USS Welles (DD-628)

USS Welles (DD-628)

USS Welles (DD-628), a Gleaves-class destroyer, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Gideon Welles.

Welles was laid down on 27 September 1941 at Seattle, Washington, by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp.; launched on 7 September 1942; sponsored by Mrs. Suzanne Dudley Welles Brainard; and commissioned on 16 August 1943, Lieutenant Commander Doyle M. Coffee in command.

Following shakedown training along the west coast of the United States, Welles returned to Puget Sound on 26 October. After post-shakedown availability there, she got underway on 15 November in company with two British escort carriers which she escorted as far as San Diego, California. Continuing on her way, the destroyer transited the Panama Canal on 28 November and set a course for New York. She stopped along the way at Norfolk and, upon her arrival at New York on 4 December, joined Destroyer Division 38 (DesDiv 38). Ordered farther north, the warship departed New York on 26 December and arrived in Boston harbor the following day. On the 28th, she and her division mates got underway for the western Pacific in the screen of New Jersey (BB-62). The task unit stopped briefly at Norfolk where New Jersey's sister battleship, Iowa (BB-61), joined it for the voyage to the Pacific. The unit transited the Panama Canal during the first week in January 1944 and continued its voyage west on the 8th.