Off Normandy’s Shores
Chasing foe on Dixie Line
Dodging shell and bomb and mine,
Pill-box blasting, hunting’s fine.
—“Invicta,” Lieutenant Matthew Darnell
On a serene Sunday afternoon on May 14 the USS Laffey headed to war. Becton guided the sparkling warship past New York’s famed skyline and the Statue of Liberty on her way to the Atlantic Ocean’s broader waters. It was a fitting start to the voyage, for although the crew lacked specific knowledge of their destination, the warship would soon be battling to liberate France and free the people whose graciousness in 1886 had made the statue a reality.
The crew responded crisply, partly because of their training but also because they sensed the significance of the moment. What could be more impressive than steaming by the Statue of Liberty, going to war to defend your country, in the best destroyer that the United States Navy had then produced? War’s sordid sides awaited the crew in both Atlantic and Pacific waters, but for now all was glorious and grand.
Accompanied by three other ships from Destroyer Division 119—Meredith would join and complete the unit in four days—and two other destroyers, Laffey took her station in a screen escorting convoy, TCU 24B, a collection of ships carrying ammunition, gasoline, and oil. For the next thirteen days she shepherded the tanker, USS Aucilla (AO-56), and thirteen merchant vessels—“all carrying valuable, strategic cargoes,”1 according to the Walke’s War Diary—across the Atlantic at fifteen knots. Operating on the flanks of the formation, Laffey and her companion destroyers probed the waters ahead and below with their radar and sonar, intent on safely conducting the convoy to its European destination.
“I didn’t realize we would be going over so soon,” said Seaman 2/c Robert C. Johnson, whose duties standing watch happily interrupted the chipping and painting that occupied most of his day. “I joined the ship in April, and in May we were on our way to Europe. Boy, we’re going to see some action soon, I thought.”2 He never expected it to occur this quickly, though.
“We Felt Very Comfortable with Him”
“Well I’m really going places now,” wrote Seaman Fern to his mother on May 15. He assumed that with the war in Europe heating up, it would not be long before he saw some action. “When I get back this time I’ll most likely be wearing one or two more ribbons.”3
To have his ship and his crew ready for any contingency, from the beginning Becton established his pattern by scheduling drills as frequently as he could. In addition to fire, collision, and damage control drills, Becton conducted gunnery exercises on four of the first six days at sea. Remembering all too clearly what had occurred in the South Pacific, when Japanese air power so effectively attacked his destroyer, Becton emphasized air recognition training and antiaircraft firing exercises. He gave the crew little time off, for each mile the ship traveled from US shores placed them a mile closer to combat.
“We had a pretty fair trip on the way over,” wrote Seaman Fern to his mother in May, but added that Becton and the officers extended few breaks to the raw crew. “Today was Sunday. I never realized it because we worked like slaves. Every time you stopped or finished some Bos’n or Cox’n had more work.”4
Despite the rigorous days and nights, the crew gained an appreciation for Becton’s command skills. The men sensed that he knew what he was doing and that he had their best interests at heart. As novices to war, they were more than happy to serve under Becton, who had already been involved in multiple Pacific combat actions, rather than under an officer fresh from the Academy. “My immediate impression was that he fit the role of captain real well,” said Seaman Johnson. “He was tall and good looking. I had heard good things about him and was impressed. He was very knowledgeable about naval matters and was doing a great job. He had experience in the Pacific, so we felt very comfortable with him, and as time went on I felt real confident with him.”5
More than once Youngquist observed Becton dealing with other officers. Rather than micromanage every detail, Becton described what he wanted done, and then trusted the man to accomplish it. “‘Now go ahead and do it,’ Becton would say,” according to Youngquist. “‘I assume you can do it. Let me know if you have any trouble, but otherwise it’s yours.’ He put his trust in us.”6 Youngquist believed he and the other young officers responded to that trust and gained confidence that when the action started, they would capably respond.
The crew did not have to wait long to learn how they reacted to alerts. Within the first five days either the Laffey or one of the other ships picked up contacts on radar and scrambled their crews to general quarters, with depth charges at the ready. Each time, a destroyer split from the screen to investigate, but returned after losing the contact or determining it was either a friendly vessel or one of the merchant ships off station. “A school of black fish were sighted in the near vicinity,”7 the Walke described in her War Diary for May 16. Even though the contacts proved false, Laffey’s crew could not relax, for they never knew if one might turn out to be an enemy U-boat and require them to take action.
On May 20, two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic, the convoy ended its eastward course and veered northeast for its final run into the British Isles. Because these waters had once been fertile hunting grounds for German U-boats, Becton cautioned his crew to be particularly vigilant. He asked Pay Youngquist, whose nighttime station was in the decoding room, to decode and relay to him not just the messages coming in to the Laffey, but also all those earmarked for other destroyers. Becton wanted to be informed of everything going on in the convoy.
“We Were Part of the Invasion”
On May 24 convoy ships began peeling away from the unit to embark on the final leg into their ports of destination. Six transports proceeded to Loch Ewe, Scotland, during the morning, while that afternoon Laffey and the rest of Destroyer Division 119 detached, formed a column on the O’Brien, and headed to Greenock, Scotland, twenty-five miles west of Glasgow. Shortly before midnight Laffey moored in Greenock’s harbor in the River Clyde to refuel.
Early the next day, with the Laffey stationed 1,500 yards on the starboard beam of O’Brien, the five ships descended the Firth of Clyde and steamed through the North Channel into the Irish Sea on their way to ports in southern England. No one yet knew what lay in store for the ship and crew, but most guessed that combat would soon replace their duties escorting convoys.
On May 26, one day out from their English port, the O’Brien picked up a sonar contact. Laffey joined O’Brien to check the report, but resumed her station fourteen minutes later when the contact proved negative. Eighty-six minutes later Laffey radar detected another contact 1,100 yards distant, sending everyone scurrying to stations. “This was it, at last,” wrote Becton, who ordered general quarters. “We weren’t drilling anymore. This was the real thing.”
The Laffey crew dropped eleven depth charges on the contact, which soon disappeared from their radar. Becton later concluded that the contact was most likely a whale or a rock pinnacle, but the episode nonetheless handed the crew its first taste of action. Becton wrote that, “we had dropped depth charges as if we had been in action. Whale, pinnacle, or U-boat, we had finally been playing for keeps.”8
The next afternoon, the five ships formed a column with O’Brien in the lead and entered the channel leading to Portland Harbor, Plymouth, England, the same port from which the determined Puritans had departed in 1620 for the New World to seek freedom from religious intolerance. Now, 324 years later, Becton and crew returned to participate in an invasion that would free occupied Europe from Nazi tyranny.
Atrocious weather made navigating the harbor treacherous. “Fog had set in, reducing visibility to zero,”9 described the Laffey’s War Diary for that day. The fact that hundreds of other vessels lay at anchor in the confined waters heightened the tension, for few, if any, could be seen until the ships were perilously close. O’Brien cautiously led the collection forward until 6:07 a.m., when a radar malfunction forced her to hand the lead duties to Becton and Laffey. Becton moved the ship to the head of the column, taking station 1,000 yards ahead of the second ship in line.
For half an hour Becton guided the column through the congested waters. He relayed information from Laffey’s radar via voice radio to the other ships, informing them of the subtle course changes they had to make to avoid anchored vessels. Often, Becton relayed one course change only to have to send another within moments. “We could hardly see,” said Lieutenant Youngquist, “and that was very scary.”10
The onset of daylight and the lifting of the fog revealed hundreds of warships of all sizes bobbing quietly at anchor, making the five arrivals seem mere appendages to an immense operation. Becton took one glance at the accumulated might and concluded that an invasion against Hitler’s Europe was imminent. Quartermaster Phoutrides scanned the horizon and thought that he had never seen more ships. “It was filled with every type of ship,” he recalled. “We knew then that we were part of the invasion of Europe.”11 In less than four months the crew had gone from boarding a ship still bearing signs of shipyard work to the eve of the largest invasion of the war.
At 10:05 Becton moored Laffey to the O’Brien and three British destroyers in Plymouth Sound, Plymouth, England and settled in to await further developments. It would not be long, Becton knew, before orders and events rearranged the lives of his young crew and placed his ship in harm’s way.
The ships that moored in Plymouth, one of the many British ports bulging with cruisers, destroyers, and landing craft, dwarfed the Laffey. The destroyer that had departed New York only days ago was a tiny piece of the thousands that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and other top officials had assembled for the vast operation soon to unfold.
Ever since German leader Adolf Hitler had started World War II by invading Poland in 1939, Roosevelt and Churchill had longed for the time they could assault Hitler’s Fortress Europe, liberate the occupied countries, and defeat Hitler. Their hopes were about to materialize in May 1944 as Becton and his crew arrived in crowded Plymouth.
On May 29 Becton joined other naval commanders, captains, and communications officers in an old theater in Plymouth, where they at long last learned what they had suspected—that they were about to invade Europe. Superiors informed Becton and his fellow commanders that on June 5, only seven days hence, more than 4,000 ships, divided into the British-dominated Eastern Naval Task Force and an American-dominated Western Naval Task Force, would land thousands of American, British, and Canadian troops along a fifty-mile section of France’s northern coast and begin the long-awaited march across Europe into Germany. The American effort focused on the western half, where troops would drive inland before veering west and seizing the important port of Cherbourg.
Five task forces would transport, land, and support the troops set to hit five beaches—three British/Canadian and two American. The Western Task Force contained two US units: Task Force “O” to support operations at Omaha Beach, and Task Force “U” under Rear Admirals D. P. Moon and M. L. Deyo to support the infantry landing at Utah Beach. Part of the unit commanded by Admiral Deyo, Laffey would join the 931 vessels of Task Force “U” assigned to the operations at the westernmost beach.
“As they always had been,” wrote Becton, “destroyers were to be the workhorses of the naval forces.”12 In addition to shepherding the landing craft on the way across the English Channel, Laffey and other destroyers would screen the battleships and cruisers as they bombarded German gun positions ashore, engage the German navy should it approach the landing area, and use their guns as artillery to destroy German pillboxes, casemated guns, and mobile artillery until the Army could land their own artillery units. Laffey and her trio of five-inch guns could concentrate an impressive volume of shells on German positions, and with the target coordinates relayed from a Shore Fire Control Party (SFCP), Laffey could fire with more accuracy than the erratic aerial bombing.
Allied strategists did not expect the German navy to be a significant factor, as earlier naval clashes had greatly reduced Hitler’s fleet. However, U-boats and the smaller E-boats, which were similar to the American PT boats that operated in the South Pacific, were threats. Becton’s main concern was that the speedy E-boats stationed at the Cherbourg Peninsula on his right flank would advance at night along the coast and execute a high-speed run against vulnerable American landing craft and resupply vessels. He intended to keep his men sharp, as even a surprise appearance by a handful of enemy ships could inflict considerable damage.
“The Prospect Was a Bit Exciting”
Becton returned to the Laffey but, as ordered, divulged none of the invasion details until June 2. Periodic enemy air raids reminded the crew that danger was never far away. Forty minutes after midnight on May 30, for instance, air raid sirens blared in the Plymouth area after a handful of German aircraft were spotted. Later that day Becton announced that the crew of the Laffey, like the crews of every other ship, would be confined to their vessels. The order sparked rumors about when they would leave and what their destination would be.
Quartermaster Phoutrides knew with certainty that the Laffey would be a part of the imminent invasion when a whaleboat pulled alongside the ship and a sailor handed him an envelope to take to Becton on the bridge. Becton stared at the sealed envelope for a moment and then told Phoutrides to take it to his safe. “Walking down,” explained Phoutrides, “I glanced at the envelope and it had written across it, ‘OPEN UPON RECEIPT OF CERTAIN RADIO SIGNAL.’ I thought, ‘I’m holding the invasion plans in my hands!’”13
On June 2 Becton gathered his officers in the wardroom for the final pre-invasion meeting. Becton informed Pay Youngquist, Jay Bahme, and the others that the ship would leave Plymouth June 3, and that the infantry would land on the coast of Normandy June 5. He checked to make certain each department had what it needed to operate efficiently, and queried each officer whether he fully understood his duties. He ended by telling the officers that they could now inform the crew. Within minutes of the meeting everyone aboard ship knew the news. A quiet, almost relaxed air encompassed the destroyer, because now men could at least deal with the known rather than fret about the unknown.
Becton addressed the coming assault in a memo to the crew issued shortly after he informed the officers. “We are getting into the war zone where the chips are down and the game is played for keeps!” cautioned the skipper, who moved directly into an item that bothered him. “General Quarters stations are still manned much too slowly.” He remarked that some men must be stopping for showers during morning alerts “judging from the time it takes to get to their stations.” He added that “if you don’t sleep in your clothes, don’t wait to button your shirt and trousers and lace your shoes before manning your station. Grab your clothes and your helmet and life jacket and GET GOING! [emphasis Becton’s]. You can put on the finishing touches after reaching your station.” Becton had seen improvement since the Bermuda shakedown, but with combat coming in the next few days, he wanted his men at peak efficiency.
He emphasized that every man’s job was important, and that the crew was to keep a sharp lookout, especially for low-flying planes that radar might miss. He told his 40mm and 20mm gunners that they had his permission to open fire immediately on any aircraft that dived toward the ship. “If they’re our own planes, they shouldn’t be diving at us.” He reminded them that while firing at balloons in practice, they mistakenly aimed too low and failed to lead the target sufficiently, and cautioned them, “Don’t fire at planes going away!” Such gunfire endangered nearby ships and Allied fighters, but he warned against the tactic mostly because it took the gunners’ attention from “the real enemy—the plane approaching the ship that HASN’T DROPPED HIS EGG AS YET. HE’S the baby we want to get!!”14
“The prospect of the invasion was a bit exciting and a bit frightening,” said then-eighteen-year-old Seaman 1/c Robert W. Dockery. Sonarman 3/c Daniel Zack, like most of the young crew, looked forward to his first battle. “When you’re young you don’t think about the dangers or know that they are a part of what you are about to face. We were immortal.” Although hardly surprised to learn of the destination, Seaman Johnson liked the certainty of knowing his destination. “It took some of the anxiety away. Now we knew we were heading for France.”15
From Felixstowe on England’s eastern shore to Milford Haven in Wales, Great Britain’s southern ports bulged with vessels of all sizes in preparation for the invasion of France. The ports would soon empty of their warships and troop transports, leaving behind in Great Britain and elsewhere an apprehension over whether the invasion would succeed or fail. Great Britain’s citizens had become accustomed to hard times, holding on gamely throughout the bombing blitz that ravaged much of London in 1940 and 1941, but if Germany rebuffed this effort, the war would take a drastic turn for the worse.
At least Seaman Fern felt better. He wrote his mother that for the first time in a long while, he was able to attend Catholic Mass when a service was arranged aboard the Laffey. The ceremony calmed the young sailor in the hours before heading into combat.
During the overcast afternoon of June 3, Laffey steamed to Point Able, where she rendezvoused with Barton and the other escorting ships tasked with protecting the 136 vessels composing convoy U-2A2. The escorts then proceeded to Point Dog, the assembly area in the English Channel south of the Isle of Wight, where that evening they met two groups of LCTs (Landing Craft, Tank) coming from Dartmouth and Brixham. Within two hours the LCTs had formed in two sections of three columns each and, with Laffey screening 1,000 yards off the port flank of the second section, turned in the heavy seas and rough weather and started the five-knot journey toward Normandy.
Even at that moderate pace, sailors moved about cautiously to avoid being knocked off their feet by the wind and waves. “The wind was stronger, the sky overcast, visibility low, and an intermittent rain fell throughout the day,” described the Barton’s War Diary for that day. The ships dared not proceed above five knots lest the convoys lose their cohesion in the challenging conditions. The troops aboard transports suffered in the uncomfortable craft, as unrelenting waves carried hulls up and down and wind buffeted them from side to side. “During that first trip,” said Sonarman Zack, “I felt sorry for the guys in the landing craft. The waves were coming over them. We felt the rocking in our destroyer, but it was rougher for them.”16
General Eisenhower was concerned, too. When he met with his top commanders to discuss canceling or postponing the operation due to the weather, his air commanders informed him that aircraft could not take off and his naval commanders cautioned that the Channel waters would make life miserable for smaller ships. After great deliberation, Eisenhower postponed the invasion for twenty-four hours and recalled the force. By late afternoon on June 4 the order had been sent, and four hours later Becton reversed course and took Laffey and the convoy back to England.
Quartermaster Phoutrides was at his post on the bridge when the recall order came. He saw no visible reaction among his shipmates, but “when you head out for the invasion, you are all ready to go, so it was a letdown of sorts.” Seaman Dockery said the feeling was uniform throughout the ship. “We were disappointed when we had to turn back. Once you started, you wanted to go do it. We also worried that the Germans might find out about the invasion.”17 Sonarman Zack saw it more as a temporary inconvenience than anything, because logic dictated that within a few days their ship would again set out for the French coast.
According to her War Diary, during the return trip Laffey “rode herd” on the port flank, assisting LCTs that had “engine trouble, breakdowns, leaks, etc.”18 One craft, LCT 2489, slowed, then stopped dead in the water from mechanical failures. Receiving her signal for help, Becton carefully moved Laffey to one side to serve as a buffer from the wind and lessen the roll until another vessel took the LCT in tow.
One LCT capsized while being towed to port, while another had her ramp ripped off south of Portland. Others lost power, had plates loosened, and took on water. After a long day shepherding the craft back to England, the Laffey arrived at Weymouth on June 5, carrying a weary but safe crew.
The men had barely had time to relax with a meal and cup of coffee when three and a half hours later Becton received the order to return to the Channel and again escort the landing craft to Normandy. The invasion, delayed for twenty-four hours, was on once again. With an overcast sky, occasional rain, and fifteen-knot winds (seventeen miles per hour), Laffey left at daybreak.
For almost three hours Becton rounded up the landing craft and gathered them into formation for the trip across the channel. The Barton escorted the lead group of LCTs, while Laffey remained behind to accompany a second group.
Laffey and Barton escorted 136 LCTs and LCIs (Landing Craft Infantry) from Weymouth to the staging area off Utah Beach, a three-mile strip of shore between Pouppeville and La Madeleine, France. The two groups left England from Point Z, the ten-mile-wide assembly area thirteen miles south of the Isle of Wight through which every ship in the vast invasion force steamed before turning toward Normandy.
Once beyond the assembly area, nicknamed Piccadilly Circus, ships navigated into one of five swept lanes, one for each beach. Now in his assigned lane at the westernmost end, Becton believed that there was no turning back this time.
Only a handful of hours separated the untested crew from its first taste of combat.
“Laffey Was Always on the Move”
Halfway across the Channel each of the five lanes split into two, one for the speedier vessels and a second for the slower troop transports and landing craft. Planners added two safeguards to help ships maintain their proper course. Vessels showing identification flags in daylight and flashing an identifying letter in the dark stood at every spot calling for a course change, and minesweepers dropped lighted buoys one mile apart along the channels.
Becton kept Laffey on her station along the port flank of the second group, ready to assist vessels in trouble as the landing craft slowly churned across the Channel in rectangular fashion. At times Becton stationed the destroyer at the formation’s head, then veered to the sides to make certain every landing craft maintained position. He communicated with the landing craft by semaphore or by lights rather than electronic means, which the Germans might have intercepted, and the landing craft featured red lights aft so the LCIs behind could follow and remain in station. “Laffey was always on the move, checking on ships,” said Sonarman Zack. “Sometimes a landing craft would sustain damage from the seas and call us. We’d signal to another landing craft to help them. We were like a shepherd.”19
Laffey’s group made steady progress throughout the evening of June 5 and into the early morning hours of June 6. Suddenly, the thundering roar of aircraft drowned out other noise as planes sped toward Normandy to deliver the paratroopers behind lines. Though no one aboard Laffey could see the aircraft in the darkness, men knew from the sounds of multiple engines that the sky had to be packed with transports on their way to deliver the first punch against Hitler’s defenses. The moment surprised the crew, who had not been told of the paratroopers, but it assured them that by the time they arrived off the French coast, the Germans would already have been in a fight.
For an hour or so after the last plane flew by, silence again covered Laffey’s group. Then more noise, louder than before, indicated that a fleet of bombers was winging its way to lambast the French coast.
In mid-afternoon lookouts spotted a floating mine two and one-half feet in diameter five hundred yards to starboard. Becton ordered seaman with rifles to detonate it, but when their bullets failed to explode the multipronged device, Becton’s 20mm guns dispatched the threat. Two hours later the minesweeper, USS Osprey (AM-56), emitted smoke when she either ran into a mine or was struck by a torpedo. While Laffey circled to provide protection, a second minesweeper moved alongside and removed the entire complement shortly before the vessel capsized and sank.
Other than those few difficulties, Becton shepherded his group across the Channel and delivered his ships to the embarkation point for the assault. With every man at battle stations, Becton prepared to execute the remainder of his tasks assigned for D-Day.
Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, Naval Commander for the Western Task Force of which Laffey was a part, had issued a message emphasizing the importance of their assignments and the challenges they would face. “In two ways the coming battle differs from any that we have undertaken before,” Kirk wrote. “It demands more seamanship, and more fighting.” The English Channel would require Becton and every commander to operate in strong currents and twenty-foot tides, after which “we must destroy an enemy defensive system which has been four years in the making, and our mission is one against which the enemy will throw his whole remaining strength.” In addition, they would face “prepared positions, held by Germans who have learned from their past failures. They have coastal batteries and minefields; they have bombers and E-boats and submarines. They will try to use them all. We are getting into a fight.” Kirk reminded his men that they had “one task only—to land and support and supply and reinforce the finest Army ever sent to battle by the United States. In that task we shall not fail. I await with confidence the further proof, in this the greatest battle of them all, that American sailors are seamen and fighting men second to none.”20
“A Once in a Lifetime Experience”
Men quieted as their ship, accompanied by hundreds of other warships and landing craft, drew closer to assigned stations off the Normandy coast. Gunner’s Mate Delewski had experienced nerves on the football field, where an errant tackle or miscue could mean the difference between a win and a loss, but those times now shrank to insignificance. Heightened senses overwhelmed Sonarman Zack, Seaman Fern, and the other initiates to combat. Hearts beat faster, palms turned clammier, and perspiration dampened shirts.
Naval intelligence estimated that twenty-eight German batteries containing 110 guns, ranging from the smaller 75mm artillery to the mammoth 170mm batteries, defended Utah Beach alone. The battleships and cruisers were to silence those batteries while destroyers escorted the landing craft to the beaches. When the first boat wave was moments from reaching shore, the commander was to fire a smoke rocket to indicate they had touched land, at which time the bombardment would lift from the beaches to selected targets inland.
“I didn’t realize how large the invasion was,” said Seaman Johnson. “It was huge, but when you’re sitting in one spot, you don’t think about that. You’re more focused on what’s in your line of vision. As we neared the coast, we worried about mines. They were a larger worry than aircraft, as we had such air superiority that we didn’t worry about attack from the air.”21
As Laffey arrived in the Baie de la Seine area with the landing craft, German E-boats concerned Becton. The German navy, still licking its wounds from naval losses in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, could call on a collection of destroyers and minesweepers, as well as sixty E-boats, scattered along the French coastline. Though hardly imposing, these smaller, speedy craft could draw close to or even penetrate the screen and wreak havoc with their torpedoes.
“D-Day was here,” recalled Gunner’s Mate Delewski, stationed in the aft five-inch gun. “The skies were gray and the waters choppy. As one sat on the ship in the Channel, one had to be impressed with the tremendous number of planes overhead. Allied air superiority was very evident.”22
In the predawn darkness on June 6, each battleship and cruiser had anchored at its assigned spot and prepared for the bombardment. As dawn broke a German shore battery broke the stillness by firing at two destroyers. Thirty-one minutes later a thundering American barrage announced to Normandy and to the world that the long-awaited assault against Hitler’s Fortress Europe had at last begun.
Each time one of the mighty battleships unleashed a salvo, the gun recoil forced the battleship downward and emitted a shock wave that rocked Laffey and other nearby vessels. At each of the five Normandy beaches, as the first glimmers of dawn cracked through the darkness, arcs of shells streamed from battleships and cruisers toward shore targets.
A deafening noise enveloped Laffey. Crew on Laffey’s deck observed the impressive opening with a combination of admiration and thanks that they were not on the receiving end. At his designated time, Becton gave the order to his five-inch mounts, which commenced with a ship-rattling salvo that sent Laffey’s first shots of the war racing toward the enemy. Their fire blended with that of the battleships, cruisers, and other destroyers, some of which were stationed closer to the beaches than Laffey and fired point-blank at the enemy.
“At that time of the morning you can actually see the shells,” said Sonarman Zack. “They are red hot. I wondered how the Germans could live through it, and I thought that it sure would open the beaches for the infantry. It made me glad I was where we were instead of on land.”23
One hour later aircraft dropped a protective smoke screen between the troops about to head into Utah Beach and the shore. Seaman Dockery caught a quick glimpse of the landing craft before settling into his station inside a five-inch gun mount. “It was impressive seeing all those landing craft heading to shore, a once in a lifetime experience.”24
As part of his duties as Quartermaster of the Watch, Phoutrides recorded the times and events as they occurred. He worked in the pilothouse along with Quartermaster 1/c John “Jack” Doran, a recent transfer from the battleship, Texas, who was the helmsman, the person who handles the wheel and steers the ship. Phoutrides also worked alongside the annunciator, the sailor who passed instructions from Becton to the engine room. Should either of the other two men became incapacitated during the battle, Phoutrides was to assume their tasks.
“I didn’t feel scared,” said Phoutrides, who gained a panoramic view of the day’s events from the flying bridge and a partial view from the portholes in the pilot house. “I was a young man anxious to see action. Everywhere we looked, there were ships, some with antiaircraft balloons above. Everywhere we looked skyward, there were U.S. aircraft. All you saw were ships and planes. It was an awesome sight!” The spectacle bolstered Phoutrides’s confidence, but he still postponed forming a conclusion on Becton, who sometimes stood inside the pilot house with them and at other times outside on the flying bridge where he might have a better view. “I had partial confidence in the skipper, but I had to see how he handled himself in combat. Every enlisted man wants to see how his officer will react under fire.”25
Laffey and other destroyers darted about the landing craft, simultaneously firing their five-inch guns toward German fortifications while ensuring that the vessels maintained their proper course toward shore. The bombardment lifted as the landing craft neared the beaches, and at 6:31 a.m., only one minute behind schedule, the first ramps lowered at Utah Beach and troops of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division swarmed ashore. While German machine gun fire at Omaha Beach cut down swaths of American infantry before they could gather on the beach, men at Utah Beach landed against light opposition, in part because currents had swept them slightly off course into a landing area that was lightly defended and partly because battleship fire had knocked out three ten-inch German batteries guarding that stretch of sand.
Now fully involved in their first combat action as a crew, the Laffey men jumped to action. Men inserted plugs or cotton in their ears to mask the whistling and screeching of the shells and other noises of the bombardment. At his 40mm mount on the starboard side near the No. 1 stack, Seaman Johnson passed racks of four shells to the loaders above.
Eighteen-year-old Seaman 1/c Donald E. “Doc” Brown watched from the torpedo deck as Laffey and nine other destroyers opened fire at German targets ashore. Spaced about half-mile apart, the ships moved in an oval, firing when their ship traversed the shoreward arc. Laffey’s two twin-mounted forward guns and one twin-mounted aft gun fired in succession, with a minute’s pause between each. Combined with the firepower of the other ships, a steady stream of five-inch shells coursed shoreward.
When Brown saw flashes inside a church steeple, indicating enemy gunfire from that location, he radioed the bridge and asked Becton for permission to fire. Becton checked with his superiors about targeting a church, and gave Brown the go-ahead when he received an affirmative. “Next time we came past,” said Brown, “we demolished it. We started with the steeple and leveled it right down to the ground. It was a pretty good-sized church, too.”26
As the infantry moved inland and broadened the beachhead, larger landing ships brought in tanks, trucks, and more supplies. Laffey stood offshore prepared to lend fire support, but a lack of targets kept her guns silent.
With matters near the beach unfolding smoothly, shortly after 10:00 a.m. Becton moved Laffey to her station in a defensive screen around the bombardment ships. Laffey, accompanied by the Walke, her sister ship from Destroyer Division 119, operated four miles offshore. Although outside the range of most German guns, Laffey maneuvered within striking distance of the larger ones, some of whose shells splashed less than twenty feet from the destroyer.
Becton figured that the shallow waters off Utah Beach precluded German U-boats from prowling about, but he could not dismiss the possibility that German fighter planes could sweep down the coast or E-boats from Cherbourg might dash to an attack. To counter the E-boat threat against the two American beaches, Laffey and other destroyers patrolled three to five miles off Normandy along what was called the Dixie Line.
By nightfall of June 6, more than 23,000 troops had landed at Utah Beach and established a six-mile beachhead. Troops had begun advancing inland to join with American paratroopers in starting what would become hundreds of assaults against German pillboxes and strongholds. Three thousand men perished at the bloodier Omaha Beach area to the east, while fewer than two hundred died from the lighter resistance at Utah Beach.
The naval support offered by the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers such as Laffey helped reduce German resistance at Utah and paved the way for the oncoming troops. SFCPs on land called in coordinates to the ships, which quickly directed their guns on the target. “Never before has it been attempted to silence with naval gunfire so extensive and elaborate a system of coast defenses as found here,” summed Commander Cruiser Division Seven’s War Diary for June 6. “The surprising thing is that more losses were not sustained by our force in this stage of the operation.”27
Laffey’s crew had been initiated into the war. “Well your big boy has had his baptism of fire a short while ago,” Seaman Fern wrote to his mother in June. “No one on my ship was hurt, but others near us weren’t so lucky.”28
The German navy had yet to harass the American fleet, but Becton remained skeptical that it had been neutralized. Sooner or later, he was certain, they would make an appearance. Hanson Baldwin, the New York Times’s respected military correspondent, wrote about the subject in an article headlined, “Where Is German Navy?” He concluded that most of Hitler’s seagoing assets were unavailable or sunk. “However, a number of E-boats were based at Cherbourg and Le Havre and there were destroyers, torpedo boats, E-boats and submarines at Brittany ports, and in the Bay of Biscay enough of all of them to seem to offer a sizable threat.”29
When or where might they suddenly strike?
June 8–9: Shore Bombardment
“We Were Doing Something Useful”
The “D” Day invasion
Was right down her alley
She blasted the Krauts
So the ground troops could rally.
—“An Ode to the USS Laffey (DD-724),” Gunner’s Mate Owen Radder
For the next eighteen days Becton faced four main tasks. Besides providing supporting fire for the infantry ashore in the early stages of the invasion, Laffey protected Allied shipping off Utah Beach from German air attacks, countered German mine-laying efforts, and guarded against incursions from German E-boats and submarines. Officers and enlisted alike learned they had to be flexible, one hour collaborating with battleships and cruisers and the next battling toe-to-toe with German land batteries. They had to search the skies for enemy aircraft and scour the sea for mines, and juggle these exacting responsibilities while learning on the job. The tasks demanded much of a young crew that had first gathered only four months earlier, yet Becton, other ships’ crews, the infantry ashore, and officers reaching into Eisenhower’s headquarters counted on them to do their jobs.
Having already witnessed in the Pacific the destructiveness of sudden air attacks, Becton kept his men on alert lest the ship be caught off guard. “The first two days we were at GQ 24 hours a day,”30 said Quartermaster Phoutrides. Becton had told the men that, when possible, they should grab a few moments of sleep at their station, but to let the men near them know what they were doing.
German aircraft rarely appeared during the day, but at night they either planted mines in the water or attacked after dropping flares that so brightly illuminated the area that the crew swore they could read by them. Once the flares revealed a vessel, the German pilot would dive in for an assault.
“At night a small number of German planes did manage to get through,” Gunner’s Mate Delewski wrote after the war, “and then one had to be impressed with the comparative brilliance of the German flares. They lit up the area like Main Street on a Saturday night.”31 Allied air superiority provided a tight blanket over the ships, but Delewski and his shipmates never knew when an enemy aircraft might burst through the curtain.
While Laffey patrolled one night, flares suddenly brightened a three-hundred-yard area around the ship. “We sped up because a bomber would be coming after us,” said Zack, who was so certain that a bomb would follow that in the interval he was unable to mutter a sound. “The waiting, after the flare, was scary,” he said. “We were going to get it now.” The German pilot dropped his bomb, but it exploded harmlessly off Laffey’s fantail.
During another nighttime patrol, lookouts spotted a German plane approaching as if to drop mines or a torpedo. However, at the last minute the German pilot, who had apparently not picked up the destroyer, veered rapidly to the right to avoid colliding with Laffey. In the attempt his wing hit the water and the aircraft flipped over and exploded, but the Laffey was safe. “Had he not turned he would have hit us,” said Sonarman Zack. “He was as surprised as us and turned at the last moment.”32
Until the infantry had advanced far enough inland to be out of range of Laffey’s guns, the ship’s five-inch gun crews zeroed in on German mobile 88s and enemy gun emplacements on the ridges that fringed the beaches. Standing a few miles offshore, Laffey opened fire whenever the SFCP radioed in coordinates for a target. With the information in hand, Lieutenant (jg) Lloyd Hull in the CIC plotted the target on the grid, and sent the range and bearing to the gunnery officer, Harry Burns, in the fire-control director. Men observed where onshore the dust and smoke arose, then adjusted the firing to bring the shells directly onto the target.
A busy two days started June 8 when SFCP called on Becton eleven times to help destroy enemy emplacements blocking the advance of the 4th Infantry Division toward Montebourg, France. From an average range of ten thousand yards the five-inch crews fired 610 rounds of shells in seven hours, eliminating German howitzers, machine gun and rocket gun emplacements, and enemy troop concentrations.
Gunnery was not a simple operation to conduct from a ship at sea, swaying in the waves and in constant motion. “Hitting what you aimed at was no easy task with the swells that kept the ships rolling,” said Gunner’s Mate Delewski. “Because the area was crowded with ships, we could not make the necessary speed to keep Laffey steady.”33 Delewski credited the training instilled in the gun crews as making the difference between success and failure.
That afternoon the ship fired one salvo when the SFCP frantically radioed for help from gunfire that had pinned down the unit. “We’re lying on our stomachs in a ditch under enemy fire,” they radioed. Hating to direct five-inch shells onto fellow Americans, Burns gave the order to fire, then anxiously waited for eleven minutes, when the radio crackled to life with the announcement, “Right on target! You did it!” The relieved shore party added, “Whoever was shooting at us has stopped so you must have done all right.”34
Their June 8 fire proved so beneficial that the SFCP radioed back its congratulations. The message stated “that every mission given the ship so far had been successfully completed, that there were dead Germans everywhere, and that he would call us back when he had more missions.”35
In bloodying the enemy for the first time since their February commissioning, the crew had completed an action that assisted their brethren infantry battling for every yard ashore. “Yes, we were proud of that,” said Quartermaster Phoutrides. “We were doing something useful.”36
Unlike the infantry, though, theirs was an impersonal fight, waged with invisible enemies and completed with hidden bloodshed and death. Speedy, surgical, and one-sided, their initial foray into battle gave the false impression that naval combat was clean. The handful of combat veterans, like Becton and Csiszar, could tell them otherwise, but their words would not sink in until Phoutrides, Fern, and the other newcomers to war witnessed a more sordid side in the Pacific.
More of the same occurred the next day, when the SFCP called on Laffey twelve times to target concrete pillboxes and fortifications. In a busy seven-hour span, the five-inch crews fired 375 rounds, taxing a group of officers and men who had completed their first bombardment fewer than twenty-four hours earlier. Crammed inside the sweltering five-inch gun mounts, Seaman Dockery and others labored in the June heat, taxing muscles and producing perspiration. Though they could not see the results of their labors, they were proud that whereas many of the other ships fired 100–200 rounds during these days, Laffey all but emptied her magazines against different targets.
Most of the day’s action consisted of eight or ten rounds against machine gun positions or troop concentrations, but during one eighty-minute barrage, the gun crews fired 275 rounds shoreward. Afterwards the SFCP reported, “Excellent shooting. Targets were 88mm guns and machine guns that had been giving our troops a lot of trouble. You made direct hits on two enemy pillboxes containing 88mm guns, and inflicted great damage. Will call you again when we have another opportunity to plaster them.”37
In Becton’s opinion, the crew functioned smoothly in their first combat action, crisply following orders and efficiently maintaining a flow of five-inch shells from handling room to gun and from gun to shore. He concluded in his action report that on both June 8 and June 9 “communications with shore fire control parties were very good and the bombardment was carried out with little difficulty.”38
The First Week: Menace of the Mines
“You Never Knew If You Were Safe”
Even with Allied air superiority clamping a tight blanket over the shipping, Laffey gun crews had to watch for possible air attacks. An occasional German plane slipped through, such as the Heinkel bomber that drew within 1,000 yards of Laffey before other ships’ guns splashed it. Late in the evening on June 9 the ship’s starboard 20mm and 40mm antiaircraft guns opened fire at two aircraft that dived out of the clouds. Fire from twenty other ships joined in, but ceased when the planes were identified as friendly. Fortunately, neither plane was damaged, but Becton castigated the officer in charge first for allowing such an impulsive reaction and then for the gun crews’ poor shooting performance. “Planes’ maneuvers fortunately were much superior to the machine gunners’ marksmanship,” Becton sardonically wrote in his report, “and neither was shot down nor apparently hurt judging from their maneuverability and speed in clearing the area.”39
Laffey spotters also had to keep watch for German mines that infested the waters off Utah Beach. Nearly every night three groups of enemy aircraft flew over. While one group dropped flares to illuminate the area and another executed runs against the beach to draw antiaircraft fire, the third sneaked in and dropped mines that, shielded by the darkness and the waves, floated among the ships. Because the currents along Utah Beach ran parallel to shore, a mine dropped at one end of the area drifted among the ships by morning.
The New York Times military analyst, Hanson W. Baldwin, described the sea action off Normandy. “The struggle between the minesweepers and the minelayers,” he wrote, “is continuous; the Germans lay mines each night from planes and from E-boats or other surface ships, and each day the sweepers steam back and forth across the Bay of the Seine and the English Channel, undoing the work of the enemy.” He added that “the Germans are indefatigable at this type of sea guerrilla warfare.”40
Mines hampered Laffey not only at night, but prevented them from reaching the next day’s station until minesweepers had cleared a path. One day Becton followed the minesweepers into a channel. At one spot the channel swerved around a ship that had been previously sunk, and just as Laffey navigated the turn a destroyer escort behind her exploded. The ship’s back end lifted out of the water, and the destroyer escort split in half and sank within minutes. Laffey had escaped harm because the Germans had planted a pressure mine that was set to permit the first vessel to pass by unharmed while detonating with the approach of a second ship. “After this you never knew if you were safe, even if the path had been cleared,” said Sonarman Zack. “Mines were a huge concern because every night German planes dropped more.”41
The weapons exacted a bloody toll at Utah Beach. On June 6 the USS Corry (DD-463) struck a mine and sank, taking twenty-two men to their deaths. The next day a second mine ripped a huge hole in the minesweeper, USS Tide (AM-125) and lifted her out of the water as she cleared lanes for fire support ships, killing her commanding officer. The troopship USS Susan B. Anthony (AP-72), sustained forty-five wounded when she struck a mine and sank. On June 8 the destroyer USS Glennon (DD-620) lost twenty-five dead and thirty-eight wounded to a mine, then three other mines ripped off the stern of the USS Rich (DE-695) as she maneuvered alongside to assist the sinking Glennon, killing almost one hundred crew.
The loss of the Meredith—their sister ship, one of the original five destroyers comprising Destroyer Division 119, and the sixth ship to be lost off Utah Beach to mines in three days—most affected the Laffey crew, however. Meredith struck a mine on June 7 while screening other vessels, losing seven dead and more than fifty wounded. She remained afloat for two days, when a German plane planted a bomb that broke the destroyer in two. The loss of a ship that had been constructed at Bath, Maine, and carried the same identifying features as Laffey, was not easily forgotten, and forced Fern and the others to realize how slim was the gap between living and dying in combat.
The other threat, E-boats, often left their anchorage at Cherbourg for nighttime forays against Allied shipping and to lay additional mines. Usually operating in groups of five to seventeen boats, the Germans followed a failed raid the night of June 8–9 with a second on June 11 in which with a single torpedo they sank the fleet tug, USS Partridge (AM-16), killing thirty-two men.
Becton was proud of his crew’s first week in combat. By June 9 they had provided so much fire support for the troops ashore that the ammunition rooms were almost empty. That afternoon, when Becton informed the Commander Task Group 125.8 that his ship had expended eighty percent of her shells, the commander ordered Laffey, after firing a few farewell salvos, to leave the line and return to England for replenishment. Within hours her relief ship, the USS Shubrick (DD-639), drew close aboard so the Laffey could pass along any information about mines and shore batteries, and Laffey was on her way back to England.
“The last week I’ve been sleeping at my Battle Station,” Seaman Fern wrote his mother about his first week off Normandy. “We’ve seen a little action but nothing important or unusual. Some of the boys are speculating already on when we’ll get back.”42
Becton did not share Fern’s optimism about steaming to the United States. When Laffey left at dawn on June 10 for her return trip to England, the captain knew that the respite from combat would last only as long as it took to replenish her ammunition and fuel supply for continued action off Normandy. It was simpler to send a destroyer back to England for supplies than to transport those materials to Normandy, and the four and one-half hour trip across the Channel only briefly took a ship out of the action.
Later that Saturday afternoon Becton steered the ship into Plymouth, where the crew spent the rest of the day refueling and loading ammunition. Sailors formed a long line from the ship to shell storage facilities near the shore. “Guys were handing shells from man to man,” said Seaman Dockery, “passing shells to the ship.”43 When they remained in Plymouth overnight to avoid making a night voyage back to Normandy, Becton rewarded his crew for what he considered their outstanding performance the previous four days. Instead of the usual fare, he ordered steak for everyone. The unexpected feast, plus resting for the moment on the calmer side of the Channel, gave everyone in the crew the chance to enjoy a breather from the war.
After a welcome respite, on Sunday morning Laffey again set course for France. When she arrived off Normandy later that day, Becton positioned the destroyer at her screening station and ordered everyone to battle stations. E-boat warnings had been posted for the Western Task Force area. That night he observed 40mm gunfire and star shells to the north and east, and concluded that those E-boat alerts might draw the ship into action.
Laffey’s first experience with combat was over. Round two was about to begin.