World War II
After initial fitting out alongside the City Docks at Orange, Alvin C. Cockrell shifted to Galveston, Texas, arriving on 14 October, and continued fitting out at the Todd-Galveston Shipbuilding, Inc., yard. Completing these preparations for service on 25 October, she sailed for Bermuda that afternoon in company with her sister ship USS French (DE-367), for shakedown training. Arriving at noon on the last day of October, the new destroyer escort carried out her shakedown training out of Bermuda until 29 November, after which time she sailed for Boston Navy Yard and post-shakedown availability. Underway from Boston, Massachusetts, on 10 December, Alvin C. Cockrell arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, the following day.
On 15 December, Alvin C. Cockrell sailed from Norfolk, and escorted the attack transport USS Thomas Jefferson (APA-30) to the Panama Canal Zone, arriving there on the 20th. Transiting the canal the same day, the destroyer escort then proceeded independently to San Diego, California, arriving there three days after Christmas of 1944. She sailed thence for the Hawaiian Islands, reaching Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of 7 January 1945.
Alvin C. Cockrell then spent the next several days operating locally out of Pearl Harbor, conducting target practice, serving as a target for a division of motor torpedo boats, undergoing an availability alongside the destroyer tender USS Yosemite (AD-19), and carrying out gunnery exercises with student officers from the Destroyers, Pacific, gunnery school manning gun control stations. On 17 January, the destroyer escort, accompanied by French, sailed from Hawaiian waters for the Marshalls as escort for convoy PD-256-T—one transport and five attack transports. Reaching Eniwetok on 25 January, the destroyer escort remained there only briefly, getting underway for the Palaus the following day and convoying the same half-dozen ships she had shepherded from Hawaii. Detaching the transport USS Wharton (AP-7) to proceed independently to Ulithi Atoll, the convoy proceeded on, reaching its destination, Kossol Roads, on the last day of January.
Over the next several weeks, Alvin C. Cockrell escorted convoys between Eniwetok, Guam, Saipan, Ulithi, and Kossel Roads, and, when required, served as harbor patrol and air-sea rescue vessel. She carried out her first air-sea rescue mission on 23 February 1945, when she sailed from Ulithi to go to the assistance of a Martin PBM-3D "Mariner" flying boat from Patrol Bombing Squadron 22 that had been forced down by engine trouble. Underway at 1008, Alvin C. Cockrell proceeded at flank speed, guided to the scene by a "Dumbo" plane overhead.
She put her whaleboat over the side as she neared the "Mariner", to take off the crew and attempt to take the aircraft in tow, and soon had seven of the nine enlisted men (two had remained on board to handle towlines), and the three officers from the crew on board. While the destroyer escort USS Manlove (DE-36) screened the operation, Alvin C. Cockrell managed to get the plane under tow by 0910 the following day, after which time the destroyer escort set out for Ulithi. Unfortunately, soon after the remaining crewmen from the plane were taken on board, the towline parted. Further attempts at salvage by Manlove proved fruitless and, ultimately, the "Mariner" (one wing of which had been damaged in the initial attempt to get a line to it) had to be sunk by gunfire.
The next instance of rescue occurred on 22 March 1945, while the ship was stationed on harbor entrance patrol at Apra Harbor, Guam. At 1540 on that day, Alvin C. Cockrell received orders to depart from her patrol station for an air-sea rescue mission 12 miles from Orote Point. Once again guided by aircraft overhead, the destroyer escort spotted a life raft and its two occupants shortly before 1800, and by 1804 the ship had brought on board Lt.(jg.) Kenneth B. Coleman, USNR, and Aviation Radioman 3d Class H. Moorhead. Transferring them to a picket boat sent out for that purpose, Alvin C. Cockrell then resumed patrolling her station.
In June, while at Kossol Passage, in the Palaus, she was directed to put to sea to search for reported airplane wreckage. In company with the destroyer escort USS Naifeh (DE-352), she searched the assigned area on 14 June and the days following, but found nothing. A similar search conducted off Peleliu during the waning days of July 1945 also yielded no trace of downed planes or pilots reported in her vicinity.
The final month of the war, August 1945, began with Alvin C. Cockrell operating with the Palau Island Patrol and Escort Unit, keeping watch on the by-passed Palaus and the Japanese garrisons there. On 2 August, the ship departed her patrol station on orders to pick up two men from a raft reported by a patrol plane. The two turned out to be Japanese soldiers or laborers attempting to escape from Babelthuap and hoping for an American ship to pick them up. Alvin C. Cockrell turned them over to a small boat for transfer ashore, and resumed her patrol.
On 5 August, however, while operating in the Peleliu-Angaur antisubmarine screen, Alvin C. Cockrell received orders to proceed at full speed to the scene of the sinking of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35). She arrived in the area at 0600, and commenced a search in company with the destroyers USS Madison (DD-425), USS Helm (DD-388), and USS Ralph Talbot (DD-390) and the destroyer escort USS Dufilho (DE-423). One flying boat orbited overhead.
With each ship proceeding to cover an assigned sector, Alvin C. Cockrell began finding grim evidence of the tragedy that had befallen the cruiser. She sighted two empty rubber rafts at 1007, and recovered an unidentified body at 1115, quickly burying it at sea. A half-hour later, at 1145, the ship spotted several other corpses—six of which were given a burial soon thereafter. Only one of the six was identifiable, and the advanced state of decomposition in all indicated that they had been dead for several days.
Many had life jackets, and a few had clothing. The destroyer escort sighted very little debris or wreckage by that point, and "no signs of any live survivors." Eventually ordered to break off the search and return to her regular operating base, Alvin C. Cockrell departed the area at 0622 on 6 August to return to Peleliu.
Read more about this topic: USS Alvin C. Cockrell (DE-366)
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line their name liveth for evermore was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.