Here we see a great shot of the Wickes-class flush-deck “four stacker” USS Mahan (Destroyer # 102) at anchor during the early 1920s, following conversion to a light minelayer. The round Mine Force emblem is painted on her bow. As noted by the National Museum of the U.S. Navy, “Though redesignated DM-7 in July 1920, she probably continued to wear her destroyer number for some years thereafter.”
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U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 46924
Named for esteemed Edwardian-era naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, Destroyer # 102 was laid down on 4 May 1918 by the Fore River Shipyard, at Quincy, Mass.; sponsored at launch three months later by the late RADM Mahan’s niece, and commissioned on 24 October 1918– just three weeks before the end of the Great War.
While her service was limited– she was decommissioned and scrapped in 1929 without firing a shot in anger– she went on to become somewhat immortal as a fictional version of Mahan appears, alongside her four-piper sistership USS Walker, in Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen series of alternate history novels.
