The second USS Tucker, DD 374, was laid down at Portsmouth, Va., on 15 August 1934 by the Norfolk Navy Yard, launched on 26 February 1936; sponsored by Mrs. Leonard Thorner; and commissioned on 23 July 1936, Lt. Comdr. George T. Howard in command.

Top and above: Tucker, Massachusetts Bay, 17 November 1937. Below: in the Pacific in the 1930s. Click on any image to view it in more detail.

   Following shakedown training, Tucker joined the destroyer forces attached to the United States Battle Fleet and was based at San Diego Calif. As part of Destroyer Squadron 3, Destroyer Division 6, she operated with the Battle force along the west coast and

Samuel Tucker, privateersman of Marblehead, Massachusetts, is said to have captured more British guns and British seamen than John Paul Jones or any other captain in the service of the thirteen states.    Captain Tucker took John Adams to Europe in 1779. On the passage, he fell in with an enemy ship. It was agreed to fight her, and also that Mr. Adams should retire below; but Tucker soon observed him with a gun, fighting as a common marine, and in tones of authority ordered him to leave the deck; Mr. Adams, however, continued at his post, when, at last, Tucker seized him, and forced him away, exclaiming as he did so, “I am commanded by the Continental Congress to carry you in safety to Europe, and I will do it.”    After the Revolution, he lived in Bristol, Maine and died there in 1803.

in the Hawaiian Islands. In February 1939, she took part in Fleet Problem XX, the naval exercise in the Caribbean personally observed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Houston (CA-30)
   As the international situation in the Pacific worsened, President Roosevelt ordered the Fleet to remain in Hawaiian waters after the conclusion of exercises in the spring of 1940. Tucker then operated between the west coast and Hawaii through the end of the year. On 14 February 1941, she arrived at Pearl Harbor from San Diego, and then proceeded to New Zealand, arriving at Auckland on 17 March to "show the flag" in that area of the world.
   Returning to Pearl Harbor from the South Pacific, she took part in routine exercises at sea before returning to her home port of San Diego, Calif., on 19 September. Getting underway again after a short stay, Tucker steamed to Hawaii as part of Task Force 19 and began operations anew in the Hawaiian Islands in November. After one month of maneuvers in the Hawaiian operating area, she returned to Pearl Harbor for a tender overhaul.
   On 7 December 1941, Tucker lay peacefully moored at berth X-8, East Loch, Pearl Harbor, in the center of a nest of five destroyers and tender Whitney (AD-4); to port of Tucker lay Selfridge (DD-375) and Case (DD-370); to her starboard were Reid (DD-365) and Conyngham (DD-371), with Whitney outboard of Conyngham. Suddenly the drone of airplane engines and the roar of exploding bombs and torpedoes shattered the Sunday morning calm; Japanese planes swept over the harbor and wheeled above like hawks. (continued)