Service History
Following shakedown exercises out of Bermuda and post-shakedown overhaul at Charleston, Gary reported to the Commander Caribbean Sea Frontier at Guantanamo Bay for temporary duty on 5 February 1944. She was detached from that command on 9 March and set her course for the Straits of Gibraltar, escorting the first of many transatlantic convoys. Until May 1945, Thomas J. Gary operated as an escort vessel in the Atlantic, safely screening eleven convoys from the East Coast to ports in the Mediterranean and the United Kingdom and back to the United States. Here is a list of the ETO convoys:
Casablanca Algiers (twice) Tunisia Naples Taranto, Italy Southampton (twice) Plymouth Portsmouth Liverpool
While on the east coast between patrols, Gary trained off the coast of Maine and out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and conducted antisubmarine warfare exercises out of New London. During June 1944, she was assigned to the Navy Fleet Sound School.
In December 1944, she detached from the homebound convoy she was escorting from British ports to aid Huron which had collided with a merchantman. On the 9th, she took on board more than 100 Coast Guardsmen from the badly damaged patrol escort vessel and then screened her as she was towed to Bermuda.
Read more about this topic: USS Thomas J. Gary (DE-326)
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