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Asked Questions page. Recollections of Commander Frederick Julian Becton, USN, Commanding Officer of the destroyer USS Laffey (DD-724) which, despite being struck by eight Japanese suicide (kamikaze) aircraft on 16 April 1945, did not sink.
Adapted from Frederick Julian Becton
interview in box 2 of World War II Interviews, Operational Archives
Branch, Naval Historical Center.
I am Commander Frederick Julian Becton, Commanding Officer
of the USS Laffey. The Laffey was built in Bath,
Maine and was commissioned in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Navy
Yard on February 8th, 1944.
After a brief shakedown period, the ship participated in the Normandy
Invasion in June 1944, after which she took part in the Cherbourg
[France] bombardment on June 25th, 1944 and suffered an eight-inch
[German artillery shell] hit which fortunately did not explode.
Upon returning to the States for repairs and alterations, the
ship proceeded to the Pacific and joined Admiral [William F. "Bull"]
Halsey's Third Fleet in November, 1944, for strikes against the
Philippine Islands during the month of November.
The ship joined the 7th Fleet under Admiral Kinkaid at Leyte Gulf
[Philippines] in early December, 1944 and took part in the landing
of the 77th Division of the U.S. Army at Ormoc Bay, on December
7th, 1944. This was our first experience with the Kamikaze Suicide
Corps [units of Japanese aircraft turned into flying bombs intended
to be crashed by their pilots into U.S. Navy ships to sink or
severely damage them]. The ship and the whole convoy were under
incessant attacks from about 10 o'clock in the morning until dark
that evening.
The next landing the ship participated in was at Mindoro on December
15,1944.
The next landing was about two weeks later when the ship left
Leyte Gulf on January 2nd, and proceeded to Lingayen Gulf [also
in the Philippines] to assist with the softening up activities
and bombardment prior to the Army landing on January 9th, 1945.
We remained in the Lingayen Gulf area until about the 22nd of
January and then proceeded to join Admiral Mitcher's task force
at Ulithi.
Participated in Tokyo Strikes.
The next operation in which the ship participated was the strikes
on Tokyo in mid-February 1945, after which the carrier task groups
headed south to support the Iwo Jima landing. We went back for
the second strikes on Tokyo about the 24th of February, and returning
from that, went into Ulithi where we remained until we were ready
for the Okinawa operation.
We departed Ulithi for the Okinawa landings on the 21st of March,
arrived at Okinawa the 24th of March, and performed screening
duties with the battleships and cruisers [protecting them from
Japanese aircraft and submarines] who were bombarding the beaches
until the major landing on April 1st, 1945. Thereafter, we took
up station to the north of Okinawa at radar picket station number
one about 35 miles north of Okinawa [these picket stations gave
advance warning of the approach of enemy aircraft or ships].
Our tour of duty on this picket station was uneventful until the
morning of April 16th, when we underwent a concentrated attack
by Japanese suicide planes. The attack commenced about 8:27 [a.m.]
when we were attacked by four Vals [single-engine Japanese Aichi
D3A naval dive bomber with a 2-man crew], which split, two heading
for our bow and two swinging around to attack us from the stern.
We shot down three of these and combined with a nearby LCS [support
landing craft] in splashing the fourth one. Then two other planes
came in from either bow, both of which were shot down by us. It
was about the seventh plane that we were firing on that finally
crashed into us amidships and started a huge fire. This marked
us as a cripple with the flames and smoke billowing up from the
ship and the Japs really went to work on us after that.
Two planes came in quick succession from astern and crashed into
our after [rear of the ship] five-inch twin mount. The first one
carried a bomb which exploded on deck. The second one dropped
its bomb on deck before crashing into the after mount. Shortly
thereafter, two more planes came in on the port quarter crashing
into the deckhouse just forward of the crippled after five-inch
mount. This sent a flood of gasoline into the two compartments
below the after crew's head [bathroom] and with the fire that
was already raging in the after crew's compartment just aft of
the five-inch mount number three, we now had fires going in all
of the after three living spaces, besides the big fire topside
in the vicinity of the number four 40 mm [antiaircraft gun] mount.
The two planes... no, the next one was a plane from our port quarter
that dropped a bomb just about our port [left] propeller and jammed
our rudder [steering mechanism] when it was 26 degrees left.
Strafed by Approaching Plane.
The next plane came from the port bow, knocked off our yardarm
[a horizontally-mounted spar on the radar/radio mast], and a [F4U]
Corsair [single engine US fighter with a 1-man crew] chasing it,
knocked off our Sugar Charlie [SC air search] radar. Then a plane
came in from the port bow carrying a big bomb and was shot down
close aboard [in the water near the ship's side]. A large bomb
fragment from the exploding bomb knocked out the power in our
number two five- inch mount which is the one just forward of the
bridge. Shortly thereafter this mount, in manual control, knocked
down an Oscar [single-engine Japanese Nakajima Ki-43, Army-type
fighter with a 1-man crew] coming in on our starboard bow [from
the right-front of the ship] when it was about 500 yards from
the ship. At the same time the alert mount captain of number one
five- inch mount sighted a Val diving on the ship from the starboard
bow, took it under fire and knocked it down about 500 yards from
the ship using Victor Tare projectiles. The next plane came yardarm
as it pulled out of its dive. It was shot down by the Corsairs
ahead of the ship.
The next plane came in from the starboard bow strafing [firing
its machine guns] as it approached and dropped a bomb just below
the bridge which wiped out our two 20 mms [antiaircraft guns]
in that area and killed some of the people in the wardroom [officers'
dining and social compartment] battle dressing station. This plane
did not try to crash either, and was shot down, after passing
over the ship, by our fighter cover.
The last plane that attacked the ship came in from the port bow,
and was shot down by the combined fire of the Corsair pilots and
our own machine guns, and struck the water close aboard and skidded
into the side of the ship, denting the ship's side but causing
no damage.
The action had lasted an hour and 20 minutes. We had been attacked
by 22 planes, nine of which we had shot down unassisted, eight
planes had struck the ship, seven of them with suicidal intent,
two of these seven did practically no damage other than knocking
off yardarms. Five of these seven did really heavy material damage
and killed a lot of our personnel. We had only four of our original
eleven .20 mm mounts still in commission. Eight of the original
12 barrels of our .40 mm mounts could still shoot but only in
local control, all electrical power to them being gone and our
after five-inch mount was completely destroyed. Our engines were
still intact.
The fires were still out of control and we were slowly flooding
aft. Our rudder was still jammed and remained jammed until we
reached port. We tried every engine combination possible to try
to make a little headway to the southward but all no avail. We
had lost 33 men, killed or missing, about 60 others had been wounded
and approximately 30 of these were seriously wounded.
The morning of our attack off Okinawa we had a CAP [combat air
patrol] of about 10 planes over us. It was entirely inadequate
for the number of attacking Jap planes. Our own radar operators
said that they saw as many as 50 bogies [Japanese aircraft] approaching
the ship from the north just prior to the attack. Many more planes
were undoubtedly sent to our assistance and quite a large number
of Jap planes were undoubtedly shot down outside of our own gun
range and to the north of us that morning. When the attack was
all over we had a CAP of 24 planes protecting us.
Threw live bomb over the side.
One of the highlights of the action occurred when Lieutenant T.W.
Runk, [spelled] R-U-N-K, USNR, who was the Communications Officer
on the Laffey at the time, went aft to try to free the
rudder. He had to clear his way through debris and plane wreckage
to reach the fantail [rearmost deck on the ship] and, on his way
back to the steering engine room, saw an unexploded bomb on deck
which he promptly tossed over the side. His example of courage
and daring was one of the most inspiring ones on the Laffey
that morning.
Another example of resourcefulness exhibited that morning came
when two of the engineers, who were fighting fires in one of the
after compartments, were finally driven by the heat of the planes
[flames] into the after Diesel generator room. The heat from the
burning gasoline scorched the paint on the inside of the Diesel
generator room where there was no ventilation whatsoever. The
acrid fumes almost suffocated these two men but they called the
officer in charge of the after engine room, which was in adjacent
compartment, and told him of their predicament. He immediately
had one of the men beat a hole through the bulkhead with a hammer
and chisel and then, with and electric drill, cut a larger hole
to put an air hose through to give them sufficient air until they
could be rescued. At the same time other engineering personnel
had cleared away the plane wreckage on the topside and with an
oxime acetylene torch cut a hole through the deck which enabled
these two men to escape. Upon reaching the topside, both of them
turned to fighting the fires in the after part of the ship.
The morning after the action we removed one engine from the inside
of the after five-inch mount which had been completely destroyed
and which had had its port side completely blown off by the explosion
of the initial plane, which was carrying a bomb when it crashed
into this mount. The second plane which crashed into that mount
had also done great damage to it. And the next morning we pulled
one engine out of the inside of the mount and another engine was
sitting beside the mount with the remains of the little Jap pilot
just aft of the engine. There was very little left of him, however.
We transferred our injured personnel to a smaller ship that afternoon,
which took them immediately to Okinawa. We were taken in tow by
a light mine-sweeper in the early afternoon, about three hours
after the attack and the mine-sweeper turned the tow over a short
time later to a tug, which had been sent to our rescue. Another
tug came alongside us to assist in pumping out our flooded spaces
and with one tug towing us and the other alongside pumping us,
we reached Okinawa early the next morning.
Put soft patches on hull.
After reaching Okinawa and pumping out all our flooded spaces,
we put soft patches on four small holes we found in the underwater
body in the after part of the ship. It took about five days to
patch the ship up sufficiently for it to start the journey back
to Pearl Harbor.
After leaving Okinawa we proceeded to Saipan and thence to Eniwetok
and from Eniwetok on to Pearl Harbor.
About the seventh plane that attacked us, it came in on the port
bow and he was low on the water and I kept on turning with about
25 degrees left rudder towards him to try to keep him on the beam.
He swung back towards our stern and then cut in directly towards
our stern and then cut in directly towards the ship. I kept turning
to port to try to keep him on the beam and concentrate the maximum
gunfire on him and as we turned, we could see him skidding farther
aft all the time. I finally saw that he wouldn't quite make [it
to hit] the bridge but then I was afraid he was going to strike
the hull in the vicinity of the engine room, but about a hundred
yards out from the ship, he finally straightened out and went
over the fantail nicking the edge of five-inch mount three and
then crashed into the water beyond the ship.
Of course, many people have various ideas about how to avoid these
Kamikazes but the consensus of opinion, so far as I know, to try
to keep them on the beam [i.e., coming in on a 90- degree angle
to the long axis of the ship, or directly from the side] as much
as possible or one reason to concentrate the maximum gunfire on
them as they approached. And another reason is to give them less
danger space by exposing just the beam of the ship rather than
the quarter of the bow for them to attack from. The danger space
is much less if they come in from the beam than it would be if
they came in from ahead or from astern and had the whole length
of the ship to choose in which to crash into. High speed and the
twin rudders, with which 2200 ton destroyers are equipped, were
believed to have been vital factors in saving our ship that morning
off Okinawa.
Interviewer:
Captain Becton, were you on some other destroyer in the early
part of the war?
Commander Becton:
Yes, I was in the [USS] Aaron Ward [DD-483] in the early
part of the war. I was in the [USS] Gleaves [DD-423] when
the war was first declared, but went to the Aaron Ward
a short time after that as Chief Engineer, fleeted up [was promoted]
to Exec[utive Officer - second in command] and was in there when
she went through that night action off Guadalcanal the night of
12-13 November 1942. We were hit by nine shells that night, varying
between 5 and 14 inches, but fortunately they were all well above
the water line. We were towed into Tulagi [an island near Guadalcanal]
the next day and later repaired.
Interviewer:
Were you also on board when the Ward went down?
Commander Becton:
Yes, I was on board the Aaron Ward when she sank off Guadalcanal
in April, 1943. After that I went to the squadron staff of ComDesRon
[Commander, Destroyer Squadron] 21 and went through three surface
actions in the [USS] Nicholas [DD-449]. The first of these
was the night of 6 July, in the First Battle of Kolombangara or
Kula Gulf when the [light cruiser USS] Helena [CL-50] was
sunk. The Nicholas and the [destroyer USS] Radford
[DD-446] stayed behind after the cruisers and other destroyers
retired to pick up the Helena's survivors and fight a surface
action with Jap ships that were still there in Kula Gulf.
The next surface action we were in came a week later when the
same outfit of destroyers and cruisers attacked some more Jap
cruisers and destroyers that were coming down from the northwest.
We operated under Admiral Ainesworth that night. The destroyers
were under the overall command of Captain McInerney.
After that the next surface action we were in was after the occupation
of Vella Lavella, in which we took on some Jap destroyers and
barges [towed craft carrying troops or cargo] to the north of
Vella Lavella in a night action. The destroyers turned and ran
and left their barges and we couldn't catch the destroyers. We
did some damage to them, possibly destroyed some, but the major
damage was done to the barges which they had left behind and many
of which we sank.
Note: USS Laffey survived WWII and is now a memorial
ship which can be visited at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime
Museum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.