Figure 1: USS Perkins (DDR-877) leading other ships of Destroyer Division Eleven, Pacific Fleet, circa 1954-1955. The next ship astern is USS Orleck (DD-886). Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 2: USS Perkins (DD-877) at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 30 January 1947. Note the tripod mainmast and extra antennas fitted for her role as a radar picket destroyer. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 3: USS Perkins (DD-877) at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 30 January 1947. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 4: USS Perkins (DD-877) at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, 30 January 1947. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 5: USS Perkins (DDR-877) operating off the coast of Korea, 26 August 1951. Photographed by McClure, of USS Sicily (CVE-118). Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 6: USS Perkins (DDR-877) underway, circa 1953. This image was received by the Naval Photographic Center in December 1959, but was taken several years earlier, soon after removal of her mainmast and replacement of her 40mm guns with 3-inch twin mounts. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 7: USS Perkins (DDR-877) refueling at sea from USS Yorktown (CVA-10), August 1953. Photographed by W.L. Pooler. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 8: USS Perkins (DD-877) underway following her FRAM II modernization, circa the mid-1960s. Official US Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 9: Seventh Fleet ships replenishing in the South China Sea, May 1969. Photographed by PH1 Long. Ships present are (from front to back): USS Wiltsie (DD-716); USS Tappahannock (AO-43); USS Oriskany (CVA-34); USS Mars (AFS-1); and USS Perkins (DD-877). Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 10: Jacket patch of USS Perkins’ (DD-877) insignia used during the 1960s. Courtesy of Captain G.F. Swainson, USN, 1969. US Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Named after US Navy Commodore George H. Perkins (1836-1899), the 3,479-ton USS Perkins (DD-877) was a Gearing class destroyer that was built by the Consolidated Steel Corporation at Orange, Texas, and was commissioned on 5 April 1945. The ship was approximately 390 feet long and 40 feet wide, had a top speed of 35 knots, and had a crew of 345 officers and men. As built, Perkins was armed with six 5-inch guns, 12 40-mm guns, five 21-inch torpedo tubes, and depth charges, although this armament changed in later years.
Right after being commissioned in April 1945, Perkins was converted into a radar picket destroyer, work that was completed in July. In the middle of August 1945, when Japan agreed to surrender, Perkins was at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Continuing on to Tokyo Bay, where she arrived in early September, she operated in the western and central Pacific until April 1946. Two more Far Eastern deployments took place in 1947 and 1949. In 1948 she went to the Marshall Islands for atomic weapons tests. While in Chinese waters in February 1949, she was re-designated DDR-877, a belated recognition of the radar picket capabilities she had received some three and a half years earlier.
In mid-1950, Perkins began operating in the central Pacific. During the Korean War, she was assigned to aircraft carrier escort and shore bombardment missions from February to September 1951. A second combat deployment followed in 1952, during which she suffered the loss of one crewman when enemy shore battery shells exploded next to her off Kojo, Korea, on 15 October. For the rest of the decade, and into the early 1960s, Perkins regularly served with the Seventh Fleet in the often tense Far Eastern waters, and operated elsewhere in the Pacific.
Between March and December 1962, Perkins was converted to FRAM II configuration, trading her special radar picket gear and 3-inch guns for anti-submarine torpedo tubes and the capability of operating drone anti-submarine helicopters (DASH). Her designation reverted to DD-877 while this work was in progress. The updated destroyer began her next series of Seventh Fleet cruises in October 1963, continuing them nearly to the end of her US Navy career. Perkins performed Vietnam War carrier escort, bombardment and search-and-rescue duties during deployments in 1966 to 1967, 1967 to 1968, 1969 and 1970 to 1971. Assigned to Naval Reserve training service after her last western Pacific visit, she spent most of 1971 and all of 1972 operating along the U.S. West Coast, with additional trips to Alaska and Hawaii. USS Perkins was decommissioned in mid-January 1973 and was transferred to Argentina. Renamed Comodore Py, she served in that nation's navy until 1984, when she was scrapped.
