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The ALLEN (DD-66) was
launched on 5 December 1916 by the Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, and was
commissioned on 24 January 1917. She reported for duty with the DesRon,
Atlantic Fleet, to patrol and escort convoys along the East Coast and in
Cuban waters. On 14 June 1917, she sailed from New York as an escort for
Troop Convoy Group 3, part of the first Troop Convoy of Expeditionary
Forces from the United States to France. During the remainder of World
War I, she operated with the destroyers based at Queenstown, Ireland,
performing patrol and antisubmarine duty and escorting convoys. Early in
1918, while escorting convoy HE 7, the ALLEN and fellow destroyers
DOWNES (DD-45) and BURROWS (DD-29) attacked enemy submarines with depth
charges, chasing them away from the convoy. Later that year, she was one
of the ships that assisted the sinking British ship GALWAY CASTLE. In
December 1918, the ALLEN joined the escort for the WASHINGTON (CA-11)
carrying President Woodrow Wilson to Brest, France.
Returning to the U.S.
early in 1919, the ALLEN operated with the Atlantic Fleet along the
eastern seaboard until placed out of commission on 22 June 1922.
Recommissioned on 23 June 1925, she trained naval reservists of the
District of Columbia until March 1928 when she again went out of
commission at Philadelphia.
On 23 August 1940, the
ALLEN was recommissioned. While others of her vintage, such as the
CONWAY (DD-70), CONNER (DD-72), and STOCKTON (DD-73), were among the
fifty destroyers transferred to Great Britain in exchange for naval
bases, the ALLEN was ordered to join Destroyer Division 80 on the West
Coast. In December 1940, she proceeded to Pearl Harbor, and on the
morning of 7 December 1941, she was moored in East Loch, to the
northeast of Ford Island and just southeast of the hospital ship SOLACE
(AH-5). During the Japanese attack, Elliot R. Milliken was gun captain
of the No. 6, 3-inch/.50-caliber gun. When a shell jammed in the gun, he
gave no thought to his personal safety and forcibly rammed the fused
projectile from the barrel of the gun, promptly putting it back in
action. The destroyer went on to assist in splashing three enemy planes,
sustaining neither casualties nor damage. The ALLEN remained on
antisubmarine patrol in the Pearl Harbor Defensive Sea Area where, on 27
December, she rescued twelve of the crew from a merchant ship sunk by an
enemy submarine.
As a unit of Destroyer
Division 80, the ALLEN operated out of Pearl Harbor during 1942 and
1943, screening sorties of various ships and convoys, patrolling the
Oahu picket line, and conducting gunnery and antisubmarine exercises.
During the first week of June 1942, she sailed with the BREESE (DD-122)
to a point between Oahu and Midway to assist in the transfer of the
YORKTOWN (CV-5) survivors from the PORTLAND (CA-33), RUSSELL (DD-414),
and MORRIS (DD-417). She took aboard four officers and ninety men and
returned them to Pearl Harbor. Following a brief return to San Francisco
in August 1942 and an escort run between Pearl Harbor and Midway in late
October, she resumed patrol duties on the Hawaiian sea frontier.
The ALLEN left Pearl Harbor on 20 August 1945 and arrived
at Philadelphia on 13 September. The oldest destroyer in the navy and
the last high-forecastle, 1,000-ton destroyer in U.S. service, she was
decommissioned on 15 October 1945 and sold for scrap on 26 September
1946. |
