Walker was placed in reserve at San Diego, where she remained into the 1930s. After 16 years on "Red Lead Row," the ship was struck from the Navy list on 28 March 1938 and slated for disposal by sale. Logistics requirements of U.S. West Coast naval districts, however, resulted in the former destroyer being placed back on the list and earmarked for conversion to a water barge. Redesignated YW-57 on 1 April 1939, the ship was undergoing conversion at the Mare Island Navy Yard when the Navy again decided to change the vessel's role. With the outbreak of war in Europe and the possibility of American involvement in the conflict, the ship was slated for use as a damage control hulk. Fate Designated as the damage control hulk DCH-1 on 11 July 1940, the vessel was based at the Destroyer Base, San Diego, and used for training exercises in formulating and evolving new damage control techniques. In the following year, as the Pacific Fleet's base had been moved from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, plans were made to tow DCH-1 (which had been stripped of propulsion machinery during the initial conversion work to YW-57) to the Hawaiian Islands. She was re-designated as IX-44 on 17 February 1941. On 28 December 1941, while being towed from San Diego, California, to Pearl Harbor, by the oiler , DCH-1 was cast adrift and scuttled by gunfire from Neches at . Fiction USS Walker was used in the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson. In the books, Walker and her sister ship are pursued by superior Japanese naval forces after the Battle of the Java Sea and seek refuge in a squall. The squall transports Walker and Mahan to an alternate earth, one where a different evolutionary path occurred. Anderson also uses other decommissioned ships in the series: and the . Walker also appears in the seventh mission of the campaign of the video game Battlestations Midway, although she is shown as a Clemson class destroyer rather than a Wickes class. References External links NavSource Photos Wickes-class destroyers World War II shipwrecks in the Pacific Ocean Ships built in Quincy, Massachusetts 1918 ships Maritime incidents in December 1941