1955-1977
After spending Christmas, 1954, in her home port, Willard Keith departed Norfolk five days into the new year, 1955, bound for the Mediterranean. She paid goodwill calls at the ports of Algiers, Naples, Genoa, and the Azores in the course of her extended deployment, before she returned to Norfolk on 15 March. Then, after a brief upkeep period, Willard Keith offloaded stores and ammunition and shifted to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for a four-month overhaul. Emerging from the shipyard on 8 August, the destroyer conducted refresher training out of the familiar waters of Guantanamo Bay before conducting gunfire support exercises with the rest of her division at Culebra. Returning northward that autumn, she conducted amphibious warfare gunfire support exercises as a fire support unit during Marine Corps amphibious landing exercises off the coast of North Carolina.
For the next seven years, Willard Keith remained with DesRon 22, operating from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. She participated in a variety of goodwill missions, midshipmen cruises, and the usual training assignments in gunnery, ASW, and the like. She also participated in the "quarantine" operations in the autumn of 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. One of the more pleasant highlights of that period occurred during the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959—during which time Willard Keith escorted the Royal Yacht Britannia, the latter having Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on board.
On 1 October 1963, Willard Keith began a new phase of her career. Reporting to DesRon 34 for duty, the warship soon commenced operating as a Naval Reserve training (NRT) ship. For the next nine years, Willard Keith operated in that capacity, accomplishing reserve training with monthly drill weekend cruises for the reservists permanently assigned to the ship's reserve crew and undertaking two-week active duty training cruises for reservists getting their annual active sea duty training. She ranged from the eastern seaboard to Guantanamo Bay as an NRT destroyer, providing the platform for training necessary to maintain a skilled pool of reservists ready for any eventuality.
Ultimately considered to have capabilities that were not up to modern Fleet standards, Willard Keith was chosen for inactivation and transfer. Decommissioned on 1 July 1972 at Norfolk, Virginia, Willard Keith was transferred to the Navy of the Republic of Colombia. Simultaneously stricken from the Navy list, the destroyer was renamed Caldas (DD-02). She served the Colombian Navy until disposed of in 1977.
Willard Keith (DD-775) earned two battle stars for her World War II service.
Read more about this topic: USS Willard Keith (DD-775)