USS Cony DD/DDE-508 · A people's history
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The ship went down in 1970.
The people are the story.

USS Cony (DDE-508) broadside in Hampton Roads on 12 March 1957, her hull number 508 in white at the bow, crewmen visible along the rails, Old Point Comfort behind her
USS Cony in her antisubmarine fit, Hampton Roads, 12 March 1957 — Old Point Comfort and Fort Monroe behind her. U.S. Navy photo NH 104882, public domain.

USS Cony was a Fletcher-class destroyer: her keel laid at Bath Iron Works on Christmas Eve 1941, three weeks after Pearl Harbor; eleven battle stars in the Pacific; a second commission as an antisubmarine escort; two more stars off Korea.

Asbestos Atlas offers a USS Cony vessel record and a Bath Iron Works shipyard profile. These records provide context, not a finding that asbestos was aboard Cony or that any Cony crew member was exposed.

On 27 October 1962 she challenged the Soviet submarine B-59 to the surface at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis — a story her own crew did not fully learn for forty years. She was decommissioned in 1969 and sunk as a target in 1970. The hull is gone. What remains is the people: the Maine yard hands who built her, the crews who sailed her, the eight men who died aboard her, and the shipmates whose association made this domain its home for many years.

Built 1941–42 · Bath Iron Works In commission 1942–46 · 1949–69 Thirteen battle stars Eight remembered by name

Why this site reads the way it does

The hull's data is easy to find — the Navy's Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships and a dozen references carry it. What made this domain matter, and what visitors came here for, was the human community around the ship. So this site is built around people, with the ship's chronology as the spine they hang on — not the reverse.

Every person named on these pages is a real person whose name appears in a cited public record: the Navy's official ship history, her deck logs, the U.S. Navy Memorial's tribute records, the National Archives' wartime casualty lists, and the Congressional Record. Nothing here is invented. The Names & Records page shows the document behind every name.

Her people

The Builders

A Christmas Eve keel at Bath Iron Works, three weeks after Pearl Harbor — and a launch day the records still argue about.

The Crews

Two commissions: the Pacific war and her costliest day, then the antisubmarine ship — Korea by way of a round-the-world cruise, NATO, and Task Force Alfa.

October 1962

27 October 1962: five hand grenades in the deck log, a Soviet submarine on the surface by nightfall, and a morning's bread and cigarettes.

The Shipmates

Decades of reunions and the association whose website this domain used to be — honestly, and at arm's length.

The Ship

Chronology, specifications, and the documented evidence record — reference material, deliberately placed after the people.

Names & Records

Every person named on this site, each with the document behind their name — including the eight men of 27 October 1943.

The honesty apparatus

This site operates under one rule: if a fact isn't in a document we can name, it doesn't appear here. Dates and the ship's war come from the Navy's official ship history. The events of 27 October 1962 come from the deck logs published by the National Security Archive and the account of a crewman who stood that watch. The eight names of 27 October 1943 are verified against the ship's own action report, the U.S. Navy Memorial's tribute records, and the National Archives' wartime casualty lists.

Where records conflict — and the launch date does — the conflict is stated plainly rather than resolved by invention. Sources for every page are listed on the About & Sources page.