USS Watts (DD-567) - 1944

1944

Following two weeks of testing and calibrating equipment in Puget Sound. Watts embarked upon her first voyage on 17 May. She headed for San Diego and a month of shakedown training. She returned to Bremerton, Wash. on 26 June and underwent three weeks of post-shakedown availability. On 12 July, she departed Bremerton in company with battleships Mississippi (BB-41) and West Virginia (BB-48) bound for San Diego. The destroyer remained at San Diego until the 22d, at which time she put to sea in the screen of a Hawaii-bound convoy of troop transports. She arrived in Pearl Harbor on 29 July and remained only until 3 August when she stood out with Destroyer Division 113 (DesDiv 113) and shaped a course for Aleutian waters. On 8 August, Watts led her division mates into port at Adak, Alaska.

During the next seven months, the destroyer operated with the other units of DesDiv 113 as a part of the Navy's North Pacific Force. Since her assignment there came well after America had consolidated her hold on the Aleutians chain, the bulk of Watts' duties consisted of patrols and supply convoy-escort missions between the various outposts scattered across the fog and snow-bound archipelago. On the other hand, she and her division mates did, on occasion, conduct offensive operations against the Japanese Empire—primarily against the northern Kuril Islands.

Her first attempt came after more than two months of operations which might be characterized as routine—as much so as possible in the stormy northern Pacific. On 14 October, she departed Massacre Bay, Attu, for her first bombardment mission with the cruisers and destroyers of the North Pacific Force. Bad weather foiled that mission and the next which began on 24 October. Late in November, however, she departed Attu for her third attempt at bombarding the Kurils. That one proved successful; and, on the night of 23 and 24 November, her guns joined those of the other warships of the force in pounding airfields and installations on Matsuwa To. During the retirement from the Kurils, heavy seas lashed the task force. Fortunately, the same storms which buffeted Watts and her sister ships kept enemy air power grounded, and the bombardment group arrived safely back at Attu on 25 November. After two weeks of badly needed repairs at Dutch Harbor, she returned to Attu on 21 December, following a brief stop at Adak.