June 1945 for the Navy

USS Langley, June 1945

After sending Sherman’s US Navy Task Force 38.3 to Leyte for a rest period, Halsey ordered RAdm. Radford’s Task Force 38.4orce northward on June 2 to strike the airfields on Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese main island. Halsey and McCain remained off Okinawa. When Radford returned on the afternoon of June 3, Halsey sent Task Group 38.1 southeast to rendezvous with Rear Admiral Donald B. Beary’s Service Squadron 6.  Ships and search planes reported a tropical storm moving up from the south.

The Missouri and Shangri-La headed southeast with Radford’s group, and Halsey ordered the amphibious command ship Ancon to monitor the storm. On the evening of June 4, Task Group 38.4 joined Clark’s force and Beary’s fueling squadron, and they all headed E-SE. At this time, radar operators aboard the Ancon sighted a typhoon, but the ship’s report did not reach Halsey until 1 the next morning.

USS Pittsburgh, Typhoon Connie, 1945

Course changes were made, and there was much feverish plotting aboard the Missouri and other ships through the night and into June 5. Halsey did not want his fleet scattered as before, and he hoped to find better weather so that his flattops could fend off kamikaze attacks. But the barometer was falling, and the howling typhoon closed in. While Radford’s group steamed through fairly calm seas 15 miles to the north, Task Group 38.1 was sucked into a maelstrom of high winds and mountainous waves. Clark ordered his ships to stop their engines and heave to.

Beary’s fueling group, meanwhile, struggled against 75-foot waves and wind gusts up to 127 knots as it passed through the eye of the typhoon. His 48 ships were “riding very heavily,” he reported, yet only four—two jeep carriers, a tanker, and a destroyer escort—received serious damage. Clark’s group passed through the eye half an hour after Beary’s, and almost all of his 33 ships suffered some damage, but none were sunk. The cruiser, Pittsburgh had 110 feet of her bow section torn off, and Clark’s four carriers—the San Jacinto, Hornet, Bennington, and Belleau Wood—were battered. Clark and Beary lost six men killed or swept overboard and four seriously injured, 76 planes were lost.

USS Hornet, June 1945

The other TF-38 ships damaged in the typhoon included the battleships Missouri, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Alabama; the escort carriers Windham Bay, Salamaua, Bougainville, and Attu; the cruisers Baltimore, Quincy, Detroit, San Juan, Duluth, and Atlanta; 11 destroyers; three destroyer escorts; two oilers, and an ammunition ship.

Halsey was aware he would have to face another court of inquiry and took the offensive.  In an angry message to Admiral Nimitz, he complained that early-warning messages were garbled, that weather estimates conflicted, and that coding regulations critically delayed the Ancon’s message. The Third Fleet, meanwhile, soon went back into action. On June 6, 1945, Clark’s and Radford’s groups again provided air support off Okinawa, and Radford’s carriers resumed strikes against Kyushu on the 8th. U.S. troops gained the upper hand on Okinawa, the kamikaze attacks tapered off, and TF-38 retired to Leyte Gulf on June 13 after 92 wearying days at sea.

USS Bennington, June 1945

Admirals Halsey, McCain, Clark, and Beary were ordered to appear before a court of inquiry aboard the aging battleship USS New Mexico anchored in San Pedro Bay, a Leyte Gulf inlet. Presided over again by the harsh Admiral Hoover, the tribunal convened on June 15 and deliberated for eight days. Blame was placed squarely on Halsey and McCain, with the court concluding that the main cause of the Third Fleet’s damage was Halsey’s “extremely ill advised” change of course from 110 to 300 degrees at 1:34 am on June 5. McCain, Clark, and Beary were indicted because “they continued on courses and at speeds which eventually led their task groups into dangerous weather, although their better judgment dictated a course of action which would have taken them fairly clear of the typhoon path.”

Hoover recommended the reassignment of Halsey and McCain, and Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal was reportedly ready to retire Halsey. When the court’s finding reached the Navy Department, Admiral King agreed that the two officers had been inept and, with the weather data available to them, should have avoided the typhoon. But Halsey was a national hero, and King had no wish to humiliate him. It would tarnish the Navy’s triumph in the Pacific. King decided to take no action, and Forrestal agreed.

Admirals Halsey & McCain, March 1945

McCain, however, received no such consideration. Nimitz had long doubted his competence, and it was decided that it was time for him to go. He was ordered by the Navy Department on July 15 to hand over command of Task Force 38 to Admiral John H. Towers and, after a furlough, become deputy head of the Veterans Administration. But McCain, worn out and emaciated, died of a heart attack on the day after he returned to his Coronado, California, home on 6 September 1945.

Halsey, meanwhile, sailed back to America and was greeted in San Francisco and Los Angeles by blaring bands, sirens, whistles, and cheering thousands. His reputation had been tarnished, yet he emerged from the war as a fighting admiral revered by the men who served under him.

Click on images to enlarge.

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Naval Humor –  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Farewell Salutes – 

Donald Anthon – Baton Rouge, LA; US Coast Guard, WWII, PTO, LT., Academy Graduate

Dean Bailey – Mobridge, SD; US Navy, WWII, PTO, USS Gardiner’s Bay

John Casey – Phoneix, AZ; US Navy, WWII, corpsman

Robert Danzig – Albany, NY; US Navy, Korea

Edward Finley III – New Orleans, LA US Navy, Top Gun pilot

Ed Jost – Glencoe, IL; USMC, WWII, Sgt., machine-gunner

Gordon Olson – Seymour, CT; USMC, WWII

Thomas Suddarth –  Concord, MO; US Navy, WWII, USS Honolulu & Klaskanine

Warren Venable – Memphis, TN; US Navy, aerial photographer

Eugene W. Wicker – Coweta, OK; US Navy, WWII, Seaman 1st Class, radioman, USS Oklahoma, KIA

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