Qualla: USS Tills

USS Tills: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EM3 Jay Jones, U.S. Navy, Public domain. USS Tills was named for a young ensign who never made it home. Robert George Tills was the first American naval officer killed in the defense of the Philippines, dead within days of the Japanese attack. Less than two years later, on October 3, 1943, his sister Helen broke a bottle of champagne against a destroyer escort's hull in San Pedro, Los Angeles. The ship served her name well: through Okinawa, through the Cuban missile crisis, through twenty-five years of training young reservists in the cold North Atlantic. In April 1969, after the Navy had no further use for her, Tills was sunk as a target off the Virginia coast, joining the seabed twenty miles east of where she now rests.

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Image: EM3 Jay Jones, U.S. Navy | Public domain

USS Tills: Pacific Apprenticeship

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Tills was laid down on June 23, 1943, by the Western Pipe and Steel Company at San Pedro, Los Angeles, launched that October, and commissioned on August 8, 1944. She belonged to Escort Division 53 and spent her first months working trials and shakedown runs off San Diego. By Octo...

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Image: Public domain

USS Tills: Okinawa

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On May 3, 1945, Tills made port at Ulithi, then joined a convoy bound for the Ryukyus. En route she came across an abandoned Japanese patrol boat and finished it off with gunfire and depth charges. She dropped anchor off Hagushi Beach on May 10 in the thick of the Okinawa campaig...

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Image: Public domain

USS Tills: The Cold War Trainer

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain. Tills was decommissioned in June 1946 and tied up in the St. Johns River, but the Navy could not afford to lose her for long. Reactivated in 1947, she was sent to Miami to train naval reservists, working her way up the East Coast from Boston to Panama. In November 1950 she was pl...

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Image: U.S. Department of Defense | Public domain

USS Tills: Last Cruises

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. For the rest of her career Tills did the unglamorous work that keeps a Navy ready: weekend reserve cruises out of Portland, antisubmarine exercises up and down the St. Lawrence Seaway, joint maneuvers with the Canadians. In 1964 she made a four-day port call at the New York World...

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Image: Public domain