Figure 1: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, at the conclusion of her FRAM II modernization, 25 April 1961. Note that hull numbers painted on her bow have not yet had countershading applied. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 2: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, at the conclusion of her FRAM II modernization, 25 April 1961. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 3: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, at the conclusion of her FRAM II modernization, 25 April 1961. Note that variable-depth sonar (VDS) gear has not yet been installed on her fantail. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 4: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, at the conclusion of her FRAM II modernization, 25 April 1961. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 5: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) underway off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, 25 April 1961, at the conclusion of her FRAM II modernization. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 6: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) comes alongside USS Coral Sea (CVA-63), while operating at sea on 2 May 1964. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 7: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) aground on Pratas Reef, in the South China Sea, July 1965. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 8: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) aground on Pratas Reef, South China Sea, in July 1965. An H-34 type helicopter is hovering over her bow to evacuate crewmen. This was the only safe method of transportation to and from the stranded ship during the rough seas that persisted during most of the several weeks of salvage operations that finally freed Frank Knox. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 9: USS Frank Knox (DDR-742) aground on Pratas Reef, South China Sea, with several ships attempting to pull her off. She went aground on 18 July 1965. This view was probably taken at about the time she was finally refloated on 24 August 1965. Ships pulling are (from left to right): Grapple (ARS-7), Conserver (ARS-39), Sioux (ATF-75), Greenlet (ASR-10) and Cocopa (ATF-101). Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 10: USS Frank Knox (DD-742) underway near Hawaii, January 1969. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 11: USS Frank Knox (DD-742) underway off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, 15 January 1969. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 12: The Greek warship HNS Themistocles (D-210), ex-USS Frank Knox (DD -742), place and date unknown. Courtesy Anthony J. Vrailas. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 13: The Greek warship HNS Themistocles (D-210), ex-USS Frank Knox (DD -742), place and date unknown. Courtesy Panagiotis Moschovitis. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 14: Newspaper clipping of the sinking of HNS Themistocles (D-210), ex-USS Frank Knox (DD -742). The ship was sunk as a target by the Greek Navy on 12 September 2001. Click on photograph for larger image. Courtesy Ed Zajkowski. Click on photograph for larger image.
Named in honor of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox (1874-1944), USS Frank Knox (DD-742) was a 2,425-ton Gearing class destroyer that was built by the Bath Iron Works at Bath, Maine, and was commissioned on 11 December 1944. The ship was approximately 390 feet long and 41 feet wide, had a top speed of 34 knots, and had a crew of 336 officers and men. Frank Knox was armed with six 5-inch guns, 12 40-mm guns, 11 20-mm guns, ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, and depth charges, although this armament changed dramatically while she was in service with the US Navy.
After completing her shakedown cruise along both coasts of the United States, Frank Knox was sent to the western Pacific and arrived there in mid-June 1945, just in time to participate in the final carrier air raids on the Japanese home islands as part of Task Force 38. The ship was present in Tokyo Bay when Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945 and stayed in the Far East until early February 1946, when she returned to her home port at San Diego, California. Frank Knox completed another two deployments in the Far East in 1947 and 1948 and on 18 March 1949 the ship was re-designated DDR-742 because of her radar capabilities.
After the start of the Korean War on 25 June 1950, Frank Knox set sail again for the Far East on 6 July and joined the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet upon arriving off the coast of Korea. The ship was attached to the Seventh Fleet’s fast carrier task forces which were pounding North Korean targets on an almost daily basis with their aircraft. During this deployment, Frank Knox participated in the amphibious assault on Inchon, bombarded numerous shore targets, patrolled the Taiwan Straits, and on 30 January 1951, was part of a fake invasion of the North Korean coast. This diversion was so successful that communist troops were rushed to protect the coastline, when they could have been used against real allied forces in central Korea. Frank Knox also spent 40 straight days bombarding rail centers on Korea’s east coast, as well as using her guns to cut enemy supply and communications routes.
Frank Knox returned to San Diego on 11 April 1951. The ship patrolled America’s west coast and the Hawaiian Islands until 19 April 1952, when she was sent back to Korea. As was the case during her first deployment to Korea, Frank Knox bombarded shore targets, including spending several weeks in Wonsan Harbor giving fire support to US minesweepers that were in the area. Frank Knox returned to San Diego on 18 November 1952. In 1953, the destroyer was sent back to Korea and her deployment coincided with the armistice that halted the war. But the ship continued patrolling the coast of Korea after the war ended and she was given the unique task of escorting transports carrying former Chinese prisoners of war to Taiwan. Evidently, these prisoners chose to go to Taiwan rather than to return to mainland communist China.
For the rest of the 1950s, Frank Knox deployed regularly with the Seventh Fleet, returning back home to San Diego for occasional overhauls. From 1960 to 1961, the ship was modernized under the “Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization” (FRAM) II program, which gave her updated radars and other new equipment. Frank Knox was based in the Far East from late 1961 until mid-1964, before returning to the United States. The ship’s next deployment occurred in June 1965, when she briefly served off the coast of Vietnam. Frank Knox patrolled off the coast of Vietnam and provided naval gunfire support when needed.
But while steaming at 16 knots in the South China Sea on 18 July 1965, Frank Knox ran hard aground on Pratas Reef, some two hundred miles east of Hong Kong. A major salvage effort was immediately launched to save the ship, with the tugs Munsee, Cocopa, and Sioux, the submarine rescue ship Greenlet, and the salvage ships Grapple and Conserver all coming to assist Frank Knox. Although the destroyer was not severely damaged by the grounding, several attempts to pull the ship off the reef between 20 July and 2 August were unsuccessful. The ship also was pushed harder onto the rocks by the waves from two typhoons that passed through the area. Frank Knox was now severely battered and holed, with machinery spaces flooded and her hull structure weakened.
Conventional hole patching and water-removal methods proved inadequate to help the destroyer, so plastic foam was pumped into the flooded compartments. This pushed out the water and increased the buoyancy of the ship. The weakened hull also needed to be reinforced by welding stiffeners to the main deck. Explosives were used to break up the coral around the ship, but this only further damaged the hull, increasing the need for more foam. Another attempt was made to pull the ship off the reef on 11 August, but this attempt also failed.
The salvage tackle to Frank Knox was re-rigged, more weight was removed from the ship, and pontoons were attached to the destroyer’s hull in an attempt to make her even more buoyant. More foam was pumped into the ship and the destroyer USS Cogswell arrived on the scene to assist in the salvage effort. Another attempt on 22 August to pull the ship off the reef produced some favorable results, but Frank Knox was still stuck. Then on 24 August 1965, Frank Knox was finally pulled off the reef, nearly six weeks after running aground. It was an amazing salvage effort that was conducted in a very difficult environment. But at last the ship was free and Frank Knox was towed to Japan for repairs.
After spending more than a year at Yokosuka, Japan, undergoing some very extensive repairs, Frank Knox was ready to re-join the fleet in November 1966. She returned to the Seventh Fleet and was deployed, once again, off the coast of Vietnam. The ship completed numerous naval gunfire support missions and was given patrol and escort duties as well. On 1 January 1969, Frank Knox was given back her old designation of DD-742 and she completed her final deployment in November of 1970. USS Frank Knox was decommissioned on 30 January 1971 and was transferred to the Greek Navy several days later. Renamed Themistocles, the ship was in excellent shape because of the extensive overhaul she received in Japan a few years earlier. The ship went on to serve another 20 years in the Greek Navy before being placed out of commission in the early 1990s. The old warship was sunk as a torpedo target for the Greek submarine Kyklon on 12 September 2001. This was a sad end to a fine ship that served in three wars, two navies, and endured one of the most incredible salvage operations of all time.
