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USS Maddox (DD-731)

1944 Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ1760548
Source-derived summary

USS Maddox (DD-731), was an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer. She was named after Captain William A. T. Maddox of the United States Marine Corps.

Maddox screened the ships of the Fast Carrier Task Force during strikes against Japanese targets in the western Pacific. She was hit by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft off Formosa on 21 January 1945. Later, she covered the Marine landings at Okinawa and operated with the 7th Fleet in support of United Nations Forces during the Korean War. Maddox participated in the Blockade of Wonsan, an 861-day siege and bombardment of the city.

After 1953, she alternated operations along the west coast of the United States and in Hawaiian waters, with regular deployments to the western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet. Maddox departed Long Beach 13 March 1964. At first steaming with fast carrier groups in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, she headed south 18 May and established patrol off the coast of South Vietnam. During August she was involved in a skirmish with North Vietnamese torpedo boats, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Editorial summary

“USS Maddox (DD-731)” enters the record as 1944 Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maddox, DD-731 and Allen can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1945, 1953, 1964—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Maddox, DD-731 and Allen.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“USS Maddox (DD-731)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Maddox, DD-731 and Allen provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

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 Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1760548. Authority coordinates are 26.148, -81.775. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1953 and 1964.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “USS Maddox (DD-731)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow USS Maddox (DD-731) primary sources, USS Maddox (DD-731) archive and Maddox research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from USS Maddox (DD-731)” 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.