Malcolm Lewis Pratt was born on 5 August 1891 in Bellefontaine, Ohio. He became Assistant Surgeon with rank of Lieutenant (junior grade), USNRF on 27 March 1917. He received the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism in reestablishing an advanced aid station just demolished by shell-fire in Lucy-le-Bocage on 11 June 1918, and in continuing to dress and evacuate the wounded under direct and continuous shell-fire at Thiancourt 13 September. He resigned from the Navy on 13 October 1919.
On 2 May 1941 he reported for active duty again with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, MC, USNR. Attached to a Marine Division, he was reported missing in action as of 13 August 1942, when he failed to return from a reconnaissance patrol near the village Mantanikau on Guadalcanal.
Construction and commissioning
Laid down in April 1944, launched in June 1944, and commissioned more than four months later, Pratt served as an escort for convoys between New Guinea and the Philippines during early 1945. She then spent three months training and escorting submarines while also patrolling shipping lanes off the Philippines. After the end of the war in the Pacific, Pratt helped establish seaplane anchorages in Korea and China before being decommissioned in late 1945. She remained in reserve until being sold for scrap in 1973.
The John C. Butler-class destroyer escorts were designed to meet a need for large numbers of cheap anti-submarine escort ships for ocean convoys, and as a result carried little anti-surface armament. The class was part of an initial requirement for 720 escorts to be completed by the end of 1944, which was significantly reduced.[1]
A United States Navy diagram of a destroyer escort
The ship was propelled by two Westinghouse geared steam turbines powered by two "D" Express boilers, which created 12,000 shaft horsepower (8,900 kW) for a designed maximum speed of 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph). She had a range of 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).[3]
Pratt next joined TG 70.4 and sailed to Okinawa where she joined the Korean occupation force. On 5 September she sailed for Jinsen and after aiding in establishing a seaplane anchorage there, she got underway with Currituck and Rombach, for Shanghai, China, whence she shifted to Taku, arriving on 28 September to plant seaplane moorings.[2]
Post-war decommissioning
On 21 November the ship departed the Asian continent for Okinawa, thence to the United States for inactivation. Arriving at San Pedro, Los Angeles on 16 December, she decommissioned on 14 May 1946 and was berthed at Stockton, California as a unit of the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Transferred to the Mare Island Group in 1959, she remained a unit of the Reserve Fleet[2] until she was struck on 15 March 1972. Pratt was sold for scrap on 15 January 1973 and broken up.[5]
Bauer, K. Jack; Roberts, Stephen S. (1991). Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN0-313-26202-0.
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