Failure to communicate cost the US Navy a destroyer and fifteen sailors on April 26, 1942 when the
USS Sturtevant DD-240 sailed out of Key West, Florida and right into a minefield. Sturtevant was a Clemson
Class destroyer built in 1919 in New York and commissioned in 1920, too late for the First World War. She
served in the Mediterranean and even aided the Soviets during the Russian Civil War, not as a warship but
rather as a relief ship. She was used to scout Russian ports for U. S. ships bringing food to the starving Russian
people during the famine.

Between the wars the ship was decommissioned twice and recommissioned for the Second World War on
Sept. 26, 1939. She saw duty as a convoy escort and also conducting neutrality patrols in the North Atlantic
until March of 1942 when she was assigned to the Caribbean for much he same duty. On April 6, 1942 she
became a rescue ship when she picked up the survivors of two tankers, Catahoula and the Comol Rico, that
had been sunk by a German submarine the day before. Seventy seven men were pulled out of the water by her
crew, twenty days later it was they who had to be rescued.

Two hours after she left Key West on April 26 to escort a convoy she entered a minefield that had been laid
only the day before by the U. S. Navy, apparently the Navy did not feel it important enough to tell her captain,
Lt. Commander C. L. Weigle to avoid the area. An explosion rocked the ship and it was assumed that they had
been hit by a torpedo fired by a German submarine, with this thought in mind her commander ordered depth
charges to be dropped, sources differ as to whether the depth charges were actually dropped or not, some
say that two sets of charges were dropped while others state the second and third explosions came before the
depth charges could be released.

In any event there were two other explosions quickly after the first, the ship broke in half, the stern sinking
immediately while the bow section stayed above water for a few hours before going down. With the ship
fifteen men also went down. The 137 men in the water were rescued by patrol craft. This was the third
destroyer lost in World War 2 by the US Navy. The wreck is still there, laying on the bottom in two sections.

© 2008 Michael W. Pocock
MaritimeQuest.com

USS Sturtevant DD-240 seen from the USS Indianapolis CA-35.