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The second MAHAN class destroyer to be built at the
Boston Navy Yard was laid down the same day as her sister, USS CASE, and
would be launched on the same day, almost a year later. DD-371 would not
be ready for commissioning until November 4, 1936, slightly more than
six weeks after CASE.
USS CONYNGHAM bore a name familiar to students of the
American Revolution. Gustavus Conyngham was a renowned privateering
captain, capturing sixty British merchant ships in less than two years,
many literally under the noses of Royal Navy escorts. He later served as
a commissioned captain in the Continental Navy and was instrumental in
the defense of Philadelphia during the War of 1812. Capt. Conyngham
passed away in Philadelphia in 1819. DD-371 would be the second naval
vessel to be named for the captain.
USS CONYNGHAM combined a shakedown cruise with visits
to Northern European ports in the spring of 1937, only to return to
Boston for an overhaul. By October, she had been assigned to the Battle
Force, Pacific,
and her home port became San Diego. Training cruises,
some of them through waters she would later visit under less peaceful
circumstances, dominated the remainder of the pre-war years.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, USS CONYNGHAM was
undergoing a tender overhaul when the Japanese air attack hit USS
WHITNEY (AD-4) and the five tin cans clustered at her side. CONYNGHAM
blasted away at the attackers, then, with the superhuman effort of her
crew and those aboard the tender, she was able to aid in the abortive
search for the attackers before the end of the day. Following the attack
and another overhaul, DD-371 was tasked with covering convoys from the
West Coast to the New Hebrides on the vital supply line to Australia.
Now a veteran, USS CONYNGHAM was called upon to screen
the carriers which were to end the Japanese string of victories with the
pivotal battle of Midway. She followed her assignment with activities
around the embattled island of Guadalcanal, providing gunfire support
and protection for the transports. The need for a brief overhaul, along
with repairs from a collision, brought CONYNGHAM back to Pearl Harbor by
the end of 1942. Her crew was unaware of the role that would soon face
them.
DD-371 was reassigned to the Seventh Amphibious Force,
nicknamed "MacArthur's Navy" in a role seldom performed by a
destroyer. Beginning with the Allied landings at Lae in New Guinea and
lasting for almost a year, USS CONYNGHAM would be VADM Daniel E.
Barbey's flagship for landing operations. Often the largest ship off
some of the smaller beachheads in MacArthur's drive to the Philippines,
DD-371 hosted a command staff of both Army and Navy planners and
expanded communications. It was a role normally reserved for a
battlewagon, or a cruiser, or, later in the war, a specially-dedicated
command vessel many times the size of a destroyer, but CONYNGHAM filled
the role so well that no one, except perhaps her crew, noticed that she
was somewhat small for the task.
Often, DD-371 was the focus of attackers intent on
destroying the command structure of the amphibious operation. Many
times, the valiant destroyer led a motley collection of vessels well
beyond the umbrella of protective aircraft, literally into the enemy's
back yard. Once attacking aircraft from the Japanese base at Rabaul
knifed straight toward a convoy, escorted by CONYNGHAM and composed of
slow-moving, poorly armed LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks - nicknamed by their
crews, "Large, slow targets"). DD-371 was supported by three
destroyers. The raiders broke through and only sharp maneuver by the
destroyers and a heavy anti-aircraft fire protected the tin cans. Two
LSTs were damaged, but CONYNGHAM could claim two of the aircraft. DD-371
screened the wounded landing ships while cargo and casualties were
transferred.
In one of the most remarkable incidents of the war,
CONYNGHAM led a convoy of thirty-six ships in a feint toward a
preexisting beachhead, then deftly maneuvered toward Arawe. Japanese
reconnaissance aircraft overflew the strike force as low as four hundred
feet, but the blacked-out destroyer led the way to the beaches. Without
radio or signals, the carefully planned landing went off without enemy
reaction until the rubber assault boats were within yards of the beach.
The first waves were hit hard by enemy shore batteries, but support fire
from CONYNGHAM silenced them. By daybreak, the troops were ashore, the
harbor taken, and all of the support and transport craft had left. Only
CONYNGHAM and a subchaser, SC-699, remained to search for survivors from
landing craft that were wrecked off Blue Beach. A radar picket off shore
warned that an enemy attack from Rabaul was inbound; thirty-three
dive-bombers and torpedo bombers were headed toward the beachhead.
CONYNGHAM was the biggest target in the harbor, and she drew the
aircrafts' fire like a magnet. Torpedoes splashed down on both sides of
the embattled tin can, but CONYNGHAM succeeded in ‘combing the
wakes’ time and again. Bombs bracketed the destroyer, showering her
with water and shrapnel, but no enemy succeeded in hitting the
skillfully handled tin can. After several minutes, the attackers flew
off toward the north; both the destroyer and the subchaser came through
unscathed.
By May, 1944, DD-371 was assigned to screen
battleships through the Marianas. Her role as flagship put aside,
CONYNGHAM would appear off many a beachhead in the American drive
through the Philippines, serving in a more "traditional"
destroyer role, that of close support for landing craft and shore
bombardment. She would remain actively engaged in the Philippine
campaign into 1945. The Japanese surrender found the veteran destroyer
undergoing an overhaul at the "new" American naval base at
Subic Bay, northwest of Manila.
USS CONYNGHAM was decommissioned on December 20, 1946.
She would be employed as a target in the Bikini Atomic Bomb test in 1946
and was finally sunk in 1948. .
USS CONYNGHAM earned fourteen battle stars for her
service in World War II.
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