U S NAVY 4th FLEET AT RECIFE - SHIP INDEX DD
15)DD 255 OSMOND INGRAM
Photo. www.navsource.org by Daniel Durham
CLASS - CLEMSON
Basic repeat Wickes Class, with 35% more fuel capacity to improve endurance problems.
Designed radius was 4900 nautical miles at 15 Knots.
Launched February 23 or 28 1919 and commissioned June 28 1919.
Originally named INGRAM changed to OSMOND INGRAM November 11 1919.
Decommissioned June 24 1922, Recommissioned November 22 1940.
Converted to Sea Plane Tender AVD-9 August 2 1940.
Reclassified DD-255 December 1 1943.
Converted to High Speed Transport APD-35 June 22 1944.
Decommissioned January 8 1946.
Stricken January 21 1946.
Fate: Sold June 17 1946 to Hugo New, New York and broken up for scrap.
Displacement 1,215 Tons.
Dimensions, 314' 5" (oa) x 31' 8" x 9' 10" (Max)
Armament 4 x 4"/50, 1 x 3"/23AA, 12 x 21" tt.
Machinery, 26,500 SHP; Geared Turbines, 2 screws.
Speed, 35 Knots.
Crew 114.
After several years' Atlantic service in fleet operations Osmond Ingram decommissioned 24 June 1922 and went into reserve at Philadelphia. Converted to seaplane tender, she recommissioned 22 November 1940 and sailed for San Juan Puerto Rico, her home port from 15 January 1941. She tended patrol planes through the area bounded by Trinidad, Antigua and San Juan, then sailed to base in the Panama Canal Zone tending patrol craft at Salinas, Ecuador, and in the Galapagos through June 1942.
Returning to destroyer functions completed 1942 on escort duty between Trinidad, Recife and Belem, then sailed north to Argentia, Newfoundland, to join the offensive antisubmarine warfare patrol formed around Bogue (CVE-9), one of the most effective of the antisubmarine forces that ranged the Atlantic that ultimately defeated the U-boats and secured the passage of the men and goods across the Atlantic, vital to triumph in Europe.
Osmond Ingram sank her first submarine, U-172 with gunfire 13 December 1943 after then she had been forced to surface by depth charge attacks. This and similar outstanding performance of duty by her sisters brought the group a Presidential Unit Citation (US)
