USS Lovelace (DE-198) was a in the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

. She was named for naval aviator Donald Alexander Lovelace (1906–1942).

Lovelace was laid down on 22 May 1943; launched on 4 July 1943 by Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth

Portsmouth, Virginia

Portsmouth is located in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2010, the city had a total population of 95,535.The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard, is a historic and active U.S...

, Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

; sponsored by Mrs. Donald A. Lovelace, widow

Widow

A widow is a woman whose spouse has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or occasionally viduity. The adjective form is widowed...

; and commissioned on 7 November 1943, with Lt. Comdr. R. D. de Kay, Jr., in command.

Service history

After shakedown

Shakedown (testing)

A shakedown is a period of testing or a trial journey undergone by a ship, aircraft or other craft and its crew before being declared operational. Statistically, a proportion of the components will fail after a relatively short period of use, and those that survive this period can be expected to...

, Lovelace departed Norfolk on 2 January 1944 never to return to the east coast of the United States. This flagship

Flagship

A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, reflecting the custom of its commander, characteristically a flag officer, flying a distinguishing flag...

 of Destroyer Escort Division 37 picked up convoys at Guantanamo

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is located on of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba which the United States leased for use as a coaling station following the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903. The base is located on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the oldest overseas...

, the Panama Canal Zone

Panama Canal Zone

The Panama Canal Zone was a unorganized U.S. territory located within the Republic of Panama, consisting of the Panama Canal and an area generally extending 5 miles on each side of the centerline, but excluding Panama City and Colón, which otherwise would have been partly within the limits of...

, and the Society Islands

Society Islands

The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...

 as she steamed across the southern Pacific to Noumea

Nouméa

Nouméa is the capital city of the French territory of New Caledonia. It is situated on a peninsula in the south of New Caledonia's main island, Grande Terre, and is home to the majority of the island's European, Polynesian , Indonesian, and Vietnamese populations, as well as many Melanesians,...

, New Caledonia

New Caledonia

New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

, arriving on 8 February.

Escort and screening duties in the Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

 preceded her departure on 19 April for the New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

 battle zone. Arriving off Hollandia

Jayapura

Jayapura City is the capital of Papua province, Indonesia, on the island of New Guinea. It is situated on Yos Sudarso Bay . Its approximate population in 2002 was 200,000....

 (now Jayapura

Jayapura

Jayapura City is the capital of Papua province, Indonesia, on the island of New Guinea. It is situated on Yos Sudarso Bay . Its approximate population in 2002 was 200,000....

, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

) without incident on 24 April, she screened the debarking of the second wave of relief troops. Later Lovelace interrupted her New Guinea coastal patrol and escort missions on 8 July to bombard beach targets at Toem and on 22 July entered a floating drydock at Milne Bay

Milne Bay

Milne Bay is a large bay in Milne Bay Province, southeastern Papua New Guinea. The bay is named after Sir Alexander Milne.The area was a site of the Battle of Milne Bay in 1942....

. A more important cessation from an almost continuous sailing schedule occurred a month later at New Caledonia, where new 20 mm guns were installed.

Lovelace left the Melanesian groups on 15 October sailing northwest to the Kossol Straits, Palau Islands, and then westward to Leyte Gulf

Leyte Gulf

Leyte Gulf is a body of water immediately east of the island of Leyte in the Philippines, adjoining the Philippine Sea of the Pacific Ocean, at . The Gulf is bounded on the north by the island of Samar, which is separated from Leyte on the west by the narrow San Juanico Strait, and on the south by...

. She arrived on 25 October just as a major naval battle was beginning some sixty miles away. While protecting 7th Fleet replenishment units, she splashed

Catastrophic kill

A catastrophic kill, K-Kill or complete kill refers to damage inflicted on a vehicle by a weapon that renders it both unusable and unrepairable whereas a "knocked out" vehicle is completely inoperable but not beyond repair...

 her first enemy plane on 26 October. Six days later en route to Kossol Straits the screen was heavily attacked by suicide planes

Kamikaze

The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....

, but the convoy fought through. On 21 November Lovelace was credited with an assist in downing

Catastrophic kill

A catastrophic kill, K-Kill or complete kill refers to damage inflicted on a vehicle by a weapon that renders it both unusable and unrepairable whereas a "knocked out" vehicle is completely inoperable but not beyond repair...

 an enemy bomber attacking its Hollandia-bound convoy.

After a period of refresher antisubmarine

Anti-submarine warfare

Anti-submarine warfare is a branch of naval warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find, track and deter, damage or destroy enemy submarines....

 training off Sansapoor, New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, the destroyer escort joined TF 78 en route to the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

. Lovelace continued to operate primarily as an intra-Philippine escort vessel from 8 January 1945 until mid-July. However, during this period her anti-aircraft capabilities were increased by the installation of air-search radar

Radar

Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

 at Manus

Manus Island

Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest island of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth largest island in Papua New Guinea with an area of 2,100 km², measuring around 100 km × 30 km. According to the 2000 census, Manus Island had a...

 in the Admiralties. In July her zone of operations expanded to include Ulithi

Ulithi

Ulithi is an atoll in the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific Ocean, about 191 km east of Yap. It consists of 40 islets totalling , surrounding a lagoon about long and up to wide—at one of the largest in the world. It is administered by the state of Yap in the Federated States of...

, and on 9 August, in the lull between air attacks, she first closed Okinawa. When she returned in September, it was the weather rather than the Japanese

Empire of Japan

The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...

 that posed the threat. Only slightly damaged herself on 19 September, she went to the assistance of the , an attack transport

Attack transport

Attack Transport is a United States Navy ship classification.-History:In the early 1940s, as the United States Navy expanded in response to the threat of involvement in World War II, a number of civilian passenger ships and some freighters were acquired, converted to transports and given hull...

 loaded with liberated U.S. war prisoners, after the ship had hit a drifting mine

Naval mine

A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, an enemy vessel...

. After seeing the troopship safely back to Buckner Bay, Lovelace returned to the Philippines; and on 1 October the ship departed Subic Bay

Subic Bay

Subic Bay is a bay forming part of Luzon Sea on the west coast of the island of Luzon in Zambales, Philippines, about 100 kilometers northwest of Manila Bay. Its shores were formerly the site of a major United States Navy facility named U.S...

 for the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in company with the ships of Escort Division 37.

Arriving in San Diego, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 on 23 October, Lovelace reached the end of twenty-one active months of naval service. Decommissioned

Ship decommissioning

To decommission a ship is to terminate her career in service in the armed forces of her nation. A somber occasion, it has little of the elaborate ceremony of ship commissioning, but carries significant tradition....

 on 22 May 1946, she was berthed

Berth (moorings)

A berth is a location in a port or harbour used specifically for mooring vessels while not at sea.-Locations in a port:Berth is the term used in ports and harbors to define a specific location where a vessel may be berthed, usually for the purposes of loading and unloading.Most berths will be...

 at Bremerton, Washington, and struck on 1 July 1967. Lovelace performed her last duty for the Navy by acting as a target for destruction on 25 April 1968.