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USS Barker (DD-213)

Please see below for item level images and donated collections containing photographs of USS Barker (DD-213)

USS Barker (Destroyer No. 213) was laid down on 30 April 1919 at Philadelphia, Pa., by William Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building Co.; launched on 11 September 1919; sponsored by Mrs. Barker, widow of the late Rear Adm. Barker; and commissioned on 27 December 1919, Lt. Cmdr. Charles C. Windsor in command. 

Barker visited Newport, R.I., beginning on 11 February 1920, and then made her shakedown cruise to Bermuda, putting in to Hamilton at the British colony on 14 February. She crossed the Atlantic and reached Gibraltar on 26 May and on 31 May Messina, Sicily, and then served for several months with the American Relief of Armenia and visited some Turkish ports and places in the Middle East, beginning with Samsun in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) on 21 June. USS Barker was reclassified to DD-213 on 17 July 1920. Barker came about and put in to Constantinople, Turkey, on 17 September, and then returned across the Black Sea and visited Yalta in the Soviet Union on 30 September. 

Early in the New Year USS Barker (DD-213) steamed easterly courses across the Black Sea and put in to Trebizond, Turkey, on 26 January 1921, following that visit two days later by reaching Bat’umi, Russia. USS Barker (DD-213) commenced an annual deployment cycle in which she patrolled Philippine and Asiatic waters, and spent a portion of each year in the Manila Bay area. USS Barker (DD-213) thus shaped a course for Chinese waters, operating areas that were to become very familiar to her crewmen and visited: Chefoo (Yantai) on 1 August; Tashik Tan on 9 August; Chefoo again on 12 August; Shanghai on 23 September; and back to Manila on 5 October 1921. 

The following year USS Barker (DD-213) passed back through the Panama Canal into the Pacific, and worked briefly out of the west coast until 2 August 1929, when she set out to operate with the destroyer divisions of the Asiatic Fleet. At the beginning of 1941, USS Barker (DD-213) served with the 57th Division, 29th Squadron, and later operated as part of Task Force (TF) 5 in the Philippines. USS Barker (DD-213) trained in the Chesapeake Bay area and made short voyages to San Juan, P.R., and Bermuda (October–5 November 1944). On that date she stood out of Guantánamo Bay and reached the Panama Canal two days later.

She put in to Charleston Navy Yard on 1 June 1945, to await her disposition, and, on 16 June, a Board of Inspection and Survey team inspected the ship and recommended her decommissioning. USS Barker (DD-213) entered drydock on 29 June; was decommissioned on 18 July 1945; stricken on 13 August; and sold on 30 November 1945.

For a complete history of USS Barker (DD-213) please see its DANFS page.