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General Characteristics Crew List Memorabilia Cruise Books About the Ship's Name History Image Gallery to end of page |  |
USS MULLINNIX was one of the FORREST SHERMAN - class destroyers and the first ship in the Navy named after Rear Admiral Henry Maston Mullinnix. Decommissioned on August 11, 1983, and stricken from the Navy list on July 26, 1990, the MULLINNIX was finally sunk as a target on August 23, 1992.
| General Characteristics: | Awarded: October 23, 1954 |
| Keel laid: April 5, 1956 | |
| Launched: March 18, 1957 | |
| Commissioned: March 7, 1958 | |
| Decommissioned: August 11, 1983 | |
| Builder: Bethlehem Steel, Quincy, Mass. | |
| Propulsion system: four-1200 lb. boilers; two steam turbines; two shafts | |
| Propellers: two | |
| Length: 418.3 feet (127.5 meters) | |
| Beam: 45,3 feet (13.8 meters) | |
| Draft: 22 feet (6.7 meters) | |
| Displacement: approx. 4,000 tons full load | |
| Speed: 32+ knots | |
| Aircraft: none | |
| Armament: three Mk-42 5-inch/54 caliber guns, Mk-32 ASW torpedo tubes (two triple mounts) | |
| Crew: 17 officers, 275 enlisted |
back to top go to the end of the pageback to top go to the end of the pageCrew List:
This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS MULLINNIX. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.
back to top go to the end of the pageback to top go to the end of the pageUSS MULLINNIX Cruise Books:
back to top go to the end of the pageAbout the Ship's Name:
Henry Maston Mullinnix, born 4 July 1892, in Spencer, Ind., graduated from the Naval Academy in 1916. He served in BALCH, engaged in patrol and escort duty off Ireland during World War I. Following service in GRIDLEY and BROOKS, he completed work in aeronautical engineering at Annapolis and MIT, receiving an M.S. degree in 1923. After flight training at Pensacola, Fla., he was designated naval aviator 11 January 1924. He was one of those mainly responsible for developing the air-cooled engine for naval aircraft. Besides various shore duty, he served in SARATOGA, WRIGHT, and commanded ALBEMARLE, between 1924 and 1941. Mullinnix commanded SARATOGA from April 1943, until 22 August, when he was transferred to duty with a carrier division, with the rank of rear admiral. Rear Admiral Mullinnix was on board LISCOME BAY when she was torpedoed and sunk off Makin Island, in the Gilberts, 24 November 1943. Declared dead 1 year later, he was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit in recognition of his “outstanding initiative and superior executive ability.”
back to top go to the end of the pageUSS MULLINNIX History:
USS MULLINNIX, a FORREST SHERMAN-class destroyer built by Bethlehem Steel's Fore River Shipyard at Quincy, Massachusetts, was laid down on 5 April 1956, launched on 18 March 1957, and commissioned on 7 March 1958 with Comdr. Clyde B. Anderson in command. The destroyer began her career with the Atlantic Fleet as a general-purpose escort and antisubmarine combatant during the early Cold War's maritime containment posture in the Western Hemisphere and the Mediterranean.
Following fitting-out at Boston, MULLINNIX conducted shakedown and training in the Caribbean during mid-1958. On 14 July 1958 she was photographed off the Brazilian Navy Yard at Rio de Janeiro while acting as plane-guard/escort during USS RANGER (CVA 61)'s transit around South America from Norfolk to Alameda, a goodwill and visibility cruise for the newly commissioned carrier. That early deployment placed the ship in multinational port settings and combined exercises with Brazilian units visible in the official image record, and it established her pattern of Second Fleet operations punctuated by periodic cruises with allied navies.
Through the turn of the decade MULLINNIX alternated Atlantic and Caribbean training with extended deployments. In 1962, she joined UNITAS operations - U.S. destroyers exercising with South American navies and circumnavigating the continent - before being recalled that autumn to the Caribbean as the United States established a naval quarantine of Cuba. During the Cuban Missile Crisis (24 October-20 November 1962) she performed patrol and interception duty as part of the quarantine forces, one of many Atlantic Fleet destroyers enforcing President Kennedy's orders at a moment of extreme nuclear tension.
In early 1965, as NASA intensified Project Gemini, MULLINNIX was assigned to the Atlantic Manned Spacecraft Recovery Force. She participated in the recovery force array for the first crewed Gemini mission, GEMINI 3, on 23 March 1965, a role documented by official ship lists and postal "recovery ship" covers produced aboard participating vessels while USS INTREPID (CVS 11) served as the prime recovery ship. Weeks later, when civil war erupted in the Dominican Republic (Operation Power Pack, April-September 1965), the destroyer shifted to Caribbean patrols in support of U.S. stabilization efforts, operating from the Guantanamo area and nearby sea lanes to deter escalation and protect maritime approaches. After these duties she deployed with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean during the summer of 1965 before returning to the U.S. east coast.
MULLINNIX's first Western Pacific/Vietnam deployment followed the next year. After work-ups, she sailed for the Seventh Fleet and, between 2 August and 1 November 1966, operated intermittently from the Demilitarized Zone southward into the Mekong approaches, providing naval gunfire support along the I Corps coast, serving as plane guard on Yankee Station, conducting search-and-rescue (SAR) patrols, and - critically - operating at times on Vung Ganh Rai and the Saigon River. On 30 October 1966, she was photographed delivering gunfire support off South Vietnam's coast. Completing the deployment, she cleared Subic Bay, transited the Indian Ocean and Suez Canal, and arrived at Norfolk on 17 December 1966, completing a circumnavigation.
In 1967, the destroyer supported space program readiness again: in August she took part in tests with the then-new APOLLO command module under Atlantic Fleet auspices, a year when recovery-force units conducted extensive training and operational reviews after the Apollo 1 tragedy. Immediately thereafter, MULLINNIX departed for UNITAS VIII (September-December 1967), steaming with Latin American partner navies, conducting combined ASW and gunnery exercises, crossing the equator (a documented "shellback" date of 3 October 1967), and visiting ports including Panama City, Panama, before returning to the U.S. east coast.
Combat operations resumed with another WestPac deployment in 1969. During this cruise she again took station assignments that included the northern I Corps littoral and the southern DMZ area, where contemporary reporting recorded her silencing an enemy rocket site by naval gunfire. Her duties mirrored the Seventh Fleet destroyer pattern of the period: screening and plane-guarding the Task Force 77 carriers, PIRAZ/SAR support when tasked, and frequent NGFS missions requested by U.S. and allied forces ashore.
In 1970, MULLINNIX shifted back to the Sixth Fleet, operating in the Mediterranean from April to November during a tense year of superpower competition around the Levant and North Africa. Imagery from that year documents her under way in the Mediterranean. She then returned to Atlantic Fleet exercises and upkeep.
Her final combat deployment came in 1972 during the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive. Sailing in spring 1972 for the Western Pacific, she joined Seventh Fleet operations off I Corps and the Gulf of Tonkin, delivering sustained NGFS in support of the defense and later recapture of Quang Tri and performing the alternating rhythm of gunline, plane-guard, and SAR duties typical of destroyers backing Task Force 77's surge air operations during LINEBACKER. Veterans' accounts and official Navy archival summaries place her on the gunline off Quang Tri through that summer before she returned to the Atlantic in the autumn.
As the Navy's global posture evolved after Vietnam, MULLINNIX continued east-of-Suez presence work. In 1974, she conducted a Middle East/Indian Ocean deployment spanning roughly February to August, transiting the Indian Ocean (a documented equator crossing on 10 August 1974) during a period when U.S. surface combatants were reinforcing maritime presence in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Later in the decade, she again combined Sixth Fleet duty with extended operations into the Indian Ocean.
Throughout her service MULLINNIX retained the FORREST SHERMAN-class's original all-gun main battery-5-inch/54 mounts - making her, by the early 1970s, one of the last U.S. destroyers still built and fought as an "all-gun" ship. Her crest, recorded in 1964, depicted a running greyhound with the motto "No escape", a nod to destroyer speed and pursuit. She also entered popular culture when footage of FORREST SHERMAN-class destroyers, including MULLINNIX, appeared in the 1963 television episode "The Thirty-Fathom Grave".
USS MULLINNIX decommissioned on 11 August 1983 and entered the reserve fleet. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 26 July 1990. On 22 August 1992 the decommissioned destroyer was sunk as a target during a fleet exercise.
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