Beatty II (DD-756)
1945-1972
The second U.S. Navy ship named for the late Rear Adm. Frank Edmund Beatty (1853-1926); see Beatty I (DD-640) for biography.
II
(DD-756: displacement 2,200; length 376'6"; beam 40'10"; draft 15'8"; speed 34.2 knots (trial); complement 345; armament 6 5-inch, 10 40 millimeter, 11 20 millimeter, 10 21-inch torpedo tubes, 6 depth charge projectors, 2 depth charge tracks; class Allen M. Sumner)
The second Beatty (DD-756) was laid down on Independence Day 1944 at Staten Island, N.Y., by the Bethlehem Steel Co.; launched on 30 November 1944; sponsored by Mrs. Charles H. Drayton and her daughter Miss Mary Drayton; and commissioned on 31 March 1945, Cmdr. Malcolm T. Munger in command.
After fitting out, the destroyer conducted her shakedown cruise in the vicinity of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and underwent post-shakedown repairs at the New York Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, N.Y., during late May and the first three weeks of June. Beatty operated out of Norfolk, Va., as a training ship from late June to 24 August 1945, and then sailed for the West Indies on another training cruise. By that time, Japan had capitulated, ending hostilities. On 12 September, she reported for duty to the Commander, Destroyers, Atlantic Fleet, but returned to training duty out of Norfolk about a week later. That service lasted until 10 November when she sailed for the Pacific. The destroyer reached San Diego, Calif., on 25 November but soon continued on to Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, where she resumed training duty.
Beatty returned to the east coast in March 1946 and operated along the eastern seaboard until heading for European waters in February 1947. She reached England on 25 February and then visited ports in France, Belgium, Denmark, Scotland, Sweden, and Portugal. She reached her last port of call of the deployment, Gibraltar, late in July and arrived back in Newport on 14 August. After 13 months of operations along the east coast and in the West Indies, the destroyer stood out of Newport on 13 September 1948 bound for the Mediterranean. She joined the Sixth Fleet at Gibraltar on 23 September and, in addition to the usual port visits and exercises, patrolled the Palestinian coast between 2 November and 7 December during the first Arab-Israeli war. The warship completed the deployment on 23 January 1949 when she arrived back in Newport. For more than two years, with time out for an overhaul at the Boston Naval Shipyard, Beatty operated along the east coast, in the West Indies, and in the Gulf of Mexico. On 5 March 1951, the destroyer deployed to the Mediterranean Sea once again but returned to Newport at the end of the first week in June.
More Second Fleet operations occupied her until early autumn of 1951. She departed Newport on 2 October, bound for the western Pacific and, after transiting the Panama Canal and visiting San Diego, Pearl Harbor, and Midway Island, she arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, on 31 October. On 4 November, Beatty joined the screen of Task Force (TF) 77, the fast carrier force, off the coast of Korea. From 6 to 9 November, the destroyer moved inshore to bombard installations at Wonsan harbor. Near the end of the month, she shelled targets at Chongjin, Songjin, and Tachon. Between 5 and 11 December, Beatty operated independently in the vicinity of Hingoan, patrolling for mines and submarines. Relieved of that duty on the 11th, she returned to Yokosuka on the 13th.
The destroyer departed Yokosuka on 28 December 1951 and, after a trip to Okinawa, rendezvoused with TF 77 off the Korean coast on 9 January 1952. For the remainder of the month, she served in the screen of the fast carriers and acted as their plane guard. After visiting Sasebo between 31 January and 5 February, she began her final tour of duty screening the carriers. Beatty made one more visit to Yokosuka from 22 to 27 February before heading back to Newport. Steaming via the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, the warship completed a circumnavigation of the world with her arrival at Newport on 21 April.
Following an overhaul at the Boston Naval Shipyard during the summer of 1952, she resumed duty out of Newport on 26 September. For almost 13 years, Beatty operated from the base at Newport alternating deployments to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea with operations along the east coast of the United States and in the West Indies. During several of her tours of duty in the Mediterranean, the destroyer was detached from the Sixth Fleet for brief periods of service in the Indian Ocean with the Middle East Force. She also made cruises to northern European ports in 1954 and 1957 following NATO exercises in the Atlantic. She participated in type training, antisubmarine warfare (ASW), and fleet exercises during all of her assignments. Her operations out of Newport, punctuated by regular overhauls at various east coast naval shipyards, also included refresher training and summer training cruises for Naval Academy and NROTC midshipmen.
There were a number of highlights during that phase of her career. While conducting post-overhaul refresher training late in July 1959, she saved the abandoned motor vessel Nassau Relief from sinking off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Late in September and early in October 1959, Beatty provided services to the Fleet Sonar School at Key West, Fla. In January of 1960, she helped to track a high altitude research balloon during Operation Skyhook. The destroyer spent two weeks in November of 1961 cruising off the coast of the Dominican Republic during a time of internal troubles for that nation. A year later in November 1962, Beatty took part in the quarantine of Cuba established to keep Russian offensive missiles from reaching that island. The last event of particular note in which she took part during this period came in May 1963 when the warship provided support for Project Mercury during Maj. S. Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit Faith 7 space flight.
In April of 1965, Beatty's home port was changed to Norfolk where she arrived on 3 June to begin an overhaul that lasted until October. Though her base of operations changed, her missions remained the same as before, deployments to European waters alternated with operations along the east coast and in the West Indies. She continued that employment until 1 January 1968 when she was placed in a caretaker status with a greatly reduced crew. Later that year, she learned that she was slated to become a Naval Reserve training ship. At the end of the first week in September, the destroyer made the voyage from Norfolk to Tampa, Fla. From that new home port, she helped to train naval reservists until 1972. In March 1972, a survey board found her to be beyond economical modernization, and recommended her disposal. On 14 July 1972, Beatty was decommissioned at Charleston, and her name stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. That same day, she was transferred to the Venezuelan Navy. Renamed Carabobo, she served Venezuela until 1981. She was scrapped in the early 1980s.
Beatty (DD-756) earned two battle stars during the Korean conflict.
Raymond A. Mann
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
25 October 2021
