Gearing (DD 710) - Naval Cruise Book

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USS GEARING CDD 7107 MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE 8 SEPTEMBER 1964 TO 30 JANUARY 1965

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THE GEARING .... A BRIEF HISTGRY The USS CEARING CDD-7101 is one of the best known ships of the Navy, not because of her war record fshe has nonej, but because she was the prototype of what became known as the Gearing Class destroyer, a svelte product of late World War II naval architecture designed for longer cruising range and greater firepower. The keel was laid without fanfare on August 10, 1944, and working with speed which will never again be witnessed in a shipyard, the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company sent the CEARING down the ways at Port Newark, New jersey on February 18, 1945, in just 192 days. For 17 years the CEARINC bore and used efficiently her anti-submarine and anti-air weapons-two ahead thrown weapon mounts, depth charges, torpedoes, three 5-inch 38 caliber twin gun mounts and five 40 millimeter machine gun mounts. In the early 1960's however, GEARINC and other ships in her class began to show signs of age and obsole- sence, and in the extensive Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization Program she was reborn and saved from razor blades for an estimated eight more years. Today she sports only two 5-inch 38 caliber gun mounts but has been given a greater anti-submarine capability in for form of anti-submarine rockets C.-XSROCj and drone anti-submarine helicopters QDASHQ in addition to two three tube torpedo mounts forward of the bridge. The GEARING has spent her entire lifetime in the Atlantic Fleet. Casco Bay, Maine was her first homeport and her early years kept her mainly in Arctic waters. It was not until january of 1951 when she sailed to Mediterranean waters for the first time, and she returned to a new homeport of Norfolk, Virginia. Always an active participant in allied opera- tions she sailed nine times with the Sixth Fleet in the Med since 1951. Out of Norfolk, midshipman training cruises highlighted GE.-XRINC'S career. Northern European ports and the Red Sea alternated with the Med as cruise routes. In 1954 she became part of the Atlantic Fleet Hunter Killer Force to participate in the now infamous annual affair known as Operation Springboard. Between 1957 and 1959 the GEAR- ING exercised in Operation Novorock with the Canadians, the joint Civilian Orientation Cruise, and LANTFLEX 2-58 and 2-59. Port visits were concentrated on the East Coast of the S. and the Caribbean. As a unit of Destroyer Squa- dron Four her homeport became Charleston, South Carolina in 1959. In the summer of 1962 the FRAM I conversion gav-e CEARINC a new silhouette and she made Newport, Rhode Island and Destroyer Squadron 20 her new home. From Newport she has visited the Mediterranean twice, Montreal, Canada once, and the Caribbean three times. The Commander Destroyer Squadron 20 has been embarked aboard the GEARINC since june 1964. 1-