1944
After returning to Purvis Bay from her last screening and escort missions in support of the Bougainville operation, Wadsworth departed the Solomons on 8 January 1944, bound for Pago Pago, American Samoa, escorting a merchantman. She returned to Espiritu Santo shepherding Shasta, before she steamed to Guadalcanal as part of the escort for West Point. She then put into Blanche Harbor, Treasury Islands, on 1 February.
That day, Wadsworth conducted an antishipping sweep off the Buka Passage, trading shells with an enemy shore battery on Buka Island, before she entered Bougainville Strait in company with Waller and Halford. Those three ships then proceeded to bombard the newly constructed Japanese airfield at Choiseul Island.
Subsequently taking on ammunition at Hawthorne Sound, New Georgia, Wadsworth left on the night of 1 February to exercise with motor torpedo boats off Rendova. The following day off Blanche Harbor, she joined the screen for a convoy of landing craft and cargo ships that had arrived off Cape Torokina on 4 February.
Near midnight, she helped to repel enemy air attacks on the Torokina beaches, before she left the area the next morning, screening Patapsco to Purvis Bay.
Clearing Purvis Bay on 11 February, Wadsworth rendezvoused with destroyers and troop-laden LSTs off Munda, New Georgia, bound for the Green Islands. Before dawn on the 15th, Wadsworth, acting as fighter-director ship, vectored night fighters toward an enemy raid of five planes that dropped flares off the formation. As a result of the destroyer's instructions, the prowling night fighters knocked down one enemy floatplane. At dawn, Wadsworth vectored fighters against another raid, during which they splashed three intruders and repelled the enemy without damage to any ship of the formation. Wadsworth then screened the transports as they disembarked their troops.
After putting into Purvis Bay on the night of 17 February, Wadsworth steamed to Kukum beach and joined a troop convoy earmarked for the Green Island occupation. After her charges had safely delivered their troops to the objective on 20 February, Wadsworth returned to Purvis Bay the next afternoon.
Getting underway on 23 February, Wadsworth steamed via St. George's Channel to Kavieng, New Ireland, and to Rabaul, New Britain, for an antishipping sweep. A few minutes after midnight on the 24th, the destroyer opened fire and shelled a supply dump, stowage houses, and enemy troop concentrations in that area. One salvo of 5 inch shells started a fierce fire that lit up the entire target area. The flames from that blaze were still glowing as Wadsworth and the rest of the bombardment force stood down St. George's Channel three hours later.
With Purvis Bay as her base of operations, Wadsworth escorted supply convoys to Green Island and from Guadalcanal to Cape Torokina until 17 March. That day, the destroyer joined the screen for high-speed transports (APDs) setting course from Guadalcanal for the landings on Emirau Island.
On the morning of the 19th, Wadsworth took a patrol station near Emirau and remained in the vicinity, supporting the operation, until sunset on the 20th. She subsequently conducted two more Guadalcanal-to-Emirau runs—escorting troopships—that kept her busy through mid-April.
After a period of rest and recreation at Sydney, Australia, Wadsworth returned to Havannah Harbor on 10 May. Assigned to duty with Battleship Division 3 (BatDiv 3)—comprising Idaho, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania—Wadsworth engaged in battle maneuvers and training off the New Hebrides in preparation for the conquest of the Marianas. While his ship lay moored in Havannah Harbor on 31 May, Wadsworth's commanding officer, Comdr. John F. Walsh, was given the additional duty of Commander, Destroyer Division 90 (DesDiv 90), and broke his pennant in his ship.
On 2 June, Wadsworth and the other destroyers in her squadron and with BatDiv 3 formed Task Group 53.14 (TG 53.14) and cleared Havannah Harbor, bound for the Marianas. At 04:30 on 14 June, the destroyer joined the screen of Pennsylvania, Idaho, and the cruiser Honolulu for the bombardment of shore installations on eastern Tinian. She completed the initial phase of her operations in the Marianas on the 16th by screening bombardment-force cruisers and battleships off Guam.
After refuelling off Saipan, Wadsworth joined Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's Task Force 58 (TF 58) on the afternoon of 17 June, becoming a part of TG 58.3, formed around the veteran aircraft carrier Enterprise in TF 58's bid to repel the First Japanese Mobile Fleet then on its way to the Marianas. On the morning of the 19th, TG 58.3 came under attack from Japanese carrier- and land-based aircraft during the beginning of what history would record as the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
Sometimes known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", that battle sounded the death knell for the Imperial Japanese Navy. During the action, the enemy lost 395 carrier planes and 31 floatplanes—about 92% and 72% of its total strength in those categories. At the end of its ill-fated effort to defend the Marianas, the Japanese Navy retained the operational use of only 35 carrier planes and 12 float planes. Besides the losses afloat, the Japanese lost some 50 land-based bombers as well.
During the two-day battle, Vice Admiral Mitscher's fliers had done well, turning back the enemy raids before they reached the American fleet. As TF 58 steamed westward to destroy the fleeing enemy on the 20th, Mitscher ordered further air strikes—attacks that sank the Japanese carrier Hiyō.
Mitscher had taken a calculated risk, however, launching the last strikes so late in the day. As the planes droned home in the gathering darkness, the admiral faced an agonizing decision. Many planes would be lost if they could not see their carriers. On the other hand, if the ships were illuminated, enemy submarines might also see the vital carriers. Mitscher ordered the lights turned on. Meanwhile, Wadsworth and other destroyers received orders to pick up any fliers who were forced to "ditch."
When TF 58 had reached a point some 300 miles (550 km) off Okinawa, it abandoned further pursuit of the Japanese. Wadsworth then returned to the Marianas and patrolled off Saipan. On 5 July, her commanding officer was relieved of his collateral duties as ComDesDiv 90.
Two days later, Wadsworth joined a cruiser-destroyer force under Rear Admiral C. Turner Joy for the bombardment of Tinian. The destroyer and her mates soon shifted their attention to Guam and destroyed many shore installations and gasoline dumps at Apra Harbor and Agana Harbor, besides blasting enemy airstrips well in advance of the landings scheduled for that island. Terminating her bombardment duties off Guam on the afternoon of the 12th, Wadsworth joined the screen for the retiring carriers, Coral Sea and Corregidor, and reached Eniwetok, in the Marshall Islands, on 15 July.
However, the respite provided by that in-port period was brief, for Wadsworth proceeded to sea on the 17th, as part of the escort for troop-laden transports slated to put their combat-garbed marines and soldiers ashore on Guam. Wadsworth patrolled off that isle as those men splashed ashore and, while engaged in that duty 26 miles offshore, picked up eight natives of Guam, who had escaped from the Japanese, on the morning of 22 July. The destroyer quickly transferred them to George Clymer, because they possessed valuable intelligence information on Japanese dispositions ashore.
Wadsworth's guns again spoke in the invasion of Guam on the night of 24 and 25 July, before she took a radar picket station between Guam and Rota Islands. Relieved by Hudson on 2 August, Wadsworth then spent four days acting as primary fighter-director ship off Agana beach for two divisions of fighters based on Belleau Wood, Langley, and Essex. Relieved of that duty on 6 August, Wadsworth departed Guam on the 10th, screening fleet oilers as they withdrew to Eniwetok.
Pressing on from the Marshalls for Hawaiian waters on 13 August as escort for a merchantman, Wadsworth reached Pearl Harbor on the 20th. She then operated off Oahu on radar picket patrols. She departed Hawaiian waters on 15 September as part of the escort for Natoma Bay and Manila Bay, heading for the Marshalls. Arriving there on 25 September, the destroyer reported for duty with the 3d Fleet.
That tour of duty proved brief, however; for, soon thereafter, Wadsworth sailed for the West Coast of the United States. Proceeding via Eniwetok, Ulithi, and Pearl Harbor, the destroyer arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 25 October for a major overhaul and completed that period of repairs and alterations on 5 December.
Wadsworth—shifted from DesRon 45 to DesRon 24—then conducted refresher training evolutions at San Diego before departing San Francisco five days before Christmas and heading for the Hawaiian Islands as an escort for a convoy. The destroyer safely conducted her charges into Oahu's waters on 29 December 1944.
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