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The second ship of the BENHAM class to be built at the
Kearny yard of Federal Shipbuilding was named for an illustrious family
of Army officers during the Civil War. The Ellett family commanded a
squadron of nine river "rams" and two floating batteries under
Army control in the actions along the Mississippi.
Almost twenty months elapsed between keel laying in
December, 1936, and the launching of the new destroyer, but
commissioning followed just seven months later. By the time ELLETT was
formally accepted into the Navy, world conditions had changed. The
nation needed a modern fleet of destroyers. ELLETT would prove very
useful.
Following her commissioning on a cold February day in
1939 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, DD-398 operated out of Boston on the
Neutrality Patrol. The duty was exhausting and hazardous; the new
destroyer protected shipping to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where
the "war zone" began. From that point, the cargo vessels were
"fair game" for prowling German submarines. The duty was cold
and thankless, but ELLETT's tireless efforts helped to maintain the
peace on "our side" of the Atlantic while the nation prepared
for war.
A welcomed respite from the Atlantic storms found
ELLETT transferred to the west Gulf Patrol out of Galveston, Texas.
While the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico were appreciated, the better
duty was not to last. Like most of the "new construction",
ELLETT was assigned to the Battle Force, Pacific, based in San Diego in
1940.
DD-398 was operating as an element of Task Force 8
when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. TF 8,
centered around USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6), was returning from Wake Island
and would still be almost two hundred miles at sea when the first bombs
exploded on the Pacific Fleet anchorage. ELLETT's years of peace had
ended.
As the battles shifted around the central and south
Pacific, DD-398 followed the action. She screened ENTERPRISE as the big
carrier herself provided an air umbrella for the B-25 Mitchell bombers
launched from USS HORNET (CV-8) in the Doolittle raid against Japan.
Less than a week later, ELLETT's task force shifted to the south to
reinforce naval units in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Thousands of miles
to the north, the forces of Imperial Japan were being drawn into a trap
and ELLETT's carrier was needed once again. In June, she protected the
flat top during the pivotal Battle of Midway.
DD-398 returned to Pearl Harbor to prepare for the
largest invasion effort yet to be staged in the Pacific, the Marine
landings on Guadalcanal. Destroyers were the workhorses of the actions
that swept up the Solomon Island chain from Guadalcanal toward the
Philippines. ELLETT was called upon for a variety of tasks.
Sometimes, her role involved rescue. After the Battle
of Savo island, DD-398 rescued nearly five hundred men from the cruisers
QUINCY (CA-39) and USS ASTORIA (CA-34). With USS SELFRIDGE (DD-357), she
was then called upon to sink the abandoned Australian cruiser HMAS
CANBERRA, wrecked in the same battle.
Japan attempted to reinforce her troops on Guadalcanal
with nightly voyages down "The Slot", the narrow body of water
that led from Japanese bases in the north. ELLETT struck back.
Occasionally, shore bombardment was the order of the day; while the
evening called for more unusual actions. On more than one occasion,
ELLETT carried units of Fiji Islander "raiders" to attack
Japanese outposts. Intelligence suggested that survivors from the
cruiser HELENA (CL-50) were hiding on Japanese-held islands. ELLETT,
along with other destroyers and two attack transports snatched the
remnants of HELENA’s crew from under the noses of Imperial forces.
On September 3, 1943, ELLETT had the chance to
practice the tactics her crew had first learned years before on the
Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic. ELLETT finally had an opportunity to
fight a submarine. Japanese Imperial submarines were ordered into the
Solomons to disrupt American convoys. They failed. The submarines were
detected almost immediately, and anti-submarine forces were ordered from
Espiritu Santo to destroy the threat. Late in the evening, ELLETT's
radar encountered an unidentified vessel at a range of 13,000 yards. The
Japanese fleet submarine 1-168 was cruising on the surface. The
destroyer approached to within three miles, finally challenging with a
blinker light, then blanketing the target with star shells. 1-168
submerged and began evasive maneuvers. For twenty-six minutes, the
destroyer beat the waters over the sub. Sonar contact was lost and
ELLETT's crew believed the undersea raider had escaped. A different
story greeted the destroyer men at daylight. A large oil slick and bits
of debris marked the grave of 1-168. DD-398 was one of the few American
destroyers to single-handedly sink an enemy submarine.
ELLETT returned to her duties of carrier screen and
shore bombardment through the remainder of the war. Her mission took her
through the Marianas and into the Bonins with the invasion of Iwo Jima
in December, 1944-January, 1945. July found the veteran tin can
conveying troops from her base in the Guam-Saipan area.
DD-398 was undergoing much needed repair and
modernization at the Mare Island shipyard in California when the
Japanese surrendered. Work on the valiant destroyer slowed to a halt and
she was decommissioned on October 29, 1945. She was finally sold for
scrapping on August 1, 1947.
USS ELLETT was awarded ten battle stars for her
service in World War II.
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