USS Gwin (DD-433)
USS Gwin underway in 1941
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| History | |
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 United States
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| Name: | Gwin |
| Namesake: | William Gwin |
| Builder: | Boston Navy Yard |
| Laid down: | 1 June 1939 |
| Launched: | 25 May 1940 |
| Commissioned: | 15 January 1941 |
| Fate: | Sunk at Battle of Kolombangara, 13 July 1943 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Gleaves-class destroyer |
| Displacement: | 1,630 tons |
| Length: | 348 ft 3 in (106.15 m) |
| Beam: | 36 ft 1 in (11.00 m) |
| Draft: | 11 ft 10 in (3.61 m) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 37.4 knots (69 km/h) |
| Range: | 6,500 nmi (12,000 km; 7,500 mi) at 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement: | 16 officers, 260 enlisted |
| Armament: |
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USS Gwin (DD-433), a Gleaves-class destroyer, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for Lieutenant Commander William Gwin, an American Civil War officer who commanded river boats against Confederate forces in Alabama.
Gwin was launched on 25 May 1940 by the Boston Navy Yard; sponsored by Mrs. Jesse T. Lippincott, second cousin of Lt.Comdr. Gwin. The destroyer was commissioned at Boston on 15 January 1941, Lt.Comdr. J. M. Higgins in command. Gwin was sunk by a torpedo launched by a Japanese destroyer during the Battle of Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands Campaign in July 1943.
Gwin completed shakedown training on 20 April 1941 and underwent final alterations in the Boston Navy Yard before conducting a neutrality patrol throughout the Caribbean Sea. On 28 September 1941 she assumed identical service in the North Atlantic from her base at Hvalfjörður, Iceland. At the beginning of February 1942, she returned to the Eastern Seaboard through the Panama Canal to San Francisco, California.
On 3 April 1942 Gwin stood out of San Francisco Bay as a unit of the escort for the aircraft carrier Hornet, which carried 16 Army B-25 bombers to be launched in a bombing raid on Tokyo. Admiral William F. Halsey in carrier Enterprise rendezvoused with the task force off Midway, and General Jimmy Doolittle's famed raiders launched the morning of 18 April when some 600 miles east of Tokyo. The task force made a rapid retirement to Pearl Harbor, then sped south 30 April 1942, hoping to assist carriers Yorktown and Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea. That battle concluded before the task force arrived, and Gwin returned to Pearl Harbor on 21 May for day and night preparations to meet the Japanese in the crucial battle for Midway Atoll.
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