USS Martin H. Ray
1943 Edsall-class destroyer escort
USS Martin H. Ray (DE-338) was an Edsall-class destroyer escort built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She served in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and provided destroyer escort protection against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys.
Namesake
Martin H. Ray Jr. was born on 9 August 1913, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated in Yonkers, New York. After one year at New York University he entered the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating with the class of 1934. Following five years service on the battleship USS Pennsylvania, he received orders to USS Hammann in 1939.
While assisting the stricken USS Yorktown in the last stages of the Battle of Midway on 6 June 1942, Hammann was hit by an Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo. Lieutenant Ray as engineering officer died attempting to save the rapidly sinking vessel and evacuate the space below decks. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.
Construction and commissioning
She was laid down 27 October 1943 by Consolidated Steel Corp., Orange, Texas; launched 23 December 1943; sponsored by Mrs.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Martin H. Ray” 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.