Wreck of USS Warrington (DD-383)

 Second World War 1939-1945, shipwreck, destroyer (ship), United States Navy

USS Warrington was the second member of the Somers Class of Destroyers built for the US Navy, laid down at the Federal Shipbuilding Yard in Kearny, NJ in October 1935 and commissioned into service with the Atlantic Fleet in February 1938. Spending her first years of service in the Atlantic Ocean, the Warrington shifted her homeport to San Diego in 1940 and spent much the next year actively engaged in exercises with the Pacific Fleet around the Hawaiian Islands.

Returning to the US Atlantic Fleet in April 1941 for duty with the Neutrality Patrol, the outbreak of the Second World War in December found Warrington under repair at the Charleston Navy Yard. With the remainder of her repairs hurriedly completed, the Destroyer and crew steamed immediately for Balboa and began convoy screening work in the waters around the Panama Canal, a duty she performed through mid-1943. Ordered to the front lines of the Pacific Theatre in July 1943, the Warrington and her crew took up convoy escort and fire support duties throughout the South Pacific and Solomon Islands chain through early 1944. From April through June of 1944 the Warrington found herself heavily involved with the Hollandia Campaign on New Guinea, where she split her time between shore bombardment and escorting convoys of LST's bound for and returning from amphibious assaults on the island. Withdrawing from New Guinean waters as an escort for a Manaus-bound convoy, the battle-weary Warrington shaped a stateside course and put into the New York Naval Shipyard in July 1944 for a much needed overhaul.

Repairs and alterations completed at both New York and Norfolk by September 1944, the Warrington stood out of Norfolk bound for Trinidad as an escort for the USS Hyades (AF-28) on the 10th. As the two ships made their way Southwards into increasingly foul weather, neither had any inclination that they were steaming straight into what is now known as the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944. With little warning of the severity of the storm, the Warrington struggled to keep pace with the much larger Hyades as she was battered by increasingly large waves and stronger winds. By noon on September 12th the Warrington was forced to abandon the escort and seek calmer seas due to the severity of the storm. After turning partially away from the wind and swell, the Warrington steamed through the mounting seas with relative ease until the early morning of the 13th when the weather made a drastic turn for the worse and the waves began to cause Warrington to lose headway. Tons of seawater lashed the ship and eventually tore off cowlings and vents topside as the ship wallowed in the storm lashed seas, allowing seawater to enter her engineering spaces. In short order the Warrington lost power, electricity and steering control and found herself at the mercy of the storm.

Warringtons crew struggled valiantly to save the ship and managed to restore engine power briefly enough for the ship to get her bow back into the swell, enabling her radiomen to send frantic distress calls to the Hyades and any ship in the area. Noon on September 13th brought no relief from the storm, and the Captain of the Warrington could clearly see that his ship was in danger of swamping at any moment and the order went out to abandon ship. Shortly after the last of Warringtons 321 crew stepped off the ship into liferafts, the Destroyer gave out and sank at this general location at 1250hrs on September 13th, 1944.

Exhaustive search efforts in hurricane conditions by no fewer than 10 vessels and numerous aircraft only found 73 of her crew alive before search efforts were called off.

USS Warrington earned two Battle Stars for her World War Two service.


www.navsource.org/archives/05/383.htm