USS Willard Keith (DD-775), an , is currently the only completed ship of the United States Navy ever named for Willard Keith, a United States Marine Corps captain who died in combat during the campaign for Guadalcanal. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions.
Willard Keith (DD-775) was laid down on 5 March 1944, at San Pedro, Los Angeles, by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding and launched on 29 August 1944; sponsored by Mrs. Willard W. Keith, the mother of Capt. Keith. The ship was commissioned on 27 December 1944.
Cancelled ships
The US Navy had two previous contracts for destroyer escorts that were to be named USS Willard Keith; both were cancelled before they were completed. The contract for the construction of Willard Keith (DE-754)—a whose keel had been laid down on 14 September 1943 at San Pedro, California, by the Western Pipe and Steel Company—was cancelled on 2 October 1943. The contract for the construction of Willard Keith (DE-314) —an laid down on 22 January 1944 at Vallejo, California, by the Mare Island Navy Yard—was cancelled on 13 March 1944.
Service history
World War II
After shakedown training out of San Diego, California, Willard Keith operated temporarily out of the Pre-commissioning Training Center at San Francisco, California, as training ship for engineering personnel. During that time, she made weekly trips from San Francisco to San Clemente Island and back.
It is rumored that, during one of these runs from San Clemente to San Francisco, Willard Keith encountered, depth-charged, and supposedly destroyed a sonar contact of unknown origin or nationality. The matter was allegedly suppressed by the ship's officers, save the eyewitness accounts of some crew members. However, no documentation or physical proof of this alleged encounter has been discovered. A few remaining crew of Willard Keith have formed a non-profit organization (The Marine War Memorial Association of Half Moon Bay, California) with the mission of finding and memorializing this alleged sunken wreck.
Completing that tour of training duty in mid-April 1945, Willard Keith sailed for the Western Pacific on 16 April, heading for Pearl Harbor in company with the cruiser and . Willard Keith arrived at Okinawa on 29 May and was assigned screening and radar picket duties for the remainder of the Okinawa campaign, during which Willard Keith destroyed two Japanese aircraft and was struck by a Japanese torpedo from one attacker which fortunately, did not explode.
Willard Keith then joined a cruiser-destroyer task force on 24 June for anti-shipping sweeps into the East China Sea. Due to the losses the Japanese merchant marine had suffered, encounters were few. Willard Keith spent the remainder of the war engaged in such largely fruitless operations and, with the coming of the Japanese surrender, drew screening duties with the initial occupying forces in Japanese home waters. That autumn, the destroyer travelled between Japanese ports carrying men and mail.
Williard Keith was the flagship of Commodore John T. Bottom, Jr., Commander, Task Flotilla 1 and area commander while remaining at Nagoya from the last part of October until 5 December. Willard Keith rendezvoused with her sister ships in Destroyer Squadron (DesRon) 66, and sailed east, reaching the US west coast in time to spend Christmas at San Diego, California
1946
Subsequently, Willard Keith proceeded down the west coast; transited the Panama Canal; crossed the Gulf of Mexico and then proceeded around the tip of Florida, bound for New York City. After voyage repairs at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York., the destroyer stood out of the yard on the last day of January and proceeded up the eastern seaboard to Newport, Rhode Island. She engaged in gunnery exercises out of that port and, upon conclusion of that first phase of her peacetime training program, returned to New York. She made five more short round trips between New York and Newport until 12 July, when she set out for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
After operations in the British West Indies area, Willard Keith returned to Norfolk, Virginia, from whence she escorted the battleships and to Culebra, Puerto Rico, for shore bombardment exercises. The destroyer then returned to Norfolk as part of the screen for the battlewagons, before she drew another escort assignment, this time with the aircraft carrier . Conducting exercises and maneuvers en route, the carrier and her consorts reached Guantanamo Bay for training before returning northward and putting into Newport.