The USS Turner (DD-648) was a Gleaves-class destroyer of the United States Navy, commissioned on 15 April 1943 at the New York Navy Yard. After shakedown, the destroyer conducted antisubmarine warfare training until early June 1943, departing on her first actual wartime assignment screening a transatlantic convoy UGS 11. The ship made her second transatlantic voyage in September, heading to Norfolk. The warship joined the screen of convoy GUS 18 the following month and made a depth-charge attack on a German submarine. On 23 November, she departed Norfolk with her third and final convoy across the Atlantic. In January 1944, the USS Turner sank after suffering internal explosions in the Port of New York. The destroyer was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 8 April 1944. Thousands of materials applied in shipbuilding between the 1930s and the 1970s contained asbestos - a versatile but carcinogenic mineral. Navy veterans were heavily exposed to the toxic material and developed incapacitating asbestos-related health conditions decades after service.
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