 USS Basilone (DDE-824, later DD-824), 1949-1982
USS Basilone, a 2,425-ton Gearing-class destroyer, was built at Orange, Texas. Laid down in July 1945, less than two months before Japan's surrender brought World War II to an end, she was launched in December of that year with the designation DD-824.
Postwar cutbacks caused the suspension of her construction, and she was later towed to Quincy, Massachusetts, for completion to a modified design, optimized for anti-submarine warfare missions.
One of her original trio of five-inch twin gun mounts, and all of her torpedo tubes, were replaced with new anti-submarine weapons, including the Weapon ABLE rocket launcher and trainable mounts for Hedgehog spigot mortars. Basilone was formally redesignated DDE-824 in January 1948 and placed in commission in July 1949.
The new ship then began service with the Atlantic Fleet, during which operations in the western Atlantic and Caribbean areas alternated with frequent deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and, occasionally, to northern European waters.
Basilone was present in the "Med" for both the 1956 Suez Canal crisis and the 1958 Lebanon intervention. In October and November 1962 she helped enforce the maritime quarantine of Cuba during the crisis over Soviet missiles on that island. Earlier, in August 1962, Basilone had been redesignated DD-824.
Between July 1963 and April 1964 Basilone underwent an extensive modernization at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. She emerged as a "FRAM I" destroyer, with a largely new superstructure, an eight-cell launcher for ASROC anti-submarine rockets, and facilities for handling drone anti-submarine helicopters.
Later in 1964 she began the first of what would be, over the next thirteen years, eight more tours of duty with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. During this time she also steamed around the World twice, in 1966 and in 1972, with combat operations off Vietnam in the middle of both deployments. The last of these cruises also involved Middle East Force service and a homeward-bound passage around the Cape of Good Hope.
Like many of the Navy's ships, during the 1960s and 1970s Basilone suffered from problems with her steam powerplant, climaxing in a boiler explosion on 5 February 1973 that killed several members of her crew.
Following repairs, she resumed operations six months later and remained quite active for another four years. At the beginning of November 1977, after the completion of her final Mediterranean cruise, USS Basilone was decommissioned and stricken from the list of Naval vessels. Later used as a weapons target, she was sunk in the Atlantic off Florida on 9 April 1982.
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