Launched by the Bath
Iron Works of Bath, Maine, on 14 July 1945, the GLENNON (DD-840) was
commissioned at the Boston Naval Shipyard on 4 October 1945. She spent
the spring of 1946 in the North Atlantic and the North Sea with the
cruisers HELENA (CA-75) and HOUSTON (CL-81) and the destroyer CONE
(DD-866). For the rest of that year and most of 1947, she was engaged
in routine training in the Caribbean and operations along the East
Coast. Fleet exercises in the Caribbean and a Mediterranean deployment
carried her through 1948.
The GLENNON engaged
in several midshipman cruises, reserve training exercises, and
deployments to the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic until January
1954 when she joined the Hunter-Killer Forces of the Atlantic Fleet to
cruise the eastern seaboard. In April 1954 she began a tour of duty in
Northern Europe, much of it spent as escort for the BALTIMORE (CA-38).
Two more midshipman cruises, fleet training in the Caribbean, and
deployments with DesRon 14 to the Mediterranean took her into 1958.
That October, the GLENNON became part of Destroyer Development Group
2, an experimental destroyer force. In 1959, she was busy with
experimental project operations in the Narragansett Bay area and in
Bermuda with the HAZELWOOD (DD-531).
After receiving new
sonar equipment in early 1960, she went through an intense period of
testing the new sonar domes as well as torpedoes and ECM systems. She
interrupted her experimental project work in 1961 for plane guard duty
with the carrier INTREPID (CV-11), participation in the Project
Mercury space shot, and U.S./Canadian exercises in the North Atlantic.
She again manned an Atlantic recovery station in 1962 for the historic
space flight of Major John Glenn. In August she began her year-long
FRAM I overhaul at the Boston Naval Shipyard. From refresher training
in Cuba in August 1963, she went on to Culebra Island for gunfire
support training and a stint as antisubmarine warfare school ship at
Key West. While on this duty, she rescued four Cuban refugees adrift
in the small boat.
The next two years
were spent in testing new PADLOC passive sonar equipment, an air
search anti-jamming device, and a new ECM system. In June 1965 the
GLENNON escorted the battleship MASSACHUSETTS (BB-59) to Fall River,
Massachusetts, where she became a historic ship memorial. During
antisubmarine warfare exercises in 1966, the destroyer took part in
the first operational employment of PADLOC, which demonstrated the
system’s great potential. Other ships involved in the exercises were
the WASP (CVS-18), the CONYNGHAM (DDG-17), CORRY (DD-817), WILLIAM M.
WOOD (DD-715), ROBERT L. WILSON (DD-847), WALLER (DD-466), LAFFEY
(DD-724), THORNBACK (SS-418), SKIPJACK (SSN-585), SCORPION (SSN-589),
and TINOSA (SSN-606). Operations in the Caribbean, along the East
Coast with the WITEK (DD-848) and HUGH H. PURVIS (DD-709), and a South
American cruise with the NORFOLK (DL-1), GYATT (DD-712), SENNET
(SS-408), and MULLINNIX (DD-944) occupied the GLENNON through 1967. In
March 1968 she deployed with the WILLIAM R. RUSH (DD-714) and GAINARD
(DD-706) for a destroyer school cruise to the Caribbean, and in June
she began a seven-month deployment with a two-hundred-ship NATO Force
whose exercises were under close observation by Soviet ships and
aircraft. Overhaul and antisubmarine warfare, gunfire support,
antiaircraft warfare, and other exercises in the Caribbean with the
McCLOY (DE-1038), CHARLES S. SPERRY (DD-697), RICH (DD-820), DAMATO
(DD-871), and LOWRY (DD-770) preceded her move to Charleston, South
Carolina in 1969.
A 1970 deployment to
the Middle East, service in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Persian
Gulf with the HAROLD J. ELLISON (DD-864), and fleet exercises took her
into 1972 when she got underway for the Western Pacific and Vietnam.
She arrived on the gun line on 19 May 1972 and after several periods
of steady round-the-clock firing, she returned to the states in
September. During exercises off the Virginia Capes in April 1973,
while trying to refuel from the CALOOSAHATCHI (AO-98), fourteen of her
crew were injured necessitating her return to Charleston. By June 1973
the GLENNON was underway for the Mediterranean and North Sea where she
operated with the ELMER MONTGOMERY (DE-1082), RICHARD E. BYRD
(DDG-23), CONYNGHAM (DDG-17), DALE (DLG-19), SARSFIELD (DD-837), NEW
(DD-818), and JOHN F. KENNEDY (CVA-67) until December.
During 1974, she was outfitted with new
experimental sonar and computer data systems followed by testing in the
Caribbean with the LAPON (SSN-661), GRAYLING (SSN-646), and TIGRONE
(AGSS-419). The GLENNON spent most of 1975 as a test platform for
continued technical evaluations of sonar systems. More tests, plane
guard duty with the AMERICA (CV-66), NATO exercises, and a Caribbean
cruise ended her long career.
On 1 October 1976,
three days short of her thirty-first birthday, the GLENNON was
decommissioned and struck from the navy’s register. She was sunk as a
target off Puerto Rico on 26 February 1981. |
