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The 300 lb. depth charge rolled about Benson's after deck
smashing
into the bulkhead, hatch coming, racks, and stanchions with each roll
and pitch of the ship. A high quartering sea and the motion of the ship
put tons of water surging across the fantail. That night, in the early
spring of 1942, Seamen Howard Ray and Harold Manwaring, in foul weather
gear and rubber boots ventured out of the after deck house in total
darkness, intent on securing the loose depth charge.
Only
a blue lensed battle hand lantern gave them a little light. Neither one
had a lifeline secured, as they felt their way along.
Using the roll of the ship to their advantage, they manuevered the
drum
back to its stanchion and secured it. All done in the dark, by
themselves, on a rolling destroyer. They had just finished when a
tremendous sea swept over the starboard quarter. It lifted Manwaring
off his feet and was carrying him overboard when Howard Ray, with one
arm around a stanchion grabbed the sailor with his other arm. The
strain was terrific but he managed to keep his hold until the water
rolled over the side. The two shaken sailors managed to undog the after
deckhouse hatch and reach safety.
Without a doubt, Ray had saved Manwaring's life.
The next night the same stormy conditions prevailed; the two sailors
were on the same watch. Every fifteen minutes, Manwarig tested the
phones by calling Ray in the handling room. About halfway through the
watch, he received no answer, despite repeated attempts. The officer of
the deck ordered him to go aft and find out the problem. He
made his way aft over the torpedo deck where safety lines were
rigged and clambered down to the handling room. Here he found the head
phones dangling and swaying on a hook, but no Howard Ray.
Upon report of his findings, the officer of the deck ordered an
immediate search of the ship and awakened the captain. A search
included sending two men in boots and foul weather gear to check the
fantail. Ray was not found and neither was another depth charge which
had apparently broken loose and rolled overboard, tearing through the
netting under the rail. They had to conclude that this was a
repetition of the night before. This time, for some reason, Ray
attempted to handle the problem alone without calling for assistance.
Rough sea, darkness, no lifeline, and a rolling 350lb depth charge; a
fatal combination. The sea is unforgiving. The two got away with it the
first, but not the second, when Ray was undoubtedly swept overboard.
(Read more Stories
of the Benson.)
Benson (DD-421) was laid down on 16 May 1938 at Quincy, Mass., by the Bethlehem Steel Co.; launched on 15 November 1939; sponsored by Mrs. William S. Benson, the widow of Admiral Benson; and commissioned on 25 July 1940, Comdr. Clifford A. Fines in command. (DD-421: dp. 1,620; l. 348'2"; b. 36'1"; dr. 17'6"; s. 36.5 k.; cpl. 276; a. 5 5", 6 .50-cal. mg., 10 21" tt., 2 dct.; cl. Benson)
Following fitting out at the Boston Navy Yard, the destroyer made a
short cruise to Portland, Maine, before departing Boston on 22 August
and heading--via Newport, R.I., and Yorktown, Va.--for Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and abbreviated shakedown training. She sailed for the Chesapeake
Bay on 3 September and--after visits to Quantico,.Va., and Washington,
D.C.--departed Norfolk, Va., on the 13th and proceeded via Guantanamo
Bay to Cayene, French Guiana, where she arrived on the 21st to check on
the possibility of Axis activity in that French colony and its Dutch
neighbor, Surinam. This effort seemed necessary to keep fascism out of
the Americas and to protect a rich source of bauxite ore, the source of
aluminum, for Allied war production. On the 27th, the colony’s governor
embarked in the destroyer for a visit to Iles du Salut, some seven or
eight miles off the coast. He returned to Cayenne later that day and
disembarked before the ship sailed for Paramaribo, Surinam. Benson
departed Cayene for the third time on 6 October and proceeded via San
Juan, Puerto Rico, to the New York Navy Yard where she underwent a
post-shakedown overhaul that lasted through mid-November.
Benson
stood out of New York harbor on 18 November to begin the neutrality
patrols that constituted her main concern well into the following
spring. A highlight of this period of her service came in March 1941
when she escorted Potomac (AG-25) while the yacht carried
President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Bahamas for a holiday of
fishing. Late in May, the destroyer helped to screen Texas (BB-35)
as the battleship patrolled the North Atlantic. While they were at sea,
German battleship Bismarck
got underway on 21 May and headed for the Denmark Strait hoping to prey
on Allied convoys. When Churchill learned of her foray, he asked
President Roosevelt to have the American Navy look for the raider and
to keep the Royal Navy informed of developments during the search. Once
alerted, Texas and her consorts scoured the seas for Bismarck
until the British sank the German warship on 27 May. Soon thereafter, Benson
returned to the Boston Navy Yard for a month's availability to prepare
for a new mission. She got underway on 28 June to join Task Force (TF)
19 which was being formed to carry marines to Iceland to free the
British troops who had been guarding that island for more active
service. Task Force 19 departed Argentia, Newfoundland, on 1 July and,
at the end of a passage through U-boat-infested waters, anchored in
Reykjavik on the evening of 7 July. After returning to Boston, Benson
quickly refueled and moved to Casco Bay for exercises off Portland,
Maine. In September, she began almost seven months of duty shuttling
between Boston and Iceland escorting convoys. On one of these
convoys, Benson was nearby when a German u-boat torpedoed and sank Reuben James, the first USN ship
lost in World War Two.
Three months later, in
December, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration
of war allowed the United States to drop the last pretense of
neutrality and prosecute the war against the Axis openly. At the end of
March 1942, she got underway to escort a convoy all the way eastward to
Londonderry, Ireland, and returned to Boston early in May. Convoy
escort operations--which took her to the British Isles, Bermuda,
and the Canal Zone--continued to be her main duty into the autumn when
she began readying herself for Operation “Torch,” the invasion of
French North Africa. As a part of those preparations, she took part in
shore-bombardment exercises with the new battleship Massachusetts
(BB-59). En route to Casco Bay, Maine, for one of these rehearsals in
the pre-dawn darkness of 19 October, she collided with Trippe
(DD-403), killing four and wounding three of the latter’s crewmen when
her prow pierced Trippe’s starboard quarter. The accident also
caused enough damage to Benson to keep her in the New York Navy
Yard undergoing repairs until after Allied troops had invaded North
Africa.
When she was again ready for action, Benson
resumed convoy-escort duty across the North Atlantic and in the
Mediterranean. In July 1943, she turned her attention to supporting the
invasion of Sicily. She sailed from Oran, Algeria, on the 6th with Task
Group (TG) 80.2, the escort group of Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt's
Western Naval Task Force, and escorted convoy NCS-1 to the assault area
at Gela, Sicily. She arrived off the beaches there several hours before
dawn on the night of 9 and 10 July and spent the next two days in the
antiaircraft screen fighting off almost incessant raids by Luftwaffe
warplanes. On the 11th, a bomb exploded close aboard the destroyer
wounding 18 of her crewmen, but inflicting only superficial damage to
the ship. The next day, she set out to escort attack cargo ship Betelgeuse
(AKA-11) to Algiers where she arrived on the 18th.
More patrol and escort duty in the Mediterranean followed until 24
August when Benson
joined TF-81 in final preparations for landing on the mainland of
Italy. At dawn on 9 September, the Allied troops went ashore on
Salerno's beaches and met fierce opposition while the Luftwaffe struck
continuously at the warships of the invaders. At mid-morning on 11
September, a German Do. 217 warplane released a radio-controlled glide
bomb which struck Savannah's (CL-42) No. 3 turret and pierced
through the light cruiser until it exploded in her lower ammunition
handling room, opening seams in the ship's hull and tearing a large
hole in her bottom. Valiant and efficient damage control parties
stemmed the stricken cruiser's flooding, corrected her list,
extinguished her fires, and enabled her to resume moving under her own
power. Benson then helped to escort Savannah to Malta
for temporary repairs that enabled her to return to the United States
for permanent patching. Benson
soon returned to Salerno, rejoined the antiaircraft screen, and--on the
morning of September 19th--shot down an FW-190 fighter-bomber. While
supporting ground operations in Italy, she also conducted numerous
shore bombardment missions and escorted other ships to various
Mediterranean ports. On 2 October, she rescued the survivors from a
downed Royal Air Force "Wellington" bomber.
At the end of January 1944, the destroyer departed
Casablanca, Morocco,
and escorted Convoy GUS-28 to New York where she entered the navy yard
for an overhaul. Then, following training exercises along the east
coast, she got underway with TG 27.4 on 20 April and proceeded to Oran
where she arrived on 1 May. After upkeep, she headed for Gibraltar on
the 9th with Convoy UGS-40. Two days later, she helped to fight off an
attack by about 30 German planes, shooting down two Ju. 88 bombers,
probably destroying a third, and damaging two others. Best of all, no
ship from the convoy was lost or damaged.
In the months that followed, Benson
continued to escort convoys and individual ships between various
Mediterranean ports. In mid-August 1944, she joined TG 80.6 to help
screen other warships involved in the invasion of southern France. She
also served as a traffic control vessel during that operation and, from
time to time, took part in the bombardment of German positions ashore.
While on patrol duty in a fire-support area near Toulon, the destroyer
blockaded enemy merchant ships in San Remo harbor and fired on supply
buildings in the vicinity. She also supported the French cruisers Montcalm
and Jeanne d'Arc during
their bombardment of San Remo. Early in January 1945, she sailed to
Leghorn, Italy, to shell German troops threatening to break through
there. During this duty, she was attacked by enemy small combatants,
either German E-boats or Italian MAS boats, but escaped injury and
later escorted the French cruiser Georges Leygues in her bombardment of
enemy-held shipyards in Pietra, Italy.
Detached from this duty late in January 1945, Benson
returned to the United States for yard repairs and training during
February. After a convoy-escort run to Plymouth, England, in April, the
destroyer received orders to the Pacific. Accordingly, she transited
the Panama Canal on 12 May and then reached Pearl Harbor on the 29th.
The destroyer spent bit more than a month in Hawaiian waters and then
got underway on 14 June to escort Lexington (CV-16), Cowpens
(CV-25) and Hancock
(CV-19) back to the western Pacific. Then, following upkeep at Leyte in
the Philippines, she proceeded to Ulithi. Until VJ day on 15 August,
the warship performed convoy and patrol duty between Ulithi and
Okinawa. She served in the screen for the first occupation troops for
Yokohama, who landed on 2 and 3 September 1945.
In the two months following the surrender of Japan, the destroyer
escorted five different convoy groups between the Philippines and Tokyo
Bay. Ordered back to the United States for inactivation, Benson
got underway from Yokohama on 4 November 1945 and moored at Charleston,
S.C., on 6 December. She was decommissioned there on 18 March 1946,
placed in reserve, and assigned to the Charleston Group of the Atlantic
Reserve Fleet. On 26 February 1954, Benson was transferred to
the government of Taiwan, and she served the Taiwanese Navy as Lo
Yang
(DD-14) into the mid-1970's. As the result of a survey made of her
early in 1974, the Taiwanese replaced her with another American
destroyer that the Navy loaned them in 1975, the former Taussig (DD-746),
which then became Lo Yang (DD-14). Meanwhile, Benson's
name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 November 1974; and
she was sold to Taiwan, presumably for cannibalization and scrapping.
Sources: Public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
and pictures from my father's 1943 Naval Recognition Manual
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