USS Henry W. Tucker

USS Henry W. Tucker, named for Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class Henry Warren Tucker (1919-1942) killed in action when USS Neosho (AO-23) was attacked by enemy Japanese carrier based aircraft in the Coral Sea on 7 May 1942 and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, was a Gearing class destroyer laid down by the Consolidated Steel Corporation at Orange in Texas on 29 May 1944, launched on 8 November 1944 by Mrs. Henry Walton Tucker, the mother of the late Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class Henry W. Tucker and commissioned on 12 March 1945. Henry W. Tucker operated with the Seventh Fleet in support of United Nations Forces during the Korean War, alternated operations along the west coast and in Hawaiian waters with deployments to the western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet, underwent an extensive Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) overhaul at the Boston Naval Shipyard between 13 December 1962 and 4 December 1963, and served as plane guard for carriers on Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf, participated in Sea Dragon and Market Time operations, patrolled on search and rescue duties and carried out Naval Gunfire Support missions during the conflict in Vietnam. USS Henry W. Tucker was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 3 December 1973, transferred to Brazil and renamed Marcilio Dias.