History
McCall (DD-400) was laid down 17 March 1936 at the Union Plant, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, San Francisco, California; launched 20 November 1937; sponsored by Miss Eleanor Kempff; and commissioned 22 June 1938, Lieutenant Commander J. H. Whelchel in command.
Assigned to the Pacific, McCall reported for duty in Destroyers, Battle Force, 16 January 1939. Less than 2 years later, on 7 December 1941, she was steaming with the carrier Enterprise en route to Pearl Harbor from Wake Island when she received word of the Japanese attack on the former. McCall's task force (TF 8) immediately commenced a search for the Japanese Fleet. By the time the force returned to Pearl Harbor only one Japanese vessel had been sighted, the submarine Japanese submarine I-70 which was sunk by the force's aircraft on the 10th. For the remainder of 1941 McCall, in the screen of Enterprise, stayed in the Hawaiian Islands area to guard against followup attack.
As the Japanese advanced south and east through the islands of the southwest Pacific, McCall headed in that direction with Enterprise and Yorktown for raids on Japanese installations in the southern Marshall Islands and northern Gilbert Islands. Making the strikes on 1 February 1942, the carrier forces and bombardment groups completed their missions in spite of heavy aerial resistance and were back at Oahu 5 February. On the 15th, the force (now designated TF 16) got underway for Wake and Marcus Islands against which they launched surprise attacks, 24 February and 4 March, respectively, and then returned to Pearl Harbor, 10 March.
McCall spent the next 6 weeks on patrol in Hawaiian waters and then did escort duty from Hawaii to Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga islands. At the end of May she sailed north to the Aleutian Islands as the Japanese stretched toward Alaska. Throughout the summer months she patrolled out of Kodiak, Alaska and participated in the bombardment of Japanese targets in the western Aleutians. She returned to Pearl Harbor 30 September, underwent overhaul and got underway with TF 11 for the South Pacific, 12 November 1942, to join in the Battle of Guadalcanal. In the Solomon Islands area for the next 10 months, the destroyer operated from Nouméa as she cruised on antisubmarine patrols and escorted carriers and convoys. On 19 September 1943 she departed to escort a convoy to San Francisco, California. There she underwent overhaul and then exercises along the west coast before sailing west again.
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