She carried out this routine against a backdrop of rising Sino-Japanese tension. Hostility between these two Asiatic powers had flared and abated during the 1930s, and open warfare broke out in July 1937. Since the Sino-Japanese hostilities seemed confined at the outset to North China, Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet (CINCAF), had few reservations about carrying out a planned goodwill cruise to Vladivostok, USSR. Alden accompanied , Whipple and to sea from their base at Chefoo, and rendezvoused with at the end of the afternoon watch on 25 July. Yarnell's ships reached Vladivostok on the morning of the 28th, and remained there until the afternoon of 1 August, in this first visit to a Russian port since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933. On the latter date, the destroyers sailed for Chefoo and Augusta for Tsingtao. After hostilities broke out at Shanghai in mid-August, the ships of the Asiatic Fleet carried out a curtailed training schedule for the remainder of the summer and into the fall, chiefly standing by to assist Americans who might be affected. Alden eventually returned to the Philippines for the winter for upkeep and training.. SS President Hoover Early on the morning of 11 December 1937, Dollar Steamship Lines' ocean liner ran aground in a typhoon on Kasho-to, east of Formosa. Alden and Barker, then at Manila and Olongapo Naval Station respectively, were ordered to proceed immediately to assist. Due to the urgency of the situation, Alden sailed without her captain, Lieutenant Commander Stanley M. Haight, and several officers and men. A Grumman J2F Duck amphibious aircraft from the Asiatic Fleet's utility unit brought Haight out to Alden, rendezvoused with the ship and landed nearby. Sea conditions, however, precluded a boat's coming alongside the aircraft, for fear of damaging the plane's main float. Commander Haight seized the initiative and swam to one of his ship's motor whaleboats to be brought aboard his ship to resume command. Alden resumed her voyage, struggling through heavy seas at only . She eventually sighted Kasho-to at 1245 on 12 December and immediately requested permission from the captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy heavy cruiser to enter Japanese territorial waters. Barker arrived soon afterwards, then an officer from Ashigara came aboard Alden to give his government's permission for the two destroyers to enter and assist President Hoover. By this time Hoovers 330