| Lewis Compton was Assistant Secretary of the Navy early in World War II. The destroyer given his name was commissioned 4 November 1944. In April 1945, she was on her way into battle. With the RALPH TALBOT (DD-390), she joined other ships in the antisubmarine screen for merchant and naval vessels bound for Okinawa, and on 26 April, was anchored off Hagushi Beach. For two and a half weeks, under constant threat from the air, her gunners covered the troops ashore, destroying several gun emplacements and small enemy watercraft. The ship also served in the antisubmarine and antiaircraft screens.
On 12 May, she covered the occupation of nearby Tori Shima and, while returning to her station off Okinawa, was attacked by a lone Japanese plane, which her 5-inch guns brought down about 2,000 yards from the ship. After repairs to a boiler at Leyte, she was back off Okinawa with the BEBAS (DE-10) screening carriers until 4 July when she escorted a convoy of LSTs to Guam. On 8 July, the COMPTON was detached from the convoy to rush a U.S. Marine to Guam for emergency medical treatment. She then screened ships in the Leyte Gulf until 25 August, when she got underway to deliver operational orders and intelligence material to Third Fleet ships off the entrance to Tokyo Bay.
Two days later, while passing mail to the IDAHO (BB-42), she scraped the starboard quarter of the battleship, which buckled several frames and plates and punctured her side. The destroyer tender PIEDMONT (AD-17) arrived soon after the mishap, but before repair work could begin, the two ships were ordered into Tokyo Bay. On the morning of 30 August, the COMPTON entered the harbor between Yokosuka and Yokohama, the only Fifth Fleet ship to enter Tokyo Bay before the formal Japanese surrender—as far as anyone aboard her knew at the time. She was headed back to Okinawa on 1 September to cover the Wakayama evacuation during which she destroyed four floating mines. On the 17th and 18th, the COMPTON rode out a severe typhoon, which caused minor injuries to several of her crew. At month’s end, she and the GAINARD (DD-706) were on “bird dog” patrol, ensuring the safety of planes flying between Tokyo, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. She continued to patrol the Western Pacific until February 1946.
Between December 1946 and September 1948, she operated out of Norfolk, Philadelphia, and Newport. Her first Mediterranean deployment began in February 1947. In the years that followed, she operated along the East Coast, engaged in training exercises and midshipman cruises in the Caribbean, served as a school ship and naval reserve training ship steaming out of New Orleans for seventeen months. During her 1948-49 Mediterranean cruise, she served with the United Nations Palestinian Patrol. In addition to her regular deployments with the Sixth Fleet, she joined NATO exercises in European and Bermudan waters.
In the Persian Gulf when the Suez Crisis erupted in the fall of 1956, the COMPTON stood by to evacuate American civilians. With the Suez Canal closed, she returned home around the Continent of Africa. Routine overhauls, training, service as a school ship, NATO operations off the British Isles, and duty in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea occupied the COMPTON into 1958. Later that year, a midshipman cruise took her to Northern European waters. Exercises in the Caribbean and a regular overhaul period at the Boston Naval Shipyard began 1959. That year’s overhaul was particularly memorable because the ship entered and left Dry Dock No. 2 in blinding snow storms. Later, she served as school ship for the Fleet Sonar School in Key West. September exercises off North Carolina were briefly interrupted by a speed run to Morehead City with an emergency appendicitis case. At year’s end, the COMPTON joined in a wide-ranging submarine hunt, serving as contact area commander for four other destroyers and destroyer escorts, as well as search and attack aircraft, lighter than air units, and submarines.
The decade of the sixties began with the COMPTON underway for San Juan and a meteorological research operation during which she recovered the critically important capsule laden with scientific data. Over the ensuing years, she was engaged in coastwise and Caribbean operations, midshipman training cruises, fleet sonar school duty, Mediterranean deployments, and routine operations. On 12 November 1962, she joined a hunter-killer group operating southeast of Bermuda during the Cuban quarantine. She then fought extremely rough weather on her return to Newport on 21 November, had a brief in-port period, and was back on patrol off Bermuda until 30 December.
During her 1964 Mediterranean deployment, her hunter-killer group located, tracked, and maintained surveillance of Soviet submarines and surface units. By 1966, she was home ported in Boston as a naval reserve training ship. Her career as a vessel of the U.S. Navy ended on 27 September 1972 at which time she was transferred to the Brazilian navy for service as the CT MATO GROSSO (D-34). She served in that capacity until 1990 when she was decommissioned for the last time. |
