During World War II, destroyer escorts were developed to protect Atlantic convoys carrying vital supplies to England against German U-Boats, beginning with British requirements for smaller, cheaper, faster-built escort vessels and expanding into several U.S. classes with differing propulsion systems and armament, including the Evarts, Buckley, Gannon, Edsall, Rudderow, and John C. Butler classes, while some were later converted into fast attack transports for Pacific operations. U.S.S. Slater, one of 72 Gannon-class vessels built, was named for Frank O. Slater of Fyffe, Alabama, who was killed in action aboard U.S.S. San Francisco during an air raid off Guadalcanal on 12 November 1942 and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Launched at Tampa on 13 February 1944 and commissioned on May 1, 1944 under Lt. Commander M. J. Blancq, Slater trained off Bermuda, served as a target ship and sonar school ship, escorted convoys to England and Wales in 1944 and 1945, then after Germany’s surrender was refitted for Pacific duty, sailed via Guantanamo Bay and the Panama Canal to San Diego and Pearl Harbor, reached Manila in September 1945, escorted convoys in the Pacific until January 1946, and then returned to California. After the war, she was routed to Norfolk for deactivation, placed in reserve at Green Cove Springs, and in 1951 was transferred to Greece under the Military Defense Assistance Program, where renamed Aetos she served for forty years in the Hellenic Navy as a patrol and officer training vessel before retiring in 1991. In the early 1980s, the Destroyer Escort Sailors Association chose Aetos as a museum ship because she was the last destroyer escort in her original rig available for restoration, secured her transfer from Greece, and brought her to New York City in 1993; after restoration efforts by volunteers and the Destroyer Escort Historical Foundation, she moved to the Port of Albany in 1997. Of the 565 destroyer escorts launched during the war, Slater is the only surviving destroyer escort afloat in her World War II rig.
