USS Roper (DD-147) was a Wickes-class destroyer in the United States Navy, later converted to a high-speed transport and redesignated APD-20.
She was named for Lieutenant Commander Jesse M. Roper, commanding officer of , who died in 1901 while attempting to rescue a member of his crew. As of 2016, no other ships in the United States Navy have borne this name.
Construction
Ropers keel was laid down on 19 March 1918 by William Cramp & Sons, of Philadelphia. She was launched on 17 August 1918 sponsored by Mrs. Jesse M. Roper, widow of Lieutenant Commander Roper, and commissioned on 15 February 1919. Roper was the first United States Navy warship to sink a German submarine during World War II.
Service history
Interwar period
Following shakedown off the New England coast, Roper sailed east in mid-June 1919 and, after stops at Ponta Delgada, Gibraltar, and Malta, anchored in the Bosporus on 5 July. For the next month she supported Peace Commission and Relief Committee work in the Black Sea area, carrying mail and passengers to and from Constantinople, Novorossisk, Batum, Samsun, and Trebizond. On 20 August the destroyer returned to the United States, at New York City, only to sail again six days later. At the end of the month she transited the Panama Canal and moved north to San Diego.
A month later, on the night of 13/14 April, it made contact with a surfaced U-boat off the coast of North Carolina. The ensuing chase ended with the sinking by artillery fire of , a unit of the 7th U-boat Flotilla. No charges were filed against the crew of Roper and 29 sailors of U-85 were buried with military honors at Hampton National Cemetery.
For their actions in sinking U-85, Destroyer Division 54 commander, Commander Stanley C. Norton, and the Ropers captain, Lieutenant commander Hamilton W. Howe, were each awarded the Navy Cross.
Former commander of German U-boat U-802 and author Helmut Schmoeckel suggested in a 2002 book that the failure of Roper to rescue the U-85 crew after they abandoned the submarine and Ropers subsequent depth charging of U-85 should be investigated. He never used the phrase war crime, as is sometimes stated, and he relied on a very inaccurate American book as his source.
On 29 April, Roper rescued 14 survivors from the British merchantman , which had been torpedoed and sunk by five days earlier. On 1 May, it rescued another 13 survivors from Empire Drum. They were landed at Norfolk, Virginia, that day. At the end of May, Roper began a series of coastwise escort runs, from Key West to New York, which took her into 1943. In February of that year, it shifted to Caribbean–Mediterranean convoy work and remained on that duty until October when it entered the Charleston Navy Yard for conversion to a high-speed transport.
|from Iceland to Newfoundland
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|AT 18
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|6–17 Aug 1942
|troopships from New York City to Firth of Clyde
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Auxiliary service
Reclassified and given hull classification symbol APD-20 (transport destroyer) on 20 October 1943, Roper departed Charleston in late November and trained in the Chesapeake Bay area and off the Florida coast into the new year, 1944. On 13 April, she steamed east and at the end of the month joined the 8th Fleet at Oran, Algeria. A unit of Transport Division 13, assigned to support the offensive in Italy, Roper landed units of the French Army on Pianosa on 17 June and, into July, plied between Oran and Naples and operated along the western coast of the embattled peninsula. In August, she shifted her attention to southern France. On 15 August, she arrived off that coast as part of the "Sitka" Force and landed troops on Levant Island. On 5 September she returned to Italy; resumed runs between Naples and Oran, and, in early December departed the latter port for Hampton Roads.