Fate
When Australian troops established a beachhead at Finschafen, New Guinea, 21 September 1943, Henley formed a part of their protective screen. Attacked by 10 Japanese torpedo bombers, she claimed to have shot down 3 and assisted in downing 3 others in a fierce half hour engagement. However, the valiant ship's wartime career, begun in the chaos at Pearl Harbor, was drawing to a close. On 3 October 1943 Henley was steaming with Reid and Smith on an offensive sweep off Finschafen when her skipper sighted two torpedoes fired by the submarine Ro-108 heading for her. Split-second maneuvering permitted Henley to evade those two torpedoes; but a third was immediately sighted, closing too fast and too near to be avoided. Henley was struck on the port side, with the torpedo exploding in the number 1 fire-room, destroying her boilers, breaking her keel, and displacing her bow about 30 degrees from the longitudinal axis of the ship.
At 18:29, with all her crew having abandoned ship, Henley went down, stern first. Her companion DD's searched for the sub, then returned to rescue Henley's survivors, who had lashed their life-rafts together and were using flashlights as signals. Eighteen officers and 225 men were rescued, with 1 officer and 14 men missing.
Read more about this topic: USS Henley (DD-391)
Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is an anathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Father Tom Murphy (William S. Burroughs)
“Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)