USS Putnam (DD-757) - World War II Service

World War II Service

Following shakedown off the Pacific Coast, Putnam glided beneath the Golden Gate Bridge 30 December 1944 to take her place with the Pacific Fleet. Arriving Pearl Harbor 2 January 1945, the destroyer prepared for her first offensive operation, and got under way 29 January for the Marianas Islands, screening the transports carrying 4th and 5th Division Marines.

Pausing briefly at Eniwetok, Saipan, and Tinian, the destroyer steamed from Guam 17 February in convoy en route to Iwo Jima. She arrived off Iwo Jima on D-Day (19 February) with the amphibious landing and battle underway. Gunfire support ships lying off-shore kept a thunderous rain of destruction pouring on the island.

Putnam inched in dangerously close to blast shore installations in support of the invading marines and illuminated Japanese troop concentrations at night with star shells. On 23 February, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and a high-ranking Navy-Marine Corps party, after observing the initial phases of the landing, embarked in Putnam for transportation to Guam and a conference with Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.

Putnam departed Guam 12 March and escorted logistics ships to Leyte in the Philippine Islands, arriving five days later. She stood out of San Pedro Bay, Philippines 27 March and escorted a transport group to Okinawa; arriving Easter Sunday, the destroyer immediately took up anti-aircraft screening duties. After escorting a convoy to Ulithi, Putnam returned to Okinawa and was assigned a gunfire support station southwest of the island 16 April.

Later assigned to a hazardous radar picket station, Putnam vectored Navy fighters against kamikazes. She remained unscathed only because an unidentified American pilot heroically crashed into a kamikaze 16 June just seconds before it would have hit the destroyer.

Soon after sundown the same day, a torpedo dropped from a low-flying Japanese plane struck Twiggs to port and exploded her No. 2 magazine. Captain Glenn R. Hartwig, the squadron commander in Putnam, quickly closed. Exploding ammunition made rescue operations hazardous, but of 188 Twiggs survivors snatched from the sea, Putnam accounted for 114.

With the "cease hostilities" order of 15 August, the occupation of the Japanese home islands became the primary mission, and through the first week of September Putnam served as a guide and rescue destroyer for Tokyo-bound transport planes. She left her station, some 100 miles north of Okinawa, 13 September to serve in the escort for New Jersey as she steamed for Wakayama, on the central island of Honshū.

Putnam stood into Tokyo Bay 17 September, where she rode out a howling typhoon. She then made a return to Wakayama 25 September, thence to Okinawa 1 October, and then back to Wakayama. Steaming via Eniwetok 5 December, the destroyer touched at Pearl Harbor 10 December for fuel, and dropped her hook at San Diego 22 December.

Putnam received three battle stars for World War II service.