Commissioned on 2 July 1945 as a standard Gearing-class destroyer, the USS Gyatt (DD-712) later became the Navy’s first guided-missile destroyer and its first combatant to be equipped with gyro- controlled fin roll stabilizers. The 390- foot ship began missile conversion at the Boston Naval Shipyard on 31 October 1955, was redesignated DDG-712 on 1 December 1956, and DDG-1 on 23 May 1957. After several years of trials with her Terrier surface-to-air missile system, the Gyatt made operational deployments to the Mediterranean in 1960 and 1961-62 before the missile system was removed between June and October 1962. She then was assigned to Operational Test and Evaluation Force (OpTevFor) as a radar and electronic warfare systems trials ship, reverting to her original hull number, DD-712. After a late-1960s stint as Naval Reserve training ship, she was stricken on 22 October 1969 and sunk as a target on 11 June 1970.
The Gyatt just after recommissioning as DDG-712 on 4 December 1956. The 14 beam-riding Terrier missiles were housed in a new structure aft and were launched from a trainable, twin-armed launcher that replaced the after twin 5-inch gun- mount. Missile targets were tracked by a modified Mk 25 Mod. 8 gun fire-control radar atop the original main gun battery director forward; the Mk 72 weapons control system provided only a single fire-control channel for both the missile system and the 5-inch guns. Abaft the second stack was a Mk 56 fire-control system for the two twin 3-inch/50-caliber dual-purpose gunmounts added between the stacks and forward of the missile bay; the two forward twin 5-inch/38-caliber dual-purpose gunmounts were retained. Aerial target detection was handled by an AN/SPS-6C radar; there was no height-finding radar, and, given the vicissitudes of the early Terrier system, only the most cooperative targets were in danger. Two Mk 11 Hedgehog spiggot mortars and two Mk 2 torpedo launchers sufficed to deal with submarines.
The Gyatt, reconfigured as OpTevFor trials ship, in 1964 with the prototype antenna for today’s AN/SPS-49 search radar on the tripod foremast. A tall, reconfigurable pole mast added in 1964 atop the former missile bay supports various electronic warfare system radomes and, in this view, is topped by the radome for the AN/SRN-15 TACAN system. Both 3-inch gunmounts were retained, as were the Hedgehogs, while Mk 32 antisubmarine torpedo tubes had been added amidships.
The Gyatt in 1966, with a portable electronics van on a pad on the fantail and the shortened pole mast aft surmounted by the antenna for a second surface-search radar set. The AN/SPS-49 radar had been replaced by an older AN/SPS-29 set.