The Mexican Navy’s destroyer Cuitlahuac was retired on 16 July 2001, a quiet end to nearly 60 years of service by what probably are the best-known destroyers built for the U.S. Navy—the 175 ships of the Fletcher (DD-445) class. Transferred to Mexico in August 1970 with sister ship Harrison (DD-573), the Cuitlahuac had been built as the John Rodgers (DD-574) by Consolidated Steel at Orange, Texas, commissioning on 9 February 1943. After a distinguished and busy operational career in the Pacific, during which she earned a dozen battle stars in actions ranging from the Marcus Island, Tarawa, and Wake Island raids in August 1943 to the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945, the John Rodgers was mothballed postwar. Although 76 of her sisters were reactivated for the Korean War and many others were reconfigured for Cold War duties, the John Rodgers slumbered on, still in the late World War II configuration from her final refit, completed in January 1945, until reactivated for Mexico.
The Harrison (renamed the Cuahtemoc by Mexico) was retired in 1982, but the Cuitlahuac continued to operate off the Mexican Pacific coast for nearly two decades. At the end, her wartime maximum speed of 35 knots had diminished to about 12 knots as a result of the decay of her four aged Babcock and Wilcox boilers. The only surviving, early-model “high bridge” Fletcher, the ship retained her late-war appearance to the end of her Mexican Navy career.
The old destroyer, named for three generations of U.S. Navy officers of the Rodgers family, whose careers spanned 1798 to 1926, would make an unusually authentic and unique museum ship for a U.S. West Coast site. The other three Fletchers preserved in the United States are all of the later, “low bridge” variant, and they are all located in the East.
The John Rodgers (DD-574) is seen here as completed, with twin 40-mm antiaircraft mounts, one on the fantail and the other between the two after, raised 5-inch dual-purpose guns. Before the ship departed for the Pacific War, the Charleston Navy Yard replaced the after 40-mm mount with three single 20-mm guns, placed two twin 40-mm mounts abreast the after stack, and added four more 20-mm guns for a total of 11.
The 2,880-ton John Rodgers in January 1945 in San Francisco Bay sports her final wartime refit. Twin 40-mm gun mounts have replaced the forward 20- mm mountings, and early radar intercept antennas have been mounted on the stub mast aft. Both quintuple 21-inch torpedo tube sets still were aboard. Unlike 52 of her sisters, the John Rodgers did not have her antiaircraft gun complement further augmented to counter the kamikaze threat.
The Cuitlahuac is seen here visiting San Francisco in 1994. The only hints of modernity are the antennas for the two Kelvin-Hughes navigational radars at the masthead. She even retains the standard 1945 Mk 12 and Mk 22 gun direction radars atop the director for the Mk 37 gun fire control system. Although the ship initially had retained the torpedo tube mount between the stacks, it, and the six depth charge mortars and two depth charge racks, had been removed by 1994, as had all five Mk 51 directors for the five twin 40-mm gun mounts.