The Formation of a Crew
Born in Bath Maine
With an already famous name
The crew got her in shape
For her destiny with fate.
—“An Ode to the USS Laffey (DD-724),” Gunner’s Mate Owen Radder
“An Officer Is Supposed to Worry about His Men First”
The men who battled so gallantly in April 1945 took their cue from their skipper, Commander F. Julian Becton. A man of considerable combat experience, Becton was born in Des Arc, Arkansas, on May 15, 1908. He became interested in the Navy in 1925 while in high school, when an aunt mailed photographs of the Naval Academy to the family. Becton, who had already been attracted by billboards touting “Join the Navy and see the world,” marked Annapolis as his destination.
After graduating in 1931, Becton quickly rose through the ranks. He served aboard two battleships and two destroyers, absorbing valuable knowledge in the ships’ engineering departments. In 1935 he journeyed to China, where he served as engineering officer aboard first a gunboat and then a destroyer.
Along the way he started what became a lifelong habit of writing down words of famous individuals he found meaningful. One of his favorites came from an 1897 speech Civil War General John M. Schofield delivered at West Point, in which he reminded the cadets how important it was to treat the men under their command with respect, for “the differences among men are far less than they generally seem.” General Schofield added, “the road to military honor will be guarded all the way by the hearts of those who may be your subordinates. You cannot travel that road unless you command those hearts.”1
A two-year stint at the Naval Academy to teach marine engineering interrupted his Pacific duty. In 1940 Becton returned to those waters as engineering officer on the USS Gleaves (DD-423), followed by a posting to the destroyer USS Aaron Ward (DD-483) as executive officer.
Following the outbreak of war, the Aaron Ward steamed to the South Pacific as part of the United States’s August 1942 effort to seize the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia. A series of dramatic naval clashes unfolded in the waters about Guadalcanal, including the November 13 nighttime encounter known as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. In that action the Aaron Ward joined five cruisers and six destroyers under the command of Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan to prevent a stronger Japanese force from bombarding American forces on Guadalcanal.
A widespread melée erupted. Japanese and American vessels darted through the darkened waters, rapidly firing at enemy targets while just as quickly trying to evade incoming shells. “It was disorganized. It was individual [action], with every ship for herself,”2 recalled Becton later.
Though the American forces sustained heavy damage—nine shells struck Becton’s Aaron Ward, killing fifteen and wounding fifty-seven—they turned back the Japanese and safeguarded for the moment the troops and aircraft ashore. Becton did not fail to notice that an aggressive commander like Callaghan, even though he lost his life in the encounter, could defy the odds and snatch victory from a more potent foe.
Becton learned another lesson that night. One mile astern from the Aaron Ward the destroyer USS Laffey (DD-459) went down after a stout fight in which the gun crews maintained fire until their shipmates could abandon ship. Becton never forgot the heroism exhibited by the Laffey and made a silent promise that, if he ever commanded a ship, he would try to perform as valiantly.
“Later on in World War II,” wrote Becton, “when it came time for me to take Laffey’s successor into battle, I could never forget the example she set for all of us in those brief final minutes of her life. Thus the story of the first Laffey’s last fight is an inseparable part of the tale I have to tell.”3
With Becton aboard, the damaged Aaron Ward was towed to safety, repaired at Pearl Harbor, and in late March 1943 returned to the South Pacific with a new commander—Becton. Three weeks later, on April 7, 1943, while the Aaron Ward escorted an LST (Landing Ship, Tank) near Savo Island in the Solomons, two waves of Japanese aircraft attacked the destroyer. One delay action bomb punctured an eighteen-inch hole in the after engine room before exploding inside, which, according to Becton’s action report, “raised the deck above the after engine room about ten inches and riddled it with shrapnel holes.” Four near misses hit within five yards of the damaged destroyer, “rocking it violently and seeming to practically lift it out of the water.”4 The attack left twenty men dead and seven others wounded.
The crew exerted every effort to save the Aaron Ward. Becton’s communications officer, Lieutenant (jg) David W. Riesmeyer, recalled that “we worked below, stuffing mattresses, pillows, towels and anything we could get into the holes and shored them up with timbers, but it was a hopeless task.”5 The ship had absorbed too much damage to remain afloat.
Becton safely extricated the survivors, but the loss of his shipmates and of his first ship haunted him. “Long after it happened I continued to feel I could have done more to prevent it,” he wrote. He added that “her loss depressed me and my memories of it were painful.”6
In his action report Becton cited his “gallant crew and officers” as being “splendid in their conduct during the action and in their later efforts to save the ship.” He remarked that the crew was “particularly desirous of staying together and of getting back on a fighting ship to soon avenge the deaths of their heroic shipmates.”7 Becton, who shared the same aggressive spirit as his crew, longed for a second shot as skipper of a ship, where he could both prove his worth as a commander and inflict retribution on the Japanese for what they had done to his first crew.
Though Becton had to wait six months before receiving another command, he was far from deskbound. His first posting, as operations officer on the staff of the commander of Destroyer Squadron Twenty-One, placed him in the middle of three surface actions in the Solomons—the July 6, 1943, Battle of Kula Gulf, the July 13 action off Kolombangara, and the August 17–18 fighting off Vella Lavella.
For those actions, Becton received the Silver Star. According to the citation, Becton helped coordinate “the attacks of the vanguard destroyers of a cruiser-destroyer force in which several enemy ships were sunk and many damaged.” He then orchestrated a successful destroyer charge against attacking Japanese ships, which “caused the destruction of two destroyers, severe damage to a third and the annihilation of a number of landing barges.”8
As a participant in some of the fiercest destroyer actions in the South Pacific, and earlier as skipper of a destroyer, Becton gained indispensable experience in ship navigation and learned how to manage a crew. “An officer is supposed to worry about his men first, then think about himself,”9 Becton said. The harsh experiences of 1942–1943 fashioned Becton into the officer he became in 1944.
In November orders returned Becton to the United States. When he arrived at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington, DC, superiors greeted him with the news that he would be the skipper for a vessel still under construction at Bath, Maine—the USS Laffey (DD-724). Honored at commanding the namesake of the ship he saw battle so admirably in 1942, and intent on living up to the honor bestowed by the Silver Star, Becton vowed to maintain that proud heritage and to ensure the second Laffey did not suffer the same fate as her predecessor or the Aaron Ward.
“It was going to take some doing to live up to her record,” he wrote. “I wanted her to match Laffey’s record of accomplishment in battle. But I also wanted her to do that with as few or fewer casualties as we had had when Aaron Ward was lost. I vowed that I would do everything in my power to make this possible. Odds or no odds, we were going to both win and survive.”10
Becton’s interlude in the United States was not all business. He spent his off-duty hours in the company of an attractive singer/actress from his Arkansas hometown. During high school Imogen Carpenter had lived a few blocks from Becton’s family home. During a visit to New York City he saw a poster announcing her appearance at the Cotillion Room at the Hotel Pierre. He contacted her and the two began dating. Carpenter often took him to watch her rehearse her small role in a new Broadway show, High Kickers, starring Sophie Tucker and George Jessel.
Becton left the Broadway rehearsals with profound respect for the dedication and hard work the director, actors, and actresses applied to perfecting their craft. Like those stage personnel, he intended to seek perfection in his crew. “In both cases,” wrote Becton, “the drills had to be endlessly practiced until every participant could respond perfectly when the curtain went up. Theater rehearsals and Navy exercises both required discipline, dedication, and concentration.”11 He planned to do everything he could to prepare his men for whatever lay ahead.
Becton continued his relationship throughout the war with Carpenter, whose cheery letters bolstered his morale and whose photograph, clipped from movie magazines, adorned at least one bulkhead posted by crew, who were simultaneously jealous and proud of their handsome skipper.
“She Presented a Beautiful Picture”
Becton traveled to Bath, Maine, confident that he had a capable ship waiting for him. Revered among shipbuilding firms since the days of wooden vessels, and enjoying close ties with the Navy, for whom they had constructed ships since 1890, the Bath Iron Works operated with the motto, “Bath Built Is Best Built.”12 Using mass production techniques and standardized parts that enabled crews to work simultaneously on multiple hulls, the Bath Iron Works laboring force—which had soared to 12,042 in December 1943 from its prewar numbers of 1,850—handed the Navy a new destroyer every seventeen days. Their World War II output of eighty-three destroyers alone almost equaled the destroyer productivity of all Japanese shipyards.
Rather than toiling on a single vessel, teams of workers, each assigned a different standard task, swarmed waiting hulls, completed their work, and rushed to the next hull to accomplish the same task. Among the ships they constructed were twenty of the new Allen M. Sumner Class destroyers, including Becton’s ship. The keel for the USS Laffey was laid on June 28, 1943, at which time shipyard workers descended to transform the unfinished chunk of metal into a sleek warship within a year. Named after a Civil War recipient of the Medal of Honor, Seaman Bartlett Laffey, who battled hand-to-hand with Confederate opponents on March 5, 1864, Laffey joined the Navy as part of the initial five Sumner Class destroyers delivered by Bath workers between December 30, 1943 and March 14, 1944. For much of the conflict Laffey served with the four other original destroyers—the USS Barton (DD-722), USS Walke (DD-723), USS O’Brien (DD-725), and USS Meredith (DD-726)—as Destroyer Division 119, a unit that gained the reputation for being “where the action is.”13
As Becton meandered through a maze of material and ship sections that waited on the yard for assembly that January day, he heard the common shipyard sounds of steel against steel indicating that workers were at their tasks. Anxious for a look at his new ship, Becton spotted the Laffey, then still an unfinished hull. Though resting in the water, the Laffey was connected to land by hundreds of cables, hoses, and lines, reminding the officer of umbilical cords from a mother pumping life into a yet unborn child.
Like those shipyard workers who meticulously fashioned a seaworthy vessel from raw materials, Becton, too, would have to create a top-caliber crew from the raw seamen then pouring out of the Navy’s training camps. The task would be challenging, but as long as he enjoyed a core of veteran officers and chiefs, he could mold the young sailors into an efficient fighting force.
The early nucleus of the crew offered a solution. A small group of Laffey officers and enlisted had gathered at Maine to study the new ship as the shipyard workers pieced her together. In doing so they could learn the intricacies of the destroyer and in turn train the rest of the crew that would join them later in Boston. The skilled veterans, including Chief Gunner’s Mate Norman Fitzgerald, Gunner’s Mate Warren Walker, Fire Controlman Ralph Peterson, and Chief Electrician’s Mate Albert Csiszar, eased Becton’s concerns. Combined with a handful of other veteran officers and enlisted then gathering in Boston, they would provide the foundation upon which he could build an effective crew.
“I joined the Laffey on December 16, 1943, while the ship was still in the yard at Bath, Maine,” said Albert Csiszar. The veteran had already seen action in the Solomon Islands, where he survived the June 1943 sinking off Rendova Island of the transport, USS McCawley (APA-4), Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner’s flagship. “I was the CEM (Chief Electrician’s Mate), with a bunch of new, young electricians I had to train. I had about 20 men, and the ship had 400 to 500 electric motors. I was so busy that I slept on the workshop bench for at least three months. I couldn’t get to my bunk. It was a bunch of new fellows and a new ship.”14
The seagoing saga of the USS Laffey commenced in early February. Becton and the nucleus crew, joined by shipyard inspectors from different departments, boarded the ship to take her from Maine to Boston. They cast off at dawn in a mild snowstorm, and for the first time Laffey was underway under her own power.
Once clearing the mouth of the river and reaching the open sea, Becton ordered full power and set course toward Boston. The Laffey carried a small amount of ammunition and some depth charges for defense in the unlikely event a German U-boat crossed their path, but an uneventful outing brought the Laffey to the Boston Navy Yard, where the rest of the ship’s officers and enlisted stood in formation on Pier 1. Becton quickly surveyed the waiting collection and, as he expected, concluded that it comprised mainly young, inexperienced sailors.
One of the men standing at attention on Pier 1 was seventeen-year-old Quartermaster 2/c Aristides S. “Ari” Phoutrides from Portland, Oregon. A freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he enlisted in May 1943, Phoutrides longed to join the Marines but needed his parents’ permission. “I wanted to do something for the war effort. I was underage and wanted to go into the Marines, but my mother remembered what had happened to the Marines at Guadalcanal [Marines waged a bloody campaign with the Japanese in late 1942] and said no way, so I went into the Navy.”15
One look at the new ship convinced Phoutrides that his mother had been correct. “She presented a beautiful picture as she lay alongside Pier #1. Her main decks were covered with snow, and icicles hung from the 5" guns and the yardarms. This was a striking contrast to her deep blue paint job. As I noted her then, lifeless so to speak, and with no activity on board, it was difficult to conceive that she would someday be hurtling tons of destruction toward the enemy. The thought that she would someday be fighting for her very existence never crossed my mind.”16 Phoutrides liked that Becton already had war experience. That would come in handy, he believed, should they land in a tight spot.
The sailors boarded ship, changed into clean blues, and began readying the Laffey for the commissioning ceremony, at which time the Navy would officially take possession of the destroyer from Bath Iron Works. They chipped ice from the railings and made certain that everything shined; their first effort as a crew impressed Becton that though the men might be raw recruits, they worked well together. The men “tried to look like sailors,” wrote Lieutenant (jg) Jerome B. Sheets, “even though about 80 per cent were reserves, civilians at heart, and for the vast majority this was their first ship.”17
“This Is the Day I Start Out to Be a Real Sailor”
“The U.S.S. Laffey was placed in commission on 8 February 1944 at the Boston Navy Yard, Charleston, Massachusetts, with Commander F. J. Becton U.S. Navy assuming command.”18 So stated the initial entry of the War Diary that would recount Laffey’s actions for the remainder of the war.
A typically wintry Massachusetts afternoon greeted Navy officials and guests for the commissioning ceremony. With the temperature hovering around fifteen degrees, the crew lined up at divisional formation on the pier while guests, including Imogen Carpenter and families who could make the journey to the shipyard, occupied seats on stands facing the new destroyer.
As Commander Becton and the Captain of the Yard approached the gangway, the crew snapped to attention and the officers were piped over the side. After a reading of the orders, sailors hoisted the commissioning pennant to the gaff, and Becton assumed command of the Laffey. Becton spoke of the ship’s Civil War namesake and of the valiant fight her courageous predecessor, the USS Laffey (DD-459), had waged in the Solomons. He promised the families assembled before him that under his command, this new Laffey would honor the tradition that had been begun by Bartlett Laffey in 1864 and was continued by the first destroyer in 1942. The ceremony ended with a Navy band playing the National Anthem.
At that moment the wartime experiences aboard the USS Laffey commenced. “This is the day I start out to be a real sailor,” Seaman 1/c Thomas B. Fern of Massachusetts wrote his mother after the ceremony. “The ship was commissioned today.”19 Fern, who had committed to memory the story of two Fern relatives who had been awarded medals, Corporal Patrick H. Fern during the Civil War and Corporal Henry M. Fern during World War I, often asked himself if he had what it took to live up to their standards. That thought drove him to do well in training and to be attentive on watches, for the last thing Fern wanted to do was bring dishonor to his family. He hoped this would be the start of an honorable career at sea that matched his ancestors’ exploits on land.
Another member of the crew was not as much nervous as he was pensive about the future. “To the mind of each mother and father and every member of the crew must have flashed the thought, ‘What does fate have in store for this ship—where will the tides of war take her?’” wrote twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Sheets at the time. He added that “this mass of steel, machinery and guns was to be their home and country, their only protection against the forces of nature and war.” Sheets, a 1943 graduate of the University of Michigan and a member of the first NROTC class produced by that institution, gazed at his new home for the indeterminate future, proud to be part of such a worthy warship. “She would disintegrate with age, she would be beaten and broken by the forces of God and man. She would take America’s young manhood away from all that they held dear,” wrote Sheets, but he was certain that the new captain and crew would meet whatever emergencies of war they faced. “Time will dictate the future of this man-made woman of the seas.”20
Fern and the other crew “went aboard to a madhouse. Everybody had seabags and hammocks all over—guys trying to get their gear into deck (foot) lockers. I had to get rid of a lot of extra junk to make room for my stuff & a little extra room in my locker. I finally got settled about 2030 (8:30 p.m.).” The young sailor did nothing to calm his mother’s nerves by mentioning, “I bunk after the fantail just under the stern 5" guns with explosives all around us,” but added of the ship that “the boys like it here!!!” After settling in, he continued, “we’ll be here about two more weeks before we go out on a short shake down. We’re going to have to work to morrow & the next few days loading ammo & supplys.”21
At this moment future events meant little to Fern and his shipmates. They had just boarded a new ship, and like most young people, their visions stretched no farther than the coming few days. “Very simply then,” recalled Quartermaster 2/c Phoutrides, “her life began. Little did we know that in the next 18 months she was to attain one of the most outstanding battle records of WWII.”22
The next morning Becton assembled his seventeen officers (he would eventually command twenty-five) in the wardroom, where he outlined the principles of command he expected every officer to follow. He emphasized that as they now supervised an inexperienced crew, their first order of business was to show the men their fire stations and where the fireplugs, hoses, and fire-fighting equipment were stored in case a fire erupted. Becton explained that the only way the men could be prepared for this and any other emergency, including combat, was with constant training and with each officer exhibiting his own thorough preparation and skill at his tasks. If his seventeen officers followed these few steps, Becton added, confidence among the crew in their officers and their ship would develop, and the Laffey would be better equipped to engage the enemy. Becton insisted that his officers refrain from using foul language, which in his opinion indicated a serious loss of self-control. He explained that the men encountered enough salty talk elsewhere throughout the day, and that few would be impressed by hearing their officer swear.
Becton ended by emphasizing that precision, cohesiveness, and performance of duty had more impact on a ship’s fate than luck. He had earlier heard a man remark that he had a feeling the ship would be a lucky one, a topic of concern for sailors plagued with aquatic superstitions. Becton disagreed. “I’ve always been one who believed that what a crew could do, and what they did do, was what made a ship lucky.”23 He told his officers he would do everything in his power to make certain the crew would perform to the best of their capabilities.
With this meeting Becton established the foundation of his command and the tone he wanted to permeate the ship. He believed it was the initial step in transforming those young men into a crew that could operate efficiently in the heat of combat.
Over the next few weeks Becton progressively increased the tempo of training. He started with simple exercises, such as manning stations as if the ship was getting underway and taking the ship for brief excursions out of the harbor. As the men gained confidence, he intensified the difficulty and duration of his drills, dropping depth charges one day and executing sharp turns on another.
When an officer asked him about the graduated pace, Becton compared their tasks to that of a parent. “Getting a brand-new ship and a brand-new crew on a completely operational footing is much like raising a child. You do it by degrees.”24
“One of Those Greyhounds of the Fleet”
The crew quickly settled into their new surroundings. During World War I, destroyers had often served primarily for torpedo attacks, but the newest destroyers now joined the fleet as multitasked warships designed to provide a variety of services. As such, the Laffey could utilize her speed and guns not only to protect a battle line, but also to engage enemy warships, drop depth charges as part of the antisubmarine warfare, and man antiaircraft guns to protect themselves and other ships from air attacks. As Lieutenant Jerome Sheets wrote, she was “one of those greyhounds of the fleet, a fighting ship, bristling with 5-inch, 40-mm, and 20-mm guns, torpedoes, and depth charges, a ship built for a multitude of jobs.”25
The Navy had ordered the construction of sixty-nine Sumner Class destroyers on August 7, 1942, the same day American Marines began their assault on the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. They emphasized the need for a larger destroyer that could better execute the variety of tasks demanded by the heightened naval combat in Pacific waters, where the ships would be subjected to the triple threat of attack from surface ships, from submarines, and from air attacks. Becton and the crew liked the thought of serving aboard a ship as well equipped as the Laffey, which offered enhanced design features, including twin-gun turrets and dual rudders for improved maneuverability.
Sheets’s observation that “in her 376 feet were packed all the instruments of war”26 was not a wild exaggeration. Spouting a beam eighteen inches wider than that of her predecessor, the Fletcher Class destroyers, Laffey enjoyed increased stability while losing only one knot in speed from the Fletcher Class ships. The extra stability allowed designers to pack her superstructure with extra guns.
Besides a main battery of six five-inch, thirty-eight caliber guns, Laffey could bring to a fight twelve 40mm antiaircraft guns spread along her length, eleven smaller tub-mounted 20mm antiaircraft guns, ten torpedo tubes in two five-tube mounts, Y-gun depth-charge throwers port and starboard, and two long depth-charge racks near the fantail. The guns could fire independently, or be synchronized and controlled to fire as a unit by the ship’s gunnery officer.
The six five-inch guns rested in three twin mounts, with two mounts located forward and the third placed fifty feet from the stern. All six stood atop rotating pedestals that enabled them to fire in an arc from port to starboard, and each tossed a seventy-five-pound projectile nine miles out and six miles up. The guns could fire at enemy warships on the surface, enemy positions on shore, or aircraft approaching from above.
The Laffey’s twelve 40mm antiaircraft guns, two more than featured on the Fletcher Class destroyers, could make enemy aircraft pay dearly for their assaults. Gaining acclaim in navies throughout the world for their potency and developed in Sweden by the Bofors Company after World War I, the guns rested along Laffey’s length in open, twin-gun tub mounts and in one quadruple-gun mount farther aft. Gun crews loved the capabilities of the automatic guns, which could rapidly propel high-explosive antiaircraft shells at attacking planes or armor-piercing rounds against enemy warships. Unlike the larger five-inch guns, which fired 15 rounds per minute, the 40mm guns could throw 160 rounds in sixty seconds at airplanes or ships.
The smaller Swiss-built Oerlikon tub-mounted 20mm guns sprinkled about the deck were rarely used for anything but antiaircraft fire. Those eleven guns could each pump 480 rounds per minute at ranges up to one thousand yards.
Though the five-inch gun mounts were enclosed in turret-like steel boxes, the thin armor for both the 40mm and the 20mm guns, no more than a quarter-inch thick, would do little to protect those gun crews from enemy shrapnel, let alone from direct hits. The curved steel sheeting, which rose only waist high, existed more to prevent sailors from falling off the platforms and to give minimal shelter from rougher seas. Heavier defensive plating took second place to enhanced offensive capabilities.
Ten torpedo tubes stood in two five-tube mounts, one amidships and one forward. Each could launch at an enemy warship a twenty-foot torpedo, twenty-one inches in diameter and weighing 1.5 tons. Seventy depth charges, more than any other antisubmarine vessel then in use, handed Becton a powerful tool with which to engage enemy submarines. Two Y-gun depth-charge throwers stood port and starboard on the main deck forward of the aft five-inch mount, each capable of tossing three-hundred-pound charges from either side in a semicircle 270 yards forward of the ship. Two long depth charge racks placed on either side of the stern 20mm gun tub dropped six-hundred-pound charges over the stern.
The Laffey offered features belowdecks as well. Twin rudders enhanced Laffey’s maneuverability and reduced her turning radius, which handed her an edge in evading approaching enemy aircraft or eluding enemy shells. Berthing spaces placed half the officers and enlisted forward and half aft, so that an explosion in any one location would not kill a majority of the experienced men. An enclosed ship-length interior passageway, newly introduced on the Sumner Class destroyers, protected the crew from heavy seas.
Like earlier destroyers, the Laffey was powered by two sets of boilers and two engines, arranged in pairs. A fireroom with two boilers stood forward of the forward engine room, while the aft fireroom with two boilers preceded the aft engine room. These units could either work in tandem or be independently operated as a split plant. This preserved for Becton the ability to maneuver even if he lost one of his boiler-engine room units. “That could mean the difference between life or death,” wrote Becton. “A destroyer dead in the water is a sitting duck for enemy bombs, shells, or torpedoes, and at the mercy of heavy seas.” He added, “a ship that could move was a ship that could survive and fight on,”27 a factor which was important to Becton.
The ship had a few flaws. Due to the extra 250 tons of weight added to the same-length hull as the Fletcher Class destroyers, the Laffey was one knot slower and less fuel efficient. In rougher seas the ship sometimes tended to roll heavily because of her narrower beam-to-length ratio and the extra weight topside from the enhanced weaponry, Becton feared the Laffey might be difficult to handle. Becton found that the overhead to the pilothouse was too low in the Sumner Class destroyers, making him and others vulnerable to cracking their heads during the excitement of combat action or drills. Finally, the ship lacked a captain’s sea cabin and head, a place adjoining the bridge for the skipper to catch a quick break from the demands of the bridge, but close enough that he could quickly return if summoned to an emergency. Becton placed his concerns in a report to Navy officials, who answered that while they could not rearrange the low overhead due to architectural concerns, they would add a sea cabin as soon as possible.
Otherwise, Becton was delighted with his new home. So, too, was the crew. After observing Becton and inspecting the ship, teenager Phoutrides was filled with awe, “not only of the ship, but also of its young and dashing commanding officer.” How many ship crews could brag that their skipper was not only a cited war hero, but also a good-looking man who whisked about town with a gorgeous starlet on his arm? Phoutrides, whose station on the bridge placed him near Becton, wrote his sister that the captain’s “steady girl is a Powers model in New York. I literally fly down to his stateroom when I’m told just to get a look at her picture,”28 which rested on Becton’s desk.
Mature for his tender years, Phoutrides postponed his final conclusions about Becton until he observed the man in combat. Phoutrides respected his father, a Greek Orthodox priest, and measured other men by how they compared with him. He liked what he saw so far, and hoped Becton would measure up, but only time and battle action would provide the definitive answer.
“Quite a Job Facing Us”
Becton had concerns when it came to the crew. As many as eighty-five percent of the 325 enlisted were naval reserves, rushed into the Navy to man the hundreds of warships being constructed in Maine and other shipyards. Not only the enlisted ranks, but even a few of his officers, seemed barely out of high school. Although a minority had gone to college for a year or two, about as many had enlisted at age sixteen or seventeen. Most had at least graduated from high school, but with only five weeks of Navy training preparing these naval neophytes, Becton and his officers faced a stern test. Some estimated that it might take six months of training before the crew was whipped into shape.
Lieutenant Sheets observed that the crew came from every corner of the nation and from every ethnic group. “The multitude of men (to be sure they were all classified as men, although some as yet had not bristle to shave off) literally poured aboard, representing the America of ‘U.S.A.,’ boys from the farm, men from Dixie, toughies from Brooklyn, volunteers, draftees, fathers, sons, brothers, boots and veterans—boys away from home for the first time, old men who saw the previous war. Yes, these men and boys were the America of World War II.”29 Becton wished he could command the cream of the Navy, but like every skipper of a new destroyer, he had to be content with taking into battle a representative sampling of the nation.
He had Quartermaster Phoutrides, who had attended the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the religious Boatswain’s Mate 2/c Calvin Wesley Cloer, who with his first and middle names seemed destined to be the preacher he was in civilian life. He had men without high school diplomas, men who had landed in trouble with the law, and men who came from caring families. He had men like Gunner’s Mate 3/c Robert I. Karr of West Virginia, who trapped skunks, possum, and muskrat, and Gunner’s Mate 2/c Lawrence H. Delewski of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, renowned for his football prowess at Redding High School.
Becton also relied on a diverse group of officers. While Becton could be affable and compassionate his communications officer, Lieutenant Theodore W. Runk, was gruff and brusque with the men. Few doubted Runk’s expertise, but most wondered about the humanity of the officer who went by the book in all matters. Runk’s iron-fisted methods and oft-repeated command, “I don’t give a good Goddamn. Do it!”30 earned him the nickname “Ivan the Terrible” from the crew.
On the other hand Lieutenant (jg) Matthew C. Darnell Jr., the ship’s doctor, volunteered for the Naval Reserve after completing an internship at a prestigious Boston hospital. Darnell loved a good party and always seemed to have a smile on his face, while the more lenient Lieutenant (jg) Joel C. Youngquist, nicknamed “Pay” because he handled the ship’s payroll, seemed to have the crew’s best interests at heart, at times giving to a man in need of funds an advance on his pay. Becton knew from experience, though, that whether the men loved or hated an officer meant little in combat. Heroes often came from the least likely of places.
Becton and two other Naval Academy graduates, executive officer Lieutenant Charles Holovak and the assistant gunnery officer, Lieutenant Paul Smith, brought the most knowledge to the Laffey. Becton had great confidence in Holovak, who as executive officer managed the ship under the skipper’s guidance, ensured Becton’s orders were followed, and assumed command should Becton be incapacitated. During combat Holovak would also run the Combat Information Center (CIC), the brain of the ship that supplied the crucial information upon which Becton formed his decisions. Becton warmed to his fellow Academy graduate at once and figured he could rely on the officer to come through in tough circumstances.
Not counting Becton, only three officers—assistant engineers Lieutenant (jg) James Fravel and Lieutenant (jg) William H. Shaw, and torpedo officer Lieutenant (jg) G. A. G. “Gag” Parolini—had seen any action. Most were like Lieutenant (jg) J. Bahme, a twenty-two-year-old graduate of Baylor University in Texas with little knowledge of the military behind him, or Lieutenant Youngquist, who had gone straight from Harvard Business School to the Navy. With the need for officers and enlisted to man their warships, the Navy streamlined its training to rush them to the fleet.
To be an effective warship, Becton needed the ability to maneuver and to shoot. Fortunately, he could rely on his capable engineering and gunnery officer, Lieutenant E. A. Henke. From Illinois Tech, Henke looked like a college professor, but his knowledge of how to produce the maximum horsepower from the ship’s boilers, condensers, and turbines, combined with his ability to lead men, made him invaluable to Becton. In charge of the black gang, the nickname for the crew that operated the machinery belowdecks, Henke commanded almost one-third of the crew.
Gunnery Officer Lieutenant Harry Burns was an introspective man with an air of confidence who had learned gunnery aboard a cruiser in Atlantic waters. Aided by assistant gunnery officer, Lieutenant Paul Smith, Burns controlled the ship’s guns, including the five-inch, 40mm, and 20mm guns.
Becton leaned heavily on his supply officer, Lieutenant Youngquist. The affable officer from Burlington, Iowa, seemed to have contacts everywhere the ship went, and if Becton needed something unusual, Youngquist somehow produced it from out of nowhere. Before the commissioning, Becton asked if he could locate something every ship’s crew desired—an ice-cream maker. Figuring it would be great for morale, Becton sent Youngquist ahead to Boston. Following the commissioning ceremony, Youngquist inched next to Becton and whispered that the machine would be aboard the next day.
“He Is Known for Fighting Any and Everything”
Meningitis bug aboard.
Pill to crew, and push on forward.
Shakedown testing high she scored.
—“Invicta,” Lieutenant Matthew C. Darnell
From February 8 to February 26, the ship remained at the Boston Navy Yard while undergoing the fitting-out process. Workers installed a fixed sound dome to the hull, calibrated the ship’s degaussing (anti-mine) equipment and magnetic compasses, and performed other last-minute alterations to prepare the Laffey for action.
Becton made use of every available moment to prepare his men for action, for at that stage of the war, the Navy moved vessels from shipyard to combat with amazing rapidity. He had the crew man stations while the ship remained docked so they became familiar with their responsibilities, then took the ship out of the harbor, where they dropped depth charges, fired guns, and executed turns. On February 23, for instance, they expended in practice 27 five-inch rounds, 96 40mm shells, 330 20mm shells, and dropped 11 depth charges. “We drilled a lot,” said Lieutenant Youngquist, “so we’d be ready for action. We had some drill to do every day.”31
Becton warned his officers that they and the crew had best become accustomed to daily training, for there would be no room for mishap in combat. “We would all need to practice, practice, and practice again,” said Becton, “so that when our time came, we could face the enemy with more than just courage to help us win.” He insisted upon a clean ship, as filthy ones bred disease and disrupted morale for men living in such close proximity with each other for lengthy periods of time. Becton also believed that a man who took pride in maintaining his ship would step up when called for. “Men who cared enough about their ship to keep her spotless were men who would fight to defend her when things got rough.”32
At 6:35 a.m. on February 27, Becton took the ship out of the Boston Navy Yard and set course for Washington, DC, where an inspection awaited. As this was their first overnight voyage, Becton noticed that some of his officers appeared anxious about standing watch on their own. He reassured the young ensigns and lieutenants that he had complete confidence in them, and should they be the officer of the deck—the man in charge while Becton was off the bridge—they should never hesitate to contact him, even if he was asleep. Although this eased their concerns, only actual experience at sea would bring the self-assurance he hoped his officers would eventually possess.
Little danger remained that a German U-boat might attack, but Becton placed everyone on Condition III watch, which called for a third of the armament to be manned and the crew to operate on a four-hour on, eight-hour off schedule. The step gave every man the opportunity to stand at least one watch during the overnight cruise to the nation’s capital.
At 5:45 p.m. the next day, the Laffey pulled up to Pier 2 West at the Washington, DC, Navy Yard. Until March 2 the ship remained moored for inspection and for final preparations to depart on the shakedown cruise. After successfully passing inspection, at 8:02 a.m. March 2, the Laffey, now a part of Destroyer Squadron 60 of the Atlantic Fleet, got underway for Bermuda.
Mostly known as a vacation playground, during the war luxuriant Bermuda offered the stage for the United States Navy to break in its newest warships and train crews about to embark for combat. Destroyers such as the Laffey left homefront shipyards, steamed to Bermuda, and before receiving an assignment overseas, spent more than three weeks in and around the island practicing every imaginable drill and firing every gun. Becton and his officers noted deficiencies in performance that required further work or defective parts that needed repair.
The training off Bermuda was as realistic as possible, with the Laffey sometimes working solo while at other times operating in conjunction with other ships. Often with naval observers taking notes on their performance, Becton conducted visit-and-search drills, towing exercises, and smoke laying. He scheduled nighttime maneuvers in which the crew fired star shells for illumination while the Laffey screened other ships. Gruff chiefs barked commands as seamen dropped depth charges over the side, launched and recovered dummy torpedoes, or fired their antiaircraft guns at target sleds pulled by aircraft.
The Bermuda shakedown provided all gun crews with valuable training, but it especially helped the five-inch crews, who would need to be sharp in the coming months when they targeted German land batteries and units in providing gun support for American infantry in troubled situations. As many as fourteen men and one gun captain operated each of the three duo-barreled mounts. Communications connected each mount with the bridge, which selected the target. If it were a land target, the bridge fed the distance to the mounts. If the target were an aircraft, men on the bridge punched into the computer-like apparatus the target’s speed and direction, the wind speed, and the ship’s speed and direction, which produced the proper fuse setting that determined when the projectile would explode.
Teamwork was vital in the enclosed mounts. In the lower handling rooms below each mount, men operated the powder and shell hoists that lifted the explosives to the loaders above. The loaders placed the powder cans and shells into the barrels, which by then had been trained at the target. The gun captain usually stood toward the back, near a door leading to the outside.
Seaman 1/c Robert W. Dockery and Gunner’s Mate 3/c Owen G. “Glen” Radder in Mount 52, the second five-inch gun forward, and Gunner’s Mate 2/c Delewski, the aft gun captain of Mount 53, which his men affectionately labeled Ole Betsy, were drenched in sweat as the crews labored in the Bermuda sun to develop a rhythm in which shell and powder could be brought from below, lifted to the barrel, and fired every three seconds. At first the enlisted men in the gun crews moved too slowly, taking double the amount of time Delewski and the other captains demanded. Guided by a handful of experienced crew—including Boatswain’s Mate Cloer and his buddy, Coxswain James M. La Pointe, veterans who earlier in the war had ships shot out from under them—the young sailors molded teams that whittled down the times.
Delewski, a hulk of a man who starred on the high school football field, was not much older than the men he supervised, but he earned everyone’s respect with his confident airs and booming voice. “Ski,” as his crew called him, recognized that the ship would soon be in a battle, most probably in the expected Allied invasion of Europe, and pushed his crew to be ready.
As the days passed, the crew became more proficient in their tasks, but tempered their pride with reality—they might perform splendidly in drills, but wondered how they would react when enemy guns and aircraft replaced the shakedown’s practice targets. They received a partial answer on March 10, when at 7:00 a.m. their Talk Between Ships (TBS) crackled with orders for Becton to hasten to the rescue of survivors from a Navy PBY-5A patrol plane, piloted by Lieutenant A. H. Cowart, that had been forced into the ocean by engine trouble. Becton left his shakedown partner, the USS Walke (DD-723), and raced sixty miles northwest to the location, where lookouts spotted nineteen survivors huddling in three rubber life rafts. Becton moved the ship near the rafts so his crew could help the nineteen aboard.
A grateful Lieutenant Cowart later wrote to Becton, “maybe it wasn’t your ship’s first real operation, but for me, it was certainly her best.” Becton was delighted that his crew had saved fellow Americans, but was equally satisfied that the men had responded so well to the crisis that they received official praise. “I believe that incident did more to teach us all to work together smoothly than any training exercise during our shakedown,”33 Becton later wrote.
Officers and enlisted began to develop confidence in their skipper. “Becton was fair to everyone, and the officers and crew all respected him,” said Lieutenant Bahme. “He was a very strict captain, liberal but strict,” said Seaman 1/c Joseph E. Dixon, first loader on one of the 40mm guns. “Everybody liked him. He let you go ashore when he had the chance. He ran a tight ship, but knew when to back off.”34
Although he was not as positive about some of the officers, Quartermaster Phoutrides liked what he observed of Becton off Bermuda. He still planned to delay his final evaluation of Becton until the ship had been in combat, but he thought Becton would be a valued commander. “I’m glad for one thing—that we have a good Captain,” he wrote his parents on March 14. “He’s young and understands his crew. Many a time I’ve been discouraged because of one thing or another. Just about that time he does or says something that makes us all forget our troubles. He’s a fine man and holds the respect of his whole crew.”35
In a subsequent letter to his sister, Aspasia, Phoutrides added, “gee, Spa, he’s one of the finest men I’ve met in a long time.” He explained that some of the men did not get along with a handful of the officers, and only avoided handing in a request for a transfer because of their affection for Becton. As an example, Phoutrides relayed an incident that occurred during the ship’s speed trials at Bermuda. Becton raced the destroyer at full speed in rough seas, with water splashing over the bridge and the ship rolling 30° to each side. “Our morale was definitely low. So what does he do? He broke out one of his restricted publications and started to read us Japanese propaganda. Within 2 minutes he had us laughing our heads off and made us forget all our troubles.” Phoutrides added that Becton had already been honored for his bravery in the Pacific. The captain “is known for fighting any and everything he runs into,” the young quartermaster wrote. “As long as he stays aboard this ship, the whole bridge gang stays.”36
After nearly a month of training, in mid-afternoon on March 31 the Laffey departed Bermuda’s sunny environs en route to Boston, where they arrived on April 2. During their time in Boston, Becton asked Youngquist to pick up two bottles of alcohol because he was hosting a dinner for Imogen Carpenter and an officer from the Walke, Hollywood actor Robert Montgomery.
Until May 5 she remained in drydock while new sonar gear and other items were installed, then left for the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk, Virginia, for additional training. Three days at Norfolk ended May 9, when the Laffey got underway for New London, Connecticut, for antisubmarine warfare exercises with submarines.
Their stay in Connecticut was cut short on May 11, when Becton received orders to take the Laffey to New York. There she would join the other four original Sumner Class destroyers built at Bath, take on supplies, and accompany a fast convoy for the voyage across Atlantic waters to Europe. Becton guessed that the Laffey and her sister ships, the most heavily gunned destroyers in the fleet, were not needed solely to escort other ships when destroyer escorts could do the job. It had to mean one thing—Laffey was to be a part of the long-awaited invasion of Europe.
“Was I eager for combat? Yes!” said Quartermaster Phoutrides. “When you’re young, that’s how you feel.”37
For Phoutrides and his shipmates, combat was at hand.