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Samuel F. Du Pont
commanded U.S. ships during the Mexican War and the Civil War. The third
DUPONT, DD-941 was launched 8 September 1956 and commissioned 1 July
1957.
During 1958, she took
part in antisubmarine exercises in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
In June 1959, she was in the Great Lakes for the celebration of the
opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and that fall, visited Southampton,
England, after serving as plane guard during President Eisenhower’s
transatlantic flight. Her 1960 tour in the Mediterranean was followed by
an overhaul in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard where she remained through
February 1961.
Fleet exercises in the
Caribbean, operations along the Atlantic Coast, and enforcing the
quarantine during the Cuban missile crisis carried the DUPONT to April
1963 when she served as the command ship during the search for the
THRESHER (SSN-593) that foundered off Boston on 10 April. She finished
1963 as the only destroyer in the Atlantic Fleet to win four successive
“E”s in Engineering. Her fifth Mediterranean cruise began in November
and continued into 1964.
After another
Mediterranean deployment, she was the first ship to reach the Gemini V
space capsule after it landed, and her crew stood by to ensure that both
astronauts and capsule were recovered safely. She was also the first
vessel ever to recover the booster section of a space shot launch
rocket, which she carried back to Norfolk lashed to her fantail. While
in Santo Domingo during the Dominican Republic crisis, the DUPONT earned
a golden “E” to commemorate her sixth consecutive Engineering 'E'.
Operations with the Sixth Fleet and NATO forces took up the first half
of 1966, followed by a Caribbean cruise and the award of her seventh
Engineering 'E', an unprecedented feat.
The DUPONT’s first
Vietnam deployment began in August 1967 on the gun line in support of
U.S. Marines fighting at the Demilitarized Zone. Under constant threat
from enemy shore batteries, her gunners shelled enemy positions day and
night. On 28 August, the enemy fired on the ROBISON (DDG-12), which was
between the DUPONT and the beach. As the ROBISON maneuvered to seaward,
the DUPONT returned fire, immediately replacing it as a target for some
twenty 130-mm rounds. One shell found its target, hitting the Mount 52
gun. The burst sent shrapnel into the mount and down through the
superstructure to the after deckhouse killing FN Frank L. Ballant and
wounding eight others. Despite the casualties to men and ship, the
DUPONT continued on station for another two weeks before heading for
Subic Bay and repairs. Under fire once more when she returned to the gun
line on 10 October, she successfully avoided being hit. On 10 November,
the eight men wounded on 28 August received Purple Heart medals, and two
days later, the ship left for her last trip to the gun line. At the end
of seventy-five days in combat, the DUPONT’s 5-inch guns had fired
20,000 rounds. Returning to Norfolk in January 1968, she went into dry
dock for repairs followed by operations with the Apollo recovery force,
exercises in the Caribbean, and midshipman training. By summer’s end,
her engineering department had racked up its ninth departmental
excellence award.
Back in the Far East on
10 October 1968, she began twenty-six days on the gun line supporting
SEAL reconnaissance teams and ARVN units in the Mekong Delta. Later in
the Gulf of Siam, she fired on a Vietcong-held island, supported a swift
boat sweep up the Van Song Ong Doc River, and provided gun fire support
in the I Corps area and around Da Nang. In mid-December, her guns
covered an amphibious landing to the south.
Returning to combat in
January, her gunners supported the 1st Marine Division at Da Nang,
covered a four-day amphibious landing to the south, and then again
shelled enemy positions around Da Nang and in the Mekong River Delta.
When she left Vietnam that spring, the DUPONT’s guns had fired 30,000
rounds, damaging or destroying more than 730 military structures, and
131 small craft, not to mention causing multiple fires and explosions.
Following her return to Norfolk, she entered the Boston Naval Shipyard
in May 1969 for decommissioning and antisubmarine warfare modernization.
Recommissioned on 9 May
1970, she returned to Norfolk and in April 1971, began antisubmarine
warfare and routine operations along the Atlantic Coast, in the
Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. A similar pattern of operations and
deployments prevailed over the next three years. Then in April 1974,
passing under the Coleman Memorial Bridge en route to Norfolk from the
Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, her after mast was damaged, and she
spent a month at pier-side for repairs. Subsequent NATO operations in
the North Atlantic took the DUPONT to Sunderland, England, where her
fire fighting team’s rapid response to a nearby warehouse fire prevented
extensive damage. She returned home in December.
Following a regular
overhaul in 1975, she rejoined the Atlantic Fleet in January 1976 with a
training cruise in the Caribbean. Fall took her to Saudi Arabia and Oman
followed by exercises in the Indian Ocean and a visit to the United Arab
Emirate of Fujairah. Visits to Kenya, Bahrain, Iran, Djibouti, Sudan,
the Seychelles, and Pakistan completed the ship’s Mid-East deployment in
March 1977. Over the next four years, the ship operated in the North
Atlantic and along the Atlantic Coast from Nova Scotia to South America
and underwent an overhaul at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard at Hoboken,
New Jersey. Training exercises and operations out of Norfolk took her to
the spring of 1981 and deployment to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the
Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf, where she conducted surveillance
operations. The DUPONT operated in the North Atlantic in September and
cruised the Caribbean before returning to Norfolk in December.
In August 1982, the
DUPONT began seventy-four days on station off Beirut, Lebanon where she
provided naval gunfire support during the PLO evacuation and the
withdrawal of U.S. Marines from Beirut.
Following the massacre of Palestinian refugees on 18 September, she
escorted the U.S. contingent of the multinational peacekeeping force
back into Beirut. The ship finally set sail for home on 7 December. The
Beirut operations were her last. On 4 March 1983, the ship was
decommissioned. Following her de-commissioning, the DUPONT entered the
Philadelphia Navy Yard’s mothball fleet. She was struck from the navy’s
list on 1 June 1990. |
