Ship background
On Mon, 24 Aug 1998
"Donald C. McElfresh" Email address wrote:
The RENSHAW was an escort destroyer. In WWII it was a FLETCHER class
destroyer, torpedoed off Mindanao, Phillipines, and later carried
President Truman during the tour of the fleet, on the Navy Day Parade in
New York Harbor in 1945. His picture on the bridge deck of RENSHAW was
on the cover of LIFE Magazine. It was decommissioned in 1946, then in
1949-50 three of the five 5" guns were removed (Mts. 52, 53 & 54), a
Mark 15 trainable hedgehog mounted where Mount 52 had been, and two pair
of automatic 3" placed back aft where Mount 54 had been. She was
recommissioned on 6/01/50 in Norfolk, VA.
She made over 40 knots on her shake down. This was part of a 12 (plus)
ship FRAM conversion to "hunter-killers" to meet the growing threat of
the Soviet submarine fleet. When the Korean War started in 1950, she
was deployed through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor (DESRON ONE), and
operated out of there to Korea.
In 1951 she sank a Soviet "M" class submarine off the west coast of
Korea (7/28/51), and then in October 1951, in a gunfight with four shore
batteries, near either Chongjin or Songjin (off-hand cannot remember
which...its been 47 years), on the east coast of Korea, knocked one off
a cliff and into the ocean.
She went on to serve in Vietnam and picked up occupants of a space
capsule in the Pacific. She was eventually decommissioned in 1971.
Every year since 1946 her original crew and later crews, have a reunion.
This year it's in Tampa, Florida, 9/24 to 9/28.
Best Regards,
Don McElfresh, former FT-2, USS RENSHAW 1950-52
Dallas, TX
