USS Childs (DD-241/AVP-14/AVD-1) was a in service with the United States Navy from 1920 to 1945. She was scrapped in 1946. Namesake Earle Wayne Freed Childs was born on 1 August 1893 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the United States Naval Academy class of 1915. He married Miss Gertrude Boucher on June 27, 1917, attending his wedding with his head bandaged from a car accident in that morning while driving in a storm. He had been cut by flying glass from the windshield. Graduating from the Naval Academy as an Ensign, he was assigned to the , a refrigerated supply ship. His next assignment was to the another refrigerated supply ship. In June 1916 he was assigned to the cruiser . Promoted to Lieutenant, he served in World War I on the submarine . However, while serving as an observer on the British submarine HMS H5, Childs was killed on March 2, 1918, when the H5 was mistaken for a German U-boat by a British merchant ship off the coast of Wales. The SS Rutherglen deliberately rammed the H 5, sending the submarine to the bottom with the loss of its entire crew. History Childs (DD-241) was launched 15 September 1920 by New York Shipbuilding Corporation; sponsored by Mrs. E. W. F. Childs; and commissioned 22 October 1920. Arriving at Gibraltar 14 February 1921, Childs joined U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, to cruise in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, North, and Baltic Seas until 25 November, when she arrived at Constantinople. Here she joined the relief mission sent to Russia early in 1922, remaining in the Black Sea on diplomatic duties until 1 April. On 8 July, she departed from Cherbourg for Philadelphia, returning to the United States 29 July. Childs conducted training operations, and joined other ships in fleet exercises along the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean until 14 February 1925, when with the Scouting Fleet she stood out of Guantanamo Bay for large scale fleet exercises in the Hawaiian Islands and then returned to the U.S. East Coast. On 6 April 1929, she collided with the American four-masted schooner in the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina; the schooner sank. In 1932, 1933, and 1934, the annual concentration of the Fleet for battle practice was again held on the West Coast, and Childs took part. With her home port changed to San Diego, California 9 November Childs served