Brinkley Bass (DD 887) - Naval Cruise Book

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THE DESTRGYER A unit of the Gearing Class, USS BRINKLEY BASS was completed just too late to participate in World War II. Her first significant duties involved participa- tion in the Eniwetok Atomic Tests in 1948, a year in which she also rescued personnel from the SS ONWARD off Shanghai. In May of 1951, BRINKLEY BASS began her first combat duties as a unit of Task Force 95. Pursuant to her service with TF 95 she expended over seven thousand rounds of five inch ammunition in the bombardment of Wonsan Har- bor. At Wonsan she was taken under fire on eleven separate occasions, re- sulting in ten casualties, including one man who subsequently died of his wounds. Following repairs in Yokosuka, BRINKLEY BASS returned to the war as a screening unit for Task Force 77. BRINKLEY BASS returned to her normal cycle of deployments to the Western Pacific until the period of tension between the Nationalist and Communist Chi- nese during the mid-fifties, when she was assigned to the Taiwan Patrol. In 1961 BRINKLEY BASS began an extended yard period under the Fleet Rehabi- litation and Modernization QFRAMJ Program. Replacing conventionalgun sys- tems with ASROC and DASH, enlarging topside command and control spaces, and installing a new Sonar system. When the ship emergedfrom the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard she participated in a series of tests with her newwea- pons capabilities, including the initial sea trials of the MK 46 torpedo. In September of 1965, the counter insurgency effort in South Vietnam had reached major proportions, and BRINKLEY BASS was ordered to the Tonkin Gulf for the first of four tours in the South China Sea.

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A Y , 5 4 ,i S I 1 5 I Y L i , I E Q. '1 V. -. fi 1 i 1 I fi I F P 1 fi sl L hu.. i 5 i 4 Q v I i 2 i ga i 42 Q P 3 3 Q 3 l 2 3 5 i E Q l 1 3 I 5 l 2 5 ,. '.,m,! 4.5595 if ,, ., ,K ,. ..f.Mfm' THE MAN Harry Brinkley BASS was born in Chicago, Illinois on the Fourth of July, 1916. He graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in June of 1938, commissioned an Ensign, United States Navy. Following tours aboard the cruiser USS NEW ORLEANS and the destroyer USS FARRAGUT, he underwent flight training and was designated a Naval Aviator on 18 February 1941. In May of that year he reported to Bombing Squadron TWO 1 aboard USS LEXINGTON. For his ser- vice in the Pacific with VA-2, LT BASS was twice awarded the Navy Cross. In April 1944 he took command of Fight- ing Squadron SEVENTY-FOUR and was serving in that capacity when he was killed in a plane crash in the Mediterra- nean on August 20, 1944. For heroism and extraordinary achievement during the invasion of Southern France in Au- gust 1944, he was awarded the distin- guished Flying Cross.