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The deficiencies found in the design of the earlier Mahan-class destroyers were for the most part corrected in the Downes while she was still under construction. Commissioning in January 1937, it wasn’t until November that Downes reached her home port of San Diego after months of at-sea training and tests. Downes engaged in further torpedo and gunnery exercises and fleet problems along the west coast until April of 1940 when she arrived at Pearl Harbor. Along with her sister ship Cassin, Downes then cruised to Samoa, Fiji and Australia, followed by a short yard period on the west coast. Both ships were back in Pearl Harbor by November of 1941.
On December 7, 1941, Downes was in Drydock No. 1 with the destroyer Cassin alongside and the battleship Pennsylvania astern. An incendiary bomb hit between the destroyers, igniting Cassin’s fuel tanks and starting uncontrollable fires. An attempt to put the fires out by flooding the drydock backfired and ammunition and torpedoes exploded. Both ships were abandoned, but not before 12 of Downes’ crew were killed. Both Cassin and Downes were burned out and flooded, Cassin slipping off her keel blocks and capsizing against the Downes. In one of the superb salvage efforts that characterized the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, both destroyer’s major components, structures and weapons were salvaged and sent to Mare Island Navy Yard where essentially new destroyers with the same hull numbers were built around the salvaged parts. This was probably by far the most extensive and expensive repair of small fighting ships by the navy in World War II.
Rebuilt and recommissioned at Mare Island on 15 November 1943, Downes sailed from San Francisco on March 8, 1944, escorting convoys to Pearl Harbor and Majuro. In April, Downes was blockading Wotje and then served in the offshore patrol guarding the recently-captured Eniwetok Island. Downes then supported the invasion of the Marianas, providing gunfire support at Tinian and Aguijan. In October, Downes bombarded Marcus Island in a diversionary raid and then moved to the Philippines in support of the re-capture of those islands. Following the landings on Leyte, Downes was detached in late October and sent to Pearl Harbor for an overhaul that lasted until March of 1945, when Downes returned to convoy escort duties that ended at Guam. From April to June of 1945, Downes was operating in the Marianas on patrol, air-sea rescue, submarine training, and escort duty. She served at Iwo Jima on similar duty beginning on June 9th and continuing until the end of the war.
Following the war, Downes, like her sister ships, was considered obsolete and worn out from war service. She was detached from the fleet, arriving at Norfolk, Virginia on November 5, 1945, decommissioning there December 17th. Downes remained in reserve until 1947 when she was stricken and then scrapped. (DBoyer 2007)
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