USS Williamson (DD-244/AVP-15/AVD-2/APD-27) was a in the United States Navy during World War II. She was named for Commander William Price Williamson.
Williamson was laid down on 27 March 1919 and launched on 16 October 1919 by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, sponsored by Commander Williamson's widow, reclassified from Destroyer No. 244 to DD-244 in the Navy's fleet-wide assignment of alphanumeric hull numbers on 17 July 1920, and commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 29 October 1920.
Service history
1920s The new destroyer was partially fitted out at Philadelphia into mid-December. After calibrating compasses in Delaware Bay, she received the remainder of her torpedo equipment at the Naval Torpedo Station, Newport, Rhode Island, before her fitting-out was completed at the New York Navy Yard.
Williamson departed New York on 3 January 1921, bound for Europe and, after proceeding via Bermuda, arrived at Brest, France, in company with , on 16 February. She remained in French and British waters - calling at Cherbourg, France; and Gravesend and Portsmouth, England - into the spring before sailing for the eastern Mediterranean on 23 May.
Assigned to U.S. Naval Forces in Turkish waters, Williamson arrived at Ineboli (now Inebolu), Turkey, on 22 June. There, she landed passengers and investigated local political conditions. At intervals in the ensuing months, Williamson made cruises from Constantinople to Odessa, Russia; Ghelenjik Bay; Novorossiysk; and Theodosia, before returning to Constantinople. She made another cruise to Odessa on 22 June 1922, delivering passengers and serving for a time as station ship there. On 2 July, the destroyer departed that port, bound for Constantinople, and transferred stores en route to her relief, . Six days later, Williamson headed for Gibraltar on her way to the United States and arrived back at Philadelphia on 27 July.
After joining the Atlantic Fleet at Hampton Roads, on 6 September, Williamson shifted to New York for exercises and gunnery drills before she returned to Hampton Roads on 28 September for further exercises off the Virginia Capes in the Southern Drill Grounds. The destroyer operated off the eastern seaboard and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, participating in war games and routine battle practices into early 1923. She returned to the New York area in November of that year, engaging, at intervals, in more rehearsals and gunnery drills. She departed New York on 6 May 1924 for maneuvers with the Scouting Fleet.
After returning to New York for voyage repairs, the destroyer sailed for the Southern Drill Grounds on 19 May and arrived at Hampton Roads on the 28th to conduct depth charge practices before she returned to Newport, Rhode Island, to take part in high speed target and torpedo practice at the Naval Torpedo Station. Later, Williamson participated in the search for a life boat missing from the steamer and made a cruise to Guantanamo Bay in company with , , and before returning to New York on 8 December.
Over the next few years, Williamsons routine remained fairly standard for vessels of her type in active service. She cruised off the east coast of the United States and into the Caribbean, operating at intervals out of Guantanamo Bay during the annual Fleet concentrations there. However, there were breaks in this routine. Although Williamson operated primarily with Destroyer Squadrons, Scouting Force, she spent a brief period in January and February 1927 in the Special Service Squadron operating off the east coast of Nicaragua during an outbreak of revolutionary violence.
After returning to the New York Navy Yard on 30 June 1927, Williamson trained Naval Reserve units off the eastern seaboard.
In 1928 it arrived in Havana harbour, as escort for USS Texas which had President Coolidge aboard as he was going to attend the Pan-American conference.
Overhauled in the spring of 1928, the destroyer conducted additional reserve training cruises into 1930. Highlights in the ship's activities during that time were plane-guarding for in Guantanamo Bay in May 1930 and an extended reserve cruise that took her to Mayport, Florida, the Dry Tortugas, Key West, and Rebecca Shoals and Havana, Cuba.
1930s Williamson continued operating off the East Coast into mid-1931 as part of Destroyer Division 9, Flotilla 1, Scouting Force, before she shifted to San Diego, California, in March 1932, to operate briefly off the West Coast in the spring before returning to the East Coast. Upon reaching Norfolk, Virginia on 17 December 1932, Williamson was placed in rotating reserve. She subsequently sailed on 1 July 1933 bound, via the Panama Canal Zone, for the West Coast; arriving at San Diego on 21 July, the ship plane-guarded for during the summer.
Williamson returned to the East Coast in the spring of the following year and, in July 1934, was one of the escorts for while President Franklin D. Roosevelt was embarked in that heavy cruiser. The destroyer subsequently proceeded to the Washington Navy Yard on 19 July 1934. There, she received an early sonar installation before sailing for the West Coast, returning to San Diego in November. She later underwent a rotating reserve overhaul in the summer of 1935 before joining Destroyer Squadron 3.
That summer, Williamson cruised to Alaska and, operating from Auke Bay, visited Portage Cove, Skagway, and Juneau, while patrolling coastal waters between 20 July and 31 July. Returning to San Diego on 9 August, Williamson conducted battle problems and local operations from that port with the other ships in her division into 1936.
Sailing for Balboa on 9 May 1936 to participate in Fleet Problem XVII in June, Williamson later underwent an overhaul at the Norfolk Navy Yard. She subsequently operated in the Gulf of Mexico and proceeded thence via Mobile, Alabama, and the Panama Canal to San Diego, where she arrived on 30 October 1936.
Williamson conducted local operations out of that port into the winter and plane-guarded for in February 1937, before shifting to Hawaiian waters in the spring. Arriving at Pearl Harbor on 25 April, Williamson operated in the Hawaiian Islands with other units of the Destroyer Force of the United States Fleet until she returned to the West Coast in June. She operated off the West Coast for the remainder of 1937 and returned to Pearl Harbor in January 1938 for an overhaul in the navy yard there. She then took part in Fleet Problem XIX and, upon the conclusion of those exercises, returned to San Diego on 28 April 1938. She then shifted to the East Coast, arriving at Philadelphia on 2 June for conversion to a new and special type of auxiliary vessel.
With the increase in patrol plane forces in the Navy at that time, there arose in the Fleet's air wings an urgent need for tenders to support such aircraft. Accordingly, two flush-deck Clemson-class destroyers were chosen for conversion to light seaplane tenders: Williamson and .
As the conversion work proceeded into the autumn, all torpedo gear was removed from both ships, as were two of each ship's 4-inch guns, the 3-inch antiaircraft gun, their depth charge tracks, and the forward two boilers. Additional deckhouse space was added forward. Internal arrangements were changed to accommodate the personnel of a 12-plane patrol plane (VP) squadron and a supply of aviation gasoline. A boat derrick was added to the existing searchlight tower structure to handle a pair of 30-foot motor launches to be used for tending the planes in the water. The ship retained her forward and aftermost 4-inch guns, and four .50-caliber machine guns were added for antiaircraft defense.
As experimental vessels, Williamson and Childs – simultaneously reclassified on 1 July 1938 to AVP-15 and AVP-14, respectively – would soon prove successful. And, although more ships of their type were added to the Fleet prior to World War II, Williamson and Childs were the trailblazers.
On the last day of 1938, the conversion was complete. Painted pale gray and wearing the hull number "15" and displaying the red-centered blue and white star which indicated her aviation affiliation, Williamson departed Philadelphia on 3 January 1939, bound for Norfolk. There she took on board men and material from Patrol Wing (PatWing) 5 and soon headed for the Florida Keys where she provided tender services to VP-15 before returning to Philadelphia on 11 March 1939 for a post-shakedown availability.
After shifting briefly to Newport, Williamson sailed for the West Coast on 21 April. Proceeding via San Diego, the light seaplane tender made port at Seattle, Washington, and reported to Commander, PatWing 4 for temporary duty. She operated off the California coast from 26 May to 23 August before shifting to Kodiak, Alaska, to service two patrol squadrons, VP-41 and VP-42.
While Williamson was tending PBY Catalinas in the Pacific Northwest, war broke out in Europe on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
That autumn, Williamson operated out of Seattle and shifted to the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 5 February 1940 for an overhaul. She got underway for the Hawaiian Islands on 5 April and participated in Fleet Problem XXI before returning to Seattle on 21 May for a period of local operations and upkeep at Naval Air Station (NAS) Seattle. That summer, on 2 August 1940, she was again re-classified—this time as AVD-2.
On 4 March 1941, Williamson recovered three crew of a Douglas TBD-1 Devastator which ditched after engine failure, ~5 miles W of Mission Beach, California. The aviators successfully deployed a dinghy and were rescued after ~30 minutes by Williamson. This rare TBD was rediscovered in 1996, and in February 2011, the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola, Florida, announced plans to recover and restore the rara avis.
Before the entry of the United States into the war in December 1941, Williamson spent the last of her peacetime months engaged in valuable survey work between Acapulco, Mexico, and the Aleutian Islands. In the summer of 1941, the seaplane tenders and planes of PatWing 4, under the direction of Rear Admiral John S. McCain – later to become the famed task force commander – conducted an intensive survey of possible advance seaplane base sites in the Aleutians and along the Alaskan peninsula work that paid dividends within a year.
World War II 7 December 1941, found Williamson under overhaul at the Puget Sound Navy Yard. After temporary duty with Destroyer Squadron (DesRon) 82, she helped to escort into the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 30 December. The tender completed her repairs and took on stores in January 1942 and then shifted to the Aleutians to resume her duties as a tender for the PBY's of PatWing 4.
1942 During the early wartime period, the ship performed local escort missions and delivered war materials to Army and Navy bases at Cold Bay, Seattle, Dutch Harbor, and Kodiak. Williamson and her sister tenders also stocked emergency seaplane bases with vital necessities: buoys, gasoline, lubricating oil, ammunition, and bombs. Those temporary sites provided shelter for PBY's forced down by weather and proved valuable as alternate bases dispersed well enough to prevent a complete disaster if the Japanese attacked the established base sites. In addition, Williamson rescued and salvaged PBY's closed out of their havens by the "notorious Alaskan fog."
On 20 May, prior to the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians, Williamson rescued Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner from Kiska, when the general and his party were stranded there by 60-knot winds that prevented seaplanes from taking off after completing an inspection tour of the Near and Rat Island groups.