Hale (DD 642) - Naval Cruise Book

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f ygfdafozq af lie 7155 Wade 1296421 The USS Hale QDD642j, a 2100 ton Fletcher class destroyer, named for the Honorable Eugene Hale, senator from Maine, was born in the Bath Iron Works Yard in Bath, Maine, in April of 1943. She spent her childhood, or shakedown period, by traveling between Casco Bay and Quantanamo Bay. This trip was negotiated without mishap, a fine per- formance for one so young. W 0 She then slipped into a short adolescenceby assuming her first important job - that of picking up the Queen Mary in mid-ocean, and with a carrier, a cruiser, and five sister destroyers escorting her to a Canadian port where the Queen' discharged a distinguished passenger - Winston Churchill, here to join the late President Roosevelt at an impor- tant conference in Montreal. 9 1 W Her young womanhood consisted of a long, educational trip to the South Pacific. She vacationed in Hawaii for a few months, and then steamed south and west to take part in the campaigns which are now history - the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Solomons, New Guinea, the Marianas, Guam - and picking up sea stories with the interjection of never-to-be-forgotten names such as Kwajalein, Bougainville, Aitake, Leyte, Saipan - she was there, as screener, escort, and plane-killer. In this phase of her life she accounted for or helped with seven Jap planes. She matured with a long trip home and a thorough going-over at Mare Island, and then headed back to the South Pacific an older and wiser gal. Early in '45 she operated in the Carolinas, participated in the inva- sion of Okinawa, performed as a carrier escort in the strikes against the Japanese mainland, and took part in the bombardment of Honshu, main island of Japan. Middle aged now, the hostilities ended, she hung around the South Pacific until January of '47, when she returned to California for a long rest. She retired, having done her job and been rewarded, and sat in a state of suspended animation as part of the mothball fleet in Long Beach. ik wil? it il? Then we got her -or she got us. Somebody shook her gently late in 1950, and by March of 1951, the old gal was wide awake and rarin' to go again. We brought her back to the east coast of her early childhood, past the pitfalls of Tiajuana and Acapulco, through the Canal, and on to her new home in Newport. We've done lots of running around since then - Philly, Gitmo, Trinidad, San Juan, Santiago - but we never really got to know her until our last jaunt together. 4 This, then, is our story - the story of gripes, grins, and greatness, of the gradual and mutual merging of a ship and her men. Here's the story of our trip to the MED . . . 9 ,