USS Watts (DD-567) - 1945

1945

On 3 January 1945, the destroyer steamed out of Massacre Bay for another sweep of the waters surrounding the northern Kurils. The climax of that operation came on 5 January when she joined in successful shelling of the Suribachi area of Paramushiro. After a brief stop at Attu, Watts moved on to Dutch Harbor with the rest of DesDiv 113. The following month, February, brought two more forays into the waters around the Kurils. However, only the second, which began on 16 February, ended with a bombardment. That one—on the 18th—hit installations in the Kurabi Zaki area of Paramushiro.

After a brief return to Attu, Watts departed the Aleutians on 22 February and headed for Hawaii with Jarvis (DD-799). The two destroyers reached Pearl Harbor on 1 March and began a fortnight of training and voyage repairs. On the 15th, Watts stood out of Pearl Harbor and headed back to the Aleutians for less than a month of operations. On 18 April, DesDiv 113 left the northern Pacific for good. From there, Watts and her division mates headed for Hawaii and three weeks of training in preparation for duty in the recently-launched Okinawa invasion. On 5 May, she cleared the Hawaiian Islands and steamed west by way of Eniwetok and Ulithi.

On 21 May, when she arrived at Okinawa, the campaign had been in progress for almost two months, but the Japanese still hung on tenaciously. The members of the Kamikaze Corps continued to hurl themselves at the ships supporting the troops ashore. Watts proved to be a lucky ship while on radar picket station. Not only did her guns help to shoot down six aerial attackers, but she suffered only one really close call. A suicide plane almost managed to crash into her port side forward, but accurate 20-millimeter fire splashed him at the last possible instant, only 10 yards off the destroyer's port bow.

Mercifully, her stay at Okinawa proved brief. In mid-June, she received orders to join the screen of TF 38 at Leyte Gulf, where she arrived on 17 June. For the remainder of the war, Watts screened the fast carriers of TF 38 while their planes flew their last series of sorties against the Japanese home islands. Ranging from Hokkaidō in the north to Kyūshū in the south, those planes helped to decimate enemy shipping, land communications, and military and manufacturing installations. On 23 July, Watts made her own personal contribution to the destruction visited upon the enemy when her guns joined in a bombardment of the outpost island, Chichi Jima, in the Bonins.

The Japanese capitulation on 15 August 1945 found the ship steaming in Japanese waters screening TF 38.

A bit under a month later, on 10 September, she entered Tokyo Bay to begin participation in the occupation of Japan. She remained on that duty until mid-November; then headed back to the United States. After brief stops at Pearl Harbor and San Diego, the destroyer transited the Panama Canal on 7 December and headed for Philadelphia, Pa. on the 18th. Watts arrived at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on 23 December and began a three-month inactivation overhaul. In mid-March, she shifted to the Charleston Naval Shipyard, where she was placed out of commission on 12 April 1946.