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Named for Admiral
Forrest Sherman, one-time Chief of Naval Operations, the DD-931 was
launched 5 February 1955 and commissioned 9 November 1955. Steaming out
of Newport, Rhode Island, in January 1957, she represented the destroyer
force at President Eisenhower’s inauguration. Later that year, during
NATO exercises off Norway, her crew demonstrated a high-line transfer
for the documentary film Windjammer.
The year 1958 took her
to several world hot spots, including Caracas, Venezuela, where students
attacked Vice President Nixon; the eastern Mediterranean and the crisis
in Lebanon; and Taiwan where the Communist Chinese were threatening the
Nationalist Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Headed for home again
in October 1958, the SHERMAN’s crew rescued four marine aviators
northeast of Honolulu. Back in Rhode Island on 11 November 1958, she was
the first of her class to circle the globe.
During the celebration
of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the SHERMAN joined
the naval escort for HMS BRITTANIA carrying President Eisenhower and
Queen Elizabeth II. She then sailed through all five Great Lakes and
entertained more than 110,000 Midwesterners. Later, during coastal
exercises with the Atlantic Fleet, her crew fought high seas to rescue
three sailors who fell overboard from a navy oiler. On hand again in
1960, they took aboard an injured man from a Liberian freighter for
transport to a hospital in Bermuda. Throughout the early 1960s, her crew
maintained the SHERMAN’s battle readiness with antisubmarine
hunter-killer exercises along the East Coast and in the Mediterranean
and South Atlantic. They also carried President Kennedy’s
people-to-people program to African, South American, and Mediterranean
ports. In March 1962, her crew rode out a fierce two-day storm that did
considerable damage to the ship. Later that spring, BM2 Donald J. Spann
helped save a fourteen-year-old boy who had fallen into the harbor at
St. John, New Brunswick.
Tension filled the
month of June 1967 as the SHERMAN patrolled the eastern Mediterranean
during the Arab-Israeli War and escorted a Greek ship carrying Americans
to safety in Greece. Operations in the Caribbean and Mediterranean took
up most of 1968 and 1969. In November 1969, with the SAMUEL S. MILES
(DE-183), FOX (DLG-33), DYESS (DD-880), FISKE (DD-842), and several
Coast Guard cutters, she searched unsuccessfully for survivors of a
Liberian freighter sunk in the North Atlantic. The following summer, her
gun crews disposed of a World War II-vintage mine discovered off
Helsinki, Finland. Voyages to Scotland, Norway, the Caribbean, and
Northern Europe occupied her into 1972 when she participated in UNITAS
XIII. The latter included a fifteen-hour, ninety-mile detour to tow a
disabled Venezuelan ship to the nearest repair site. The following year,
serious engineering problems sent her to Boston for repairs. Progress
was slow, but despite 'very discouraging conditions,' the crew’s morale
remained high. Finally in March 1974, she got underway for intensive
training on the way to her new home port in Norfolk, Virginia.
Much of 1975 was spent
underway, with time between Mediterranean and North Atlantic ports used
for rigorous training exercises. By July 1976, she was in Bethlehem
Steel’s Boston shipyard for a major overhaul that lasted through
December. While in Boston, the SHERMAN’s crew encountered trouble with
local citizens, and on 16 December, an unknown assailant killed crew
member EMFN James D. Stephens.
The SHERMAN’s crew
endured another prolonged overhaul period that continued until the
summer of 1977. On 12 August, after thirteen months, the destroyer
finally got underway for Charleston, South Carolina, her new home port.
Plagued by engineering plant problems, she began refresher training in
Guantanamo Bay in January 1978.
With training exercises
and sea trials behind her, she was off to the Mediterranean. During NATO
and other exercises, her engineering, damage control, CIC,
communications, electronic warfare, and weapons departments excelled in
their performance. As a result, in January 1979, the commander of
Destroyer Squadron 24 commended the SHERMAN’s crew as the 'success story
of the Atlantic Fleet' for returning the ship to full operational
capability after her less than satisfactory overhaul. Trouble in
Nicaragua in June 1979 took her to the Caribbean, where she later
shadowed a Soviet task group. That September, her crew fought a two-day
battle against the winds, seas, and rain of hurricane David.
Operating in the
Caribbean in January 1980, when engineering problems disabled the VOGE
(DE-1047), the SHERMAN took her in tow and provided boiler feed water
and technical assistance on the way to Nassau. On 26 March, with the
MULLINNIX (DD-944), she left for the Middle East and duty patrolling the
Arabian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the coast of North Africa. Back home
in September 1980, she entered the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula,
Mississippi. There, her crew and shipyard personnel completed the
anticipated twelve-month overhaul in ten months. While in Pascagoula,
fifteen of the SHERMAN’s crew joined local fire fighters to prevent a
large brush fire from destroying homes and buildings in nearby Gautier,
Mississippi. The SHERMAN left Pascagoula on 4 August 1981, and in late
September participated in shock testing for the KIDD (DDG-993).
Anti-submarine warfare exercises off Vieques, Puerto Rico, in early 1982
were followed by a Mediterranean deployment in March. In April, the
SHERMAN’s crew rescued thirteen men and one woman from a burning
Yugoslavian freighter. She then continued through the Suez Canal for
radar picket duty in the Persian Gulf and battle group exercises with
the JOHN F. KENNEDY (CV-67) in the Arabian Sea. Headed for Charleston in
July 1982, the SHERMAN received word that she was scheduled for
deactivation, which was completed by 15 October. Captain John E.
Sherman, nephew of the ship’s namesake, spoke at the decommissioning
ceremony on 5 November 1982. She was then towed to the Inactive Ships
Facility in Philadelphia. On 27 July 1990, the FORREST SHERMAN was
stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. |
