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George F. Davis, World
War II commander of the WALKE (DD-723), was mortally wounded during a
kamikaze attack in January 1945. The fourth DAVIS, DD-937, was launched
28 March 1956 and commissioned 6 March 1957.
Based in Newport, Rhode
Island, she operated along the East Coast, in the Mediterranean, off
Northern Europe, and in the Caribbean, where in July 1959 she patrolled
the western and southern coasts of Haiti during trouble on that island,
and in January 1960, she collected data for the International
Geophysical Year. That July, the ship’s crew earned the battle
efficiency 'E'; they earned a second the next year, and a third in 1962.
Following her 1962 Mediterranean deployment, she joined the U.S.
quarantine line during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The DAVIS returned to
the Caribbean in 1963, took her fifth Mediterranean cruise in November
1964, and was back patrolling the Caribbean in 1965 during the Dominican
Republic crisis. Then, in March 1966, she headed for the Western Pacific
and Vietnam where she served on the gun line and plane guard duty for
the HANCOCK (CV-19) and TICONDEROGA (CV-14) as their planes struck enemy
positions in North and South Vietnam. Later, the DAVIS’s guns supported
South Vietnamese army operations in Quang Ngai and U.S. Marines fighting
around Chu Lai and Da Nang. When she left Vietnam in July 1966, the
DAVIS had fired over 6,000 rounds of ammunition. She returned to Newport
via the Arabian and Mediterranean seas, ending her around-the-world
cruise in August.
On the night of 8 June
1967, during the Arab-Israeli War, the DAVIS raced to the aid of the USS
LIBERTY that had been attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats. Her
crew found the ship badly damaged with thirty-four dead and seventy-five
wounded. Medical and damage control parties from the DAVIS cared for the
injured, reestablished vital ship functions, and assisted in clean-up.
Ordered on a very different mission later that summer, the DAVIS and the
FRED T. BERRY (DD-858) dogged a submerged Soviet submarine for 105
hours, finally forcing it to the surface. In addition to routine
operations, the DAVIS participated in U.S.-Canadian exercises in the
fall.
Exercises with the
STICKELL (DD-888) and MASSEY (DD-778) in early 1968 put her in the
Caribbean, where for three weeks in April, her crew stood
round-the-clock Condition III watches covering the operations of the
USNS MULLER, an intelligence ship gathering data off the coast of
Havana, Cuba. Although several KOMAR missile patrol boats prowled around
her, the mission passed without incident. By the following October, the
DAVIS was again on the gun line supporting allied troops in North
Vietnam and amphibious operations in Da Nang before heading homeward in
April 1969. When she left, her guns had fired more than 11,000 rounds of
ammunition.
On 30 October 1969, the
DAVIS entered the Boston Naval Shipyard for decommissioning and
antisubmarine warfare conversion. She emerged for recommissioning on 17
October 1970 equipped with the latest antisubmarine weapons systems. At
Guantanamo Bay for refresher training on 16 February 1971, she was
detached for surveillance operations off Cuba, with the CECIL (DD-835)
and CALCATERRA (DER-390) to monitor and identify shipping out of
Cienfuegos. Relieved three days later by the MULLINNIX (DD-944), she
returned on 26 March for a four-day stint of harbor surveillance. During
her deployment to Northern Europe in May, the DAVIS was ordered on an
intelligence-gathering mission to find, two Soviet ships in the North
Sea; not an easy task, but some educated guesswork and an alert ESM
operator located the Soviet vessels, and the DAVIS shadowed them through
the English Channel accumulating photographic and electronic
intelligence data.
Following Cuba’s attack
on the merchantman JOHNNY EXPRESS in January 1972, she patrolled the
Windward Passage and escorted other merchant vessels through the area.
By early June she was headed for the Western Pacific, making a
thirty-two-day, non-stop transit around South Africa to the Philippines.
She was on the gun line near Quang Tri, South Vietnam, on 8 July. The
DAVIS interrupted her cycle of shelling, rearming, and refueling on 19
July to rescue a U.S. Air Force pilot shot down near the DMZ. His
co-pilot was also safely retrieved by the EVERSOLE (DD-789). She was
back on the gun line on 10 August when an explosion tore off a two-foot
length of Mount 51’s barrel. Four of the gun crew suffered minor
injuries. After regunning at Subic Bay, she was back on plane guard and
gun line duty until 11 September when she joined a 'Linebacker' unit
conducting nightly raids against North Vietnamese shore positions. By
October, the DAVIS’s nightly raids were combined with preventing Chinese
Communist merchant ships from getting their cargo onto the beach near
Hon La. Her crew also launched several mini-radios in air-filled bags
designed to carry non-communist radio broadcasts to the North
Vietnamese.
On 21 October, the
DAVIS, with the guided missile cruiser PROVIDENCE (CLG-6) and the
destroyers JAMES E. KYES (DD-787) and HOEL (DD-768) shelled critical
enemy infrastructure south of Thanh Hoa. Covered by the KYES and HOEL,
the DAVIS and PROVIDENCE closed on the beach, coming under fire from
coastal guns on Hon Me Island, which the DAVIS pounded into silence. She
fired on enemy gun emplacements on Hon Gio Island, before beginning her
homeward trek, which ended in Newport on 22 December 1972. During her
third Vietnam deployment, she had fired 8,645, 5-inch rounds, conducted
seventy underway replenishments, and steamed more than 55,000 miles.
In
1974, the DAVIS’s home port was changed to Charleston, South Carolina,
where she began an eleven-month overhaul in early 1975. A South American
deployment, a Caribbean cruise, a deployment to the Middle East, and a
Great Lakes cruise took her into 1978. Early in 1979, she left for the
Mediterranean, the Middle East, and operations in the Red Sea and Gulf
of Aden, finishing out the year undergoing overhaul. Her overhaul ended
in late 1980, and she was back with the Sixth Fleet in August 1981.
Patrols in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, exercises in the Caribbean
and North Atlantic led up the fall of 1982 and her final response to a
crisis, this time in the Eastern Mediterranean. Mission accomplished,
she got underway for home and decommissioning on 20 December 1982. On 27
July 1990, the DAVIS was stricken from the navy’s list. |
