World War II
After shakedown Killen cleared Port Angeles, Wash. on 19 August 1944, escorted a convoy from Pearl Harbor and arrived at Manus, Admiralty Islands on 14 September. Following training exercises the destroyer departed Hollandia on 12 October with the Central Philippine Attack Force that arrived off San Pedro Bay on the 20th. For the next 5 days she gave day and night fire support to troops ashore on Leyte, and during one 30-minute period on the 21st silenced three enemy artillery positions. When the Japanese Navy decided to contest the landings in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Killen's squadron engaged the enemy at Surigao Strait. On the morning of 25 October, at 03:25, she launched five torpedoes toward battleship Yamashiro. One hit, slowing her to 5 knots (9.3 km/h), enabled other American destroyers to maneuver for the kill. In the widespread fleet actions for Leyte, covering hundreds of thousands of nautical miles, the U.S. Fleet reduced the Japanese Fleet to an ineffective force thus greatly speeding up the advance toward Japan and end of the war.
Killen resumed antiaircraft screen. While on patrol off Leyte on 1 November she was attacked by seven enemy aircraft. The destroyer splashed four raiders before a bomb from one of the attackers found its mark in Killen's port side, killing 15 men including Commander Corey. After temporary repairs at San Pedro Bay and Manus, she steamed into Hunter's Point, Calif., on 15 January 1945, for overhaul.
Returning to Manus on 9 May, the destroyer, now with Commander James L. Semmes in command, sailed the next day for convoy escort and patrol duty in the Philippines. Killen formed part of the screen for the cruiser carrying General Douglas MacArthur to nearly every island in the chain to give his "I have returned" speech.
Lacking the propulsion system necessary to operate with the fast carriers around Okinawa, Killen was kept in the south with the cruiser fleet. She steamed into Brunei Bay, Borneo, on 10 June with the assault forces, and supported the troops with prelanding bombardment. She resumed exercises on 15 June before arriving off Balikpapan, Borneo, on 27 June for fire support missions. After silencing enemy shore batteries on Borneo, Killen prepared for the final phase of the Pacific war as she arrived Manila on 14 July. She cleared that port 2 weeks later, and joined the North Pacific Force in the Aleutian Islands.
Upon the cessation of hostilities the destroyer was assigned to the occupation forces in the Japanese islands. Departing Adak on 31 August, Killen took up station at Ominato in northern Honshū, and supported the occupation forces until 14 November, when she sailed to Puget Sound. From there she proceeded to San Diego, arriving on 2 April, and decommissioning on 9 July 1946.
Read more about this topic: USS Killen (DD-593)
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest looking persons I ever see; except one, and that was uncle Silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn’t know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn’t a understood it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)