USS Davis (DD-65) was a destroyer in commission in the United States Navy from 1916 to 1922. She saw service during World War I. She was the second Navy ship named for Rear Admiral Charles Henry Davis (1807–1877).
After her U.S. Navy service ended, Davis served in the United States Coast Guard as USCGC Davis (CG-21) from 1926 to 1933.
Construction and commissioning
Davis was launched 15 August 1916 by Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, sponsored by Miss E. Davis, granddaughter of Admiral Davis; and commissioned 5 October 1916.
Service history
World War I
Assigned to Destroyer Force, United States Atlantic Fleet, Davis operated on the United States East Coast and in the Caribbean until the United States entered World War I on 6 April 1917. She departed Boston, Massachusetts, on 24 April 1917 as one of six destroyers in the first American destroyer detachment to reach European waters, arriving at Queenstown, Ireland, on 4 May 1917. She performed patrol duty off the coast of Ireland and escorted merchant ship convoys through the zone of greatest danger from Imperial German Navy submarines. Between 25 and 28 June 1917 she met and escorted troop transports carrying the first American Expeditionary Force troops to France.
On 24 February 1918, Davis was proceeding in a scouting line with the destroyers and in the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Ireland bound for Queenstown when Paulding sighted the British Royal Navy submarine ′s periscope. Mistaking L2 for a German U-boat, Paulding headed for the periscope at flank speed and opened gunfire. L2 had sighted the destroyers and, assuming that the destroyers had not seen her periscope, submerged to , but upon hearing Paulding open fire, she dove to . Paulding dropped two depth charges, the first of which shook L2 severely and jammed her diving planes in a hard-upward position. This caused L2 to take on a tremendous inclination, and her stern struck the seabed at a depth of . Four more depth charges exploded, again shaking the submarine. L2′s commanding officer gave the order to blow the number 5 and 6 ballast tanks, and L2 surfaced bow-first. Davis dropped a depth charge near her, and then all three destroyers opened gunfire on her from a range of about . One round struck L2′s pressure hull just abaft her conning tower. Some of L2s crew emerged from her conning tower, waved their hands and a White Ensign, and fired a smoke grenade. The destroyers ceased fire immediately. L-2 did not sustain serious damage, and Davis escorted her to Berehaven, Ireland. The force commander of British submarines, Captain Martin Dunbar-Nasmith, commended L2 and the destroyers for the action in his report on the friendly fire incident. Admiral Lewis Bayly, the Royal Navy′s Commander-in-Chief, Coast of Ireland, in his endorsement of Nasmith′s report, wrote, "Had L-2 not been very skillfully and coolly handled, she would have been lost. The U. S. destroyers deserve great credit for their smartness in attack, and for their quickness in recognizing the submarine as British."