page_title: USS Newman K. Perry (DD-883)
section_title: 1950–1968
hierarchical_section_title: USS Newman K. Perry (DD-883) / Service history / 1950–1968
caption_attribution_description: English: The U.S. Navy Gearing-class destroyer USS Newman K. Perry (DD-883) underway in the 1960s.
context_page_description: USS Newman K. Perry, a Gearing-class destroyer was the only ship of the United States Navy named for Ensign Newman K. Perry, USN, who was killed in a boiler explosion board Bennington on 21 July 1905.
  Newman K. Perry was laid down by the Consolidated Steel Corporation at Orange, Texas on 10 October 1944, launched on 17 March 1945 by Mrs. Laura P. Gunter, sister of Ensign Perry and commissioned on 26 July 1945, Commander Norman E. Smith in command.
context_section_description: After her return to Destroyer Forces, Atlantic Fleet, she rotated tours with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea and midshipmen and reservist training cruises, and fleet, squadron and type training exercises with the 2nd Fleet. Redesignated a radar picket destroyer in 1950, she conducted her scheduled operations as DDR–883 until 1964 when Newman K. Perry underwent the FRAM I refit at the Boston Naval Shipyard until February 1965. The most visible alteration were the new bridge, the addition of a hangar and landing deck aft for the Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH drone and the addition of an ASROC launcher between the funnels. Modernized into a "regular" destroyer again, she resumed the designation DD-883.
  On October 1965 she collided with the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La in the Mediterranean, killing one and injuring another.  A change in operations in 1959 took her to Charleston, South Carolina, which served as her homeport for several years before she resumed operations out of Newport.
  A second change in operations took her to the Western Pacific for her overseas deployment in 1966. Departing Newport with Destroyer Division 201 on 4 October, she transited the Panama Canal, stopped in Hawaii, Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines, and arrived on station in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam on 23 November. Assigned to fire support duties, she shelled enemy coastal storage areas until the 28th. She then shifted to Phú Quốc island, off the Cambodian-South Vietnamese border, to support Vietnamese and Special Forces units for five days, returning to the Delta area in December. Other assignments on that tour with the 7th Fleet took her along the coast to the DMZ and then to the Gulf of Tonkin for plane guard and search and rescue missions. On 8 March 1967, she departed the combat zone for Hong Kong before returning to Subic Bay for the last time. On the 27th she departed the Philippines for the Mediterranean and Newport, arriving on 8 May.
  After overhaul at Boston, Newman K. Perry began 1968, with Caribbean exercises and on 4 April departed Newport for the Mediterranean to resume her annual deployments with the 6th Fleet.
caption: USS Newman K. Perry after her FRAM refit.
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