The ship's 20-mm guns and aft starboard 3-incher, however, took her in their sights and opened up. In September of that year, KIDD participated in a top secret mission which carried her to a midnight rendezvous somewhere in the Yellow Sea. She then joined NEW JERSEY (BB-62) on bombardment duty, before being assigned to patrol the Formosa Strait. As U-606 cleared her stern, the cutter dropped two depth charges set at 50 feet. Now, on the eve of impending war, the U.S. was ready to take destroyer design to the next level. At several points in the film, a German U-boat uses Greyhound's transmitting frequency and broadcasts threatening messages over the ship's loudspeakers. Some went on to serve during the Korean War and into the Vietnam War. So on the crews behalf, Mrs. Kidd obtained official permission from the powers-that-be in the Navy for them to paint the pirate on the stack and fly the Jolly Roger. From tax deductible donations to your time and skills, there are many ways you can contribute! flying the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger high from the foremast. It was early on at this point in her career when she picked up the nickname that would become her trademark. Bennett (DD 473) lays stack and chemical smoke in the Shortland Islands, 1944. off Korea in the 1950s and some even off Vietnam in the 60s, she was condemned in 2010 as a derelict and hazard to navigation and scrapped in 20102011. Two days earlier, while helping escort eight ships from Iceland to a rendezvous with westbound ONS-152, the cutter had dropped a single 600-pound depth charge on a sound contact. Despite being rooted in World War II history, the Tom Hanks movie is not directly based on a true story. The plant has to be started up from the Central Control Station below decks, but once it is ready for operation throttle control can be transferred to the bridge. . In 1984, the Dutch fleet oiler ZUIDERKRUIS arrived in Baton Rouge on a port visit and transferred to KIDD two twin 20mm gun mounts, two Mk-16 K-gun depth charge projectors, and twelve 20mm magazine drums. The crew was extremely tight. All five 5/38-cal. Not wishing to dishonor RADM Kidd, however, the crew obtained permission from Mrs. Kidd first. The island-hopping campaign continued across the Pacific and KIDD continued to go in harms way. She saw action again in the Marshall Islands in January of 1944, and was the first to follow minesweepers into the lagoon at Majuro. While the movie finds Tom Hanks' Commander Ernest Krause and the convoy caught up in the Battle of the Atlantic over a five-day period in the latter part of 1942, the battle actually spanned almost the entirety of the war, beginning on September 3, 1939 and ending on May 8, 1945. Half of the year, she rides the currents of the Mississippi; the other half, she sits dry-docked in a cradle where visitors can see her full dimensions. No, not exactly. In conducting our Greyhound fact check, we discovered that up to 80,000 Allied sailors, airmen, and merchant seamen were killed during the six-year-long Battle of the Atlantic, which spanned almost the entirety of WWII. It was December, 1944. In January, 1952, DESDIV 152 returned to San Diego for overhaul and repair. Ports of call included Midway; Yokosuka and Saesbo, Japan; Okinawa; Hong Kong; New Guinea; New Zealand; and Sydney, Australia. David W. Taylor returned to join them in time for Okinawa, after which she and John D. Henley closed out the war with the Third Fleet off Japan while the other surviving ships of the squadron returned home. 3. The Fletcher class destroyer is one of the most famous and most produced warships developed and built for the US navy in WW2. 7. The movie's fictional incident is based on an event that unfolds in The Good Shepherd book from which the film was adapted. KIDD was in the vanguard position with BULLARD the following morning when they steamed to within eleven miles of the Japanese shoreline, her navigator taking bearings on enemy lighthouses. Next. While off Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach Harbor, KIDD was struck by the 9,000-ton Swedish freighter HAINAN on April 21, 1953. The night was overcast with the seas running six to eight feet as the Campbell went to general quarters. The next order would be to Take in the Brow. Dan Van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). Essentially what this meant was for the first team to take their assigned stations for getting underway. In 1945, the seven ships remaining in the war zone participated in the Iwo Jima operation. About once per quarter we would be assigned an availability alongside a Destroyer Tender for routine repairs. Some went on to serve during the Korean War and into the Vietnam War. In May 1942, before the first Fletcher was even commissioned, it approved a six-gun ship in which the Fletchers five 5-inch single mounts were replaced with three 5-inch twinsthe 2,200-ton Allen M. Sumner class, with 20 per cent more firepower on a Fletcher hull widened by 14 inches. In the traditional system of naming destroyers after Naval heroes, she was named after Rear Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, Sr. who was killed aboard his flagship, USS ARIZONA (BB-39) during the surprise attack by the Japanese on the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 5. As fortune had it, her forward damage control party was exercising in the immediate vicinity with a make-believe casualty strapped into a stretcher. The Pirate of the Pacific began a series of WESTPAC cruises which lasted from 1954 to 1959. Under the command of Cdr. A sister ship of the Fletcher-class, USS CAPERTON (DD-650), provided the quintuple Mk-14 21-inch torpedo tubes that were missing, as well as a Mk-27 torpedo director, two Mk-63 gun directors, and her boat boom. The class was designed in 1939, as a result of dissatisfaction with the earlier destroyer leader types of the Porter and Somers classes. The cycle would start at the end of a shipyard overhaul, in our case at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. Communications would be established with all vital stations, steering gear, alarms, whistle and engine order telegraph tested, radar, sonar, and fathometer in operation, and compasses checked. But on her third pass, the cutter again attacked, dropping 5,000 pounds worth of explosives. The Bibb, Duane, and Ingham were also still operating from Iceland. On March 19, 1945, the carrier USS FRANKLIN (CV-13) suffered a devastating hit which touched off gasoline and ammunition explosions and claimed 724 lives. The Sullivans played a large role in World War II and the . Required fields are marked *. With wars end, KIDD returned to peacetime duties. None of the Germans hoisted a white flag, and the one-sided close-range battle continued. The peacetime manning was 14 officers and 236 enlisted men. This is the third in a series of articles by Captain Stewart detailing the technical specifications, manning, and operations of the U.S. Navys Fletcher class destroyers. Enter the Fletcher Class. The KIDD would become the only vessel in the history of the United States Navy to ever have such leave granted to fly the flag of piracy. The tenders could then supply us with power, thereby allowing us to shut down and go Cold Iron. Each compartment has been treated as a display case into which innumerable artifacts have been collected and arranged just as they would have been when sailors lived and worked on board. The Fletcher design permitted significant increases over preceding classes in hull, armament, machinery, ammunition, stores and fuel bunkerage. Their detonations practically lifted the U-boat out of the water and badly shook the cutter, which was rapidly losing speed. But most of the other wartime functions still remained. These conditions refer to degrees of closure to minimize the effects of potential damage. Faced with a shortage of escort ships, the Navy requested on 31 October that all Coast Guard cutters be transferred to its control. Arch A. Mercey and Lee Grove, eds., Sea, Surf and Hell (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1946). A second 36 searchlight was obtained from a private estate in 1985. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Naval Historical Foundation 1306 Dahlgren Avenue, SE Washington Navy Yard, DC 20374 1-202-678-4333 info@navyhistory.org. [3] 2. Of the four preserved Fletcher-class destroyers, she is the only destroyer remaining in her World War II appearance and is now on exhibit in her wartime camouflage paint, Measure 22.. We also made fueling stops at Guam and Midway. By February, organization of the ocean escorts had been formalized into American, British, and Canadian groups. This article describes destroyer operations as I remember them during the late 1950s. I made six month WESTPAC deployments in 1957 and 1958. On 17 December, the Ingham was on the western edge of the air gap, sweeping ahead of eastbound Convoy SC-112. In an emergency program to expand capacity, some shipyards were upgraded and other new ones were brought on line. Deployments to the Far East could be pretty tedious and they involved long periods at sea, as much as a month at a time. . The ship's CO, Commander George McCabe, knew from hard experience that the sonar's pinging could be heard by a U-boat beyond the range an escort could detect the sub. One of the enemy planes descended to near water level, levelled out, and commenced a run on BLACK which was 1,500 yards off KIDDs starboard beam. in 1951 during the Korean War. 27 2023 . Chevalier. USS John D. Henley (DD 553) Destroyer Squadron 51 in World War II was a squadron whose 2,100-ton Fletcher -class destroyers were deployed in thirteen diverse operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific. The strategy that the Allies used was to send a group of merchant ships across the Atlantic in a convoy that was escorted by a group of warships, and, when feasible, aircraft. Some that we were called upon to perform included: There are probably some others that I have forgotten about. While 19 were lost and six damaged beyond repair, 44 earned ten or more service stars, 19 were awarded the Navy Unit Commendation and 16 received the Presidential Unit Citation. With the active sonar switch on, Sasso again picked up the U-boat: "It was beautiful, a metallic sound, real clear." You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Naval History this month. The venerable destroyer had earned twelve battle stars during her career: eight for service in World War II and four for service in Korea. Based at Hvalfjordur, Iceland, the Bibb, Duane, and Ingham covered small convoys out from Reykjavik that were joining westbound ON convoys. While the U-boats did occasionally eavesdrop after stumbling upon the transmitting frequency of the escort ships, as far as we know, they were never able to transmit on that frequency, nor were they able to hack into and broadcast over the convoy's inter-ship communication system. (similarly, the HMS James/Harry looks like it was modeled on a British Battle-class destroyer, which did not enter service until No. 1 LCdr. Downtown Baton Rouges Fletcher-class destroyer USS KIDD (DD-661) and the Louisiana Veterans Museum. Previous. My own ship, the USS Halsey Powell (DD 686) had been struck by a Kamikaze while escorting the carrier USS Hancock (CV 19) off Okinawa in 1945. As well as other tasks, most of the ships served on weather station patrols, monitoring conditions in specific areas of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the Navy continued looking ahead. As they neared Reykjavik on 29 January 1942, the Hamilton turned the tow over to a British tug. Her single-pole mast was still in place, though her own post-war damage control plans showed her with a tripod mast. Under her new commander, KIDD returned to battle during the invasion of the Philippines in October and November. She screened the amphibious operations, serving as a fire-support ship during the landings on Leyte. The U.S. and Canada needed to maintain the vital flow of supplies and men to Europe in order to keep up the fight. It soon became clear that it was traveling in the opposite direction of the convoy. 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