USS Winslow (DD-359)

USS Winslow (DD-359/AG-127) was a Porter-class destroyer in service with the United States Navy from 1937 to 1950. Winslow was the last surviving U.S. destroyer commissioned during the 1930s before she was sold for scrap in 1959. Winslow was the 28th of 66 U.S. destroyers commissioned during the 1930s and the longest serving (13 yrs. 9 mos.). All of the other U.S. 1930's era destroyers had been decommissioned by 1947 and gone to the ship breakers before 1950, most by 1947. 23 U.S. destroyers commissioned during the 1930s were lost to enemy action or foundered in storms.

Winslow was named after Rear Admiral John Ancrum Winslow and Cameron McRae Winslow. She was laid down on December 18, 1933 at Camden, New Jersey, by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation; launched on September 21, 1936; sponsored by Miss Mary Blythe Winslow; and commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on February 17, 1937.^[1]

The warship completed outfitting in October 1937 and, on the 19th, embarked upon a shakedown cruise which took her to a number of European ports. Upon her return to the western hemisphere, she passed her final acceptance trials off the coast of Maine and was assigned to Battle Force, Squadron Nine (DesRon), Destroyer Division (DesDiv) Seventeen in the Pacific. On November 23, after transiting the Panama Canal, Winslow and sister-ship USS Balch arrived at San Diego, California to comprise the all Porter-class Destroyer Division 17, along with flagship USS McDougal and relief flag USS Moffett. ^[2] On November 29, 1937, Winslow began a week of sea-keeping and maneuvering practice with her division off San Diego. Other evolutions, lasting until December 19, included antiaircraft drills, battle practice runs, and torpedo firing exercises. She spent the holidays in port. In early 1938, Balch became flag for DesRon Nine. Over the next three years, Winslow conducted operations in the eastern Pacific—generally between Hawaii and the west coast—from her home port at San Diego. The destroyer and her division participated in Fleet Problems XIX in April 1938 and XXI in April 1940.

By 1941, events in Europe—where World War II was already in its second year—necessitated the strengthening of American naval forces in the Atlantic. On April 9th, Winslow along with sister-ships, McDougal and Moffett, were ordered to Destroyers, United States Atlantic Fleet, Destroyer Flotilla Three, Squadron Nine, Destroyer Division Seventeen. After transiting the Panama Canal that month and visiting Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Winslow reported for duty at Norfolk, Virginia. That summer, she conducted training operations with submarines off the New England coast. Later, she also participated in Neutrality patrols, particularly those directed at keeping watch over the Vichy French ships at Martinique and Guadeloupe in the French Antilles. Early in August, the three destroyers of Division Seventeen along with USS Madison and USS Sampson were ordered to screen the heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa and Augusta as the latter carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to NS Argentia, Newfoundland, for a secret meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the conference which resulted in the Atlantic Charter. Then, after escorting transports carrying reinforcements to Iceland, the destroyer arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, early in November and became a unit in the screen of America's first convoy to Southeast Asia. Convoy WS-12X, bound via the Cape of Good Hope for Singapore, departing Halifax on November 10. Just before the convoy reached Cape Town, South Africa, where the destroyers were to part company with the convoy and head for home, word arrived that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

After leaving the convoy at Cape Town, Winslow returned to the United States where she was assigned to the 4th Fleet, which had grown out of the South Atlantic neutrality patrols. The warship patrolled the area between Brazil and Africa, searching for German submarines and blockade runners until April 1944. On two occasions during that period, she returned briefly to the United States—in June 1942 and in October 1943—to undergo repairs at Charleston, South Carolina.

Robert Morgenthau, son of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and future longest serving Manhattan, NY, District Attorney (1962-2010) was a naval officer commissioned at age 20 through the V-7 program prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Morganthau was attached to Winslow from early 1942 through mid-1943. Winslow was the first of three destroyers that Morgenthau was assigned, the second USS Lansdale was sunk by a German aerial torpedo in 1944. Morgenthau was one of 234 survivors (47 men went down with the ship) and bobbed and treaded water for nearly three hours in the frigid sea before being picked up by one of two destroyer escorts that plucked the survivors from the water. Shortly after the destroyer sank, Morgenthau gave his life vest to a screaming sailor in the water next to him, who had suffered a concussion when the ship was hit. Morgenthau's third and last destroyer, USS Harry F. Bauer, was attacked by thirteen kamikazes, and survived a torpedo and dive bomber attack (both failed to detonate) at the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. Bauer was credited with destroying 17 kamikaze planes, and the ship and all the members of her crew were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation (United States).^[3] Morganthau was acting executive officer on Winslow near the end of his duty on the ship, and permanent X.O. during his attachment to the Lansdale and Bauer. He was discharged as a lieutenant commander and received two awards of the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V" device.

In April 1944, the warship began escorting newly constructed warships from Boston, Massachusetts via Norfolk, to the West Indies. After three such voyages, she began escorting convoys from New York to England and Ireland in August. She made five round-trip voyages across the Atlantic before putting into Charleston again in March 1945 for a four-month overhaul.

While in Charleston for alterations, she lost her torpedo tubes, traded her light, single-purpose, 5-inch guns for five dual-purpose 5-inch guns. In addition, she received 16 40-millimeter and four 20-millimeter anti-aircraft guns in preparation for services in the Pacific.

In July 1945, she was assigned to Admiral Willis Lee's Experimental Task Force 69 (ETF 69), which later became the Operational Development Force, Atlantic Fleet operating from Casco Bay, Maine. Following his successful operation commanding American forces in the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Lee had been recalled from the Pacific Fleet by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King to set up ETF-69 to develop improved tactics to defeat Japanese kamikaze attacks. However, on August 25, ten days after the Japan's surrender, Vice Admiral Lee suffered a fatal heart attack while being ferried in his admiral's barge to his flagship, the experimental gunnery training ship and former battleship USS Wyoming (AG-17), in the harbor (Casco Bay) at Portland, Maine.

On September 17, 1945, Winslow and sister-ship McDougal were respectively reclassified AG-127 and AG-126 and continued carrying out experimental naval gunnery operations. McDougal was decommissioned on June 24, 1946, at Kings Point, NY, while Winslow continued in service. On July 11, 1947, Wyoming put into Norfolk and was decommissioned on August 1. Her crew was transferred to the ex-battleship Mississippi (AG-128), which assumed Wyoming's duties with the Operational Development Force.

Winslow continued her experimental work with the Operational Development Force until she was decommissioned on June 28, 1950, the last U.S. destroyer commissioned during the 1930s to be decommissioned. Winslow remained in reserve, berthed with the Charleston Group, Atlantic Reserve Fleet, until declared unfit for further naval service on December 5, 1957. Her name was struck from the Navy list on that same day, and she was sold on February 23, 1959 for scrapping. Winslow had been the only U.S. destroyer that was not scrapped before 1950 and nearly survived that decade intact.

 This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.