Photos and the story

Lang

Class	Benham class
Type	Destroyer (DD)
Hull	DD-399
Fate	Afloat. Decommissioned 16 October 1945.
Armament (class)	Four 5-inch guns, one funnel, and sixteen torpedo tubes.
Command	Johnson, Felix L. Captain from 30 March 1939

Laid down, displacement, length, beam, draft, speed, and complement are not stored for each hull, so this table leaves them out.

The armament line is the class drawing, not a measurement of this hull.

USS Lang (DD-399) was a Benham-class destroyer of the United States Navy, a fleet destroyer built for high-speed work with the battle line and with other destroyers.

Felix L. Johnson was her captain from 30 March 1939, and he is the commanding officer named for her in this account.

On 6 August 1943 she took part in the Battle of Vella Gulf. With Sterett and Stack she crossed the bow of the Japanese column and opened gunfire as the torpedoes hit.

Lang came through that night undamaged. The action is the fight recorded for her, and she is not assigned a separate credited strike from it. She survived the war. The Navy decommissioned her on 16 October 1945.

The pictures on this page are the originals.