Talk about a recruiting poster.
Here we see the Edsall-class destroyer escort USS Martin H. Ray (DE-338) knifing through the Atlantic with a bone in her teeth while on a Convoy run, circa 1944-45
NHHC Catalog #: 26-G-4502
Named for the engineering officer on USS Hammann (DD 412) who earned a Navy Cross the hard way during the Battle of Midway, DE-338 was built in Orange, Texas, christened by the widow of Lt. Ray, and commissioned 28 February 1944.
Finishing her shakedown, she rode shotgun on 14 Atlantic convoys over the course of the next year– without losing a ship– then was transferred to the Pacific in August 1945, just too late for the war against Japan, capping her service on Magic Carpet runs.
Decommissioned in May 1947 after a career that lasted just over three years, she was laid up at Green Cove Springs, Florida, for two decades, then sold for scrap.
