Samuel Braithwaite served as captain of HMS Kingston under Sir Charles Wager in 1727.
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Straub (DE-77) was laid down on 10 May 1943 at Hingham, Mass., by the Bethlehem Hingham Shipyard; reallocated to the United Kingdom under lend lease on 10 June 1943; stripped of her name on 23 June 1943; launched on 31 July 1943; delivered to the Royal Navy on 13 November 1943; and commissioned as HMS Braithwaite (K. 468).
Braithwaite earned her “battle honors” off Normandy during the invasion of France in 1944, and in the North Atlantic later that same year. She operated in the North Sea in 1945. She teamed with sistership Bayntun (K. 310) and the frigate Loch Eck (K. 422) on 3 February 1945 to sink U-1279; less than a fortnight later, those three escort vessels operated in concert with Loch Dunvegan (K. 435) to destroy U-989 on 14 February 1945.
Returned to the U.S. Navy after World War II, Braithwaite reached the New York Naval Shipyard on 11 December 1945. Decommissioned on 17 December 1945, she was declared “not essential to the defense of the United States” on 8 January 1946. Her hull number was struck from the Navy list on 21 January 1946, and she was sold to Northern Metals Co. of Philadelphia in June 1946 for scrapping.
Robert J. Cressman
13 December 2005
