Like and Follow us on Facebook!

Hull Number: DD-802

Launch Date: 05/08/1944

Commissioned Date: 07/29/1944

Decommissioned Date: 02/01/1964

Call Sign: NTFD

Voice Call Sign: SCRAPPY (60-62), BANKNIGHT, STAGHOUND (45)

Other Designations: AD-11


Class: FLETCHER

FLETCHER Class

Data for USS Fletcher (DD-445) as of 1945


Length Overall: 376’ 5"

Beam: 39’ 7"

Draft: 13’ 9"

Standard Displacement: 2,050 tons

Full Load Displacement: 2,940 tons

Fuel capacity: 3,250 barrels

Armament:

Five 5″/38 caliber guns
Five 40mm twin anti-aircraft mounts
Two 21″ quintuple torpedo tubes

Complement:

20 Officers
309 Enlisted

Propulsion:

4 Boilers
2 General Electric Turbines: 60,000 horsepower

Highest speed on trials: 35.2 knots

Namesake: FRANCIS HOYT GREGORY

FRANCIS HOYT GREGORY

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, April 2021

Gregory (Destroyer No. 82) was laid down on 25 August 1917 at Quincy, Mass., by the Fore River SHip Building Co.; launched on 27 January 1918; sponsored by Mrs. George S. [ALice] Trevor, great-randdaughter of Admiral Gregory; and commissioned on 1 June 1918, Comdr. Arthur P. Fairfield in command.

Joining a convoy at New York, Gregory sailed for Brest, France, 25 June 1918. She spent the final summer of the war escorting convoys from the French port to various Allied ports in Britain and France. As the war neared its close, Gregory was assigned to the patrol squadron at Gibraltar 2 November 1918. In addition to patrolling in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Gregory carried passengers and supplies to the Adriatic and aided in the execution of the terms of the Austrian armistice. After six months of this duty, the flush-deck destroyer joined naval forces taking part in relief missions to the western Mediterranean 28 April 1919. In company with USS Arizona. Gregory carried supplies and passengers to Smyrna. Constantinople, and Batum. She then sailed for Gibraltar with the American counsul from Tiflis, Russia and some British army officers. Debarking her passengers on the rocky fortress, Gregory sailed for New York reaching the States 13 June 1919.

After brief tours in reserve at Tompkinsville, N.Y., the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Gregory sailed to Charleston, S.C., 4 January 1921. A year of local training operations out of the southern port ended 12 April 1922 when Gregory entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She decommissioned 7 July 1922 and went into reserve.

As war broke again over Europe, threatening to involve the United States, Gregory and three other four-stackers were taken out of mothballs for conversion to high-speed transports. The DDs were stripped of virtually all their armament to make room for boats, while other important modifications were made for troops and cargo. Gregory recommissioned 4 November 1940 as APD-3 and joined Little, Colhoun, and McKean to form Transport Division 12. None of these valiant ships were to live through the Pacific war-all but McKean were lost during the Guadalcanal campaign.

Gregory and her sister APD’s trained along the East Coast for the following year perfecting landing techniques with various Marine divisions. On 27 January 1942. with war already raging in the Pacific, she departed Charleston for Pearl Harbor. Exercises in Hawaiian waters kept TransDiv 12 in the Pacific through the spring, after which they returned to San Diego for repairs. They sailed for the Pacific again 7 June, reaching Pearl Harbor a week later to train for the upcoming invasion of Guadalcanal, America’s first offensive effort in the long Pacific campaign.

Departing Noumea 31 July 1942, Gregory joined TF 62 (Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher) and steamed for Guadalcanal. After sending her Marines ashore in the first assault waves 7 August, Gregory and her sister APD’s remained in the area performing a variety of tasks in one of history’s most desperately fought over areas. The versatile ships patrolled the waters around the highly-contested islands, waters which were to gain notoriety as “Iron Bottom Sound,” and brought up ammunition & supplies from Espiritu Santo.

On 4 September Gregory and Little were returning to their anchorage at Tulagi after transferring a Marine Raider Battalion to Savo Island. The night was inky-‘black with a low haze obscuring all landmarks, and the ships decided to remain on patrol rather than risk threading their way through the dangerous channel. As they steamed between Guadalcanal and Savo Island at ten knots, three Japanese destroyers (Yudachi, Hatsuyuki, and Murakumo) entered the Slot undetected to bombard American shore positions. At 0056 on the morning of 5 September, Gregory and Little -saw flashes of gunfire which they assumed came from a Japanese submarine until radar showed four targets-apparently a cruiser had joined the three DD’s. While the two outgunned but gallant ships were debating whether to close for action or depart quietly and undetected, the decision was taken out of their hands.

A Navy pilot had also seen the gunfire and, assuming it came from a Japanese submarine, dropped a string of five flares almost on top of the two APD’s. Gregory and Little, silhouetted against the blackness, were spotted immediately by the Japanese destroyers, Who opened fire at 0100. Gregory brought all her guns to bear but was desperately overmatched and less than 3 minutes after the fatal flares had been dropped, was dead in the water and beginning to sink. Two boilers had burst and her decks were a mass of flames. Her skipper, Lt. Comdr. H. F. Bauer, himself seriously wounded, gave the word to abandon ship, and Gregory’s crew reluctantly took to the water. Bauer ordered two companions to aid another crewman yelling for help and was never seen again; for his brave and gallant conduct he posthumously received the Silver Star.

At 0123, with all of Gregory’s and most of Little’s crew in the water, the Japanese Ships began shelling again- aiming not at the crippled ships but at their helpless-crews in the water. All but 11 of Gregory’s crew survived, 6 of them swimming through the night all the way to Guadalcanal. Gregory sank stern first some 40 minutes after the firing had begun, and was followed 2 hours later by Little. Fleet Admiral Nimitz, in praising the courageous ships after their loss, wrote that “both of these small vessels fought as well as possible against the overwhelming odds . . . With little means, they performed duties vital to the success of the campaign.” Gregory’s name was struck from the Navy List 2 October 1942.

Gregory received two battle stars for service in World War II.


Disposition:

Moored non-operable training ship, San Diego (05/01/1966 to 1/1971). Renamed INDOCTRINATOR 05/20/1966. Designated for use as target. Towed to and moored off San Clemente Island. During a storm, the ship broke her moorings and ran aground 03/04/1971. Still argound. To be retained for research and development experiments. Now no more than hulk.


A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History

USS GREGORY DD-802

The Tin Can Sailor, January 1983

GREGORY (DD-802) was launched by the Todd-Pacific Ship Building Co., Tacoma, Wash., 8 May 1944; sponsored by Miss Ann McGuigan, daughter of Captain McGuigan, superintendent of construction at Tacoma; and commissioned 29 July 1944, Commander Bruce McCandless commanding.

After shakedown along the West Coast, GREGORY sailed for the Pacific with HULL (DD-350), reaching Pearl Harbor 23 October 1944. Two months of local operations terminated in January 1945 as GREGORY began practice for the impending invasion of Iwo Jima, next-to-last great campaign of the long and bloody Pacific war. GREGORY sailed for the island 22 January, arriving off Iwo Jima via Saipan and Eniwetok on D-day, 19 February. For the next month she remained off the rocky coast under almost constant fire to screen transports and provided fire support for the Invasion forces. Departing Iwo Jima 15 March, GREGORY reached Saipan 4 days later to prepare for her role in the Okinawa campaign.

Okinawa, last step prior to Invasion of the Japanese home Islands themselves, involved over a thousand ships and half a million men, under Admiral R. A. Spruance, in the Pacific war’s largest amphibious effort. GREGORY joined this modern armada as it sailed from Saipan 27 March and was off Okinawa 1 April 1945 as the first waves of Marines waded ashore to bloody battle. Her task group, under Admiral Jerauld Wright, conducted a “demonstration landing” on the southeast coast, hoping to distract some Japanese attention from the actual invasion along Okinawa’s western coast. This diversion complete, GREGORY remained off Okinawa on patrol and radar picket station.

On the afternoon of 8 April, GREGORY’S lookouts spotted three Japanese planes coming in out of the setting sun, a favorite kamikaze device. One of the suicide craft crashed into the destroyer amidships just above the waterline to port with pieces of fuselage spinning wildly off as GREGORY’S guns registered hit after hit. GREGORY shuddered under the impact and began to slow in the water as power failed in her forward engine and fire rooms flooded. The two other kamikazes mercilessly pressed on their attack, but the wounded DD downed both of them in blazing gunfire. GREGORY then steamed to the anchorage at Kerama Retto for temporary repairs, and on 19 April departed Okinawa. After escorting the carrier Intrepid to Pearl Harbor, she sailed for San Diego, reaching there 18 May for battle repairs.

While GREGORY was still in overhaul, the Japanese surrendered and the destroyer was placed in inactive status, in commission in reserve, at San Diego. She decommissioned 15 January 1947.

GREGORY’S rest was to be brief, as Communist forces launched their war in Korea 24 June 1950 and the U.S. Navy joined United Nations forces; she recommissioned 27 April 1951, Comdr. H. C. Lank in command. Reaching Yokosuka, Japan, via Pearl Harbor and Midway 16 August 1951, GREGORY immediately began patrol duty along the Korean coast. Her principal duties were screening American carriers, such as ESSEX and BOXER, from which air strikes against North Korean positions and supply lines were launched; blockading the coast, and participating in coastal bombardment as the tide of war ebbed and flowed along the Korean peninsula. In addition, she was frequently assigned to the Formosa patrol, intended to prevent Communist action against the beleaguered republic. Here GREGORY came under fire from Mainland Communist Chinese shore batteries. While on a search-and-rescue mission for a downed P2V 19 January 1953, she closed to within 8,000 yards of Nan-ao Tao, a Communist held island just off the China coast. Though shore batteries opened fire on her, GREGORY did not return the fire, instead clearing the area immediately to continue her SAR mission.

After the Korean Armistice ended the shooting war in August 1953, GREGORY returned to a peacetime routine of local operations out of San Diego interspersed with yearly deployments, usually 6 months long, to the Far East. These deployments took her to Yokosuka, Sasebo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Sydney, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Formosa for training maneuvers with American and other warships. In the fall of 1958 GREGORY spent a tension filled 21/2 months off the China coast during one of the periodic intensifications of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis.

GREGORY earned the Battle Efficiency “E” three times during her post-war career-1955, 1956, and 1959. GREGORY decommissioned at San Diego 1 February 1964 and entered the reserve. She was struck from the Navy List 1 May 1966, renamed INDOCTRINATOR, and served as an inoperable trainer at San Diego till 1972 – the GREGORY was used for target practice by the U.S. Navy & was sunk off San Clemente Island with the bow section partially on the beach.

GREGORY earned two battle stars during World War II and four battle stars during the Korean conflict.

USS GREGORY DD-802 Ship History

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, April 2021

The second Gregory (DD-802) was launched by the Todd-Pacific Ship Building Co., Tacoma, Wash., 8 May 1944; sponsored by Miss Ann McGuigan, daughter of Capt. McGuigan, superintendent of construction at Tacoma ; and commissioned 29 July 1944, Cmdr. Bruce McCandless commanding.

After shakedown along the West Coast, Gregory sailed for the Pacific with Hull (DD-350), reaching Pearl Harbor 23 October 1944. Two months of local operations terminated in January 1945 as Gregory began practice for the impending invasion of Iwo Jima, next-to-last great campaign of the long and bloody Pacific war. Gregory sailed for the island 22 January, arriving off Iwo Jima via Saipan and Eniwetok on D-day, 19 February. For the next month she remained off the rocky coast under almost constant fire to screen transports and provide fire support for the invasion forces. Departing Iwo Jima 15 March, Gregory reached Saipan four days later to prepare for her role in the Okinawa campaign.

Okinawa, last step prior to invasion of the Japanese home islands themselves, involved over a thousand ships and half a million men, under Admiral R. A. Spruance, in the Pacific’s war largest amphibious effort. Gregory joined this modern armada as it sailed from Saipan 27 March and was off Okinawa 1 April 1945 as the first waves of Marines waded ashore to bloody battle. Her task group, under Admiral Jerauld Wright, conducted a “demonstration landing” on the southeast coast, hoping to distract some Japanese attention from the actual invasion along Okinawa’s western coast. This diversion complete, Gregory remained off Okinawa on patrol and radar picket station.

On the afternoon of 8 April, Gregory’s lookouts spotted three Japanese planes coming in out of the setting sun, a favorite kamikaze device. One of the suicide craft, pieces of fuselage spinning wildly off as Gregory’s guns registered hit after hit, crashed into the destroyer amidships just above the waterline to port. Gregory shuddered under the impact and began to slow in the water as power failed in her forward engine and fire rooms flooded. The two other kamikazes mercilessly pressed on their attack, but the wounded DD downed both of them in blazing gunfire. Gregory then steamed to the anchorage at Kerama Retto for temporary repairs, and on 19 April departed Okinawa. After escorting the carrier Intrepid to Pearl Harbor, she sailed for San Diego, reaching there 18 May for battle repairs. While Gregory was still in overhaul, the Japanese surrendered and the destroyer was placed in inactive ‘Status, in commission in reserve, at San Diego. She decommnssioned 15 January 1947.

Gregory’s rest was to be brief, as Communist forces launched their war in Korea 24 June 1950 and the U.S. Navy joined United Nations forces; she recommissioned 27 April 1951, Cmdr. H. C. Lank in command. Reaching Yokosuka, Japan, via Pearl Harbor and Midway 16 August 1951, Gregory immediately began patrol duty along the Korean coast. Her principal duties were screening American carriers, such as Essex and Boxer, from which air strikes against North Korean positions and supply lines were launched; blockading the coast, and participating in coastal bombardment as the tide of war ebbed and flowed along the Korean peninsula. In addition, she was frequently assigned to the Formosa patrol, intended to prevent Communist action against the beleaguered republic. Here Gregory came under fire from mainland Communist Chinese shore batteries. While on a search-and-rescue mission for a downed P2V 19 January 1953, she closed to within 8,000 yards of Nan’ao Tao, a Communist-held island just off the China coast. Though shore batteries opened fire on her Gregory did not return the fire, instead clearing the area immediately to continue her SAR mission.

After the Korean Armistice ended the shooting war in August 1953, Gregory returned to a peactime routine of local operations out of San Diego interspersed with yearly deployments, usually 6 months long, to the Far East. These deployments took her to Yokosuka, Sasebo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Sydney, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Formosa for training maneuvers with American and other warships. In the fall of 1958 Gregory spent a tension-filled 2% months off the China coast during one of the periodic intensifications of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis.

Gregory earned the Battle Efficiency “E” three times during her post-war career, 1955, 1956, and 1959. Gregory decommissioned at San Diego 1 February 1964 and entered the reserve. She was struck from the Navy List 1 May 1966, renamed Indoctrinator, and served as an inoperable trainer at San Diego.

Gregory earned two battle stars during World War II and four battle stars during the Korean conflict.