USS Hull, a 2850-ton modified Forrest Sherman class destroyer, was built at Bath, Maine. She was commissioned in early July 1958 and transited the Panama Canal a few months later to begin a long career with the Pacific Fleet. Between April and August 1959 Hull conducted the first of her fifteen deployments to serve with the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. She made three more cruises in that area in 1960, 1961-1962 and 1963-1964. During October and November 1962 the destroyer escorted Pacific-based amphibious forces to the Panama Canal Zone as part of the Navy's Cuban Missile Crisis operations. Hull's 1965 Seventh Fleet tour was the first of six Vietnam War deployments, during which she fired tens of thousands of five-inch shells in support of forces ashore and helped rescue several downed U.S. aviators.
Hull made her eleventh WestPac cruise in 1973, after the direct U.S. role in the Vietnam conflict had ended. Overhauled after that, she lost her remaining three-inch gun mount and had her forward five-inch gun replaced by an experimental eight-inch type. She conducted tests of the latter weapon during 1975-1978, and also made her twelfth and thirteenth Seventh Fleet deployments during this time. The big gun was removed in 1979, and Hull spent the rest of her days with the three five-inch gun mounts that were typical of her class.
In February-September 1981 Hull served again in Asian waters. She began her final deployment in September 1982, steaming to the Western Pacific by way of Alaska, rescuing five Vietnamese refugees at sea in October and then moving further west to serve in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea as part of the battle group built around the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise. Returning to the U.S. West Coast in April 1983, she immediately commenced inactivation preparations. USS Hull decommissioned in July 1983 and was sunk as a target in April 1998.
USS Hull was named in honor of Commodore Isaac Hull (1773-1843), a signficant Naval commander during and after the War of 1812.
Credits: Naval Historical Center / USN
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Select a thumbnail to view a larger image of the USS Hull DD-945.
