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USS Sterett (DD-407)

1938 Benham-class destroyer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 11, 2025
Entity authorityQ7874386 ↗
Source-derived summary

USS Sterett (DD-407) was a Benham-class destroyer in the United States Navy. She was the second Navy ship named for Andrew Sterett.

The Sterett was laid down on 2 December 1936 at the Charleston Navy Yard; launched on 27 October 1938; sponsored by Mrs. Camilla Ridgely Simpson; and commissioned on 15 August 1939.

Pre-war years

The Sterett departed from Charleston, South Carolina on 28 October 1939 in company with two other newly commissioned destroyers, Mustin and Hughes, for shakedown in the Gulf of Mexico. She visited Veracruz, Cristóbal, Mobile, and Guantanamo Bay before returning to Charleston on 20 December. She underwent post-shakedown overhaul and trials at Charleston until departing on 4 May 1940. Assigned to Destroyer Division 15, Sterett rendezvoused with Hammann at Guantanamo Bay, and the two destroyers steamed for San Diego via the Panama Canal. They arrived in San Diego on 23 May; and, for a month, Sterett divided her time between training and plane-guarding Enterprise. On 24 June, she sailed for Hawaii with Enterprise and five other destroyers, and arrived at Pearl Harbor on 2 July.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “USS Sterett (DD-407)” as 1938 Benham-class destroyer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

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—1936, 1938, 1939, 1940—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Sterett, DD-407 and Benham-class can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1938 Benham-class destroyer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7874386. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1938, 1939 and 1940.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. 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.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “USS Sterett (DD-407)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow USS Sterett (DD-407) primary sources, USS Sterett (DD-407) archive and Sterett 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 Sterett (DD-407)” 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.