USS FALCON AM28 ASSIST RAISE SQUALUS1939 HUTNICK CACHET

The third Falcon was launched 7 September 1918 by Gas Engine and Power Co., and C. L. Seabury Co., Morris Heights, N.Y.; sponsored by Mrs. W. J. Parslow; and commissioned 12 November 1918, Lieutenant B. E. Rigg in command. She was reclassified ASR-2 on 12 September 1929. From December 1918 to May 1919, Falcon served on temporary duty in the 4th Naval District as a lightship. After towing targets and various craft along the east coast, an occupation with salvage duty which was to be her major employment for many years, she sailed from New York 8 August 1919 for Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland. For 2 months she aided in clearing the North Sea of the vast number of mines 'laid there in World War I, returning to Charleston, S.C., 28 November 1919. Falcon made a second voyage to European waters between March and August 1920, visiting Rosyth, Scotland, and Brest, France, and returning by way of the Azores with a captured German submarine in tow for the Canal Zone. Back at Hampton Roads 18 October 1920, she returned to towing, salvage, and transport duty along the east coast. After conducting salvage operations on S-5 (SS-110) through the summer of 1921, she was assigned permanently to submarine salvage work, based at New London. She continued to perform occasional towing duty, and from time to time sailed to the Caribbean on both salvage and towing duty. In 1925, Falcon joined the Control Force for operations in the Canal Zone, along the west coast, and in the Hawaiian Islands. She returned to home waters in September, and began her part in the salvage operations on S-51 (SS-162), in which she joined that fall and the next spring. After the submarine was raised through determined and ingenious efforts, it was Falcon who towed her to New York in July 1926, providing air pressure for the pontoons supporting the submarine, as well as her compartments. Acting as tender as well as salvage ship for submarines, Falcon accompanied them to fleet exercises in waters from Maine to the Canal Zone, and conducted many operations to develop rescue techniques, as well as training divers. She stood by during deep submergence runs and other tests of new submarines, and played an important role in raising Squalus (SS-192) in the summer of 1939, and in the rescue operations on O-9 (SS-70) in June 1940. Throughout World War II, aging but still able, Falcon sailed out of New London and Portsmouth, N.H., on salvage, towing, and experimental operations. When at New London, she usually served as flagship for Commander, Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet. Her only deployment from New England waters during the war came between July and October 1943, when she conducted diving operations and laid moorings in the anchorage at Argentia, Newfoundland. One of her most important activities during the war was training divers, search, salvage, and rescue workers to man newer submarine rescue ships. Falcon was decommissioned at Boston 18 June 1946, and sold 12 March 1947.

The first Semmes (DD-189) was laid down on 10 June 1918 by the Newport News Shipbuilding Co., Newport News, Va.; launched on 21 December 1918; sponsored by Mrs. John H. Watkins, granddaughter of Raphael Semmes; and commissioned on 21 February 1920, Comdr. H.H. Norton in command. Following shakedown, Semmes participated in exercises along the northeast coast until January 1921 when she sailed south for winter fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean. From there, she transited the Panama Canal to cruise off the west coast of South America and returned to the Caribbean in late February to conduct further exercises out of Guantanamo Bay. In late April, she resumed operations out of Norfolk. The destroyer was ordered inactivated in 1922; and, on 12 April, entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard where she was decommissioned on 17 July. Activated ten years later, she was transferred to the Coast Guard and commissioned in that service on 25 April 1932. As a Coast Guard destroyer, she was reconditioned at Boston and based at New London, whence she operated from 25 September until detached for two months duty with the Navy on 7 September 1933. On 10 November, she returned to New London and resumed operations for the Treasury Department. On 20 April 1934, the destroyer was returned to the Navy and was recommissioned as an experimental ship in accordance with the London Treaty limiting naval armament. Although not officially redesignated as an auxiliary ship, AG-24, until 1 July 1935, Semmes was assigned to Experimental Division 1: and, with assigned submarines, tested and evaluated underwater sound equipment into the 1940's. After the entry of the United States into World War II, Semmes added escort missions, training services for the Key West Sound School, and antisubmarine patrol work to her duties. At Key West from 16 March to 16 April 1942, she performed escort and patrol work off the mid-Atlantic seaboard into May; and, on the morning of the 6th, while patrolling off Cape Lookout, collided with a British ship, Senateur Duhamel. The latter sank; and, after assisting the survivors, Semmes put into Morehead City for temporary repairs. Permanent repairs were completed at Norfolk on 3 June and the former destroyer resumed her test and evaluation, patrol, and escort work which she continued through the end of the war in Europe. After the capitulation of Germany, Semmes resumed her primary mission of testing experimental equipment and, for the remainder of her career, conducted tests for the Underwater Sound Laboratory, New London, as a unit of the antisubmarine surface group of the Operational Development Force. Other duties during that period included the provision of training services to the Submarine School and to the Fleet Sonar School. On 21 May 1946, Semmes again entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard for inactivation. Decommissioned on 2 June 1946, her name was struck from the Navy list on 3 July 1946; and her hulk was sold for scrapping to the Northern Metals Corp., Philadelphia, on 25 November 1946. She was scrapped the following year.

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