A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS DYESS DD-880
The Tin Can Sailor, April 2015
Editors Note: The following is taken from a history of the ship compiled by Chief Petty Officer Ralph J. Brown, Sr., who served aboard her from 1955 to 1960 and from Jim Rice, BM3, aboard from 1948 to 1952. Thanks to USS DYESS veteran Joe Peters for the information.
The USS DYESS (DD 880) was launched on 26 January 1945 in Orange, Texas, commissioned on 21 May 1945, and designated radar picket destroyer DDR-880. Following the war, she operated with the Fifth Fleet in Tokyo Bay and over the ensuing years, she was engaged in regular Mediterranean deployments, a variety of anti-submarine hunter-killer exercises, and amphibious training operations with the Atlantic Fleet. Her Mediterranean tour in 1956 saw her engaged in evacuating Americans during the Suez Canal crisis. In 1964 a Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) conversion equipped her with the most advanced detection and weapons systems for antisubmarine warfare.
She was in the South China Sea in 1966 with the FISKE (DD-842) when she received the call from a small aircraft that was out of fuel and forced to ditch. She arrived in time to rescue the pilot and navigator soon after the plane plunged into the sea and sank. Later that year she was engaged in gunfire support operations in the Tonkin Gulf and served as a gunship for the nuclear-powered missile ship BAINBRIDGE (DLG(N)-25). She was one of the first destroyers to operate in the shallow tidal waters covering operations of South Vietnamese army units in the Mekong Delta. Her five-inch bombardment from 2000 yards offshore was coordinated with jet and helicopter strikes on Vietcong supply and assembly areas, troop concentrations, gun emplacements, and other targets. As the ship continued to provide harassment and interdiction fire, impressed spotters reported “excellent effect and outstanding coverage.”
She left her river coverage to support the South Vietnamese army attacking a large Vietcong base camp twenty miles up the coast from Vung Tao. Firing 185 rapid rounds, she destroyed or damaged six structures and several earthen emplacements, silenced ground fire, and left an undetermined number of Viet Cong casualties. With that job well done, she sailed for home.
Back home in April 1967 with DesRon 12, the DYESS joined the USS SARATOGA (CVA-60) and other ships underway for the Mediterranean. En route, she carried a team of drone operators and repair technicians with 13 propeller-driven drones to be used as targets for anti-aircraft warfare drills. During the subsequent hours flying, firing at, and recovering the drones, the DYESS was the only ship to splash a drone and receive the coveted “Long Rifle” award.
Still in the Med in May 1967, the DYESS was off Izmir, Turkey, when she responded to a distress call from the 40-foot civilian sloop ATLANTIS disabled in heavy seas southeast of Rhodes, Greece. In the early morning, she located the sloop with two people aboard and took it in tow, a job she later passed on for the MASSEY (DD-778) to complete. In early June that year, she entered the Suez Canal at a time of increasing tension between the United Arab Republic (UAR) and Israel. Though no incidents marred her transit, protesters followed the ship in boats and jeered from the banks along the canal. Two days later, when war broke out between the Arabs and Israelis, Israel bombed the canal, preventing the DYESS from returning to the Sixth Fleet in the Med. The sudden intensity of the war kept the DYESS with the Mid-East Force east of Massawa, Ethiopia, to evacuate American citizens and protect U.S. and allied interests in the area. On the morning of 9 June, the DYESS was patrolling just outside of Yemen’s 12-mile limit when a UAR minesweeper approached and warned her to stay outside that country’s territorial waters. Called to general quarters, the destroyer’s crew stood ready as a UAR motor torpedo boat approached at high speed to reenforce the warning. After circling the DYESS, it left with the minesweeper and the destroyer proceeded into the Persian Gulf.
Stateside with the Atlantic Fleet in the late 1960s, she served as an ASW school and surveillance ship at Key West, Florida, then, after an overhaul was bound for the Mediterranean again in 1968. There, during night operations with the USS FORRESTAL, she went to the rescue of one of the carrier’s E2A aircraft. A FORRESTAL helicopter picked up one man and the DYESS rescued the aircraft’s radar intercept officer. Following exercises with the BASILONE (DD-824), CONYNGHAM (DDG-17), INDEPENDENCE (CVA-62), and FORRESTAL (CVA-59), she ended the decade in Black Sea operations under constant surveillance by Soviet naval and air units.
The DYESS began the 1970s with a Northern European deployment. In May 1970, she was underway for Lisbon, Portugal, as a unit of Task Group 83.1, with the WASP (CVS-18), FISKE (DD-842), GARCIA (DE-1040), FORREST SHERMAN (DD-931) and EDWARD MCDONNELL (DE-1043). Following antisubmarine escort duty with the WASP (CVS-18) and USS MARIAS (AO-57), she went on to France for ASW exercises with the FISKE and France’s MAILE BREZE (D-627). She wound up her European tour off Scotland with the WASP (CVS-18) for NATO’s Operation Northern Wedding. By month’s end, she was bound for home and operations out of Newport.
In June 1972, the DYESS was in the Med with the STRONG (DD 758) when she experienced problems with her main propulsion and engineering plants and ultimately had to return to Brooklyn where she remained for the rest of the year. In 1973 she was converted to navy distillate fuel. Soon after a hole was discovered in her reefer decks below the water line and a lateral crack in her hull beneath main control which required a return to the shipyard. In good repair that summer, she rejoined DesRon 28 in Newport for a visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia, then, East Coast operations through year’s end.
The DYESS began 1974 in Newport. Following a training cruise off the Carolinas and Florida, she returned for DesRon 28’s first annual seamanship competition in which she took first place overall. In September she was off Cape Cod engaged in experiments for Newport’s Naval Underwater Systems Center.
In 1975, after a stint in the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard, the DYESS headed for Norfolk to embark the crew of the USS LAFFEY, which was being decommissioned. She joined units of DesRon 30 for operations out of Jacksonville, Florida, and was back in Brooklyn to celebrate her 30th birthday in May. That summer, she was headed for Halifax with the MYLES C. FOX (DD-829), WILLIAM R. RUSH (DD-714), and DAMATO (DD-871) when a heavy fog and an engineering casualty on the FOX caused a minor collision between the DYESS and FOX. No personnel were hurt. She ended the year undergoing a ten month overhaul at the Sun Shipyard and Dry-dock Company in Chester, Pennsylvania. Following sea trials she returned to Brooklyn.
Over the ensuing year, operations with DesRon 28 out of Brooklyn took her to Norfolk, Mayport, Florida, and Guantanamo Bay. She began 1977 at sea for reserve training, active duty training, and underway exercises with DesRon 28. A joint Canadian-British-U.S. exercise in early June, was followed by training at Little Creek Amphibious School, gunfire support exercises off Bloodsworth Island in the Chesapeake Bay, and routine operations.
Following an engineering system upgrade, she got underway in the middle of a snowstorm in January 1978 for Charleston, South Carolina. There, a Naval Board of Inspection and Survey found her fit to continue in naval service on 22 February. That March, the DYESS began reserve training cruises with DesRon 28 and over the ensuing months, her crew qualified in antisubmarine warfare, naval gunfire support, electronic warfare, communications, damage control, deck seamanship, engineering, and naval gunfire support. They also demonstrated her antisubmarine warfare, gunnery, and CIC capabilities, especially in testing the “over the horizon” targeting capabilities of the navy’s Harpoon cruise missile. The DYESS ended the year with the MYLES C. FOX on a visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia, then routine operatons out of Newport and New York.
Early 1979 found the DYESS bound for a winter deployment at the U.S. Naval Station, Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. When, in May her possible decommissioning was announced, an officer of the Hellenic navy inspected her for possible transfer to Greece. She continued routine operations until her weapons were offloaded for a decommissioning that October. That date was postponed until finally the go-ahead arrived in December and she was decommissioned on 27 February 1981.
Her ultimate fate is uncertain. In one report, the DYESS was transferred to Greece and eventually scrapped. Another, however, reports the DYESS being seen in Brooklyn in 1981 being cut up, then sold to Greece as scrap.
