USS Wainwright (DD-419) was a World War II-era Sims-class destroyer in the service of the United States Navy. The ship was named to honor Lieutenant Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, Jr., USN; his son, Master Jonathan Wainwright, III, USN; his cousin, Commander Richard Wainwright, USN; and also Rear Admiral Richard Wainwright, USN. Wainwright was laid down on 7 June 1938 at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard; launched on 1 June 1939; sponsored by Mrs. Henry Meiggs; and commissioned on 15 April 1940. Service history World War II Following shakedown, Wainwright began duty with the Atlantic Fleet in conjunction with the Neutrality Patrol which had been established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt soon after World War II broke out in Europe early in September 1939 to keep hostilities from spreading to the Western Hemisphere. Just before the opening of hostilities between Japan and the United States, Wainwright embarked upon a mission which indicated an acceleration in America's gradual drift into the Allied camp. She departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 10 November, as a unit of the screen for Convoy WS-12X, an all-American ship convoy transporting British and Commonwealth troops via the Cape of Good Hope to Basra in the Near East. The convoy steamed first to Trinidad in the British West Indies, in order that the "short-legged" destroyers might refuel there before beginning the long South Atlantic leg of the voyage to Cape Town. There, the convoy was to be turned over to the British Admiralty for orders and protection, and the destroyers were to turn around and head home. The convoy reached Cape Town on 9 December 1941, two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and two days before Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. This change in the strategic picture caused changes in the destinations of the transports. Some went to Suez and thence to Australia while other carried reinforcements to the doomed "fortress" of Singapore. The escorting American destroyers headed back to the United States, but this time they put to sea as full-fledged belligerents. 1942 Upon her return to the east coast, Wainwright resumed her patrols. Her assignment, however, took on a new complexion. No longer simply trying to prevent the spread of hostilities to the Western Hemisphere, she patrolled instead to protect America's shorelines and seagoing traffic along her coast from Germany's undersea fleet. That duty continued until mid-March 1942, when the warship received