Tag Archives: USS Halford (DD-480)

Warship Wednesday, May 8, 2024: Surigao Torpedo Slinger and Overall Slugger

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, May 8, 2024: Surigao Torpedo Slinger and Overall Slugger

U.S. Navy photo, National Archives, identifier 80-G-K-3977

Above we see, 80 years ago today, a great original color shot of one of the trainable 21-inch quintuple MK 15 torpedo tube stands on the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Halford (DD-480), complete with helmets on top of the crew shield and a greyhound with a steel fish in his grill.

A Fletcher, equipped with two such mounts, could rocket out 10 24-foot torpedoes in a single salvo, each with up to an 823-pound HBX warhead.

USS Halford (DD-480) loading a torpedo tube after completing an overhaul of the torpedo, 8 May 1944. 80-G-256439

Just five months after the above images, Halford’s squadron, DesRon 56, would famously charge the onrushing Japanese battleline during the overnight Battle of Surigao Strait, leaving the 35,000-ton Fuso-class dreadnought Yamashiro with several holes poked in her hull.

The Fletchers

The Fletchers were the WWII equivalent of the Burke class, constructed in a massive 175-strong class from 11 builders that proved the backbone of the fleet for generations.

Coming after the interwar “treaty” destroyers such as the Benson- and Gleaves classes, they were good-sized (376 feet oal, 2,500 tons full load, 5×5″ guns, 10 torpedo tubes) and could have passed as unprotected cruisers in 1914.

Destroyer evolution, 1920-1944: USS HATFIELD (DD-231), USS MAHAN (DD-364), USS FLETCHER (DD-445). NH 109593

Powered by a quartet of oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers and two Westinghouse or GE steam turbines, they had 60,000 shp on tap– half of what today’s Burkes have on a hull 25 percent as heavy– enabling them to reach 38 knots, a speed that is still fast for destroyers today.

USS John Rodgers (DD 574) at Charleston, 28 April 1943. A great example of the Fletcher class in their wartime configuration. Note the five 5″/38 mounts and twin sets of 5-pack torpedo tubes.

LCDR Fred Edwards, Destroyer Type Desk, Bureau of Ships, famously said of the class, “I always felt it was the Fletcher class that won the war . . .they were the heart and soul of the small-ship Navy.”

Meet Halford

Our subject is the only U.S. Navy warship named for Coxswain William Halford who, at age 30 when the sloop-of-war USS Saginaw ran aground near Midway on 29 October 1871, volunteered with three others to sail the ship’s 25-foot sail gig an amazing 1,500 miles to Honolulu for help, with Halford the only one to survive the brutal 31-day voyage.

Halford received a commendation for his bravery and served until 1910, when he retired after an impressive 41 years’ of service. Promoted to Lieutenant on the retired list, he returned to the Navy in 1917 and died 7 February 1919 at Oakland, California. The Saginaw’s gig is in the custody of the Naval History and Heritage Command and for years had been on display at Annapolis.

USS Halford (DD-480) was laid down six months before Pearl Harbor on 3 June 1941 at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, was launched on 29 October 1942 with the late LT Halford’s daughter, Eunice, as the sponsor, and commissioned 10 April 1943.

Of interest, Halford was one of only three destroyers (out of six originally planned) that were built with a floatplane catapult shoehorned in place of the standard 2nd set of torpedo tubes and Mount 53 (3rd) 5-inch gun mount. In effect, trading half of their torpedo tubes and a fifth of their main battery for a single floatplane. Her floatplane-carrying sisters were USS Stevens (DD-479) and USS Pringle (DD-477).

USS Halford (DD-480) off Port Jackson, Washington, 24 April 1943. 19-N-45399

USS Halford (DD-480) at anchor off the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington on 3 May 1943. She is equipped with an aircraft catapult in place of her after torpedo tubes and 5/38 Mount 53. NH 107411

USS Halford (DD-480), 14 July 1943, with an OS2U Kingfisher floatplane on her catapult. 80-G-276691

From July through September 1943, she would spend an extended shakedown period testing out the feasibility of her somewhat novel seaplane fit.

Halford’s embarked naval aviator was LT Bob Schiller, who had flown SOC-3 Seagull biplanes from (and almost went down with) the heavy cruiser USS Astoria (CA-34). Surviving the loss of his ship at the Battle of Savo Island, he eventually reached the west coast and, after 30 days leave, was ordered to Oregon to join Halford as her destroyer aviator.

As detailed by Schiller in a 2006 Naval History article. 

“The guys firing torpedoes would have preferred another set of torpedo tubes,” Schiller said. “The guys on the antiaircraft guns didn’t like it either. They had to give up one of the 5-inch guns to make room for the plane. The ship lost 20 percent of its firepower right there. The skipper [Lieutenant Commander Gustave N. Johansen] wasn’t in favor of the plane, either; he wanted a fighting destroyer.”

On a shakedown cruise to San Diego, the ship practiced aircraft launch and recovery. It was necessary to smooth the sea—turn sharply in a circle—to prepare a landing zone for the plane. The aircraft would taxi into the zone where Schiller gunned the engine just enough to push the nose up on a sled deployed from the destroyer. A crane then angled out over the plane and dropped a large hook to slide through an eyebolt on the top of the fuselage. “An experienced radioman-gunner [in the rear seat] could hook it himself,” Schiller said. “Otherwise, it was up to the pilot to engage the hook. You have to stand up on a seat that is pretty slippery and take your parachute off with nothing to hang onto. You’d have to stand up and catch that swinging hook. There was no real way to brace yourself except with your feet and sometimes you’d lose your balance and fall over the side to the amusement of those on the ship.” Occasionally, Schiller took shipmates and officers aloft, and on one flight he allowed a Hollywood cameraman to film the destroyer launching torpedoes. Most of the time Schiller, however, had nothing to do. “They flew the plane very, very rarely,” he said. “Every time we joined a new group, I would get to fly at least once. The captain or the admiral would want to see it fly. So, we would fly around for his curiosity.”

As noted by DANFS, all seemed to agree that it was a bad idea: “Because of tactical changes and our growing aircraft carrier strength Halford returned to Mare Island 27 October 1943 for alterations which replaced the catapult and scout plane.”

Likewise, her similarly-equipped sisters were rebuilt as well. 

By 6 December 1943, completed with a full set of five 5″/38 guns and 10 21-inch tubes, Halford set off for the West Pac, to get in the big show. Meanwhile, Bob Schiller converted to Wildcats and would soon join Composite Squadron VC-78 aboard the jeep carrier USS Saginaw Bay (CVE-82) for the duration.

War!

Escorting the 18,000-ton Maston liner turned troopship SS Lurline with Marine reinforcements to Guadalcanal just in time for Christmas 1943, Halford soon became flagship for VADM Theodore Stark “Ping” Wilkinson’s Green Islands Attack Force and was on hand for operations there in February 1944.

While on an anti-shipping patrol as part of DesRon 45 off the west coast of New Ireland a week after Green Island’s D-Day, on the early morning of 25 February Halford and her sister USS Bennett (DD-473) got in a surface gun battle with a Japanese convoy, reportedly sinking two coastal ships and damaging a patrol vessel. Halford pumped out 219 5-inch shells in just 20 minutes then was given the green light to turn around and plaster the beached patrol boat with another 42 rounds.

These were likely the twin 839-ton cargo ships Tatsukiko Maru and Tatsugiko Maru, listed as lost on this date off New Ireland.

Original Kodachrome of 20mm and 40mm anti-aircraft guns on USS Halford (DD-480), 80-G-K-1629.

Front view of Mount 51 and 52 of USS Halford (DD-480), c. 1943-45 National Archives, identifier 80-G-K-3980

USS Halford (foreground) and the destroyer Bennett (background) open fire on a wooden watchtower on the Shortland Islands south of Bougainville, in early 1944. Admiral Halsey later sent the “naughty boys” a message saying the installation was already known and did not pose a threat. 80-G-K-1638.

USS Halford (DD-480). LT Elvin Clinton Ogles (USNA 1938) shoots the sun from the ship’s bridge while W.T. Gautrau, QMC, takes notes. Late April 1944. Note pelorus in the background. Ogle was serving aboard the USS Patterson in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, and remained aboard that hard-fighting tin can through the first amphibious landings on Guadalcanal and the night sea battle of Savo Island before becoming a Halford plankowner, eventually becoming her XO. He finished the war as the skipper of USS Gillespie (DD-609) then later commanded the destroyer USS Radford (DD-446) off Korea. Capt. Ogles retired in 1968 as skipper of the Naval Reserve Training Center, Seattle, and passed in 2006, aged 92. 80-G-253287

USS Halford (DD-480), LT Donald Dertien, ship’s gunnery officer, in the Mark 37 gun director, 8 May 1944. The Radar overhead is a Mark 4. Dertien enlisted in the Navy in 1940, and he was commissioned an ensign in 1941 after successfully completing the Navy’s “90-day wonder program” on the USS Arkansas (BB-33). He was stationed at Pearl Harbor and was aboard the USS Farragut (DD-348) when Pearl was attacked, then transferred to Halford in 1943 for the rest of the war. He retired as a captain in 1968 and passed away in 2015, aged 97. 80-G-256457

USS Halford (DD-480), with a torpedoman operating a Mark 27 torpedo director on the ship’s bridge, during weapons exercises in the South Pacific, 19 May 1944. Note the signal lamp in the right rear. 80-G-256430

USS Halford (DD-480) as an F6F Hellcat makes a low pass over the ship on 22 May 1944, outside Tulagi Harbor, in the Solomon Islands. Sister USS Bennett (DD-473) is astern. 80-G-253373

Shipping to the Marianas for Operation Forager: The Battle of Saipan, Halford was at sea for 75 days including bombardment of Tinian’s defenses, screening Task Force 58 for the Marianas Turkey Shoot, covering beach demolition units for the landings on Guam and Angaur Island.

Notably, on 10 July 1944, Halford, responding to a report from a pilot off USS Wasp, closed with and destroyed what was reported to be a beached submarine (possibly an Unkato supply container) on the sand bar at the mouth of the Umatac River on Guam’s Umatac Bay. She sent 386 rounds to the beach that day.

Then it was on to the Philippines. Attached to RADM Jesse Barrett “Oley” Oldendorf’s Task Group 77.2, the Fire Group of the Southern Attack Force, Halford was one of 28 destroyers screening Oldendorf’s massive force of six battleships and eight cruisers, intended to provide all the naval gunfire support that would be needed for the landings.

The thing is, on the night of 24-25 October, VADM Shoji Nishimura’s Southern Force, sailing to the Philippines from Brunei with the battleships Yamashiro and Fuso along with a mix of cruisers and destroyers, made an appearance.

With the benefit of radar and a screen of 39 massed PT-boats that went in on an early (but unsuccessful) torpedo attack on Nishimura’s force, the destroyers were tasked to make a torpedo run of their own. One of the nine tin cans of DesRon 56, Halford was split off with sisters USS Robinson (DD 563) and USS Bryant (DD 665), under Capt. Thomas Conley, for their run, while the squadron’s other six destroyers were to make their own runs in two other 3-ship sections. Lined up with the Japanese phantoms on the horizon by 0345, it was all over by 0359, each firing a half-salvo of five torpedoes.

Their target ended up being Yamashiro, with Nishimura aboard.

Halford’s skipper, in the ship’s war diary, felt that at least two of his fish may have hit a target.

While it will never positively be known whose torpedoes hit Yamishiro that morning, it is known that she picked up at least two hits, if not four, from the destroyer attack, slowing her down enough that she was soon the sole target of Oldendorf’s battlewagons and cruisers and she vanished from radar by 0421, taking 1,626 officers and crew to the bottom, some 600 feet down.

VADM Shoji Nishimura’s flagship, the battleship Yamashiro (near center) comes under intense fire from U.S. Navy warships in John Hamilton’s depiction of the Battle of Surigao Strait. (NHHC)

Halford continued her duties in the Leyte Gulf for the rest of the year, covering landings, escorting cripples and slow convoys, and fighting off Japanese air attacks.

11 January 1945 saw Halford, in a fast column of Fletchers that included USS Bush, Stanly, Stembel, and Dashiell, slow to just 5 knots and then own San Fernando Bay, 40 miles north of Manila, where they leisurely destroyed three small Japanese Sugar Charlie or Sugar Fox cargo ships, a landing craft, and several beached barges, with the destroyers firing just over 1,500 5-inch shells (244 from Halford alone) in 34 minutes and an overhead combat air patrol reporting “no craft, left afloat…”

Halford’s war came to a pause when, on Valentine’s Day 1945, while patrolling Saipan amid a nighttime smoke screen, she rammed type EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship SS Terry E. Stephenson. Although there were no injuries, she suffered enough damage to her bow to have to pull out for Mare Island to have it carved off and rebuilt– knocking her out of the war over three months.

USS Walke (DD-723) Plan view, forward, taken at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 26 March 1945. USS Halford (DD-480) is at right, with her bow shortened as the result of a collision with the type EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship SS Terry E. Stephenson in Saipan harbor on 14 February 1945. 19-N-84484

USS Halford (DD-480) off Mare Island Navy Yard, fresh out of repair, 12 May 1945. Note the odd location of hull numbers on the bow. 19-N-84885

USS Halford (DD-480) at the Mare Island Navy Yard, 15 May 1945. Circles mark recent alterations. Note radars on 40mm guns, quintuple mount torpedo tubes, and the destroyer-minelayer in the floating dry dock. Also, note floater nets and electronic gear on stacks (electronic antennas on the stacks are for electronic countermeasures). 19-N-84891

Getting back to the West Pac in June, Halford drew quiet duty escorting transports from Eniwetok to Ulithi then, in August, as part of the Northern Pacific Fleet’s TF 44 (six jeep carriers and eight destroyers/escorts), made for Ominato on Northern Honshu where her task force occupied the Japanese naval base there on 12 September.

Returning to Alaska, Halford spent Navy Day 1945 in Juneau then was ordered back to Bremerton and then San Diego, for mothballs. She was decommissioned on 15 May.

Gleaves-class destroyer USS McCalla (DD-488) moored with other destroyers off San Diego circa 1945-1946. One of the other destroyers appears to be USS Halford (DD-480). Halford reached San Diego on 28 January 1946 and decommissioned there on 15 May. NH 89288

Halford earned 13 battle stars for her war, a remarkable achievement considering she only served with the fleet in combat for 15 months, suffering half a year lost in floatplane experiments and subsequent rebuild, and another three months in repair.

Reserve Fleet Ships at San Diego photographed around 1960. Identifiable ships from left to right include Fletcher class sisters USS Izard (DD-589), Halford (DD-480), Wiley (DD-597), Bryant (DD-665), and Haraden (DD-585). The vessel with the large aviation star on her bow is the 311-foot Barnegat-class small seaplane tender USS Suisun (AVP-53). NH 72676

Stricken 1 May 1968, Halford only left mothballs for a tow to the breakers, sold 2 April 1970 to National Metal & Steel then taken the short distance to Terminal Island, where she was dismantled.

Epilogue

Halford’s war diaries and plans are in the National Archives. 

Oral histories of Bob Schiller— the destroyer aviator– and Seaman Green Day are in the collection of the National Museum of the Pacific War.

Sadly, there has not been a second U.S. Navy ship to carry the name.

As for Halford’s Fletcher-class sisters, 24 were sunk or evaluated as constructive total losses during WWII. These ships were sent into harm’s way. 

The rest of her surviving sisters were widely discarded in the Cold War era by the Navy, who had long prior replaced them with more modern destroyers and Knox-class escorts. Those who had not been sent overseas as military aid were promptly sent to the breakers or disposed of in weapon tests. The class that had faced off with the last blossom of Japan’s wartime aviators helped prove the use of just about every anti-ship/tactical strike weapon used by NATO in the Cold War including Harpoon, Exocet, Sea Skua, Bullpup, Walleye, submarine-launched Tomahawk, and even at least one Sidewinder used in surface attack mode. In 1997, SEALS sank the ex-USS Stoddard (DD-566) via assorted combat-diver delivered ordnance. The final Fletcher in use around the globe, Mexico’s Cuitlahuac, ex-USS John Rodgers (DD 574), was laid up in 2001 and dismantled in 2011.

Today, four hard-charging Fletchers are on public display, three of which in the U.S– USS The Sullivans (DD-537) at Buffalo, USS Kidd (DD-661) at Baton Rouge, and USS Cassin Young (DD-793) at the Boston Navy Yard. Please try to visit them if possible. Kidd, the best preserved of the trio, was used extensively for the filming of the Tom Hanks film, Greyhound.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Warship Wednesday, April 15, 2020: The Winged Spinach Can

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, April 15, 2020: The Winged Spinach Can

Naval History and Heritage Command Photo NH 73276

Here we see a beautiful profile shot of the Clemson-class “four-piper” destroyer USS Noa (DD-343) underway in San Diego Harbor, about 1930. Note the wooden cabin cruiser in the foreground, and Clemson-class sister USS Kane (DD-235) moored alongside another destroyer in the background. Despite her modest looks, our little tin can would prove influential in the steppingstones of naval aviation, and her namesake even more so in the evolution of space exploration.

One of the massive fleets of Clemson-class flush decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, Noa came too late for the Great War. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War. At 1,200-tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

The subject of our story today was the first warship named after one Midshipman Loveman Noa (USNA 1900).

NH 47525

Born in 1878 at Chattanooga, Tennessee, young Loveman secured an appointment to Annapolis and graduated with his 61-person class in June 1900, back in the days when Mids would have to serve some time with the fleet before picking up their first stripe. Ordered to the Asiatic Station in the battleship Kearsarge, he was assigned once he got there to the recycled captured former Spanish 99-foot gunboat, USS Mariveles, under the command of Lt. (future Fleet Adm) William Leahy.

On the morning of 26 October 1901, Noa led a force of six blue jackets in a small boat to interdict waterborne smugglers between Leyte and Samar. However, with their little boat taking on water, they were forced ashore at the latter, while scouting the adjacent jungle, Noa was attacked and stabbed four times by Filipino insurgents then struck in the head and left for dead. SECNAV Josephus Daniels later wrote Noa’s mother during the Great War to inform her that a new destroyer would be named in her son’s honor.

Laid down at Norfolk Navy Yard a week after Armistice Day in Europe, USS Noa was appropriately sponsored by Midshipman Noa’s sister and commissioned 15 February 1921.

Launch of USS Hulbert 342 & USS Noa 343 on June 28, 1919 (Historic Norfolk Navy Yard Glass Plate Collection, #2273 taken on 6/28/1919

USS Noa (DD-343) at Norfolk Navy Yard, February 11, 1921. From the collection of Lawrence Archambault NHHC Accession #: S-526

Starboard side view of Clemson-class destroyer USS Noa (DD-343) NH 68341

In May 1922, Noa was assigned to her namesake’s old stomping ground, the Asiatic station, which she reached via a flag-waving cruise through the Mediterranean to the Suez, to and Aden and across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon then on to Singapore. For the next seven years, the destroyer would see some very active service in the Philippines and China.

Clemson-class destroyers photographed during the early 1920s. USS Noa (DD-343) in the foreground, with USS Peary (DD-226) in the background. NH 44864

While in China service, she would land a force to guard U.S. interests in Shanghai for two weeks between 25 July and 10 Aug 1925, earning an Expeditionary Medal.

In Nanking as part of a reinforced Yangtze Patrol from January through August 1927, Sailors from Noa and sistership USS William B. Preston (DD-344) put a small landing party ashore to protect refugees at the American consulate and later, with British Tars from the cruiser HMS Emerald, assembled a 250-man landing party ashore to protect escaping refugees from marauding Kuomintang regulars, sweeping into the city to seize it from Yangtze warlord Sun Chuan-Feng’s defeated troops.

A good reference to this event is the Yangtze Patrol by Kemp Tolley and “U.S.S. Noa And the Fall of Nanking” by CPT Ronald Pineau in the November 1955 issue of the USNI’s Proceedings.

Pineau interestingly details how Noa dispatched a low-key guard force to the U.S. consulate, saying

Anticipating that an armed party would surely be barred, Noa’s captain called on the Consul to provide private cars for trans­portation. Pistols were concealed under uni­form coats, field packs were stowed under rugs on the floorboards and, without con­sulting local authorities, the party drove through to the Consulate…A machine gun and am­munition were later smuggled into the American Consulate.

At one point, taking sniper fire from the shore and with 102 refugees aboard, Noa’s skipper, LCDR Roy C. Smith, Jr., ordered his No. 1 and No. 2 4-inchers to open fire on a building where the fire was coming from, an act that Preston soon joined her in. In all, the two Clemsons would fire 67 shells and “thousands of rifle and machinegun rounds.” Smith’s 13-year-old son would also be pressed into helping ferry shells, an act that he would later, as a retired Captain, describe as making him the “last powder monkey.”

Notes Pineau:

Captain Smith of the U.S.S. Noa remarked as he opened fire at Nanking, that he would get either a court-martial or a medal for it. That re­mark should be blazoned in every office, workshop, and institution of the land. It is the willingness to accept the obloquy without complaint, should it come, that makes the reward worth having.

USS Noa (DD-343) dressed in flags at Shanghai, China, while celebrating the Fourth of July 1927. NH 90000

Returning Stateside 14 August 1929 for an overhaul at Mare Island, Noa shifted her homeport from Cavite to San Diego where she served on duties as varied over the next half-decade as a plane guard for the new aircraft carriers USS Langley (CV-1) and USS Saratoga (CV-3), helping with the development of early carrier-group tactics. However, with the downturn in the U.S. economy, she was detailed to red lead row in Philadelphia in 1934 and mothballed.

Enter the destroyer-seaplane concept

In the Fall of 1923, while Noa was deployed half-way around the world, one of her sisters, the Clemson-class destroyer USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294), had a seaplane temporarily installed.

Naval Aircraft Factory TS-1 floatplane (BuNo A-6300) the Clemson-class destroyer USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294) circa 1923 NH 98820

The mounting took place in Hampton Roads and involved a TS-1 floatplane from the nearby Naval Air Station. Installed on a static platform on 29 August, Ausburn went to sea for two days for experimental trails with the floatplane aft while aircrew from USS Langley were attached to study how it endured while underway on the 314-foot tin can– although the plane was not launched from the destroyer and Ausburn had no facilities for fuel, recovery, or launching.

Ausburn returned to Norfolk on 3 September and the TS-1 was craned off. The destroyer was later used in 1925 “to provide plane guard service in the round-the-world flight of Army aircraft, maintaining stations off Greenland and Newfoundland for the historic event,” but never embarked an aircraft again.

Fast forward to 1 April 1940 and, with a new World War in Europe, Noa was dusted off and reactivated at Philadelphia. In a further test of concept, she was fitted with a Curtiss XSOC-1 Seagull seaplane just forward of the after deckhouse, replacing her after torpedo tubes. A boom for lifting the aircraft was stepped in place of the mainmast.

As noted by DANFS:

She steamed for the Delaware Capes in May and conducted tests with an XSOC-1 seaplane piloted by Lt. G. L. Heap. The plane was hoisted onto the ocean for takeoff and then recovered by Noa while the ship was underway. Lt. Heap also made an emergency flight 15 May to transfer a sick man to the Naval Hospital at Philadelphia.

Such dramatic demonstrations convinced the Secretary of the Navy that destroyer-based scout planes had value, and 27 May he directed that six new destroyers of the soon-to-be-constructed Fletcher Class (DD-476 to DD-481) be fitted with catapults and handling equipment. Because of mechanical deficiencies in the hoisting gear, the program was canceled early in 1943.

The concept thus failed to mature as a combat technique, but the destroyer-observation seaplane team was to be revived under somewhat modified conditions during later amphibious operations.

XSOC-1 Seagull floatplane aboard USS Noa. Photos from Henri L. Sans via USSNoaDD841.com

USS Noa (DD-343) insignia circa 1940, showing “winged spinach can” with Popeye at the controls, denoting NOA’s affiliation with aviation duties. She carried a Curtiss SOC-1 Seagull beginning April 1940. Note the destroyer underway on a distant Earth in the background. NH 83946-KN

A second variation of the insignia, NH 83945-KN

Six Fletchers would go on to receive Kingfishers, briefly, ordered immediately after Noa’s short trial with her Seagull. To support the floatplane they had space for 1,780 gals of AvGas installed on deck surrounded by a cofferdam of CO2 for safety purposes. The magazine normally used by the 5-inch gun (Mount 53) removed for the catapult installation was repurposed for the Kingfisher’s bombs and depth charges as well as aircraft tools. Berthing was allocated for a pilot, ordie/gunner and aviation mechanic.

Fletcher-class destroyer USS Halford (DD 480) 14 July 1943 with an O2SU seaplane on the catapult.  (National Archives, photo 80-G-276691.)

Lt. Heap, Noa’s sole aviator, went on to command an airwing, Carrier Air Group Eighty-Two aboard USS Bennington (CV-20) during WWII.

Speaking of the war…

Noa would spend the remainder of the next three years in service to train Midshipmen, provide an afloat platform for the Sonar School at Key West, and operate as a plane guard for the East Coast shakedown of the new Yorktown-class carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), between stints in patrol, rescue, and convoy escort duties.

Spring Paint Job, May 2, 1941. From the original caption, “This year the Navy is painting up, but the traditional light war-color that once gleamed so cleanly in the sun is gone. In its place is the new almost, oxford-grey, color [seen in the image below] that so easily escapes detection in northern waters. USS Noah (DD 343) as she goes through her stages of dressing. Note, the old Coast Guard cutter USS Bear (AG 29) before in stark contrast. U.S. Navy Photograph Lot-854-11: Photographed through Mylar sleeve.

USS Noah (DD 343) This image has her after her new paint scheme, which seems quite a bit darker than haze grey. Lot-854-12

In the summer of 1943, Noa was converted at Norfolk to a “Green Dragon,” a high-speed transport and was reclassified as APD-24 on 10 August 1943.

Some 14 Clemson-class destroyers were similarly converted as APDs, a process that saw the forward fireroom converted to short-term accommodations for up to 200 Marines, with the front two boilers and smokestacks removed. Also deleted were the topside torpedo tubes, replaced with davits for a quartet of LCPL or LCVP landing craft. They could still make 26 knots and float in just 10 feet of seawater.

USS Kane (DD-235 / APD-18): Booklet of General Plans – Outboard Profile / Main Deck NARA 75842398

USS BROOKS (APD-10), former Clemson-class destroyer DD-232, showing the typical APD conversion, of which Noa received. Caption: In San Francisco Bay, California, 24 August 1944. Courtesy of A.D. Baker III., 1981 NH 91790

Class leader USS CLEMSON (APD-31), also showing her APD conversion. Off the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, 21 April 1944.Courtesy of A.D. Baker III., 1981 NH 91795

Noa steamed for Pearl Harbor 4 November 1943 and by early December was a landing craft control ship off New Guinea, very much in the middle of the war in the Pacific. On the day after Christmas, she landed 144 officers and men of the First Marine Division on Cape Gloucester.

Early 1944 saw her active in the amphibious landings at Green Island, Emerau Island, and Hollandia before she ran back to Pearl in May to gather units of the Second Marine Division for landings on Saipan.

In September, while steaming to Palau with UDT members aboard for demo work there, Noa was rammed by the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Fullman (DD-474) at 0350, 12 September and immediately began to settle. Despite the heroic efforts of her crew and others, she slipped beneath the waves seven hours later but gratefully carried no Blue Jackets with her.

USS FULLAM (DD-474) recovers NOA’s survivors as USS HONOLULU (CL-48) stands by in the background, in the morning on 12 September 1944. NOA sank after being rammed by USS FULLAM (DD-474) while both were en route to the invasion of Peleliu. The original caption with the photo has Noa being hit by a Japanese mine. National Archives 80-G-287120

Survivors of USS Noa (APD-24) sunk near Peleliu after being rammed by Fullam on September 12– as seen from the ill-fated USS Indianapolis (CA 35), September 15, 1944. At the extreme right, the Executive Officer is interviewing one of the survivors. 80-G-287125

USS Noa received an Expeditionary Medal for her 1925 China service, the Yangtze Service Medal for her 1927 saga in Shanghai, and five battle stars for World War II service.

Noa II

Keen to quickly recycle the names of historic ships lost during the war, the Navy soon re-issued “Noa” to a Gearing-class destroyer (DD-841) then building at Bath Ironworks. Commissioned 2 November 1945, the greyhound would give 28 years of steady Cold War service without firing a shot in anger before her transfer to Spain as Blas de Lezo (D65) for another 13 years.

The second and final USS NOA, Destroyer No. 841, giving her submarine imitation.

Perhaps the best-known entry on the second Noa’s service record is her recovery of the famous Mercury space program capsule FRIENDSHIP 7 and astronaut Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr., USMC, off the island of Grand Turk after their first human-manned orbit of the globe, 20 February 1962. The Noa picked Glenn up just 21 minutes after impact. In the 13 years of NASA programs with crew splashdowns, from Mercury’s Freedom 7 through Skylab 4, only two destroyers, Noa and USS Leonard F. Mason (DD-852) recovered astronauts and launch capsules.

Glenn signing autographs on the Noa after recovery, and FRIENDSHIP 7 being taken aboard the destroyer. Photos: NHHC NHF-016.01 and NASA

The famous photograph of Glenn maxing and relaxing with aviator shades and Chuck Taylors was snapped on Noa’s deck before he was transferred to the carrier USS Randolph (CV-15), which was the primary recovery ship.

Surely channeling the same spirit of the Winged Spinach Can (Photo: NASA) https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_534.html

A Veteran’s organization to both Noa I and Noa II is maintained.

Epilogue

The original Clemson-class Noa is remembered by a 1/400 scale model by Mirage Hobby, depicted with her XSOC-1 embarked.

As for her sisters, seven Clemson’s were lost at the disaster at Honda Point in 1923, and 18 (including six used by the British) were lost in WWII including one, USS Stewart (DD-224), which was famously raised by the Japanese and used in their Navy only to be recaptured by the USN and given a watery grave after the war.

Those four-pipers not sold off in the 1930s or otherwise sent to Davy Jones were scrapped wholesale in the months immediately after WWII. Sister USS Hatfield (DD-231) decommissioned 13 December 1946 and was sold for scrap 9 May 1947 to NASSCO, the last of her kind in the Navy.

The final Clemson afloat, USS Aulick (DD-258), joined the Royal Navy as HMS Burnham (H82) in 1940 as part of the “Destroyers for Bases” deal. Laid up in 1944, she was allocated for scrapping on 3 December 1948.

None are preserved and only the scattered wrecks in the Western Pacific, Honda Point, the Med and Atlantic endure.

For more information on the Clemsons and their like, read CDR John Alden’s book, “Flush Decks and Four Pipes” and/or check out the Destroyer History Foundation’s section on Flushdeckers. 

As for the late Loveman Noa, while Uncle does not have a vessel on the current Naval List in his honor, he is remembered by a circa 1910 memorial tablet at Annapolis and is enshrined in Memorial Hall, one of six members of the Class of 1900 so recorded. His descendants apparently also have a memorial of their own to the young Mid who breathed his last on a beach in Samar.

And, of course, aircraft operations are standard on U.S. Navy destroyers today and have been since the FRAM’d Gearing and Sumner-class destroyers of the 1950s/60s, with their dedicated DASH drones, and the full-on helicopter decks of the follow-on Belknap-class destroyer leaders.

Then came the Spru-cans.

Photo taken by Bath Iron Works as USS HAYLER left Portland, ME on sea trials in the Gulf of Maine May 1992 after she had received the vertical launching system, SQQ-89 ASW system with towed array sonar, enlarged hangar and RAST and upgrades SLQ-32 and CIWS. Via Navsource

And today’s Burkes.

200304-N-NK931-1001 PHILIPPINE SEA (Mar. 4 2020) Landing Signalmen Enlisted (LSE), assigned to the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52), directs night flight operations of an MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter, assigned to the “Saberhawks” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 77, during the U.S.-Japan Bilateral Advanced Warfighting Training exercise (BAWT). (U.S. Navy photo by Ensign Samuel Hardgrove)

Specs:

Noa, April 1940, via Blueprints.com

Displacement:
1,215 tons (normal)
1,308 tons (full load)
Length: 314 ft. 4.5 in
Beam: 30 ft. 11.5 in
Draft: 9 ft. 4 in
Propulsion:
4 × boilers, 300 psi (2,100 kPa) saturated steam
2 geared steam turbines
27,600 hp (20,600 kW)
2 shafts
Speed: 35.5 knots
Range: 4,900 nmi (9,100 km) @ 15 knots
Crew: (USN as commissioned)
8 officers
8 chief petty officers
106 enlisted
Armament:
(1920)
4- 4″/51 cal guns
1 x 3″/23 cal AAA
12 × 21-inch torpedo tubes (4 × 3) (533 mm)

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Swim Call! 75 years ago

Posted on by 2 comments

“USS Halford (DD-480). Men swimming from the ship, in the South Pacific, 8 May 1944.”

(NHHC: 80-G-256443)

A Fletcher-class destroyer, Halford was built by Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and commissioned on 10 April 1943. Sailing straight for Guadalcanal, she was in the thick of the Pacific War and from Dec. 1943 to Sept 1945– just 22 months, she earned an impressive 13 battle stars. Decommissioned 15 May 1946, she went into mothballs at the ripe old age of three and was scrapped in 1970.