Lloyd Mills born 3 July 1917
at Rock Springs, Wyo.,

Lloyd Jones Mills enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve as seaman second class 4 December 1940. He was appointed aviation cadet 6 March 1941, naval aviator 22 August 1941, and commissioned ensign 19 September 1941. Ensign Mills was killed 30 July 1942 in an airplane crash during the Aleutian Islands campaign, and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism and extraordinary achievement in action 1 to 15 June 1942.

Mills (DE-383) was laid down 26 March 1943 by Brown Shipbuilding Co., Houston, Tex.; launched 26 May 1943; sponsored by Mrs. James E. Mills; and commissioned 12 October 1943, Lt. Comdr. J.S. Muzzy, USCG, in command.

After shakedown out of Bermuda, Mills trained nucleus crews for frigates and destroyer escorts off Norfolk until 10 January 1944 when she began transatlantic convoy escort duty. On her second voyage into the Mediterranean, Mills’ convoy was attacked before dawn 1 April 1944, 56 miles west of Algiers by German torpedo bombers. SS Jarard Ingersoll, a Liberty ship, was hit and set blazing. Mills picked up survivors who had abandoned ship, and sent a boarding party to extinguish her fires. British tug Mindfull and Mills then towed Jarard Ingersoll to Algiers.

By V-E Day, for which she was moored at Brooklyn Navy Yard, Mills had completed nine voyages on escort duty to the Mediterranean, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and France. Mills left New York 30 May 1945 for the Panama Canal and Adak, Alaska, arriving 8 July. She served there as weather station, plane guard, and escort between Alaskan ports until sailing 29 August for occupation duty, arriving 9 September at Ominato Ko, Honshu.

Briefly returning to Alaska 25 September to 17 November, Mills steamed west again to operate out of Taku and Tuinton, China, until 11 February 1946. Returning to the States via Pearl Harbor and the Panama Canal, she arrived Charleston, S.C., 22 March, sailed 25 April for Green Cove Springs, Fla., and decommissioned 14 June to go into reserve.

Eleven years later, after installation of additional radar and electronic equipment and enlargement of her superstructure at Boston Naval Shipyard, Mills was reclassified DER-383 and recommissioned 3 October 1957, Lt. Comdr. Joseph E. Feaster in command. Assigned as a radar picket of the North American Continental Air Defense System to deter surprise attack by locating and reporting aircraft headed toward North America, Mills sailed 3 April 1958 from Newport, R.I., for Argentia,

Newfoundland to begin her first picket. She made 17 subsequent 3- to 4-week pickets on the barrier stretching from Newfoundland to the Azores through 28 July 1961, as well as one off the southeast coast of the United States.

Between 28 August 1961 and the end of 1963, Mills served primarily on the new Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Barrier designed to extend protection to the NATO allies.

In 1964, Mills was assigned to operation “Deep Freeze,” the U.S. Naval Force supporting scientific research in Antarctica. During the austral summer seasons of 1964-65, and 1966-67, Mills took station to provide weather information and electronic navigational aid to aircraft ferrying men and equipment between Christchurch, New Zealand, and McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

Each of these seasonal deployments required an 11,000-mile voyage via the Panama Canal to Dunedin, New Zealand, Mills’ base of operations with “Deep Freeze.” At the end of each deployment, Mills completed a round-the-world cruise by returning to Newport via Suez. In 1965, when she did not serve with “Deep Freeze,”
Mills was underway school ship off Florida. On 3 September 1968, Mills became an operational Naval Reserve training ship at Baltimore, Md.

MILLS received one battle star for World War II service.

Stricken from the Navy Register on 1 August 1974, MILLS was sold on 12 March 1975.

From the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, (1969) Vol. 4, 361.

The Atlantic Barriers

The radarpicket stations on the Contiguous Barrier were, as noted,originally patrolled by DERs. The DERs were withdrawn on 31March 1960 in favor of radar picket ships (AGRs), which had beenconverted from Liberty-type cargo vessels between 1957 and 1959.Foralmost two years, beginning in late 1954, WV-2 airborne earlywarning aircraft, which were just entering the Navy inventory,supplemented the DERs on the Contiguous Barrier. In mid-1956these highly capable aircraft were shifted to more demandingduties on the newly established North Atlantic barrier. ZPG-2Wand ZPG-3W airborne early warning airships flying out of NavalAir Station Lakehurst, New Jersey, were another part of the Navyair defense effort from 1954 to 1962. Assigned to the InshoreBarrier, they provided radar coverage in the area between theDERs on the Contiguous Barrier and the ground-based radars ofthe Inshore Barrier.17The Atlantic extension of the DEW Line was designated the Atlantic Barrier, and Commander Barrier Force Atlantic (COMBARFORLANT) was established in July 1955 to control the ships and aircraft that would patrol it. COMBARFORLANT headquarters was located at U.S. Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland, Canada, one of the
bases acquired by the United States in 1941 under the Lend-Lease deal with the United Kingdom. COMBARFORLANT, designated Commander Task Force 82 (CTF 82) in the CINCLANTFLT task
organization, also served as Commander AEW Wing Atlantic (COM-AEWINGLANT), providing the planes that conducted the airborne early warning patrols.

Testing of the Atlantic Barrier began in 1956. That summer USS Strickland (DER 333) made the first radar picket patrol, and WV-2s began airborne early warning patrols. The Atlantic Barrier, which officially became operational on 2 July 1957, consisted of four radar picket stations at 250-nautical-mile intervals from Newfoundland to the Azores. Four WV-2s were kept in the air at all times conducting airborne early warning patrols. (Budget cuts later reduced the number of planes on patrol at any one time to two.) All air contacts detected by the DERs or WV-2s were reported to COMBARFORLANT for evaluation, which consisted of comparing the contact’s track with the flight plans of civil aircraft expected to be in the area. Any electronic emissions that could be correlated with the contact were also used to help identify it. Unidentified air contacts were passed on to NORAD headquarters for further evaluation and
a decision whether or not to scramble fighters to intercept it.

Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in 1959 soon raised new security issues for the United States. As Castro established closer relations with the Soviet Union, including extensive military cooperation, concerns arose that Soviet aircraft could threaten the United States from bases in Cuba. In April 1961, in the aftermath of the aborted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed NORAD to execute Operation SOUTHERN TIP, which established a radar picket station to monitor the airspace between Cuba and southern Florida.20

The SOUTHERN TIP station of the Atlantic Contiguous Barrier was located about a hundred nautical miles east of Key West, eighty nautical miles south of Miami, and ninety miles from the coast of Cuba. Both DERs and AGRs were used to patrol the SOUTHERN TIP station, which was well positioned to detect air contacts heading northward from Cuba toward Florida. Unidentified air contacts were reported to the CONAD Control Center Key West, Florida, code named “Brownstone.”

In mid-1961, additional Air Force long-range radar stations became operational, extending the eastern end of the DEW Line across Greenland. This covered a portion of the approaches being guarded by the Atlantic Barrier, but there was still a gap between the DEW Line and Nato’s Allied Command Europe Early

Warning System, the western end of which was in Scotland. The better to utilize the Navy barrier patrol forces, plans were made to disestablish the Atlantic Barrier on 1 July 1961 and replace it with a Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Early Warning Barrier. To control the new GIUK Barrier, COMBARFORLANT, at this time Rear Admiral Robert N. Moore, shifted his headquarters from Argentia to Keflavik, Iceland. Admiral Moore gave up command of AEWINGLANT in the move but gained additional responsibilities as Commander Iceland Defense Force and as Commander Nato Fleet Air Wing North Atlantic Sub-Area. A few days before the GIUK Barrier was to become operational, however, the Air Force notified the Navy that its new radar stations in Greenland were not ready and that the Atlantic Barrier would have to remain in operation for another month. This caused pandemonium, as deployments to Keflavik were nearly complete, but the new COMAEWINGLANT was able to pull together sufficient resources to patrol the Atlantic Barrier for another month. Finally, on 1 August 1961, the GIUK Barrier became operational.