This is a story about American heroes. They came from farms, small towns, and large cities all across this nation. Many still too young to shave, they brought along their own brand of unbridled energy and a strong sense of duty and love of country as they courageously went to sea to help fight the greatest war this world had ever seen.
Teenagers with little or no experience on the water, these boys were determined to fight for their country. They dropped out of school, ran away from home, and lied about their age so they could put on the uniform and defend their homeland. As Nazi U-boats were sinking Allied ships at a rate faster than they could be replaced, Winston Churchill warned that the sea soon would become America’s cage. Churchill argued that something had to be done, and done quickly, to stop Adolph Hitler before he ruled the Atlantic Ocean, cutting off all commerce between the United States, England, and Europe. Fortunately, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was listening.
To carry out this mission, America turned to an unseasoned crop of teenagers, sending them out to fight the Nazis in a new type of warship—the destroyer escort (DE)—a novel and untested vessel that some U.S. Navy officials viewed as a waste of money. But Roosevelt and Churchill believed it offered the Allies the best hope to turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic.
The United States was pinning its very future on these newly minted bluejackets and their officers—Ivy League college boys more accustomed to being on board yachts than warships. Out to sea they went in the new vessels, designed by a man who had no formal training in ship design and who used whatever available parts he could find to build the new ships. Before long they became the most valuable and successful antisubmarine vessels in the U.S. fleet.
With their teenage crews and young skippers, destroyer escorts plowed through the stormy and dangerous North Atlantic, shepherding merchant ships and Allied convoys carrying needed supplies, equipment, and troops for the war. Using the most sophisticated sonar and radar equipment available, they searched for enemy submarines along the way and used the latest antisubmarine weapons to sink them. Finally it appeared the U-boats had met their match.
President Roosevelt, one of the earliest proponents for the construction of destroyer escorts, believed they would be best equipped to battle Hitler’s skillful U-boat commanders because they were smaller and more maneuverable than larger ships. He first ordered them built in 1940, but the Navy brass did not agree with their president and convinced him to use the nation’s limited resources to build more American destroyers instead. That mistake would carry a heavy price.
U-boats slaughtered Allied vessels and their sailors on the Atlantic Ocean with great effectiveness—some twenty-eight hundred ships were sunk in only the first six months following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. As Germany increased its stranglehold on the Atlantic and the outlook for the United States and England appeared grim, the Navy decided to take another look at FDR’s idea to build the smaller vessels. And not a moment too soon. Hitler’s men were courageous and brazen, using the lights from America’s cities to target and sink Allied ships with Americans watching in horror from shore as ships burned in the distance. There was little time left to end the carnage and turn the tide of the war.
The new ships were built by untrained men and women at a fevered pitch in seventeen shipyards all around the country, 563 DEs in all, 17 rolling off the production lines in a single month. Shipyards stayed open around the clock turning out the new vessels, which, although tardy in their arrival, would quickly be taking their place along the front lines on the dangerous seas.
Navy officials accelerated the mass production of these new ships, with large sections fabricated in factories many miles from the shipyards and welded, rather than riveted, to save additional time. The first DE, outfitted with the latest sonar, radar, and antisubmarine weapons, went to sea in January 1943. The sturdy little ships waged war against German submarines and torpedo bombers in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and then went on to fight in every major battle in the Pacific, where they went toe-to-toe against the largest battleship in the world.
But this is not a story about ships. Ships did not win the war against Germany and Japan—courageous young American sailors, soldiers, and airmen did that job. Away from home for the first time in their young lives, many—more than 1,300 DE sailors, in fact—would never see their families again. Others would return with serious injuries, physical and psychological, they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. Today they speak, many for the first time, about their harrowing days at sea.
This chapter in American history has been largely overlooked in the annals of World War II. Since 2003, when I first considered writing a book about the men who sailed on these trim but deadly little ships, I have interviewed scores of DE veterans, most in their eighties and nineties, humble and reserved, and every one with a story to tell. Finally, in their twilight years, these aging heroes have decided to speak, and I am honored to be the one to hear their tales and write them down for the ages.
I conducted ninety-one personal interviews with World War II naval officers and enlisted men who served on board fifty-six different destroyer escorts; reviewed dozens of oral histories and letters; and poured over secretly kept war diaries, ship logs, and countless other documents and photographs that help to illuminate the remarkable contributions made by these men. Until today many of these diaries and other documents rested in dusty attics, basements, and storage closets far removed from our view. Now a new window has been opened, allowing all Americans to see in crystal clarity the sacrifices made by these young sailors and their families so many years ago—sacrifices, in fact, that allow us to live today as a free nation rather than, as President Roosevelt once said, at the point of a gun.
But the story about destroyer escort sailors is not just a story about battles. It is a story about growing up in the Great Depression, American genius and ingenuity, hard work, honor, and fear, and it includes a small but historic first step toward ending racial discrimination in the United States’ armed forces. All of this and more are part of the remarkable tale these men have told about themselves and their service to the nation. These are their words, these are their stories—I am simply the messenger privileged to share them with my readers.
All too frequently authors will tag their books as “the untold story of . . .”I have resisted doing that here. But it should be very clear that this, indeed, is a story about World War II that has remained virtually hidden in the minds and hearts of the destroyer escort veterans. Although they are aging and, unfortunately, we are losing them too rapidly, their recollections are clear, the memories are focused, and their stories offer a vital lesson for the United States today. It is a lesson of service, honor, responsibility, and tolerance. These men came forward to serve their country during one of the most dangerous and fearful periods in American history. Today their numbers may be diminishing, but their contributions to this nation will forever live in our collective memories. Heroes, you know, never really die.