The EVERETT F.
LARSON (DD-830) was launched on 28 January at Bath, Maine, and
commissioned on 6 April 1945. Following conversion to radar picket
destroyer DDR-830, she left Boston for the Far East, arriving in Tokyo
Bay in September 1945. She covered U.S. Marine landings at Taku,
China, in October 1945 and helped sink twenty-four captured Japanese
submarines in April 1946. She was back in the U.S. in Newport, Rhode
Island, in March 1947.
Routine operations
and ASW exercises in the Atlantic, deployments to the Mediterranean,
patrol missions during the Palestinian crisis, and NATO training
cruises took her into 1956. That June the LARSON arrived at Long Beach
to begin fleet operations along the West Coast. During four Far East
tours, she operated off Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Philippines; served
as escort and plane guard for the carriers of Task Force 77; and
visited several South Pacific islands. In 1962 she underwent Fleet
Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM-II) conversion, emerging as a
state of the art antisubmarine fighting ship.
The LARSON began
1963 with operations in the Pacific Northwest and then, in April
joined the “Little Beavers” squadron, DesRon 23. The following month,
she became the second ship in the Pacific Fleet to receive the DASH
weapons system. In June, she demonstrated her DASH capabilities for
President John F. Kennedy and top Pentagon personnel. Later that month
she joined a hunter-killer group composed of the HORNET (CVS-12) and
DesDiv 231. In October 1963, she began a seven-month WestPac
deployment operating with fast attack carriers, amphibious and
Nationalist Chinese forces, and the LARSON’s hunter-killer group. She
ended 1964 with operations along the West Coast.
In June 1966, she
was back in the Western Pacific and on 2 August began a brief period
in the Tonkin Gulf followed by Taiwan patrol and ASW exercises in the
South China Sea. In October 1966 off Danang she completed thirty-three
missions, killing or wounding sixty-three Vietcong and destroying
sixty-two structures and other enemy positions. She ended her tour
with duty on Yankee Station and in the Taiwan Straits. The LARSON
returned to WestPac in August 1967 with ASWGROUP-5, which included the
WALKE (DD-723), FRANK E. EVANS (DD-754), and JAMES E. KYES (DD-787)
plus the JOHN W. THOMASON (DD-760) and LYNDE McCORMICK (DDG-8). By
October she was in the Tonkin Gulf plane guarding for the CORAL SEA
(CVA-43), ORISKANY (CVA-34), and KEARSARGE (CV-33). The LARSON was off
South Vietnam on 30 November for the first of ten gunfire support
missions in the IV Corps area where her guns destroyed or damaged
seventy-five structures, thirty-one bunkers, nineteen sampans, and two
bridges and wounded two Vietcong. On 11 December 1967, with DesDiv
231, she delivered an unusual cargo to Danang, entering the harbor
just long enough to unload 2,000 frisbees, hula hoops, and super balls
for U.S. Marines to use in their pacification programs. The LARSON
returned to Yankee station until ASWGROUP-5 left for Sasebo, Japan. On
Christmas Day 1967, twenty-five members of the LARSON’s crew helped
save a Japanese bulldozer driver buried under a landslide.
Following duty in
the Tonkin Gulf, her visit to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, was abruptly cut
short by orders to proceed to the Sea of Japan. There on 31 January,
she was among the first U.S. units to arrive after the capture of the
USS PUEBLO and its crew by the North Koreans. The LARSON remained in
the Sea of Japan plane guarding the CANBERRA (CAG-2) until 2 March
1968 then returned home.
In March 1969, the
LARSON left for WestPac with the SCHOFIELD (DEG-3) and was off South
Vietnam in early May, providing gunfire support near Danang. During
SEATO exercises in June, HMAS MELBOURNE and the FRANK E. EVANS
(DD-754) collided, leaving only the after half of the EVANS’s hull
afloat. The LARSON sent a salvage and recovery team aboard what was
left of the bisected destroyer to make it watertight and ready for
towing to Subic Bay by the tug TAWASA (ATF-96). She went on to Yankee
Station and plane guard duty with the ORISKANY and KITTYHAWK (CVA-63).
Following operations in Taiwan and off Japan, the destroyer returned
to the Tonkin Gulf and in August joined the gun line northeast of
Saigon. Repairs to a propeller cut short her third tour on the gun
line, after which she tracked three Soviet ships in the Guam area and
then headed for home.
