A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS ROBERT K. HUNTINGTON DD-781
The Tin Can Sailor, January 2011
The ALLEN M. SUMNER-class destroyer, ROBERT K. HUNTINGTON (DD‑781) was launched 5 December 1944 by the Seattle Tacoma Ship Building Corporation, Seattle, Washington and commissioned 3 March 1945. She joined the Pacific Fleet on 31 May 1945 and from 27 June to 16 August escorted ships between Eniwetok and Ulithi. On 28 August, she joined the Fast Carrier Task Force off the Japanese coast and was one of the ships that escorted the battleship MISSOURI into Tokyo Bay to receive the official Japanese surrender. She then returned to San Diego carrying 100 marines home.
In the spring of 1946, she returned to the Marshalls as a unit of JTF 1 during Operation Crossroads, the first atomic bomb test at Bikini. In July, her crew witnessed the air burst from a considerable distance and the more spectacular underwater blast from the comparatively close range of 10 miles.
Until early 1949, the HUNTINGTON operated and trained off the West Coast, in Hawaiian, and in Far Eastern waters with Task Force 38, the Pacific Mobile Striking Force. In April, the destroyer was transferred to the Atlantic Fleet where she was assigned to a carrier task force then undergoing extensive antisubmarine warfare training. She spent the following winter in Arctic waters. By February 1950, she was headed for the Caribbean to participate in fleet exercises. The year ended with her first deployment to the Mediterranean for duty with the Sixth Fleet. That spring, she returned to Norfolk and, for the next 2 years, she alternated cold weather operations with Caribbean cruises. From the spring of 1953 until the summer of 1955, she rotated between duty in the Mediterranean and exercises with the Second Fleet off the U.S. East Coast and in the Caribbean. In July 1955 she was in the North Atlantic guarding President Eisenhower’s plane route as he traveled to and from the Geneva Conference.
Following a Caribbean cruise in the spring of 1956, the HUNTINGTON conducted a midshipman training cruise to Europe and the Caribbean. In 1957, she operated in the Caribbean and then in European waters for NATO exercises. In both 1958 and 1959, she made six‑month Mediterranean deployments, but spent most of 1960 undergoing a fleet rehabilitation and modernization (FRAM) overhaul and conversion. Emerging from the shipyard, the “new” destroyer steamed to her new home port, Mayport, and through 1961 operated off the U.S. East Coast and in the Caribbean.
The first half of 1962 saw her employed in ASW exercises off the East Coast. By August, however, the HUNTINGTON was headed for the Mediterranean. While there, she also operated in the Black Sea from 3 to 12 October. She returned to Mayport on in March 1963 and spent much of the rest of that year in the Caribbean. For the next 4 years, she operated off the East Coast, in the Caribbean, and in the Mediterranean. In late 1967, she deployed to the Mediterranean as part of a hunter‑killer force. She returned to Mayport on 16 December 1967.
In early 1968, the HUNTINGTON operated off the East Coast and in the Caribbean until transferring to the Pacific Fleet. In October, she deployed to the Far East for 6 months operating off Vietnam. She returned to Mayport in April 1969 and operated in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico into 1970.
In July 1970, the HUNTINGTON received a new assignment and a new home port. Operating out of Bayonne, New Jersey, she was active in the Atlantic and Caribbean with the reserve program until October 1973. At that time, a survey found her to be unfit for further service and, as a result, she was decommissioned on 31 October at Newport, Rhode Island. The ROBERT K. HUNTINGTON was stricken from the navy’s list on the same day and sold to Venezuela. She operated in the Venezuelan navy as the FALCON until she was retired and scrapped in 1981.
