World War II Service
As newer and more modern destroyers began joining the fleet some of the old ships were assigned to other duties such as tending seaplanes, laying or sweeping mines, or for a newer innovation in modern warfare, carrying fully equipped troops for assault landings as fast transports.
In the Guadalcanal Campaign, neither side enjoyed the overwhelming local naval and air supremacy which ensured victory in every other amphibious operation of the war. This necessitated an increase in the number of high-speed transports, hybrid warships which combined the functions of transports and destroyers. The concept of the high-speed transport embodied sufficient armament for the ship to defend herself against smaller warships and to support the troops she carried with sufficient speed to enable her to outrun more heavily armed ships.
APDs performed arduous service. They transported troops to beachheads, served as escorts for transports and supply vessels, conducted anti-submarine patrols and survey duties, operated with Underwater Demolition Teams and commando units, performed messenger and transport duties, conveyed passengers and mail to and from forward units, and were involved in mine sweeping operations. They were attacked by submarines, surface ships and aircraft (including kamikazes), and many were damaged or sunk.
Read more about this topic: High Speed Transport
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world, war and/or service:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children’s lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)