USN:
Wickes-class destroyer USS Hamilton (DD-141) In port, circa the 1930s.
Wickes-class destroyer USS Blakely (DD-150) passing under the Brooklyn Bridge during the 1930s
Blakely was a
Wickes-class destroyer, built by the Cramp yard of Philadelphia, and first commissioned on May 8, 1919. After a couple years of operating along the Eastern Seaboard, she was decommissioned on June 29, 1922, as part of the post-World War One drawdowns. The ship was recommissioned in 1932, only to be decommissioned due to budgetary issues in 1937.
Blakely was recommissioned for a third time on October 16, 1939 due to the international situation and was assigned to Neutrality Patrol duties. When the U.S. entered World War 2, the destroyer was assigned to escort and patrol duty in the Caribbean.
Blakely is perhaps most well known for an incident on May 25, 1942, where while she was patrolling near Martinique, she was torpedoed by the German submarine
U-156, blowing 60' of the destroyer's bow off. The ship survived the attack and limped into port for emergency repairs due to superb damage control efforts by her crew.
After a temporary bow was fitted,
Blakely made her way to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where her bow was replaced with one transplanted from the hulk of a decommissioned sister ship,
Taylor (DD-94). Returning to service that September,
Blakely would return to the Caribbean, and except for a brief stint with a hunter-killer group and a trans-Atlantic convoy escort mission in early 1943, she would remain on escort and patrol duty there until withdrawn from combat service in February, 1945. The destroyer's last assignment was assisting in submarine training at New London between March and June, 1945.
Blakely was decommissioned on July 21, 1945, stricken from the Naval Register on August 13, and sold for scrap that November.
