USS Agerholm
Private First Class Harold Crist Agerholm was nineteen years old when he died on Saipan, carrying wounded Marines to safety under withering Japanese fire until enemy bullets found him. The Medal of Honor came posthumously. Three years later, his mother Rose stood at Bath Iron Works in Maine and christened the destroyer that would bear her son's name. USS Agerholm (DD-826) would go on to serve for three decades, participate in the evacuation of an American embassy, appear in a Hollywood film, and ultimately become one of the first targets ever destroyed by a Tomahawk cruise missile.
The Hero of Saipan
Harold Agerholm enlisted in the Marine Corps at eighteen and shipped out with the 2nd Marine Division. On July 7, 1944, during the assault on Saipan, the young PFC from Racine, Wisconsin found himself in the midst of chaos. Without being ordered to, he commandeered a stretcher and began evacuating wounded Marines from exposed positions. For hours he worked under constant fire, making trip after trip across the bullet-swept terrain. He had saved numerous lives when he was killed. His selfless courage earned him the Medal of Honor, and when the Navy commissioned a new Gearing-class destroyer on June 20, 1946, they named her for this teenage hero.
Cold War Warrior
Agerholm spent her early years training out of San Diego, mastering the destroyer arts in waters ranging from the Caribbean to the Western Pacific. She made 21 WestPac deployments over her career, an extraordinary number that took her from Korea to Vietnam and across the vast reaches of the Pacific. She earned four battle stars during the Korean War and eight more during Vietnam, where she served at Yankee Station as a plane guard for the carrier Constellation and performed radar picket duty in the Gulf of Tonkin. In February 1975, she participated in Operation Eagle Pull, the helicopter evacuation of the American embassy in Phnom Penh as Cambodia fell.
Hollywood and High Scores
Between her combat deployments, Agerholm found time for an unexpected career in entertainment. In 1976, she landed a role in Airport '77, the third installment of the disaster film franchise. The destroyer participated in midshipman training cruises as well, introducing generations of future naval officers to life at sea. Her crew took pride in their ship's capabilities: during Exercise Fortress Lightning in 1977, she performed ASROC test firings and participated in a full-scale amphibious landing on Mindoro Island in the Philippines. Liberty calls took her to ports across the Pacific and into the South Pacific, from Hong Kong to Singapore, from Fiji to New Zealand.
Death by Tomahawk
By 1978, Agerholm's age was showing. The Board of Inspection and Survey examined her in October and concluded that her lack of modern capabilities could not be economically corrected. She was decommissioned on December 1, 1978, and struck from the Navy list the same day. But her final chapter would be historic. On July 18, 1982, the submarine USS Guitarro surfaced her missile tubes and launched a Tomahawk cruise missile at the hulk of the old destroyer. The weapon found its mark, sending Agerholm to the bottom in waters off the California coast. She now rests in deep water at approximately 32.75N, 119.53W, one of the first vessels ever sunk by the weapon system that would become a cornerstone of American naval power.
From the Air
The wreck of USS Agerholm lies at approximately 32.75N, 119.53W, west of San Diego in deep Pacific waters. No surface features mark the location. Nearest airports include San Diego International (KSAN) and North Island NAS (KNZY).