Butler -class destroyer escort in the service of the United States Navy from to She was finally sunk as a target in After undergoing elimination flight training at the Naval Reserve Aviation Base, Kansas City , from 16 September to 5 October, he received an honorable discharge on 24 December , to accept an appointment as an aviation cadet, USNR, on 27 December.
Three days later he arrived at the Naval Air Station, Pensacola , Florida , to begin his formal flight training. He underwent further instruction at Naval Air Station Miami before he received his wings on 10 July He located the Imperial Japanese Navy carrier force and led them in on their torpedo runs.
VT-8 pressed home a desperate attack in the face of fighters and heavy antiaircraft fire, and all 15 planes were shot down. Abercrombie was launched on 14 January , sponsored by Mrs. Abercrombie, mother of the late Ensign Abercrombie, and commissioned on 1 May The destroyer escort spent the first three weeks of May in the vicinity of Galveston, Texas either at sea in the Gulf of Mexico testing her ordnance and equipment or in port receiving finishing touches in preparation for shakedown training.
She conducted her shakedown cruise in the British West Indies late in May and early in June before putting into Boston on 25 June for post-shakedown repairs. Eleven days later, Abercrombie headed south to Norfolk where she stopped over on the night of 7 and 8 July. From there the warship took departure for Aruba , a Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela, and a transshipment and refining center for Venezuelan crude oil, in company with USS Walter C.
Abercrombie and Walter C. Wann shepherded the two oilers into port at Aruba late in the evening of 15 July. Two days later after the oilers loaded cargo, the convoy put to sea again. After seeing Chepachet and Salamonie safely to the Panama Canal , Abercrombie began two weeks of patrol and escort duty in the Caribbean Sea that ended on 1 August when she entered the canal. Following two days of liberty at Balboa, Panama , the destroyer escort got underway for San Diego where she arrived on 11 August.
