Post War
Zellars conducted refresher training out of San Diego in September, transited the Panama Canal on 8 October, and entered the New York Naval Shipyard on the 16th. Following availability, the destroyer made a cruise, in company with Midway (CVB-41), down the Atlantic coast to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and thence to Culebra Island where the destroyer conducted shore bombardment practice. Upon her return to the United States, the warship received orders directing her to escort Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) on her shakedown voyage during January and February 1946. The highlight of the voyage was an early February visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1 to 11 February. On the return trip, Zellars received orders detaching her from the big new carrier and sending her to Pensacola, Fla. She served there until 22 April when she got underway for Earle, New Jersey. There, Naval Academy midshipmen came on board for a summer cruise that lasted until August.
Following routine repairs and post-availability shakedown at Casco Bay, Maine, the destroyer reported for duty with the Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet, on 4 October. During the next three months, she served as a target ship for submarines conducting torpedo training. In January and February 1947, she participated in the first major fleet tactical exercise since Fleet Problem XXI in 1940. The warship returned to Norfolk on 17 March and, for the next four months, operated along the middle Atlantic and New England coasts.
On 21 July, Zellars departed Norfolk on a deployment to European waters. She arrived in Plymouth, England, 10 days later and, for the next month, made the rounds to various British ports. Early in September, she transited the Strait of Gibraltar to begin a three-month cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. She visited Soudha Bay at Crete; Taranto, Naples, Venice, Salerno, and Trieste in Italy; and Tangiers on the North African coast. Zellars concluded her first 6th Fleet deployment upon her arrival at Boston on 1 December 1947 and entered the Boston Naval Shipyard that same day for a three-month overhaul. Following repairs, she conducted a five-week refresher cruise out of the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Zellars reentered Norfolk again on 20 April 1948 and remained there for six weeks preparing to deploy once more to the 6th Fleet. On 1 June, the destroyer set sail from Norfolk and shaped a course for the Mediterranean. Her second tour of duty with the 6th Fleet proved brief, for she returned to Norfolk early in October. For almost two years, she conducted normal 2d Fleet operations out of Norfolk.
Read more about this topic: USS Zellars (DD-777)
Famous quotes containing the words post and/or war:
“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.