USS Beale (DD-471) - World War II - 1944

1944

After that action, the destroyer retired to the vicinity of Buna Roads and Cape Sudest, on the eastern coast of New Guinea south of the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits, in which neighborhood she remained until the beginning of 1944. On New Year's Day 1944, Beale departed Buna and rendezvoused with an assault force composed of nine high speed transports (APDs), two tank landing ships (LSTs), and several large landing craft (LCIs) with the 126th Regimental Combat Team (RCT) of the U.S. Army's 32d Infantry Division embarked. Seven other destroyers joined Beale in the escort. The force steamed northwest through Vitiaz Strait to Saidor, New Guinea, where the soldiers streamed ashore unopposed on the morning of 2 January to secure the left flank of the straits through which General MacArthur's forces would pass constantly during their leapfrog up the back of the New Guinea hen. Beale and her compatriots in the screen contented themselves with antiair and antisubmarine patrols during the landings.

For the next month, the warship divided her time between support for the Saidor operation and general patrol and escort missions along the New Guinea coast from Milne Bay to Saidor. On 5 February, Beale stood out of Milne Bay and set course for Sydney, Australia, where she carried out repairs from 9 to 23 February. Returning to Milne Bay on 27 February, she reported for duty with Task Force 74 (TF 74), a mixed force made up of American and Australian cruisers screened by American destroyers and commanded by Rear Admiral Victor A. C. Crutchley, VC, RN.

With both sides of the straits between New Guinea and New Britain free of Japanese interference, General MacArthur looked north to the Admiralty Islands whose capture would further shield his right flank during the advance and provide an alternative base to heavily defended Rabaul. Accordingly, on 27 February, Beale and her colleagues in TF 74 stood out to sea from Cape Sudest, New Guinea, just ahead of a task force composed of fast transports (APDs) and destroyers with elements of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division embarked. The troops were to serve either as the initial invasion force if resistance in the Admiralties was sufficiently light or as a reconnaissance in force to be withdrawn if opposition proved too heavy.

Arriving off Los Negros Island about two hours into the morning watch of 29 February, Beale accompanied Nashville and Bache to a station north of Seeadler Harbor off Ndrilo Island to provide gunfire support for the landing force. At 07:40, she and her consorts opened fire on the island and continued to pound suspected enemy positions for about 15 minutes. The landing force's initial successes obviated the need for a second drubbing of the targets scheduled for the beginning of the forenoon watch. With all apparently going well ashore, the warship cleared the area in company with the rest of the task force, less two destroyers that remained behind to provide call fire, and steamed back to Cape Sudest.

On 4 March, she returned to the vicinity of the Admiralties with TF 74. After bombarding an enemy gun emplacement on Hauwei Island, her task force took up a patrol station about 30 miles (55 km) to the north of Manus. Beale remained on station with TF 74 for three days guarding the approaches to the Admiralty Islands while the troops ashore consolidated their hold on Los Negros Island and moved over to Manus. On the 7th, she made a visit to Hyane Harbor on Los Negros with Rear Admiral Russell S. Berkey embarked and then bombarded an enemy position on Moakareng Peninsula before rejoining the task force for the voyage back to Cape Sudest.

Following a week of gunnery drills and tactical exercises, Beale joined Ammen, Daly, Hutchins, and Mullany in an anti-shipping sweep along the northern coast of New Guinea that was highlighted by a bombardment of Japanese installations at Wewak on 19 March. She patrolled off Oro Bay, New Guinea, on the 20th before carrying out repairs there between 21 and 27 March. The destroyer conducted antisubmarine warfare (ASW) exercises and more gunnery drills during the period 29 March to 8 April and then began another availability on 9 April at Milne Bay, New Guinea, that occupied her until the middle of the month.

Beale's return to combat came in mid-April during the three-pronged occupation of a portion of New Guinea's northern coast bounded by Tanamerah Bay in the west and Aitape in the east. The destroyer was assigned to Rear Admiral Russell S. Berkey's TF 75, built around light cruisers Phoenix, Nashville, and Boise and designated Covering Force "B" for the Hollandia mission. Her unit parted company with the main force about midnight on 21 April and reached its objective, Humboldt Bay, at about 05:00 on the 22d. At around 06:00 Beale and her consorts commenced a 15-minute preliminary bombardment. Those efforts, as well as the contributions added by TF 58 aircraft, prompted most of the supposed defenders to abandon their assignment and head for safer surroundings. As a consequence of the enemy's headlong flight, the assault troops enjoyed a landing that in amphibious circles might be regarded as a walkover, and Japanese resistance never really materialized.

With the landing's success assured, Beale cleared the area with Task Group 77.2 (TG 77.2) and arrived in Seeadler Harbor, Manus, the next day. After taking on fuel and provisions, the destroyer returned to sea on 26 April bound for the northern coast of New Guinea to resume support for the occupation of the region around Hollandia. She took up patrol station off Humboldt Bay on the morning of 27 April and, for the next several days, alternated between patrol duty, shore bombardment missions, and screening assignments with the aircraft carriers also supporting the troops ashore.

Early in May, the warship returned to Seeadler Harbor to prepare for the next hop in the leapfrog up the back of the New Guinea hen. Before embarking on that phase of the huge island's conquest, however, she joined Abner Read and Bache to conduct a subsidiary mission in the vicinity of the bypassed Japanese base at Wewak where enemy shore batteries were hampering the work of Aitape-based PT boats. On 9 May, the three destroyers departed Manus for Aitape where, on the 11th, they embarked four PT boat officers to help them locate the targets. Beale and her colleagues carried out their bombardment on the 12th, returned the impromptu spotters to Aitape, and headed back to Manus.

Beale reentered Seeadler Harbor in time to complete preparations for the Wakde-Sarmi step of the climb up the New Guinea ladder and sortie with the covering forces on 15 May. The destroyer and her colleagues took station off the objectives early on the morning of the 17th. After participating in the preinvasion bombardment, she and Hutchins conducted a fruitless search for enemy barges reported to be in the vicinity of Sarmi. At the conclusion of that mission, Beale shaped a course for Humboldt Bay, where she arrived on the 18th. She returned to the Wakde-Sarmi area on 21 May and patrolled to the north and west with TF 75 while the troops ashore consolidated their beachhead and prepared to move inland against a much more resolute defense than had been encountered at Hollandia. The fact that the defense was confined entirely to enemy ground forces allowed the Army to proceed on its own once the beachhead was fully secured and to release most of its naval support to participate in the next amphibious operation on the New Guinea timetable, the seizure of Biak, one of the Schouten Islands located just to the east of the peninsula that constitutes the head of the New Guinea bird.

Accordingly, Beale left the Wakde-Sarmi area and arrived back in Humboldt Bay on 24 May to join the Biak assault force. The following day, she returned to sea with that force to carry out the mission. Arriving off Biak on the 27th, the destroyer provided antisubmarine protection for the cruisers during their prelanding bombardment. After the landing, she moved in to bring her own guns to bear on enemy positions to assist the troops' movement inland. Beale patrolled off Biak until the end of May guarding the assembled warships against the submarine threat and supplying occasional gunfire support.

After the invasion, the Japanese reversed their decision to leave Biak to its own devices and launched Operation "Kon" to reinforce the island's garrison. Beale returned to Humboldt Bay with TF 75 on 31 May to fuel and provision in preparation for the expected onslaught. On 7 June, the destroyer sortied from Humboldt Bay with TF 75 and shaped a course back to Biak. The cruiser-destroyer force took up station to the northeast of the island early in the evening of the 8th. An American patrol plane spotted the Japanese surface force attempting to bring reinforcements to Biak at about 22:00, and Beale's force picked it up on radar about 80 minutes later. Not long thereafter, the enemy made visual contact on the Allied surface force, let go the barges they were towing to Biak, and launched torpedoes before retiring at high speed.

The Allied lead destroyers, Beale among them, charged toward the retreating enemy at flank speed and began firing at extreme range in the hope of closing the distance by forcing the Japanese to maneuver to avoid their salvoes. The enemy destroyers returned the fire and even launched another torpedo attack. The only damage — other than fragments from near misses — sustained by either side in the running duel, however, came at about 02:10 on the 9th when Shiratsuyu suffered a direct hit from one of the salvoes from Destroyer Division 47 (DesDiv 47). The enemy destroyer slowed briefly but picked up speed again soon thereafter. About 15 minutes later just before 02:30, the Allied force broke off the stern chase in compliance with orders issued to protect its ships from attack by friendly aircraft. Task Force 75 rendezvoused with TF 74 later that morning, and then Beale headed for Manus in the Admiralty Islands, where she spent the period 10 to 28 June carrying out maintenance work and conducting combat training.

On 29 June, the destroyer stood out of Seeadler Harbor on her way to participate in the last two major amphibious operations of the New Guinea campaign. Before invading the Vogelkop peninsula proper on its northwestern coast at Cape Sansapor, General MacArthur concluded that his forces needed airfields farther west than those the Allies already possessed, and the island of Noemfoor, though relatively well defended, met his requirements perfectly. Beale and her colleagues in the cruiser-destroyer force arrived off the invasion beaches at Kamiri on Noemfoor's northwestern coast early on the morning of 2 July, and they pummelled the objective with a preliminary bombardment that pounded the defenders into what historian Samuel Eliot Morison described as "...that desirable state known to pugilists as 'punch drunk'." That happy result allowed the assault troops to storm ashore and capture all their initial objectives against a resistance that scarcely deserved the name. It also obviated the immediate need for Beale and her consorts to provide gunfire support for the troops' initial movement inland from the beaches. Accordingly, she headed for Humboldt Bay that same day and arrived there on the 3d.

After maintenance and overhaul work at Hollandia and Manus she returned to the northern coast of New Guinea in mid-July to help defend the eastern flank of the Allied enclave at Hollandia against pressure from the bypassed enemy garrison at Wewak. Her part in that endeavor consisted of patrols along the coast to interdict Japanese barge and truck traffic carrying reinforcements and supplies to their forces trying to breach the Aitape roadblock and contest Allied possession of the Hollandia region. Training exercises and further patrols along New Guinea's northern coast occupied Beale's time until the end of the month when she helped cover the unopposed landing at Cape Sansapor on the Vogelkop peninsula, the last rung on the New Guinea ladder.

At the beginning of August, she left New Guinea for a voyage to Australia and spent the period, 11 to 25 August, receiving major maintenance work at Sydney. Revitalized, the destroyer returned to the northern shores of New Guinea at the end of the month to resume patrols along stretches of the coast still held by isolated enemy forces and to prepare for the Allies' next move on the southwestern Pacific chessboard, the jump from the head of the New Guinea bird into the Molucca Islands at Morotai. Beale departed Humboldt Bay on 13 September and headed for the point near the Vogelkop where the warships covering the seizure came together for the approach. Reunited there with many of her colleagues from the long series of operations from the Bismarcks to the Vogelkop, the destroyer set off with them on the latest quest. The force arrived off Cape Gila on the southwestern coast of Morotai early on the morning of D-Day, 15 September, and the cruiser-destroyer force to which Beale belonged parted company with the main group to cross the strait between Morotai and Halmahera to bombard a Japanese strongpoint reported to be located at Galela. After pounding the target for more than an hour without reply, the destroyer accompanied her consorts back across the strait to provide gunfire support for the landing itself. Her guns, however, remained silent because an absent enemy allowed the assault troops to occupy the objective unmolested. Since her gunfire support proved unnecessary, Beale retired from Morotai and rendezvoused with TG 77.1 near Mios Woendi on the 16th.

For almost a month, she occupied her time with training exercises in the vicinity of the Admiralty Islands, evolutions punctuated by repair periods in Seeadler Harbor at Manus. By 12 October, the destroyer was back at Humboldt Bay readying herself for the invasion of the Philippines at Leyte. On the 13th, Beale's Close Covering Group, TG 77.3, stood out of the bay in company with the Northern LST Group whose landings on Leyte near Tacloban at the head of San Pedro Bay it was to support. The warship and her colleagues escorted the Northern Attack Force into Leyte Gulf during the night of 19–20 October, and together they made their way toward the northwestern corner of the gulf. While the amphibious forces approached their stations and took up their positions, the battleships of the Fire Support Unit, North, subjected the target area to a withering barrage. At the conclusion of that overture, Beale and her compatriots in TG 77.3 moved in to play their supporting roles in the opening act of the performance. Her cruiser-destroyer force opened fire at about 09:00, and, about 30 minutes later when the assault craft started their runs toward shore, Beale and her mates shifted their attention inland.

The destroyer remained "on call" in San Pedro Bay for four days to provide gunfire support for the troops ashore whenever they requested it. During that space of time, she fought to repel frequent enemy air raids. Those attacks exacted a toll from Beale's neighbors. On the 20th, a torpedo bomber scored a hit on Honolulu that forced her return to the United States for repairs which occupied her for the remainder of the war. The next day, she fired upon a suicide plane but failed to prevent him from crashing HMAS Australia. On the 22d, another kamikaze crossed her sights, but again her efforts to thwart him succeeded only partially. Though diverted from Beale, he struck LCI-105 in nearby waters.

At that point, danger loomed from a different quarter. By midday on the 23d, vague fears of a surface threat to the amphibious units assembled in Leyte Gulf began to take more tangible form as contact reports from submarines and aircraft confirmed the approach of at least three separate Japanese naval forces. The following afternoon, Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid organized his warships in the gulf to bar entry to the enemy. Beale's unit headed south to await the forces of Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura and Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima in Surigao Strait, the passage between Leyte and Dinagat Islands. Posted on the right flank forward of the battle line, she participated in the second torpedo attack by destroyers on Nisihimura's advancing warships just before 03:30 in the morning of 25 October. Though her own torpedoes failed to score on the enemy, several of those from her colleagues achieved their purpose. One hit battleship Yamashiro and slowed her briefly while another delivered the coup de grâce to destroyer Michishio, damaged almost an hour earlier by DesRon 54 in the first destroyer torpedo attack.

Beale and her consorts then retired to give the cruisers and battleships a clear field of fire. Once the left flank destroyers executed the third torpedo attack and cleared the area, the battle line and the cruisers completed the destruction so ably initiated by the destroyers. Of Nishimura's two battleships, one heavy cruiser, and four destroyers, only the cruiser and a destroyer, both heavily damaged, escaped that encounter. The cruiser, Mogami, did not last long for the Japanese sank her later in the day after she suffered further pounding from both surface gunfire and aerial attacks.

Vice Admiral Shima's foray into Surigao Strait was a very desultory affair, and Beale and her colleagues, having already yielded the field to the heavy units after launching torpedoes at Nishimura's approach, never came in contact with the enemy's second, halfhearted attempt to force the strait. Upon confirming to his own satisfaction that Nishimura's force was effectively destroyed, Shima displayed surprising prudence for a Japanese commander by retreating with his own vastly inferior force.

The magnitude of the American victory increased as word of the successes won in the actions fought farther north off Samar and off Cape Engaño filtered into the gulf during the few days that Beale remained there guarding the amphibious force against submarine and air attack. On 29 October, the destroyer embarked upon a voyage that soon brought even more joy to her crewmen when they learned that their destination was the United States. Steaming by way of Ulithi Atoll and Pearl Harbor, she ended her transpacific journey at Seattle, Washington, on 27 November. From there, the warship headed south to San Francisco, where she began an extended repair period. She completed those repairs on 17 January 1945 and departed San Francisco the next day, bound for San Diego and two weeks of post-overhaul refresher training. On the last of day January, Beale stood out of San Diego on her way to rejoin the Pacific Fleet in prosecuting the final stages of the war against Japan.