Destroyers of Distinguished service, USS Mugford (DD-389).

USS Mugford (DD-389) was a Bagley-class destroyer,laid down in October, 1935, and launched one year later. Commissioned in August, 1937, she joined the Pacific Fleet, performing local operations along the continental coast and the Hawaiian area for the next four years.

On the 7th of  December, 1941, Mugford was on "standby status" at Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Within the first ten minutes of the Japanese attack, she had claimed three air kills and fifty minutes later, was steaming out of the harbor for ships to pass and the clear sky of further enemy aircraft. 

For the first year of the war, Mugford would start her action with screening the Wake Island relief force, serving as an escort for convoys traveling between the United States and Australia, and performing patrols around Lunga Point, Guadalcanal. In August, 1942, while of Lunga Point, she would take two more Japanese aircraft from the sky, part of a much larger airstrike in the region. Mugford would dodge three near misses, but take one bomb hit, killing 17 of her crew with 10 more listed as missing. 

A few days later, during the first Battle of Savo Island, she would come to the rescue 400 survivors, from the stricken American Cruisers Vincennes and Astoria. Mugford would carry on with patrols in the Coral Sea, escort missions to Milne Bay, New Guinea, part of the assault on Woodlark Island, New Guinea, performed escorted duties for the invasion of Lae, New Guinea and conducted a pre-invasion bombardment north of Finschafen, New Guinea. 

In October, she and four companion destroyers were attacked by 60 Japanese aircraft surprisingly  Mugford suffered no damage during the battle. In May, 1943, Mugford would come to the rescue of  survivors from the Australian hospital ship AHS Centaur, sunk by a Japanese submarine off Point Lookout, Australia. 

From the battle at Arawe, New Britain, the assault on Buna and Cape Gloucester, through the Battle of the Philippine Sea and escorting the badly damaged American Carriers Enterprise, Belleau Wood, and Franklin from the aftermath of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Mugford was there. However, after returning to Leyet, through the Surigao Strait, Mugford would become one of the first American ships to be hit with a new Japanese weapon; the Kamikaze, losing eight of her crew and another fourteen wounded.

After receiving repairs Stateside, Mugford would end out the war with radar picket and antisubmarine patrol duties, between Ulithi and Saipan. With the war now over, Mugford would bring Allied prisoners of war from Japan to Okinawa and screen carriers by providing air support for the occupation in the Nagasaki-Sasebo area.

USS Mugford would survive the war, to be decommissioned on August, 1946 and used during the Bikini Atoll nuclear bomb tests of the same year. She would endure the blast, but later sunk at Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands on March,1948. She earned seven Battle Stars for her service in the Pacific theater and honored for her actions with this plague....