Destroyer USS Manley—Fighting Ship in Two World Wars

USS Manley, DD-74

The Caldwell-class destroyer, USS Manley (Destroyer #74) was built at Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, and was commissioned on 15 October 1917, during World War I. Joining Battleship Division Nine the next month, she began escorting Allied ships at Queenstown, Ireland.  

On 19 March 1918, a depth-charge accidentally exploded on her fantail, killing 33 enlisted men and the executive officer.  On that morning, while Manley escorted a convoy, she rolled against the British auxiliary cruiser HMS Montagua, which caused the accidental detonation of Manley's depth charges. Her stern was practically destroyed, and 33 enlisted men as well as her executive officer, Lt. Comdr. Richard M. Elliot, Jr., were killed in the subsequent explosion. Fragments pierced two 50-U.S.-gallon (190 L; 42 Imp gal) drums of gasoline and two tanks containing 100 U.S. gallons (380 L; 83 Imp gal) of alcohol. The leaking fluids caught fire as they ran along the deck and enveloped the ship in flames that were not extinguished until late that night.

Manley Missing Much of Her Stern

Then the Aubrietia-class sloop HMS Tamarisk edged up to the shattered destroyer and unsuccessfully tried to put a towline on board. Manley remained adrift until British tugs Blazer and Cartmel took her in tow after daylight on 20 March. She reached Queenstown at dusk the following day with more than 70 feet (21 m) of her hull awash or completely under water.

Repaired that December in Liverpool, England, she served in the Atlantic and Mediterranean areas.  She got under way on 11 April 1919 to join U.S. Naval Forces in the Adriatic Sea transporting passengers, carrying mail, and performing diplomatic missions. In June 1919 she began carrying, mail, and members of the U.S. Food Commission among Turkish ports in the Black Sea. The destroyer returned from the Mediterranean to New York on 1 August 1919 and decommissioned at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 14 June 1922.

In July 1920, Manley was designated as DD-74 and was decommissioned two years later.  Recommissioned in May 1930 as an experimental torpedo-firing ship, she served off both coasts and with Squadron T-40 in the fall of 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.  

Manley as AG-28 During WWII

 In November 1938, she was reclassified as AG-28 and began landing Marines for training.   Designated as the Navy's first high-speed transport, APD-1, in August 1940, she served in the Atlantic upon United States entry into World War II before departing for the Pacific.  Manley subsequently participated in the Guadalcanal Campaign in 1942, the invasions of the Marshall Islands and Saipan in 1944, the invasion force for Leyte, Philippines, in October, the landings of Lingayen Gulf in January 1945, and the Okinawa Invasion in April.   

Reclassified as DD-74 in June, Manley was decommissioned in November, struck from the Navy List in December, and sold for scrapping in November 1946. 

Sources:  U.S. Navy National Museum; Wikipedia; Destroyer History Foundation