USS Gansevoort (DD-608) - 1944

1944

Gansevoort departed San Francisco 13 March 1944 to join the screen of a convoy bound from Hawaii to Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands where she arrived 1 April. During several months of blockade and antisubmarine patrol in waters off the bypassed enemy garrisons in the eastern Marshalls, she rescued several Marine aviators. Once she closed to within 500 yards of a beach to shell shore batteries while her whaleboat picked up an aviator. She also helped reduce enemy coastal defenses by assisting in the bombardment of Mille Atoll (26 May and 9 June) and Taroa Atoll (8 August). Detached from this duty 19 August, she replenished in Pearl Harbor, then sailed via New Guinea to Manus, Admiralty Islands, to join forces staging for the liberation of the Philippine Islands.

Gansevoort joined Destroyer Squadron 48 in guarding transports of Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson's Southern Attack Force off the beachhead of Leyte 20–21 October. From 27 October until 13 December she escorted troop and supply convoys between New Guinea and the Philippines. On 27 December she joined a large supply convoy at Dulag, Leyte. Comprising 99 naval and merchant ships, this important supply convoy departed the 27th to carry men and material to Mindoro. Steaming via Surigao Strait, the ships came under heavy, constant attacks from Japanese bombers and torpedo and suicide planes. As the convoy steamed through the Mindanao and Sulu Seas, the enemy attacked by day and night between 28 December and 30 December and created nearly 72 hours of hell and hard work for sailors in nearly a hundred ships.

Called to General Quarters 49 times in 72 hours, Gansevoort's gunners splashed 5 enemy planes and assisted in splashing 12 others. Although enemy planes sank one merchant ship and one LST and severely damaged another merchant ship and Porcupine, their desperate attacks could not halt this powerful force.

She entered Mangarin Bay, Mindoro, with the convey the morning of 30 December 1944. That afternoon, a kamikaze crashed Gansevoort's main deck to port. A terrific explosion cut steering and electric power, started several fires, and killed or wounded 34 of her crew. Damage control parties could not get aft as her main deck was blown upward.

Destroyers Wilson and Philip helped fight her fires, then she was towed to the Mindoro PT base anchorage. Here, Gansevoort was given the unusual assignment of knocking off the stern of Porcupine with torpedoes, in an attempt to extinguish a fire before it reached the aviation gasoline stowed forward. The water was too shoal for torpedoes to be effective, and in spite of one torpedo hit, fire ignited the gasoline, spreading flames across the water to endanger Gansevoort.

Gansevoort was towed to safety in another anchorage off White Beach. With living quarters gutted, her crew made temporary camp on shore. Her engineering officer, damage control officer, and some twenty men remained on board working to save the ship. Despite recurring air attacks and several near misses by bombs, the destroyer escaped further damage and was made seaworthy after a full month of hazardous and exhausting repairs.