Commissioned on 24 November 1944 at Seattle, Washington, the MASSEY (DD-778) was en route to the war zone and the Okinawa campaign the following spring. On 1 April, she screened escort carriers during the initial landings on Okinawa. The destroyer switched to picket duty in May and by the time she left Okinawan waters, her gunners had splashed nine kamikazes, five in one evening engagement. From Okinawa, she went on to join in an antishipping sweep in the East China Sea in July. With the end of hostilities, the MASSEY returned to Okinawa for air-sea rescue work until 22 September when she began courier operations between U.S. occupied ports in Japan.
At year’s end, DD-778 headed home for duty with the Atlantic Fleet. Operations along the East Coast, a visit to Chile, hunter-killer exercises, and two Mediterranean deployments occupied her until September 1950 and the war in Korea. On 14 October 1950 the MASSEY covered minesweeping operations at Wonsan, Hungnam, and Songjin and later participated in blockade and fire support missions off Korea’s northeast coast. In December she bombarded enemy troop and transportation concentrations around Hungnam until the evacuation of U.N. forces was complete. She then turned her guns on the port facilities, leaving nothing useful for the enemy.
In February 1951, the MASSEY escorted the carrier BATAAN (CVL-29) and steamed along the east and west coasts on blockade and shore bombardment missions off North and South Korea. July 1951 found her back in Norfolk for operations along the East Coast and in the Caribbean, Northern Europe, and the Mediterranean. While with the Sixth Fleet in 1953, she and the FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (CVA-42) provided medical aid and supplies to victims of an earthquake on the Greek island of Cephalonia.
Over the next six years the MASSEY operated out of Norfolk with the Atlantic Fleet, participating in various exercises off the East Coast and in the Caribbean in addition to regular deployments with the Sixth Fleet and with NATO forces in Northern Europe and the North Sea. In December 1959 she underwent Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM II) conversion at Norfolk. During her 1960 Mediterranean deployment the destroyer recorded the first landing of a manned helicopter on the flight deck of a Sixth Fleet destroyer. She returned home to Mayport, Florida, in March 1961, and in January 1962 was reassigned to Newport, Rhode Island, her base of operations for the next four years.
The MASSEY returned to the Pacific in January 1966 and arrived on Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf on 10 March to serve as plane guard for the KITTY HAWK (CVA-63) during round the clock air strikes against North Vietnam. Her second assignment with the KITTYHAWK was in early April as the carrier’s planes struck Vietcong targets in South Vietnam. On 7 April she was on the gun line in the IV Corps area and on 10 April fired 174 rounds, hitting a boat dock, a shipping area, a building, and an enemy sampan. She moved on to the I Corps area and from 12 to 14 April, fired 259 rounds destroying Vietcong positions, gun emplacements, storage areas, and boats. Back on Yankee Station in May, she screened the KITTY HAWK and ENTERPRISE (CVA(N)-65) and participated in ASW training with the POMFRET (SS-391) and PORTERFIELD (DD-682). Following picket duty at Point Springfield, the MASSEY joined the CONSTELLATION (CVA-64) on Yankee Station as the carrier’s aircraft bombed fuel depots in the Hanoi and Haiphong areas. On 2 July 1966 she left the Tonkin Gulf for home via the Suez Canal, arriving in Newport on 17 August. She resumed East Coast operations interspersed with deployments with the Sixth Fleet.
While in the Eastern Mediterranean in the spring of 1967, she relieved the destroyer DYESS (DD-880) in towing the sloop ATLANTIS to Rhodes following its collision with a merchant tanker. On June 9, during the Arab-Israeli war, Israeli gunboats and aircraft attacked the technical research ship LIBERTY (AGTR-5). The MASSEY and the DAVIS (DD-937) picked up doctors, corpsmen, and emergency medical supplies from the carrier AMERICA (CVA-66) and sped to the aid of the stricken ship. The next afternoon, the DAVIS accompanied the LIBERTY to Malta, and the MASSEY screened the AMERICA as it proceeded through the troubled waters of the eastern Mediterranean. She returned to more routine operations when the war ended in mid-June and headed for home in September.
During the spring of 1968, she operated out of Newport, in Florida waters, and the Caribbean. Off the coast of Spain with the NEWMAN K. PERRY (DD-883), ZELLARS (DD-777), GEARING (DD-710), MOALE (DD-693), and JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, JR. (DD-850) on 11 April, she found and rescued a seaman lost overboard from the MOALE 1,000 miles west of Gibraltar. When she picked him up, he had been in the water twelve hours and twenty-five minutes. The MASSEY went on to the Mediterranean for NATO exercises and operations with the Sixth Fleet. Intelligence gathering was one of her missions and before returning to Newport in late September 1968, she observed and photographed several Soviet naval vessels. Operating out of Key West in November, she picked up Cuban refugees on a small raft and transferred them to a Coast Guard vessel.
In the Mediterranean in July 1969, she again rescued a man overboard, this time from the NEWMAN K. PERRY. Returning to the states, she shifted home ports from Newport to Fort Schuyler in Brooklyn, New York, in January 1970. There, she operated as a reserve training ship until she was decommissioned on 17 September 1973. The MASSEY was sold for scrap in December 1974. |
