USS Welles (DD-628), a , was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Gideon Welles. Welles was laid down on 27 September 1941 at Seattle, Washington, by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp. and launched on 7 September 1942; sponsored by Mrs. Suzanne Dudley Welles Brainard. The ship was commissioned on 16 August 1943. Service history Following shakedown training along the west coast of the United States, Welles returned to Puget Sound on 26 October. After post-shakedown availability there, she got underway on 15 November in company with two British escort carriers which she escorted as far as San Diego, California. Continuing on her way, the destroyer transited the Panama Canal on 28 November and set a course for New York. She stopped along the way at Norfolk and, upon her arrival at New York on 4 December, joined Destroyer Division 38 (DesDiv 38). Ordered farther north, the warship departed New York on 26 December and arrived in Boston harbor the following day. On the 28th, she and her division mates got underway for the western Pacific in the screen of the battleship . The task unit stopped briefly at Norfolk where New Jerseys sister battleship, , joined it for the voyage to the Pacific. The unit transited the Panama Canal during the first week in January 1944 and continued its voyage west on 8 January. Southwest Pacific Area Welles and her traveling companions arrived at Funafuti in the Ellice Islands on 21 January and remained there for a week before getting underway for New Guinea. The destroyer arrived at Milne Bay on 5 February and joined the U.S. 7th Fleet. Later in the month, she escorted a convoy of LSTs to Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain. On 29 February, Welles provided gunfire support for elements of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division then landing on Los Negros Island in the Admiralties. During that operation, the destroyer came under fire from enemy automatic weapons and at least one field gun but sustained no damage. After completing her portion of the mission, she moved out to the transport area to provide antisubmarine defense. Periodically, she returned close to shore to provide all fire for American troops fighting ashore. In March, she returned south to the area around Buna to prepare for operations to capture the remainder of the northern coast of New Guinea. During the Hollandia