USS Bradford
1942 Fletcher-class destroyer
USS Bradford (DD-545) was a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy. She was named for Captain Gamaliel Bradford (1768–1824), a privateer during the Quasi-War with France.
Bradford was launched 12 December 1942 by Bethlehem Shipbuilding, Terminal Island, Calif., sponsored by Mrs. Sarah Bradford Rose, great-great-granddaughter of Captain Bradford, and commissioned 12 June 1943.
Service history
World War II
Bradford sailed for Pearl Harbor 18 August 1943. On 25 August, less than 24 hours after arrival in Pearl Harbor, she was underway for Baker Island to take part in its capture and occupation (1 September). Afterwards, Bradford joined the carrier striking forces to participate in the Tarawa raid (18 September) and the Wake Island raid (5–6 October).
She operated as a screening unit in Task Group 52.3 (TG 52.3), covering the occupation of the Gilbert Islands (13 November – 8 December). Following this operation she went to Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, and was assigned to TG 37.2. With this group Bradford participated in three strikes (25 December 1943, 1 and 4 January 1944) against the shipping and harbor installations at Kavieng, New Ireland, during the Bismarck Archipelago operations.
The public source identifies “USS Bradford” as 1942 Fletcher-class destroyer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bradford, Fletcher-class and destroyer.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7867820. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1768, 1824, 1942 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Bradford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.