| DD-697 was launched by the Federal Shipbuilding construction crews on March 13, 1944. She had been named for RADM Charles S. Sperry, who had commanded the American battle fleet and served, briefly, as commander of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” during that force’s round the world cruise. RADM Sperry passed away in Washington, DC on February 1, 1911.USS CHARLES S. SPERRY was commissioned on May 17, 1944 and was ordered almost immediately to the Pacific for training in Hawaiian waters. By December, DD-697 was at Ulithi, ready to accompany task Force 38, one of the premier fast carrier forces in the Pacific. For most of her service in the Pacific War, SPERRY “sailed in harm’s way”, protecting carrier forces from kamikaze attack while cruising off enemy coasts. The carriers DD-697 protected lashed out at airfields around Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, and the coast of Indochina.
The invasion of Iwo Jima was supported by SPERRY’s task force, and the destroyer was pivotal in protecting her charges with accurate anti-aircraft fire and a smokescreen as enemy aircraft sought and found the huge force. The carriers swept past Japan once again, before returning to Ulithi.
Although TF 38 became TF 58 periodically to confuse Japanese intelligence, most of the escorting ships remained the same. USS CHARLES S. SPERRY and her sisters often stayed at sea for three months or more, either steaming to a new launch point for the carrier aircraft or withdrawing briefly for underway replenishment. In preparing for the invasion of Okinawa, SPERRY’s fast force struck targets in Kyushu. This time, the Japanese struck back heavily. DD-697 succeeded in splashing several attackers, but USS FRANKLIN (CV-13) was hit, and the destroyer was called upon to screen the badly damaged vessel.
Task Force 58 found itself in the thick of the action. In a final effort to blast American forces from Okinawa, the Imperial Japanese Navy sortied the mighty and, many thought, unsinkable dreadnought YAMATO. Escorted by a cruiser and eight destroyers, the battleship was expected to ground herself on an Okinawan beach, firing until she ran out of ammunition. Covering the attack were flights of kamikazes. The aircraft of the task force took care of the enemy battleship and most of her escort; DD-697 and her sisters took care of the kamikazes. Two of the group’s carriers, USS HANCOCK (CV-19) and USS BUNKER HILL (CV-17) were hit by attackers in April and May operations, but USS CHARLES S. SPERRY and the rest of the group’s escort helped with damage control and crew rescue.
DD-697 would cover the final air strikes against Japan. She was at sea when the cease f ire was announced. USS CHARLES S. SPERRY remained in Japanese waters, first to support occupation forces and repatriate prisoners of war, then on training exercises. She finally sailed for the East Coast in December, 1945, arriving two months later.
For the next several years, USS CHARLES S. SPERRY served as a training vessel for Naval Reserve units both on the East Coast and in the Gulf. Her relatively tranquil existence was not to last, however.
Following an overhaul in Norfolk, the destroyer was on her way to block North Korean incursions against the south. On October 14, 1950, USS CHARLES S. SPERRY found herself off the Korean coast, ready to take on a new enemy.
For eight months, DD-697 was in action almost continuously. The North Koreans came to know the gray-hulled ghost that swept unto the waters around Wonsan, Kojo, and Hungnam, blasting away at every target with superb accuracy and skill. At Wonsan, SPERRY steamed up the twisted channel, under fire from shore batteries, to provide support for landing forces assigned to capture the harbor islands. She would make life interesting for any number of Communist gunners, locomotive crews, and infantrymen up and down the coast. Usually arriving unheralded, she “interdicted enemy forces”, then left the immediate area for another assignment. Her deployment was not to end until the summer of 1952. SPERRY’s return to Norfolk marked a new point in her operational life. Soviet presence both in the eastern Mediterranean and the Atlantic made every destroyer, even one that was nearly ten years old and hardly “state of the art”, a vital element of the Atlantic fleet. Training exercises alternated with Mediterranean deployments with the Sixth Fleet and midshipmen cruises until 1959, when an innovative program promised yet another career for the vessel.
By the late 1950’s the Navy found itself in a familiar problem. Like her forces at the end of the First World War, the U.S. Navy after World War II found herself with large number of rapidly aging destroyers that were not really able to effectively counter the new technology arrayed against them. The few new vessels Congress was willing to fund would hardly provide much defense against what Navy intelligence saw as hordes of Soviet submarines in the Atlantic. The answer was a program what would modernize and rehabilitate existing hulls, buying five of new life for the tin cans. The program was called FRAM (Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization).
USS CHARLES S. SPERRY was selected for a FRAM II rebuilding. Weapons systems were modernized, electronics and communications suites were upgraded, and her hull and machinery were “rehabilitated.” With an expenditure of almost eight million dollars and a yard stay of nearly seven months, USS CHARLES S. SPERRY might be expected to be a “new” ship, and in many ways she was. Sporting hedgehog long-range torpedoes and remotely controlled drone helicopters called DASH, DD-697 was a very different ship from the one that had entered the Norfolk Navy Yard in June, 1960.
By the mid-1960’s, DD-697 had entered her third war. American involvement in the Vietnam War had escalated and strong naval forces were deployed in the area. SPERRY served in many of the same roles she performed off Korea more than ten years before. She served as a harbor defense ship for Danang, then sailed north to test her weapons against the Communist guerrillas. On January 15, 1966, one of the first 5-inch rounds the destroyer fired at a North Vietnamese target set off a spectacular secondary explosion. When the dust cleared, an ammunition dump and ten other structures had been completely destroyed, while another forty-one were heavily damaged. Within the next fifteen days, SPERRY fired one hundred thirty-five 5-inch rounds at enemy targets along the coast. The deployment ended on February 22, and SPERRY left for home.
A return to the States marked SPERRY’s return to the round of training cruises and “Med” deployments she had experienced before her Vietnam experience. Unfortunately, her operations became less and less routine. Breakdowns and equipment failures became frequent in reports. The material that had been added ten years before was no longer up to fleet standards. SPERRY had become obsolete.
In March, 1973 a Navy survey team concluded that USS CHARLES S. SPERRY was no longer useful for anti-submarine purposes. She was slated to be stricken from the Naval Vessel Register, effective on October 31, 1973.
As it happened, several South American allies were interested in acquiring “surplus” naval vessels from the United States. A deal was negotiated with the Chilean Navy in September for a total in excess of $229,500. The transfer was not entirely smooth; decommissioning was delayed while the Chilean government ironed out technicalities. Finally, on January 8, 1974, USS CHARLES S. SPERRY became MINISTRO ZENTENO, captained by CDR Francisco Johow. She served another sixteen years in the Chilean Navy before being stricken in 1990. Sources suggest she was scrapped soon afterward.
USS CHARLES S. SPERRY earned four battle stars for service in World War II, four for Korea, and additional commendations for her Vietnam service. |
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