A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS CUSHING DD-376
The Tin Can Sailor, April 1998
The third ship to be named for the intrepid CDR William Baker Cushing, the Civil War hero whose destruction of the Confederate ironclad ALBEMARLE marked the beginning of the torpedo boat, was launched at Puget Sound Navy Yard on December 3l, 1935. She would be commissioned the following August.
USS CUSHING was assigned to the Battle Fleet in the Pacific and participated in the abortive search for Amelia Earhart, the woman pilot who disappeared in her attempt to fly around the world. She was never found.
In the years immediately before World War II, CUSHING was actively involved in the variety of fleet exercises and “problems” that seemed to define the Navy of the 1930’s. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor found CUSHING undergoing an overhaul at the Mare Island Navy Yard.
DD-376 was immediately pressed into service to screen convoys and protect carriers in training exercises off the California coast, before proceeding to the cauldron around Guadalcanal.
CUSHING was assigned to Task Force 16, protecting USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6) in the climatic battle of Santa Cruz Island. The group, accompanied by TF 17, with USS HORNET (CV- 8) faced an awesome array of Japanese naval vessels. Japan planned a complex series of moves toward Guadalcanal. Troops on the island were to take Henderson Field, canceling the “Cactus Air Force” that supported the American naval effort. Five separate Japanese task forces would converge on the island and blast the Marine beachhead out of existence. DD-376’s charges during the air battles that followed were able to fight off their attackers; USS SOUTH DAKOTA (BB-57), also assigned to support ENTERPRISE, was credited with twenty-six aircraft shot down herself. TF 17 was less fortunate, HORNET and USS PORTER (DD-356) were lost.
Less than three weeks later, DD-375 was again facing an enemy threat. The veteran destroyer completed a successful convoy run, protecting transports bound for the embattled island, when reconnaissance forces to the north spotted a force of two battleships, a light cruiser, and eleven destroyers steaming toward Guadalcanal. RADM Daniel J. Callaghan arranged his forces, eight destroyers and five cruisers, in a classic “line ahead”, with the tin cans in the van and rear. At just before 2:00 AM on November 13, 1942, CUSHING sighted Japanese destroyers crossing her bow at a range of just 3,000 yards. The destroyer turned to unmask her torpedo battery and the fight was on.
The resulting action, in the dead of night, was a confusing free-for-all. Almost before she knew it, CUSHING was in the middle of the Japanese column. She gamely fired on several destroyers and the Japanese battleship IJN HIEI, then launched six torpedoes at the huge battlewagon, then less than half a mile away. CUSHING had already suffered punishing hits from the destroyers, but she turned to again attack the battleship. HIEI’s skipper, rattled by the ferocity of CUSHING’s attack, as well as fire from other destroyers and cruisers in the area, slowly turned from the attack. But CUSHING’s respite could not last.
A searchlight flashed on and fire seemed to concentrate on DD-375. Within minutes, the destroyer lost headway. Fires spread throughout the ship as damage control parties fought to keep the tin can afloat. A second time, Japanese searchlights pinioned the stricken CUSHING. With her bridge almost blasted away and most of her guns out of operation, DD-375 was a floating wreck. LCDR E. N. Parker, CUSHING’s skipper, ordered the ship abandoned. Late in the afternoon, her uncontrolled fires finally reached the ship’s magazines and the courageous destroyer exploded. In all, seventy-two men were lost.
USS CUSHING received three battle stars for her service in World War II.
