HISTORY OF USS RICH DD/DDE-820
USS RICH DD/DDE-820 was the successor to a Buckley Class destroyer escort, the USS RICH DE-695, sunk on June 8, 1944 off the Utah beaches during the Normandy invasion. This second vessel carrying the name of Lieutenant junior grade Ralph McMaster Rich was laid down on May 16, 1944 by the Consolidated Steel Corporation of Orange, Texas. The ship was launched on October 5,1945 and was sponsored by the widow of Ralph McMaster Rich. RICH was commissioned in Orange, Texas on July 3, 1946 with Commander R. C. Houston being her first commanding officer. Her wartime compliment was nominally 350 officers and men. She was a Gearing (DD-710) Class destroyer, a lengthened version of the earlier Allen M. Sumner (DD-692) Class. There were 168 vessels produced in the Sumner-Gearing configuration. She displaced 2,425 tons, was 390’ 10” in length and had a breadth of 41’. He engineering plant of four boilers and two sets of geared turbines was designed to give the ship a maximum speed of 35 knots. At 15 knots her design range was 6,500 nautical miles.
As built, her main armament consisted of 6, 5”/38 caliber dual purpose guns in three turrets, two forward and one aft as well as 10, 21” Mark 15 torpedoes located on the deckhouse amidships. Her antiaircraft battery, at commissioning, consisted of 12 40mm and several 20mm antiaircraft guns. As a multipurpose fleet destroyer she was equipped to combat submarines with both stern racks and side throwing depth charge projectors. Throughout her some three decades of service to the country she went through two major and many minor modifications. The first occurred in 1950 when she officially became an “escort destroyer,” configured principally for anti-submarine warfare (ASW). At this time her numerical designation was changed from DD-820 to DDE-820. Her main gun armament was reduced to two 5”/38 gun mounts with the uppermost forward mount, Mount 52, being replaced by a Mark 15 trainable hedgehog projector. Her torpedo tubes amidships were removed in the mid-1950s. In addition to the armament changes, significant alterations were also made in her electronics and anti-submarine warfare sonar capabilities. RICH was again modified, this time extensively, in 1963 under the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) Program when she was redisignated DD-820 still a destroyer but with enhanced ASW capabilities. In her FRAM Mark I configuration her two 5”/38 twin gun mounts were retained but all other guns were removed and she was equipped with an antisubmarine rocket launcher (ASROC) amidships. Her silhouette was now changed considerably from that of the 1945 era destroyer with the addition of a helicopter deck and hanger abaft the number two stack. There were also major changes made in her electronic and sonar equipment. In addition, she was now armed with Mark 32 triple tube antisubmarine torpedoes. RICH was in the Mark I FRAM configuration when she was stricken from the Navy’s registry on December 15, 1977 at the Philadelphia Naval Ship Yard.
RICH widely ranged the major oceans and seas during her long and useful operational life. She was, however, principally an Atlantic Fleet destroyer. Over this life much of her crew was drawn from the east coast. The crew, like that of many similar destroyers, was made up of a mixture of career and reserve officers and enlisted personnel. Many sailors received their initial introduction to the “tin can” Navy aboard the RICH. In the Atlantic Fleet she constantly trained to perfect her ASW capabilities both in hunter-killer (HUK) groups and antisubmarine task organizations like Task Force Alpha. She served in the screening and plane guard forces in several destroyer squadrons (DESRONS) for many aircraft carriers throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean with excursions into the Red Sea and Indian Oceans. RICH was an active participant in the Lebanon Crisis of 1958 and the Cuban Quarantine in 1962. Her excursion into the Pacific took her to the Tonkin Gulf and the gun-line off Vietnam. At the end of her life, she like many of her contemporaries, provided a vessel dedicated to the training of naval reservists. It was after this final service to the Navy she was stricken from the Navy’s registry. The thirty-two year operational history of the USS RICH from 1945 to 1977 clearly mirrors that of a typical “peace-time” journeyman destroyer following the end of World War II.
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