STATUS:
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Laid
down: October 7, 1943
Launched: December 30, 1943
Commissioned: February 1, 1944 (as USS
Thornhill / DE 195)
Decommissioned: June 17, 1947
Stricken: March 26, 1951
transferred
to Italy - January 1951; renamed Aldebaran
Decommissioned:
1976
scrapped
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F 590 ITS Aldebaran / ex USS Thornhill (DE
195):
Service history (USS Thornhill)
Thornhill (DE-195) was laid down on 7 October 1943
at Newark, N.J., by the Federal Shipbuilding & Dry-dock Co.; launched on
30 December 1943; sponsored by Mrs. J. E. Thornhill, the mother of Lt. (jg.)
Thornhill; and commissioned on 1 February 1944, Lt. John B. Shumway, USNR, in
command.
The destroyer escort got underway on 18 February, held shakedown training out
of Bermuda, and returned to New York exactly one month later. Thornhill
served as a training ship at Norfolk during April. In May, she returned to
New York to escort a part of Convoy UGS-42 to Norfolk. The 108-ship convoy
sortied from Hampton Roads on 13 May, bound for North Africa. Thorn-hill
arrived at Bizerte on 1 June and returned to New York on the 29th with a westbound
convoy. Late in July, the destroyer escort screened another convoy to North
Africa and returned to New York on 7 September 1944.
During the next eight months, Thornhill made four more escort voyages to
England and France. On 9 June 1945, she and the other ships of Escort
Division (Cort-Div) 55 got underway for Guantanamo Bay and proceeded thence
through the Panama Canal to the west coast of the United States. The division
arrived at San Diego on 9 July. CortDiv 55 stood out to sea five days later
and arrived at Pearl Harbor on the 19th to join the Destroyer Force, Pacific
Fleet.
Thornhill and her division departed with SS Empress of Australia on 8 August,
bound for the Marshalls, and reached Eniwetok the day after hostilities with
Japan ceased. She remained in the Marshalls until 7 December when she and
Wing field (DE-194) headed back toward Hawaii. The two ships arrived at Pearl
Harbor on 13 December 1945, and Thornhill served as a weather patrol ship
there during January 1946. The destroyer escort sailed for home on 2 February
and, after calling at San Diego, arrived at the Boston Navy Yard on 7 March.
The next week she got underway for Green Cove Springs, Fla., to be
inactivated. She was decommissioned on 17 June 1946 and assigned to the Atlantic
Reserve Fleet.
Thornhill was transferred to Italy under the Military Assistance Program on
10 January 1951 and was struck from the Navy list on 26 March that same year.
She serves the Italian Navy as Aldebaran (F-590).
source: US Naval History &
Heritage Command
no service history from ITS
Aldebaran (F 590) at this time
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