USS Ingraham

USS Ingraham is a name given to various United States Naval ships throughout history. The ships were named for Captain Duncan Ingraham who stood against 3 Austro-Hungarian ships in defense of Martin Koszta. Martin had emigrated to America and started the process of becoming a citizen, but was captured during a trip to Turkey. Ingraham received the Congressional Gold metal for his actions.

Speech Relevance

From 'A City Upon a Hill':

Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.

At the time of this speech, there had been 3 ships to bear the name of USS Ingraham. All were Destroyers. The US Navy never went more than five years without an Ingraham in service. The first was in service from 1918 until 1936. The second from 1941 until 1942, sinking in a collision. The third ship was built almost immediately and went into service in 1944. It served the US Navy until 1971 (participating in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War), when it was sold to Greece. There, it was in service for another 21 years, until 1992.

The fourth USS Ingraham took seventeen years to reappear. A Oliver Hazard Perry-class Guided Missile frigate, this time, launched in 1988 and was retired in 2014.

The story was later told during 1975 through Reagan's Radio show. More information about that can be found at London 2.

Source Links

USS Ingraham (Wikipedia)