USS Overton

USS Overton (DD-239/APD–23) was a United States Navy Clemson-class destroyer and high-speed transport that saw service during World War II.

Captain Overton served in the United States Marine Corps in World War I and was awarded the Croix de Guerre with silver star and palm for action in the Bois de Belleau (13 June 1918) and the Distinguished Service Cross for action near Mont Blanc (2–10 October 1918).

Writing to his wife Effie on 5 July 1920, just five days after Overton was commissioned, Murray declared that he was "training a new crew of only three of which have ever been on a destroyer before".

Departing New York City on 14 September 1920, she joined the Black Sea Detachment at Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire on 5 October 1920.

For the next year and a half she performed quasi-diplomatic and humanitarian roles necessitated by the aftermath of World War I. Cruising regularly to Caucasian, Romanian, and Ottoman Black Sea ports, she also steamed into the Mediterranean to visit Levantine cities.

Much of the latter was accomplished following the capitulation of General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel's White Army to Bolshevik forces in the Crimea in November 1920 during the Russian Civil War.

In July 1922, Overton returned to the United States for abbreviated exercises with the Scouting Fleet and, then, in October 1922, as Ottoman-Greek hostilities flared at Smyrna, rejoined the Turkish Waters Detachment for another six-month tour.

Until 24 June 1944, she screened the transport area and patrolled off Tinian, then retired to Eniwetok to escort convoys to Saipan.

Overton steamed west again on 15 September 1944, this time to Manus, and from there, on 12 October 1944, to the Philippines to cover Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) personnel put ashore prior to the landings on Leyte.

From Leyte, Overton steamed to Ulithi Atoll, from where she screened the Fast Carrier Task Force′s logistics support group to underway replenishment areas until early March 1945.