US Destroyers 1934–45 by Dave McComb

Author:Dave McComb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: US Destroyers 1934–45: Pre-War Classes
ISBN: 9781780962863
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

One of the most famous photographs taken during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 shows Shaw’s forward magazine exploding. She, Cassin, and Downes were all in dry dock when the Japanese attacked. (NARA80-G-16871)

Over the next months, the Italian land campaign became a stalemate. On January 22, 1944, to relieve the pressure, troops were landed in the German rear at Anzio, south of Rome. For this Operation Shingle, DesDiv 14 joined to bring DesRon 7 up to full strength. Again destroyers earned high praise for their fire support and again they fought off aircraft – 32 waves of them in the first ten days. Squadron flagships Plunkett and Woolsey distinguished themselves during this period, the former surviving a 14-plane attack on January 22.

The Italian campaign dragged on. Off Algeria in April, veteran Lansdale was lost to an aerial torpedo. In May, after a protracted hunt, Ellyson, Hambleton, Rodman, Emmons, Macomb, Gleaves, Nields, and Hilary P. Jones, with help from a British Wellington bomber, forced Buck-killer U-616 to the surface and sank her after her crew abandoned her, a battle some later nicknamed “Operation Monstrous.”

Thirty-three American destroyers gathered around Britain in June for Operation Neptune, the Normandy invasion. Among them were three of the DesRon 9 1,850-tonners from the South Atlantic and DesRon 18, the last Atlantic Fleet squadron to form. Guided by shore fire-control parties during the desperate fighting on D-Day, some pressed so close to the beaches to deliver accurate fire that they touched bottom. Corry was sunk by shellfire and possibly also a mine that day; Glennon was later mined and also lost.

The final major amphibious operation in the European theater was Operation Anvil, the invasion of southern France in August 1944. There, the Atlantic Fleet destroyers again demonstrated their crack marksmanship in shore bombardments along the French and Italian Rivieras before turning to targets along the German-occupied Italian coast until the end of the war.

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