USS Fieberling
1944 Buckley-class destroyer escort
USS Fieberling (DE-640) was a Buckley-class destroyer escort in service with the United States Navy from 1944 to 1948. She sold for scrap in 1972.
History
Namesake
The ship was named in honor of Langdon Kellogg Fieberling, born on 3 January 1910 in Oakland, California. He enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve on 7 October 1935, and after training and service as an aviation cadet, was commissioned Ensign on 1 March 1937. From 26 July 1941, he aided in establishing Torpedo Squadron 8, and when this unit was activated, served with it on the USS Hornet. When the Hornet sailed to undertake the Doolittle Raid in May 1942 half of VT-8 remained at Naval Station Norfolk in order to replace their obsolescent Douglas TBD Devastators with Grumman TBF Avengers.
The 21 aircraft detachment reached Hawaii on 29 May the day after Hornet had departed the island to fight in the Battle of Midway. Because Midway Island's airfield had some space available, Fieberling took six Avengers there. On 4 June, the first day of the battle, he led his detachment in an attack on the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers. Of the 18 men, only Ensign Albert K. Earnest and Radioman 3rd Class Harrier H. Ferrier survived.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Fieberling” 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.