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Hull Number: DD-848

Launch Date: 02/02/1946

Commissioned Date: 04/25/1946

Decommissioned Date: 08/19/1968

Call Sign: NBCI (EDD)

Voice Call Sign: GRANTS TOMB (EDD)

Other Designations: EDD-848


Class: GEARING

GEARING Class

Data for USS Gearing (DD-710) as of 1945


Length Overall: 390’ 6"

Beam: 40’ 10"

Draft: 14’ 4"

Standard Displacement: 2,425 tons

Full Load Displacement: 3,479 tons

Fuel capacity: 4,647 barrels

Armament:

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

Complement:

20 Officers
325 Enlisted

Propulsion:

4 Boilers
2 General Electric Turbines: 60,000 horsepower

Highest speed on trials: 34.6 knots

Namesake: FRANK PETER WITEK

FRANK PETER WITEK

Wikipedia (as of 2024)

Private First Class Frank Peter Witek (December 10, 1921 – August 3, 1944) was a United States Marine who was killed in action on August 3, 1944, in the Battle of Finegayan, Guam. For his heroism and sacrifice of life, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. He was the 28th Marine to receive the Medal of Honor during World War II.

Frank Peter Witek was born on December 10, 1921, in Derby, Connecticut. He was of Polish ancestry. When he was 9, the family moved to Chicago. It was there he finished his student days at Crane Technical High School and went to work at the Standard Transformer Company.

On January 20, 1942, he left for recruit training after enlisting in the United States Marine Corps. He left almost immediately for Pearl Harbor and in January 1943, his family heard from him while he was in New Zealand. From there he went to Bougainville where he fought in three major battles. Then he went to Guadalcanal for a rest. On July 21, 1944, the 3rd Marine Division invaded Guam. PFC Witek was a Browning automatic rifleman and scout behind the Japanese lines.

On September 8, 1944, his mother received a telegram from Washington informing her that her son had been killed on August 3. According to a combat correspondent’s release, he was slain at the battle of the Mount Santa Rosa roadblock. He had only eight cartridges left out of an original 240 rounds when he was found.

On Sunday, May 20, 1945, 50,000 people, including his mother and Gen Alexander A. VandegriftCommandant of the Marine Corps, met in Soldier Field, Chicago, to do honor to his memory. PFC Frank Peter Witek had earned the highest military award his country could give him — the Medal of Honor.

Initially buried in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps Cemetery on Guam, PFC Witek’s remains were reinterred in the Rock Island National CemeteryRock Island, Illinois, in 1949.

Medal of Honor Citation

The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR posthumously to

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS FRANK P. WITEK
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE

for service as set forth in the following CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the First Battalion, Ninth Marines, Third Marine Division, during the Battle of Finegayan at Guam, Marianas, on 3 August 1944. When his rifle platoon was halted by heavy surprise fire from well camouflaged enemy positions, Private First Class Witek daringly remained standing to fire a full magazine from his automatic point-blank range into a depression housing Japanese troops, killing eight of the enemy and enabling the greater part of his platoon to take cover. During his platoon’s withdrawal for consolidation of lines, he remained to safeguard a severely wounded comrade, courageously returning the enemy’s fire until the arrival of stretcher bearers and then covering the evacuation by sustained fire as he moved backward toward his own lines. With his platoon again pinned down by a hostile machine-gun, Private First Class Witek, on his own initiative, moved forward boldly ahead of the reinforcing tanks and infantry, alternately throwing hand grenades and firing as he advanced to within five to ten yards of the enemy position, destroying the hostile machine-gun emplacement and an additional eight Japanese before he, himself, was struck down by an enemy rifleman. His valiant and inspiring action effectively reduced the enemy’s firepower, thereby enabling his platoon to attain its objective, and reflects the highest credit upon Private First Class Witek and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

/S/ FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Honors

  • In 1946, a Gearing-class destroyer, the USS Witek (DD-848) was named in honor of PFC Witek. The destroyer was launched on February 2, 1946, and was christened by Witek’s mother, Mrs. Nora Witek. The USS Witek was commissioned on April 25, 1946. It was formally decommissioned on August 19, 1968.[1]
  • In 1999, Witek’s hometown, Derby, Connecticut has named the PFC Frank P. Witek Memorial Park in his honor.[2]
  • The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation awards a memorial scholarship in honor of PFC Frank Witek.[3]
  • T

onors[edit]he area near the village of Yona on Guam, was named Marine Camp Witek. Although the camp closed decades ago, Guam natives still refer to the area as “Camp Witek”.


Disposition:

Sunk as target 06/04/1969 off Virginia.


USS WITEK DD-848 Ship History

Wikipedia (as of 2024)

USS Witek (DD/EDD-848) was a Gearing-class destroyer of the United States Navy, named for Marine Private First Class Frank P. Witek (1921–1944), who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroism during the Battle of Guam.

Witek was laid down on 16 July 1945 at Bath, Maine, by the Bath Iron Workslaunched on 2 February 1946; sponsored by Mrs. Nora Witek, the mother of PFC Witek; and commissioned at the Boston Naval Shipyard on 23 April 1946.

Witek departed Boston on 27 May, bound for Cuban waters, and reached Guantanamo Bay on 1 June. She conducted shakedown training out of Guantanamo until 2 July, when she headed north, returning to Boston on 6 July for post-shakedown availability. Fitted out for experimental development work in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) systems, Witek received the classification of EDD-848. She arrived at New London, Connecticut, her new home port, on 7 December 1946.

Over the next 20 years, Witek operated primarily off the eastern seaboard of the United States from Narragansett Bay to the Virginia Capes and to Key West, Florida She ranged on occasion into the Caribbean and touched at places such as Nassau, Bahamas; Guantanamo Bay and Havana, Cuba; the Panama Canal ZoneSt. Croix, Virgin IslandsBridgetown, BarbadosSan Juan, Puerto RicoHampton Roads; and Boston. On one occasion, the ship visited the West Coast – spending six months in operations out of San Diego, California, testing the sound gear formerly installed in the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen – in mid-1948. During those tests, carried out under the supervision of the Naval Electronics LaboratoryWiteks silhouette took on a decidedly different “look” compared to that usually associated with a Gearing-class destroyer. Her second twin 5-inch gun mount (mount 52) was removed at the Boston Naval Shipyard, and its place was taken by the “house-trailer full” of former German electronics equipment. These tests included the sonic listening device GHG, which had been used heavily by German submarines. That “trailer” was eventually removed at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in the autumn of 1950. Its place was taken, in turn, by a trainable Mk. 15 “hedgehog” anti-submarine mortar.

While at Nassau, Bahamas, in late October 1954, Witek went to the aid of the local fire department in the British colony when a serious fire threatened the city. Faced with a bad warehouse fire, 140 men from Witek rushed into action with 3,000 feet of fire hose, walkie-talkie radio sets, “smoke-eater” masks, four fog applicators, and two portable pumps on Sunday, 24 October. Working for two hours alongside Nassau police, firemen, and volunteers, Witeks sailors earned a unanimous vote of thanks in “helping stem what might have been the most disastrous fire in the Colony’s history.”

Due to the nature of Witeks work, her routine was little publicized, and she gained none of the overseas deployment excitement in the course of her more than two decades of experimental work. She made no deployments to the Mediterranean nor any to the western Pacific; in addition, she never visited European waters. Outside visiting La Guaira, Venezuela, the seaport for Caracas, in January 1948, Witek spent most of her underway time off the eastern seaboard and in the western Atlantic – sometimes in the Caribbean – participating in experimental exercises with other units of the Operational Development Force based at New London. She operated primarily with other experimental ships, such as Maloy (EDE-791), and submarines, testing ASW electronics installations. On some occasions, when she conducted project work out of New London, she would slip up the coast to Rockland, Maine, or to Portsmouth, N.H. Her local operations in Long Island Sound even earned her the nickname: “The Galloping Ghost of the Long Island Coast.”

On occasion, though, outside her normal independent routine, Witek conducted exercises with carrier task forces for ASW maneuvers. During one such evolution in 1955, Witek exercised with the fleet carrier Leyte (CVS-32) and the atomic submarine Nautilus; other carriers with which Witek operated included Antietam and Randolph.

Besides carrying out operational tests of ASW electronics equipment, Witek served as the test-bed for the “pump jet” propulsion system. On 2 July 1958, Witek entered Drydock No. 4 at the Boston Naval Shipyard for an “extensive overhaul and installation of the pump jet system.” The destroyer remained in drydock at Boston until a little over a week before Christmas, when she emerged with the new system installed. Over the ensuing years, Witek tested the system under operational conditions. In 1960, she operated for a time with Task Group Alpha, the first time in four years since she had operated with the fleet. She conducted extensive ASW operations with that unit until returning to her home port.

Due to the grounding of Bache in early 1968, Witek was retained in active service. Subsequently, decommissioned at Norfolk, Virginia, on 19 August 1968, the ship’s name was struck from the Navy List on 17 September 1968. She was then berthed at the Inactive Ship Facility, Norfolk, to await final disposition. Witek was sunk as a target off Virginia on 4 July 1969.