USS Lansdale (DD-426) - 1944

1944

Continuing escort duty out of Norfolk, Virginia, Lansdale made a run to Casablanca and back from 3 November to 17 December before sailing again for north Africa on 13 January 1944. She reached Casablanca on 1 February and continued the next day via Oran and Algiers to Tunis where she arrived the 10th. After escorting the light cruiser Brooklyn to Algiers, she arrived Pozzuoli, Italy on 14 February for operations off the Anzio beachhead. Until returning to Oran from 22–26 March, she searched for German submarines and screened the light cruiser Philadelphia during fire support and shore bombardment operations from Naples to Anzio.

Lansdale departed Oran on 10 April and joined convoy UGS 37, composed of 60 merchant ships and six LSTs, bound from Norfolk to Bizerte. At 23:30 on 11 April, some 16 to 25 German Dornier and Junkers bombers attacked the convoy off Cape Bengut, Algeria. During the next hour, the planes lit the night with flares and struck at the tightly formed convoy with torpedoes and radio-controlled bombs. Although the destroyer escort Holder took a torpedo hit amidships, warning of an impending attack, an effective smokescreen, and massive, accurate anti-aircraft fire repulsed the enemy planes. While losing four planes, the Germans failed to sink a single ship.

Leaving UGS 37 on 12 April, Lansdale escorted three merchant ships from Oran to westbound convoy GUS 36. Then she sailed from Oran 18 April to join UGS 38 the next day. Stationed off the port bow of the Bizerte-bound convoy, she served as a "jam ship" against radio-controlled bombs, in addition to screening against U-boats. As the ships hugged the Algerian coast during first watch on 20 April, they approached approximately the same position off Cape Bengut where the Luftwaffe had attacked UGS 37 on 11–12 April. Though warned of possible attack during the afternoon and evening, the ships had little chance to avoid the strike unleashed by the Germans shortly after 21:00.

Attacking as twilight faded on 20 April, the German planes, flying close to shore and low over the water, evaded radar detection until they were almost upon the convoy. Some 18 to 24 Junkers and Heinkel bombers struck in three waves, minutes after the destroyer escort Joseph E. Campbell of the outer screen reported, "They are all around me...they are enemy, they are enemy."

The first wave of about nine Junkers Ju 88s attacked from dead ahead. Their torpedoes damaged SS Samite and detonated high explosives aboard SS Paul Hamilton, blowing her out of the water and killing all 580 men on board. The second wave of about seven Junkers hit the starboard flank of the convoy and damaged two more merchant ships, one fatally. And the third, consisting of about five Heinkel He 111s, bore down on the convoy's port bow, Lansdale's station.