Fletcher class in Action
The Fletcher class ships had a strong armament, long range, reliability, and irrepressible toughness. Some of their success came by inheritance; most units joined the fleet after the early, unpleasant lessons of night combat against the Japanese. However, the Fletchers presented the perfect vehicle for exploiting those lessons, achieving utter triumph at Cape St. George and Surigao Strait.” Also, most of the losses among the Fletcher and Sumner classes resulted from kamikaze attacks. In many cases the ships survived, but the navy in that stage in the war didn’t bother to repair them.
The first ships of the class saw action in the Solomons during the Guadalcanal campaign. In November 1942 Fletcher destroyers DD-445, DD-449 and DD-450 engaged the Japanese Navy for the first time. Fletcher and O’Bannon took part in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal where O’Bannon was one of several destroyers that ganged up on the Japanese Battleship Hiei at ranges as low as 500 yards causing heavy damage to the Battleship which was sunk by naval aircraft the following day. The O’Bannon would be awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for her actions around Guadalcanal.
On 1st February 1943, after numerous bomb strikes, the USS "De Haven" sank off the Solomons and was the first vessel of this class to be a total loss. Chevalier, Strong, De Haven and Brownson were lost in the confused actions which followed the landings on Guadalcanal.
Two, the Hoel and Johnston, were sunk during the tremendous fight against heavy odds between Admiral Sprague's escort carriers and the Japanese fleet off Samar in October 1944, while the Spence and Abner Read were sunk by air attack during the landings in Leyte Gulf.
From April to July 1945 - particularly in the Battle of Okinawa - another eleven destroyers fell victim to kamikaze attack. The worst losses were suffered during the assault on Okinawa, when kamikazes and gunfire accounted for the Hutchins, Pringle, Leutze, Thatcher, Luce, Bush, Evans, Haggard, Longshaw, Morrison, William D Porter, Bell, Twiggs, Callaghan, Halligan, Colhoun and Little. The majority of these were not sunk outright, but were so badly damaged that they were written off as not worth repair.
Hoel succumbed to a traditional fate beneath an avalanche of Japanese gunfire: 40 shells, ranging from five-inch to 16.1 inch, stopped her dead in the water, and subsequent hits finished her off. Johnston received 4,700 pounds of incoming ordnance within the space of one minute. It wrecked half of her machinery, yet she continued at 17 knots. Commander Ernest Edwin Evans was the Commanding Officer of the USS JOHNSTON (DD-557), a Fletcher class destroyer which fought Japanese forces in the battle off Samar on October 25, 1944. Evans was a true warrior who, upon taking command of the newly commissioned vessel on October 27, 1943, told his crew, "This is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go in harm's way, and anyone who doesn't want to go along had better get off right now."
Evans was awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Johnston in action against major units of the enemy Japanese fleet during the battle off Samar on 25 October 1944. The first to lay a smokescreen and to open fire as an enemy task force, vastly superior in number, firepower and armor, rapidly approached. Comdr. Evans gallantly diverted the powerful blasts of hostile guns from the lightly armed and armored carriers under his protection, launching the first torpedo attack when the Johnston came under straddling Japanese shellfire.
Undaunted by damage sustained under the terrific volume of fire, he unhesitatingly joined others of his group to provide fire support during subsequent torpedo attacks against the Japanese and, outshooting and outmaneuvering the enemy as he consistently interposed his vessel between the hostile fleet units and our carriers despite the crippling loss of engine power and communications with steering aft, shifted command to the fantail, shouted steering orders through an open hatch to men turning the rudder by hand and battled furiously until the Johnston, burning and shuddering from a mortal blow, lay dead in the water after 3 hours of fierce combat. Seriously wounded early in the engagement, Comdr. Evans, by his indomitable courage and brilliant professional skill, aided materially in turning back the enemy during a critical phase of the action.
Destroyer Squadron Twenty-One's proud history began in March, 1943, when the first ships of the then-new Fletcher class, having been deployed to Guadalcanal in the southwestern Pacific's Solomon Islands, were organized as Destroyer Squadron Twenty One, part of Admrial William F. Halsey's Third Fleet. Over the next three years, Fletcher, Radford, Jenkins, La Vallette, Nicholas (flagship), O'Bannon, Chevalier, Strong, Taylor, Ross, and Hopewell served in the front line and collectively earned three Presidential Unit Citations, a Navy Unit Commendation and 118 battle stars. Then in 1945, Admiral Halsey chose the three survivors of this most decorated destroyer squadron - Nicholas, O'Bannon, and Taylor - to escort his flagship Missouri into Tokyo Bay "because of their valorous fight up the long road from the South Pacific to the very end."
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