USS Wickes (Destroyer # 75, later DD-75), 1918-1940

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USS Wickes, name ship of a class of thirty-eight 1090-ton destroyers, was built at Bath, Maine. She was commissioned at the end of July 1918 and began World War I operations early in August, escorting a convoy across the Atlantic to the British Isles and returning to the U.S. by way of the Azores. For the next two months, Wickes performed convoy service off the East Coast. While so-employed, she was damaged in a night-time collision on 23 October, which necessitated several weeks of repair work at the New York Navy Yard. In December 1918 the destroyer helped escort President Woodrow Wilson during his first trip to France. She spent the next half-year in European waters and was again damaged in a collision on 3 March 1919, while operating in German waters. Wickes returned to the United States in June 1919, also serving as an escort for President Wilson. With other destroyers, she transited the Panama Canal in late July to take station in the Pacific, where she served until decommissioned and placed in reserve at San Diego, California, in May 1922.

After nearly eight years of inactivity, Wickes was recommissioned in April 1930 and transferred to the Atlantic. She was used for Naval Reserve training until 1932, then joined a Rotating Reserve squadron. During 1933-1937 she served in the Pacific, based at San Diego, but was again laid up in April 1937. The outbreak of World War II in Europe, with the corresponding requirement for larger U.S. Naval forces to enforce American neutrality, brought Wickes back into commission at the end of September 1939. From December of that year until September 1940 she was employed in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico area, helping to keep track of warships and merchant vessels of the warring nations and participating in exercises.

In mid-October 1940, Wickes was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia, decommissioned and turned over to Great Britain as part of an arrangement that gained the hard-pressed Royal Navy fifty older U.S. destroyers in exchange for basing rights in British territories in the Americas. Renamed Montgomery, she operated in the Western Approaches to the British Isles, escorted trans-Atlantic convoys and, beginning in February 1942, served in the western Atlantic. While based at Halifax, she was loaned to the Royal Canadian Navy. HMS Montgomery steamed back to England at the start of 1944. Now worn out, and with great numbers of newer escort vessels coming into service, the former USS Wickes was paid off in February 1944 and scrapped a year later.

  
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