USS Woolsey (DD-437), a , was the second ship to be named Woolsey in the United States Navy. It is the first to be named for both Commodore Melancthon Brooks Woolsey and his father Commodore Melancthon Taylor Woolsey. Woolsey was laid down on 9 October 1939 at Bath, Maine by the Bath Iron Works and launched on 12 February 1941, sponsored by Mrs. Irving Spencer. The ship was commissioned on 7 May 1941. Service history Following a shakedown cruise in the Caribbean Sea, Woolsey joined the Atlantic Fleet at the beginning of the second week in September in 1941. Initially, she served on the Neutrality Patrol, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to keep the war in Europe from spreading to the western hemisphere. For a time, she also served as a unit in the screen of the newly commissioned battleship . As the year 1941 waned and the United States approached closer and closer to active belligerency, Woolsey began escorting convoys between the United States and Iceland. The attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II found the destroyer in Iceland completing the first leg of one such round-trip voyage. War brought a change to Woolseys range of duties. Her convoy escort work was broadened to include voyages to the British Isles and Puerto Rico. That duty occupied her energies until the fall of 1942 when she participated in her first invasion operation. Operation Torch For Operation Torch, the invasion of Vichy French-controlled North Africa, Woolsey was assigned to Destroyer Squadron 13 (DesRon 13) which served as antisubmarine screen for the Center Attack Group, the Fedhala landing force. That task organization sortied from Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 24 October and, four days later, rendezvoused with the other units which comprised Task Force 34 (TF 34). After a meandering and mercifully uneventful crossing, the ships reached the vicinity of the Moroccan coast, and each of the three task groups went their separate ways. Woolsey arrived off Fedhala with the Center Attack Force just before midnight on 7 November. Between 05:00 and 06:00 the next morning, the troops landed at Fedhala and consolidated their beachhead quickly. Resistance soon dissipated, and Woolsey seems not to have participated actively in this phase of the operation other than to conduct antisubmarine patrols against a menace which, at that juncture, failed to materialize. Later, however, U-boats began attacking the transports. On 11