USS Alden (DD-211) was a of the United States Navy (USN). Serving during World War II, Alden is the only ship of the US Navy to have been named for Rear Admiral James Alden, Jr. (1810–1877).
Construction
Alden was laid down on 24 October 1918 and launched on 14 May 1919 by William Cramp & Sons, sponsored by Miss Sarah Alden Dorsey, a niece of the late Rear Admiral Alden, and commissioned on 24 November 1919.
Service history
Inter War-Period
1920–23
Following shakedown training and post-shakedown repairs and alterations, Alden, subsequently her classification changed from "Destroyer No 211" to DD-211 during the fleet-wide assignment of alphanumeric hull numbers on 17 July 1920, sailed on 5 December 1919 for duty in European waters, proceeding to Constantinople, and then to Samsun, Turkey.
Alden visited Adriatic ports during the spring of 1920, investigating political conditions and "showing the flag" to protect American interests in the area, her ports of call including Split, Gravosa, and Pula. During her trips along the Adriatic coast, she carried mail and passengers, and for a time served as station ship at Venice. Proceeding to Constantinople to participate in relief efforts for refugees from the Russian Civil War, she resumed her Adriatic operations soon afterwards, visiting Kotor and Split before she returned to Venice on 12–13 December 1920. She then again visited Split and Gravosa, in succession, before she proceeded to Salonika, Greece, where she arrived on 15 December.
Released from duty with the United States Naval Detachment in the Adriatic soon afterwards, Alden sailed for the Asiatic Station via the Suez Canal. She ultimately reached Manila, Philippine Islands, on 2 February 1921. Following upkeep at the Asiatic Fleet's base at Cavite, the destroyer sailed for Chinese waters, and arrived at Chefoo on 22 June. She operated out of the Asiatic Fleet destroyers' summer base until 15 September, when she sailed for Shanghai. Assigned special duty, Alden wound up her ten-day stay in that port on 27 September and cleared Shanghai for the Yangtze River port of Hankow, which she reached on 1 October. Remaining there until the 7th, she proceeded back to Shanghai, arriving on the 9th to stay only long enough to fuel and take on provisions, before she sailed for the Philippines the same day.
Alden arrived at Cavite on 12 October, sailed to Manila two days later for a three-day liberty and recreation port visit. The ship then spent two months operating out of Olongapo on target practice, returning to Manila on 17 December. She then fueled and took on stores at Cavite before she sailed to Mariveles, where she operated with Asiatic Fleet submarines. Alden then conducted long-range battle practice evolutions out of Manila until January 1922. Subsequently, she based temporarily out of Olongapo before undergoing a tender availability alongside in March. Then, following a stint of target and torpedo practice in the waters of Lingayen Gulf from 13 April to 25 May 1922, the destroyer enjoyed a five-day respite at Manila before she sailed for Shanghai, China, on 3 June and a drydocking in that port. Alden then sailed for Japanese waters, visiting the port of Yokohama.
Winding up her deployment in the Asiatic Fleet that summer, Alden sailed for the United States, and ultimately reached San Francisco, California on 2 October. She was decommissioned at San Diego, California on 24 January 1923.
1930–1937
Alden remained inactive through the rest of the 1920s, but was recommissioned at San Diego on 8 May 1930 and assigned to Destroyer Squadrons, Battle Fleet (later, Destroyers, Battle Force). As part of Destroyer Division 46 (DesDiv 46), and later as a unit of DesDiv 10, Alden was homeported at San Diego, with her home yard at Mare Island Navy Yard. She carried out regular underway training evolutions, with routine periods of upkeep in port over the next six years.
The training for each year culminated in the annual large-scale exercise, or fleet problems. Over the next few years, Alden participated in six of these. However, she did not participate in Fleet Problem XVII in the spring of 1936 due to DesDiv 10's undergoing two months' overhaul at the Mare Island Navy Yard. While Alden lay at Mare Island, had suffered heavy damage in a collision with on 14 April, and, unfit for further service, had been struck on 19 May; Alden, chosen to replace Smith Thompson, sailed on 15 July for the Asiatic Station. Stopping briefly at Pearl Harbor, the ship paused at Wake Island and Guam, eventually arriving at Chefoo on 20 August.
Over the next six years, Alden, assigned initially to DesDiv 13, steamed north to China in the spring, spent the summer operating out of Chefoo, and returned to the Philippines in the fall for further exercises and upkeep at Cavite over the winter. She carried out this routine against a backdrop of rising Sino-Japanese tension. Hostility between these two Asiatic powers had flared and abated during the 1930s, and open warfare broke out in July 1937.
Since the Sino-Japanese hostilities seemed confined at the outset to North China, Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet (CINCAF), had few reservations about carrying out a planned goodwill cruise to Vladivostok, USSR. Alden accompanied , Whipple and to sea from their base at Chefoo, and rendezvoused with at the end of the afternoon watch on 25 July. Yarnell's ships reached Vladivostok on the morning of the 28th, and remained there until the afternoon of 1 August, in this first visit to a Russian port since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933. On the latter date, the destroyers sailed for Chefoo and Augusta for Tsingtao.
After hostilities broke out at Shanghai in mid-August, the ships of the Asiatic Fleet carried out a curtailed training schedule for the remainder of the summer and into the fall, chiefly standing by to assist Americans who might be affected. Alden eventually returned to the Philippines for the winter for upkeep and training..
SS President Hoover
Early on the morning of 11 December 1937, Dollar Steamship Lines' ocean liner ran aground in a typhoon on Kasho-to, east of Formosa. Alden and Barker, then at Manila and Olongapo Naval Station respectively, were ordered to proceed immediately to assist. Misidentifying Trinity as a transport, I-123 fired four Type 89 torpedoes at Trinity at