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The contract to build the first ship of the class
intended to replace the FLETCHERs was awarded to Federal Shipbuilding
and Drydock's Kearny (New Jersey) yard, a relatively new facility
created during the building boom years of Navy expansion prior to the
outbreak of World War II. The new vessel, DD-692, was launched on a cold
December forenoon in 1943 and commissioned more than a year later.
USS ALLEN M. SUMNER was named for a Marine captain who
gave his life in an attack against German forces near Tigney, France, in
the closing months of World War I. DD-692 was the first vessel to bear
his name.
An extensive shakedown along the East Coast was
followed by a training assignment; DD-692 was detailed to the Fleet
Operational Training Command for two months of service training new
destroyer crews expected to man the rapidly completing class. Finally
freed of that thankless but important task, USS ALLEN M. SUMNER was off
to war at last. By August 1944, she had transited the Panama Canal and
reported to the Pacific fleet at San Pedro, California.
SUMNER reached the fast task forces just in time for
deployment in the Philippine campaign. Initially, the service involved
screening and patrol duties, but on the night of December 2-3, 1944, the
situation changed radically. The American landings in the southern
Philippines were in jeopardy; the Japanese could use Ormoc Bay on the
west coast of Leyte to funnel fresh troops to oppose the Allied landings
there. The bay was heavily defended by coastal batteries and Japanese
convoys from the north well protected by escorting destroyers. Worst of
all, the monsoon season had arrived and the formidable air power
deployed by the allies was often grounded. Tearing up the bay became an
assignment for destroyers.
As flagship of DesDiv 120, SUMNER led the way into the
bay. Accompanied by sister ships USS MOALE (DD-693) and USS COOPER
(DD-695), DD-692 went hunting for five transports reported to be landing
Japanese reinforcements. The American destroyers entered Ormoc at first
light and were immediately attacked by enemy aircraft as the weather
cleared. Swarms of aircraft shuttled between local airfields and the
developing action in the bay; the three destroyers were under almost
constant attack until the following morning. But DesDiv 120 caught a
number of enemy ships in the anchorage and the hunting was good. Relying
heavily on radar-directed gunfire, SUMNER and her sisters knocked down
ten enemy aircraft, sank or heavily damaged nearly a dozen enemy
transports and small craft, and devastated the Imperial Japanese Navy's
escort destroyer KUWA. Just as COOPER was turning to finish off the
mortally wounded escort, however, the Japanese destroyer TAKE took
advantage of the diversion to launch a spread of torpedoes. COOPER was
hit, her back broken. As the destroyer settled, SUMNER and MOALE were
forced to fight their way out of the quickly closing trap around the
bay.
SUMNER, however, had been ripped by fragments from a
bomb that exploded less than thirty feet from her starboard bow and
enemy strafing attacks were devastating to even the heavily armed tin
can. DD-692 carried thirteen wounded out of Ormoc Bay. The new destroyer
and her crew became veterans quickly.
USS ALLEN M. SUMNER sped from beach- head to beachhead
in the Philippines cauldron for the next several weeks. On her way to
the Lingayen Gulf landings, SUMNER had her first brush with a new enemy
weapon. A Japanese suicide aircraft crashed the destroyer's after funnel
and torpedo mount on January 6, 1945, leaving fourteen men killed and
twenty-nine wounded. Still the gallant destroyer steamed to her station
off the beachhead, providing security for the landing force until
relieved more than a week later.
DD-692 returned to the West Coast for repairs that
lasted well into the spring of 1945. Finally out of the yard at Hunter's
Point, SUMNER was briefly assigned to train new destroyer crews
"working up" for the final push across the Pacific to Japan.
SUMNER seemed destined for more action as she was ordered to the fleet
base at Eniwetok to assist in what was expected to be the opening rounds
of the invasion of Japan. By the time she arrived, however, the war was
over. Two atomic bombs had convinced the Emperor that further resistance
was useless. SUMNER was given the pleasant duty of screening Task Force
38 off Tokyo Bay in the first days of peace.
In the years following the war, SUMNER continued in
her role as a training vessel, first on the West Coast, then out of
Norfolk. While still in the Pacific, the destroyer helped to patrol the
test site for Operation "Crossroads", the atomic bomb tests
conducted at Bikini in the Marshall Islands. In the Atlantic by April
1949 she began a round of training cruises alternating with a deployment
in the Mediterranean.
When war broke out in Korea in 1950, SUMNER was
assigned to the Atlantic coast, providing a shield against growing
Russian submarine forces in the Atlantic. Finally, on April 24, 1953,
she drew war duty. The long trip to the Korean coast took her through
the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and across the Indian Ocean. After
almost two months in transit and ten-day "visit" to the
American base at Yokosuka, Japan, DD-692 was ready for the war.
For the next two months, USS ALLEN M. SUMNER screened
the carrier forces off the Korean peninsula as the flat tops sent their
aircraft to blast targets in North Korea. The tactic worked; an
armistice ended the shooting war in July.
In the years that followed Korea, DD-692, like so many
of her sisters, alternated between training and Mediterranean
deployments. The growing might of the Soviet Union needed to be checked,
and what better way to do it than to "show the flag" with
scores of destroyers. SUMNER was one of them.
The Navy was in need of new anti-submarine forces, but
Congress was not willing to approve extensive construction. The next
best alternative was the FRAM (Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization)
Program. SUMNER was extensively modified during the summer and fall of
1961 to better accomplish her role as a fleet anti-submarine escort. New
deck houses, an expanded electronics suite, and remotely controlled DASH
helicopters marked her extensive face-lift.
In the 1960's, DD-692 served effectively in the
blockade of Cuba while Russian missiles were aimed at the United States
and the Vietnam War escalated. In February 1967, SUMNER left Mayport,
FL, for a Vietnam deployment. For more than six months, the veteran
destroyer screened the nuclear cruiser USS LONG BEACH (CGN-9), provided
protection for carriers in Tonkin Gulf, interdicted Communist supply
routes, and even added her firepower to Marine operations along the
coast. It would be the aging destroyer's last war.
SUMNER returned to Mayport for the now familiar round
of training exercises and deployments in the northern Europe and the
Mediterranean. Approaching her thirtieth year in almost continuous
operation, the destroyer was feeling her age. On July 1, 1971, DD-692
was reassigned as a Naval Reserve training vessel, based in Baltimore.
She trained scores of reservists for two years before the Navy decided
that even upkeep of the aging veteran was not cost effective. The city
of Baltimore briefly toyed with the idea of making SUMNER a memorial and
a school ship of the city's youngsters when the Navy announced plans to
scrap the vessel, but the financial support failed to materialize. On
August 15,1973, USS ALLEN M. SUMNER was decommissioned. Fourteen months
later, she was sold to the Union Minerals and Alloy Co. for scrapping.
DD-692 earned two battle stars for her service in
World War II, along with one battle star for Korea, and two for Vietnam.
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