Ships
- USS Balch (DD-363) Captain from 20 October 1936
Commander T. C. Lutimore of the United States Navy became captain of the destroyer Balch on 20 October 1936, the day the ship was commissioned. Balch, hull number DD-363, was the second Navy ship named for Rear Admiral George Beall Balch. Bethlehem Shipbuilding built her at Quincy, Massachusetts. Her keel was laid on 16 May 1934, and she was launched on 24 March 1936. Miss Gertrude Balch, the admiral's granddaughter, sponsored the launch.
She was a Porter-class destroyer, one of the large leaders built to head a squadron. She measured 381 feet 1 inch in length, displaced 1,825 tons, and on trial made 36.4 knots. As completed she carried eight 5-inch guns, a battery of 1.1-inch antiaircraft guns, eight 21-inch torpedo tubes, and depth-charge tracks. Her complement was 294. Lutimore, then a commander, was her first commanding officer.
After commissioning, Balch went to the Boston Navy Yard to finish fitting out. Through the following winter and spring Lutimore worked the new ship up in New England waters. Training cruises sometimes ran as far south as Norfolk, Virginia, while the crew learned the ship, her guns, and her handling. On 1 July 1937 she returned to Boston for the repairs and alterations that follow a shakedown. That yard period lasted until 30 September.
On 5 October 1937 Balch left Boston and reached the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, the same day. For about three weeks her torpedo crews trained and fired exercise torpedoes in Narragansett Bay. Ordered to the Pacific, she sailed for Hampton Roads on 25 October, refueled there the next day, and arrived at Guantánamo Bay early on 29 October, still under the captain who had taken her into commission the year before.