Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
Office of the Chief of Naval OperationsNaval History Division • Washington
Irving Day Wiltsie--born on 14 November 1898 in Hartford, Conn.--graduated in the Naval Academy class of 1921 and then served at sea in a succession of ships--Arizona (BB-39), Wyoming (BB-32), Raleigh (CL-9), and Cleveland (CL-21)--before he underwent flight instruction at Pensacola, Fla., from 1925 to 1926. he subsequently served in aviation units based in Milwaukee (CL-5), Memphis (CL-13), and Texas (BB-35) before he returned to Pensacola as an instructor. After another tour of sea duty--in Louisville (CA-28)--Wiltsie commanded the Naval Reserve aviation base at Minneapolis, Minn., from 29 June 1935 to 4 June 1937. he later commanded the bombing squadrons attached to Saratoga (CV-3) from June 1937 to June 1939, before he served at the naval air station at San Diego, Calif. He subsequently joined Yorktown (CV-5) as navigator on 27 June 1941 and received a promotion to commander on 1 July.Wiltsie remained in Yorktown until her loss at the pivotal Battle of Midway from 4 to 6 June 1942. During the early stages of the action, Wiltsie displayed "outstanding professional ability" as he provided complete and accurate navigational information to air plot, thus enabling the carrier's air group to pinpoint their targets.
During the Japanese torpedo attacks on 4 June, when "Kates" from the carrier Hiryu located Yorktown and carried out a successful attack against her, Wiltsie, on instructions from the captain, conned the ship from his battle station in the conning tower and was later deemed directly responsible for the ship's evading a pair of torpedoes. When injuries sustained during the attack incapacitated the carrier's executive officer, Comdr. Wiltsie assumed these duties and directed the organization of a salvage party which fought valiantly to save the ship.
When Yorktown eventually succumbed to her damage and the coup de grace administered by Japanese submarine I-168, Wiltsie coolly and calmly directed the salvage party and the wounded to rescuing vessels alongside the doomed carrier.
Wiltsie--promoted to captain in September 1942--commanded Albemarle (AV-5) from 6 October 10942 to 12 June 1943. After this tour, he supervised the fitting-out of escort carrier Glacier (CVE-33) at the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Co., and went on to supervise the same kind of activities of Liscome Bay (CVE-62). Wiltsie would command this escort carrier until the ship's loss of Makin, in the Gilberts, in the autumn of 1943.
In the predawn darkness of 24 November 1943, I-175 torpedoed Liscome Bay--the flagship of Rear Admiral Henry M. Mullinex--and started fires among bombs and ammunition. Fed by aviation gasoline, the flames spread rapidly, and the carrier rocked with explosions. Wiltsie immediately left the bridge and proceeded along the starboard gallery deck level to ascertain the damage to his ship, as communications had been severed early-on. Despite the tremendous structural damage and raging fires, the captain bravely headed aft to determine the full extent of the damage. Damage control efforts failed, however, and the carrier sank soon thereafter, carrying the intrepid Wiltsie, Admiral Mullinex, and 644 officers and men down with her.
The citation for Capt. Wiltsie's posthumous Navy Cross noted his "calm, courageous action and valiant devotion to duty" which inspired the surviving members of the crew.
(DD-716: dp. 2,425; l. 390'6"; b. 41'1"; dr. 18'6"; s. 35 k.; cpl. 336; a. 6 6", 12 40mm., 20 20mm., 6 21" tt., 2 dct., 6 dcp.; cl. Gearing)
Wiltsie (DD-716) was laid down on 13 March 1946 at Port Newark, N.J., by the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., launched on 31 August 1945, sponsored by Mrs. Irving D. Wiltsie, the widow of Capt. Wiltsie and commissioned on 12 January 1946 at the New York Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, N.Y., Comdr. Raymond D. Fusselman in command.
Following a shakedown cruise which took the ship to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Wiltsie transited the Panama Canal on 8 July 1946 and proceeded to San Diego. She spent the fall and winter of 1946 engaged in training exercises before departing the west coast on 6 January 1947, bound for the Far East. She subsequently operated out of Tsingtao, China, on exercises and maneuvers while standing by the American community in that port during rising local tensions between the communist and Nationalist Chinese. Wiltsie remained at Tsingtao until June 1947, when she shifted to Sasebo, Japan, for occupation duty. Departing Sasebo on 8 March 1948, the destroyer proceeded to Bremerton, Wash., for an overhaul at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
After training off the west coast, Wiltsie sailed once more for the Far East, departing San Diego on 1 October. Late that autumn, she again operated out of Tsingtao during the evacuation of Americans from that port to Yokohama because of the Chinese civil war then raging. During this period of anxiety, Wiltsie briefly visited Hong Kong and Okinawa before returning to Tsingtao.
Chinese communist forces meanwhile inexorably rolled southward, crossing the Yangtze at midnight on 20 April 1949. Four days later, Nanking fell. Wiltsie arrived at Shanghai on 22 April, to stand by during the evacuation of all foreign nationals from the city. Over the ensuing days, Wiltsie watched a veritable parade of merchant vessels of many nationalities‹Chinese Dutch, Norwegian, French, Danish' British, and American‹as well as American, British, and Chinese naval vessels. On Thursday, 5 May 1949, 20 days before the fall of the city to the communists, Wiltsie departed Chinese waters for the last time, bound for Buckner Bay, Okinawa.
From there Wiltsie soon headed homeward and made port at San Diego on 4 June 1949. She later moved up the coast; embarked NROTC midshipmen at Treasure Island, near San Francisco, on 1 August, and departed the following day for a training cruise to Balboa, Panama, and the Galapagos Islands. Returning to San Diego on 31 August' the destroyer soon sailed for Hawaii, where she participated in Operation "Miki," a mock invasion of the Hawaiian Islands in which Army, Navy, and Air Force units all took part. Returning to the west coast soon thereafter, Wiltsie spent the period from December 1949 to April 1950 at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, Calif., undergoing an overhaul.
On the morning of 25 June 1950, Far Eastern tensions flared into open warfare when 75,000 North Korean troops swarmed across the 38th parallel into South Korea. The communist forces struck at six points along the border and launched amphibious assaults at two places on South Korea's east coast. Later that day, the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) passed a resolution calling for a North Korean withdrawal and a cease-fire. The North Koreans ignored both aspects of the resolution.
In July, Wiltsie sailed for the Far East to augment the meager American naval presence in Korean waters; and, when she reached the combat zone, the military picture looked bleak for the hard-pressed UN forces. North Korean troops continued to push the UN troops toward the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula.
For five days in mid-August the Republic of Korea (ROK) 3d Division, supported from the sea by the Navy's Task Group (TG) 96.51, blocked the enemy's southward advance near Yonghae. Meanwhile, UN forces had established a defensive perimeter north of Pusan. Isolated, the 3d ROK Division faced annihilation.
On the evening of 16 August, the United States Navy came to the rescue when Helena (CA-75), with four LST's and escorting destroyers, closed the coast. Capt. J. R. Clark, Commander, Destroyer Division 111, embarked in the recently arrived Wiltsie, assumed direction of the embarkation operation for the ROK troops. He ordered the four LST's to beach at a pre-arranged site, guided in by jeep headlights from shore. Before sunrise the next day, 327 officers and 3,480 men of the 3d ROK Division, 1,260 civilians, and 100 vehicles had been loaded in an orderly evacuation accomplished without loss. Comdrs. Malcolm W. Cagle and Frank A. Manson, in their book, The Sea War in Korea, cited that evacuation as "the final naval contribution to the salvation of the Pusan perimeter."
The Pusan perimeter held. Meanwhile, General Douglas MacArthur made plans to relieve the heavy pressure on the UN forces in the south by striking deep behind North Korean lines. In a desperate gamble American forces went ashore at Inchon on 15 September 1950. Wiltsie participated in one phase of this assault, screening the fast carriers of Task Force (TF) 77‹Philippine Sea (CV-47), Valley Forge (CV-45) and Boxer (CV-21)‹as their aircraft hit communist ground targets to support the advance of troops ashore. The Inchon landings stopped the enemy's momentum as he was on the verge of pushing UN forces into the sea. The North Koreans then found themselves out flanked and their supply lines interdicted. For the remainder of the deployment, Wiltsie supported UN troops ashore with call-fire support, screened TF 77 as it conducted air strikes against enemy supply lines and troop concentrations and patrolled in the Taiwan Strait to safeguard Nationalist Chinese neutrality.
Wiltsie returned to San Diego in March of 1951 underwent repairs at Long Beach, and subsequently departed the west coast for her fourth tour of duty in the Far East. In Korean waters, she resumed her screening, call-fire, and interdiction duties. Highlighting her blockading activities of Wonsan, Wiltsie fired retaliatory gunfire missions against troublesome communist shore batteries. In March 1951, those guns kept up an uncomfortable fire upon the American ships engaged in the blockade.
On 13 March, before it was silenced by air strikes from TF 77's planes, one battery landed shells near Manchester (CL-83), Douglas H. Fox (DD-779), James F. Kyes (DD-787), and McGinty (DE-365). One week later, enemy guns shelled Wiltsie and Brinkley Bass (DD-887) as they patrolled their blockade station, fortunately doing no damage.
Wiltsie returned to the west coast late in 1952, but soon found herself back in the Far East for her third Korean War deployment. After leaving the west coast on 2 January 1953, the destroyer patrolled the Formosa Strait for a time and operated off the North Korean coast before shifting to Wonsan. Meanwhile, the stalemated "police action" with the North Koreans and communist Chinese "volunteers" had long before bogged down and would soon be in its third year. The Navy continued it operations to support UN ground troops interdicted enemy supply lines by air and by surface gunfire and blockaded the enemy's coasts. By late in April 1953, when truce negotiations had bogged down, the communists resorted to an all-out offensive in an attempt to convert military gain in the field into political gains at the conference table.
Eight days after Wiltsie and Theodore H. Chandler (DD-717) had destroyed a train near Tanchon on 3 June, communist shore batteries took Wiltsie under fire off Wonsan, lobbing 45 105-millimeter shells in her direction, scoring a hit on the destroyer's fantail. Fortunately, the ship suffered no casualties and soon resumed her local patrol operations. On 15 June, Wiltsie evacuated 13 Korean civilians from Yo-do Island to Sokcho-ri.
Eventually, a cease-fire in Korea was negotiated, but hostilities continued up to the minute the truce was to take effect. While preparing to abandon the Wonsan sedge in accordance with the armistice stipulations, Wiltsie screened minesweeping operations and joined in the last-minute shelling of communist ground targets In company with Porter (DD‹800) and Bremerton (CA-130), Wiltsie shelled targets at Wonsan until a few minutes before the 2200 deadline. On 27 July 1953, the Korean armistice finally came into effect. However, Wiltsie remained in Korean waters, screening the continuing minesweeping operations between Hungnam and Wonsan until 6 August 1953.
Wiltsie conducted seven WestPac deployments between 1953 and 1961. During each tour, she carried out training and patrol assignments in Far Eastern waters, operating off the coasts of Japan, Korea, and Okinawa; visiting such ports as Yokosuka, Kobe, and Sasebo, Japan, Hong Kong, and Philippine ports such as Olongapo and Manila. Also during this time, she plane-guarded for fast carrier task forces, patrolled the Taiwan Strait to prevent communist Chinese incursions against the Nationalists on Taiwan, and undertook antisubmarine warfare and gunnery training exercises.
Between deployments to WestPac and the Far East, Wiltsie underwent regular overhaul and repair periods at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. In addition, she conducted an NROTC midshipman training cruise; visited Seattle, Wash., and Esquimalt, British Columbia; and visited Melbourne, Australia, in May 1959 to celebrate the anniversary of the key Battle of the Coral Sea. . . .
Decommissioning preparations began at Alameda in November 1975, and Wiltsie was decommissioned there on 23 January 1976. Simultaneously struck from the Navy list, the veteran of Korean War and Vietnam service was transferred, via sale, to Pakistan.
Transferred o 29 April 1977, the destroyer was reactivated and overhauled during 1977. Renamed Tariq (D.165), the ship reached Pakistan in mid-1978 to commence her active service with the Pakistani Navy.
Wiltsie (DD-716) received eight battle stars for Korean War service and seven for Vietnam.