Qualla: USS Jacob Jones (DD-130)

USS Jacob Jones (DD-130): Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A full moon lit the Atlantic on the night of February 27, 1942. The destroyer USS Jacob Jones steamed south along the New Jersey coast, blacked out, no running lights, hunting for the German submarines that had been savaging merchant shipping within sight of American beaches. She never found her quarry. At dawn on the 28th, the quarry found her. Torpedoes from U-578 tore the aging destroyer apart in seconds, and the Atlantic swallowed another ship bearing the name of Commodore Jacob Jones, a naval officer who had made his own reputation fighting enemies at sea more than a century earlier.

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USS Jacob Jones (DD-130): A Name Twice Cursed

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The DD-130 was the second warship to carry the name Jacob Jones, honoring the War of 1812 commodore who captured HMS Frolic. The first USS Jacob Jones, a destroyer designated DD-61, had been torpedoed by a German U-boat in December 1917 during World War I, becoming one of the fir...

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USS Jacob Jones (DD-130): Twenty Years Between Wars

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Camden, New Jersey, Jacob Jones was laid down on February 21, 1918, and commissioned on October 20, 1919, too late for the war she was designed to fight. The interwar decades sent her on a globe-spanning odyssey. She ran anti-airc...

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USS Jacob Jones (DD-130): The Battle of the Atlantic Comes Home

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After Pearl Harbor, the German Navy launched Operation Drumbeat, sending U-boats to hunt along the American East Coast. The results were devastating. Merchant ships silhouetted against the glow of coastal cities made easy targets, and the Navy had few escorts to spare. Jacob Jone...

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USS Jacob Jones (DD-130): The Last Patrol

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Jacob Jones departed New York on the morning of February 27, 1942, ordered to patrol between Barnegat Light and Five Fathom Bank off the Delaware Capes. That afternoon, she came upon the burning wreckage of a tanker torpedoed the previous day and circled for two hours searching f...

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USS Jacob Jones (DD-130): Eleven Survivors

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At 0810, an Army observation plane spotted the life rafts and radioed their position to the Inshore Patrol. By 1100, rising seas forced the rescue vessel to break off her search after pulling twelve men from the water. One died en route to Cape May. The search continued by air an...

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