USS Wadsworth (DD-60)

USS Wadsworth (DD-60)

USS Wadsworth (Destroyer No. 60/DD-60) was a Tucker-class destroyer built for the United States Navy prior to the American entry into World War I. The ship was the first U.S. Navy vessel named for Alexander Scammel Wadsworth.

Wadsworth was laid down by the Bath Iron Works of Bath, Maine, in February 1914 and launched in April 1915. The ship was a little more than 315 feet (96 m) in length, nearly 30 feet (9.1 m) abeam, and displaced 1,060 long tons (1,080 t). She was armed with four 4-inch (10 cm) guns and had eight 21-inch (530 mm) torpedo tubes. Wadsworth's geared steam turbine power plant was a successful prototype that greatly influenced U.S. destroyer designs after 1915.

After her July 1915 commissioning, Wadsworth served on the neutrality patrol off the east coast and in the Caribbean. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Wadsworth was the flagship of the first U.S. destroyer squadron sent overseas. Patrolling the Irish Sea out of Queenstown, Ireland, Wadsworth reported several encounters with U-boats in the first months overseas. She was transferred to Brest, France, in March 1918, and spent the remainder of the war there.

Upon returning to the United State at the end of 1918, Wadsworth underwent a five-month overhaul. She served as a plane guard for the Navy's transatlantic flight attempt by four Navy-Curtiss flying boats in May. After two years in reduced commission in August, Wadsworth was reactivated in May 1921. She was decommissioned in June 1922, and spent nearly 14 years in reserve at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register in January 1936, sold in June, and scrapped in August.