|
Lewis Compton was
Assistant Secretary of the Navy early in World War II. The destroyer
given his name was commissioned 4 November 1944. In April 1945, she was
on her way into battle. With the RALPH TALBOT (DD-390), she joined other
ships in the antisubmarine screen for merchant and naval vessels bound
for Okinawa, and on 26 April, was anchored off Hagushi Beach. For two
and a half weeks, under constant threat from the air, her gunners
covered the troops ashore, destroying several gun emplacements and small
enemy watercraft. The ship also served in the antisubmarine and
antiaircraft screens.
On 12 May, she covered
the occupation of nearby Tori Shima and, while returning to her station
off Okinawa, was attacked by a lone Japanese plane, which her 5-inch
guns brought down about 2,000 yards from the ship. After repairs to a
boiler at Leyte, she was back off Okinawa with the BEBAS (DE-10)
screening carriers until 4 July when she escorted a convoy of LSTs to
Guam. On 8 July, the COMPTON was detached from the convoy to rush a U.S.
Marine to Guam for emergency medical treatment. She then screened ships
in the Leyte Gulf until 25 August, when she got underway to deliver
operational orders and intelligence material to Third Fleet ships off
the entrance to Tokyo Bay.
Two days later, while
passing mail to the IDAHO (BB-42), she scraped the starboard quarter of
the battleship, which buckled several frames and plates and punctured
her side. The destroyer tender PIEDMONT (AD-17) arrived soon after the
mishap, but before repair work could begin, the two ships were ordered
into Tokyo Bay. On the morning of 30 August, the COMPTON entered the
harbor between Yokosuka and Yokohama, the only Fifth Fleet ship to enter
Tokyo Bay before the formal Japanese surrender—as far as anyone aboard
her knew at the time. She was headed back to Okinawa on 1 September to
cover the Wakayama evacuation during which she destroyed four floating
mines. On the 17th and 18th, the COMPTON rode out a severe typhoon,
which caused minor injuries to several of her crew. At month’s end, she
and the GAINARD (DD-706) were on “bird dog” patrol, ensuring the safety
of planes flying between Tokyo, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. She continued to
patrol the Western Pacific until February 1946.
Between December 1946
and September 1948, she operated out of Norfolk, Philadelphia, and
Newport. Her first Mediterranean deployment began in February 1947. In
the years that followed, she operated along the East Coast, engaged in
training exercises and midshipman cruises in the Caribbean, served as a
school ship and naval reserve training ship steaming out of New Orleans
for seventeen months. During her 1948-49 Mediterranean cruise, she
served with the United Nations Palestinian Patrol. In addition to her
regular deployments with the Sixth Fleet, she joined NATO exercises in
European and Bermudan waters.
In the Persian Gulf
when the Suez Crisis erupted in the fall of 1956, the COMPTON stood by
to evacuate American civilians. With the Suez Canal closed, she returned
home around the Continent of Africa. Routine overhauls, training,
service as a school ship, NATO operations off the British Isles, and
duty in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea occupied the
COMPTON into 1958. Later that year, a midshipman cruise took her to
Northern European waters. Exercises in the Caribbean and a regular
overhaul period at the Boston Naval Shipyard began 1959. That year’s
overhaul was particularly memorable because the ship entered and left
Dry Dock No. 2 in blinding snow storms. Later, she served as school ship
for the Fleet Sonar School in Key West. September exercises off North
Carolina were briefly interrupted by a speed run to Morehead City with
an emergency appendicitis case. At year’s end, the COMPTON joined in a
wide-ranging submarine hunt, serving as contact area commander for four
other destroyers and destroyer escorts, as well as search and attack
aircraft, lighter than air units, and submarines.
The decade of the
sixties began with the COMPTON underway for San Juan and a
meteorological research operation during which she recovered the
critically important capsule laden with scientific data. Over the
ensuing years, she was engaged in coastwise and Caribbean operations,
midshipman training cruises, fleet sonar school duty, Mediterranean
deployments, and routine operations. On 12 November 1962, she joined a
hunter-killer group operating southeast of Bermuda during the Cuban
quarantine. She then fought extremely rough weather on her return to
Newport on 21 November, had a brief in-port period, and was back on
patrol off Bermuda until 30 December.
During her 1964 Mediterranean deployment, her hunter-killer group
located, tracked, and maintained surveillance of Soviet submarines and
surface units. By 1966, she was home ported in Boston as a naval reserve
training ship. Her career as a vessel of the U.S. Navy ended on 27
September 1972 at which time she was transferred to the Brazilian navy
for service as the CT MATO GROSSO (D-34). She served in that capacity
until 1990 when she was decommissioned for the last time. |
