USS BENSON DD-421

USS BENSON DD-421 Ship History

The Tin Can Sailor, July 1997

USS BENSON was launched at Bethlehem Ship Building’s Quincy, Massachusetts, yard on November 15, 1939, the leader of one of the largest destroyer classes ever built in peacetime.

The new destroyer was named for ADM William Shepherd Benson, whose career spanned more than forty years of active service. I n 1915, ADM Benson was appointed the nation’s first Chief of Naval Operations and it was the Admiral who coordinated American maritime operations during World War I. The Navy’s choice of a name for the new class would prove to be unusually appropriate. Like their namesake, BENSONs would play a prominent role in a “Great War.”

Following her commissioning in July 1940, USS BENSON was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, where she passed much of the year in training exercises. The efforts would prove valuable in the near future.

By the spring of 1941, war had spread through Europe and Asia and the Roosevelt Administration was attempting to protect the Western Hemisphere with a neutrality zone. Dozens of destroyers were assigned to secure the convoy routes between North America and Iceland, the eastern “outpost” near the neutrality zone boundary. BENSON would complete six convoy runs between Newfoundland and Iceland prior to March 1942.

Few were surprised when the unofficial conflict which had seen the loss of so many men in the name of neutrality degenerated into a full-scale shooting war. Experienced anti-submarine forces were in short supply and BENSON was immediately assigned to convoy merchant vessels through to the British Isles and, later, to North Africa in preparation for invasion.

Casco Bay, Maine was used as a convenient rendezvous for naval forces north of Boston. Scores of vessels crowded the approaches to the anchorage, and in the predawn hours of October 19, 1942, the inevitable happened. USS MASSACHUSETTS (BB-59), accompanied by several escorts, was sailing north after extensive firing exercises. Returning from an arduous convoy assignment, USS BENSON ran afoul of the battleship’s escort, USS TRIPPE (DD-403). Both ships were extensively damaged. Four crewmen were killed and three others were injured aboard TRIPPE. Both ships spent weeks in New York for repair. BENSON would return to convoy duty in support of the invasions of Europe scheduled for 1943-1944.

After the Allied invasion of North Africa provided a base in the summer and fall of 1942, Hitler’s Europe could be attacked from any number of directions. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, believed Italy to be the “soft underbelly,” so the next step called for an assault on the Italian “boot.”

DD-421 was assigned to forces in the Mediterranean in July 1943. The Allies planned to land on Sicily, off the “toe” of the Italian “boot” in Operation HUSKY. American destroyers would serve as convoy escorts, fire support vessels for the landing force, and as anti-air protection for the vulnerable transports. BENSON nearly met her end off the town of Gela on Sicily’s south coast.

German and Italian forces had no intention of relinquishing Sicily without a fight. German torpedo boats, called E- Boats, scoured the coast for targets, while entire Luftwaffe squadrons attacked the landing area in support of some of the strongest tank units available to the Axis. The attack on the evening of July 11, 1943 began with a flight of Axis bombers dropping flares astern of the destroyer. Every ship in the area opened up, and BENSON became the target of considerable “friendly fire,” but the worst was yet to come. Heinkel HE-111 medium bombers dropped their entire load of bombs along the destroyer’s starboard side, fortunately missing the vessel, but spraying DD-421 with fragments that wounded LCDR R. J. Woodaman and eighteen crewmen. Junkers JU-87 STUKA dive-bombers then attempted to finish off the ship. After an aerial battle that lasted more than an hour, the destroyers in the area were ordered to lay a smoke screen. The remaining aircraft fled.

BENSON moved north with Operation AVALANCHE, the invasion of the mainland at Salerno. Once again, DD-421 faced a bewildering variety of enemies. Nazi artillerymen blasted away at invaders with 88-mm. anti-tank guns; Luftwaffe bombers swept across the anchorage; even submarines and robot bombs were a threat. BENSON came through it all.

Hitler ordered additional undersea forces into the Mediterranean to harass Allied shipping and DD-421 was once again detailed to anti-submarine forces. For the next two months, BENSON alternated between convoy duty and anti-submarine sweeps. Finally, the destroyer returned to New York for a much needed refit.

DD-421 returned to the Mediterranean just in time to support landings in Southern France. Fire support missions required BENSON’s expertise along the coast of France and Italy throughout the summer and fall of 1944. A final return to the United States for an overhaul ended with one more convoy assignment to the British Isles.

By the spring of 1945, Axis forces had been pushed out of France and veteran destroyers were needed in the Pacific. BENSON arrived in time to screen carrier forces making final attacks on Wake Island. She then resumed her old duty, convoy work, this time between Ulithi, Okinawa, and the Philippines. The destroyer would serve with DESRON 50 at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945.

Following the end of hostilities, BENSON was ordered to the Charleston Navy Yard for deactivation. The destroyer remained out of commission and in reserve until February 26, 1954, when she was transferred to the Nationalist Chinese Navy. She served as LO YANG with Taiwanese forces for the next twenty-one years, ultimately being scrapped in 1975.

USS BENSON DD-421 Ship History

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, March 2016

Benson (DD-421) was laid down on 16 May 1938 at Quincy, Mass., by the Bethlehem Steel Co.; launched on 15 November 1939; sponsored by Mrs. William S. Benson, the widow of Admiral Benson; and commissioned on 25 July 1940, Comdr. Clifford A. Fines in command.

Following fitting out at the Boston Navy Yard, the destroyer made a short cruise to Portland, Maine, before departing Boston on 22 August and heading, via Newport, R.I., and Yorktown, Va., for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and abbreviated shakedown training. She sailed for the Chesapeake Bay on 3 September and, after visits to Quantico,.Va., and Washington, D.C., departed Norfolk, Va., on the 13th and proceeded via Guantanamo Bay to Cayene, French Guiana, where she arrived on the 21st to check on the possibility of Axis activity in that French colony and its Dutch neighbor, Surinam. This effort seemed necessary to keep fascism out of the Americas and to protect a rich source of bauxite ore, the source of aluminum, for Allied war production. On the 27th, the colony’s governor embarked in the destroyer for a visit to Iles du Salut, some seven or eight miles off the coast. He returned to Cayenne later that day and disembarked before the ship sailed for Paramaribo, Surinam. Benson departed Cayene for the third time on 6 October and proceeded via San Juan, Puerto Rico, to the New York Navy Yard where she underwent a post-shakedown overhaul that lasted through mid-November.

Benson stood out of New York harbor on 18 November to begin the neutrality patrols that constituted her main concern well into the following spring. A highlight of this period of her service came in March 1941 when she escorted Potomac (AG-25) while the yacht carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Bahamas for a holiday of fishing. Late in May, the destroyer helped to screen Texas (BB-35) as the battleship patrolled the North Atlantic. While they were at sea, German battleship Bismarck got underway on 21 May and headed for the Denmark Strait hoping to prey on Allied convoys. When Churchill learned of her foray, he asked President Roosevelt to have the American Navy look for the raider and to keep the Royal Navy informed of developments during the search. Once alerted, Texas and her consorts scoured the seas for Bismarck until the British sank the German warship on 27 May.

Soon thereafter, Benson returned to the Boston Navy Yard for a month’s availability to prepare for a new mission. She got underway on 28 June to join Task Force (TF) 19 which was being formed to carry Marines to Iceland to free the British troops who had been guarding that island for more active service. Task Force 19 departed Argentia, Newfoundland, on 1 July and, at the end of a passage through U-boat-infested waters, anchored in Reykjavik on the evening of 7 July. After returning to Boston, Benson quickly refueled and moved to Casco Bay for exercises off Portland, Maine. In September, she began almost seven months of duty shuttling between Boston and Iceland escorting convoys. Three months later, in December, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war allowed the United States to drop the last pretense of neutrality and prosecute the war against the Axis openly. At the end of March 1942, she got underway to escort a convoy all the way eastward to Londonderry, Ireland, and returned to Boston early in May.

Convoy escort operations, which took her to the British Isles, Bermuda, and the Canal Zone, continued to be her main duty into the autumn when she began readying herself for Operation “Torch,” the invasion of French North Africa. As a part of those preparations, she took part in shore-bombardment exercises with the new battleship Massachusetts (BB-59). En route to Casco Bay, Maine, for one of these rehearsals in the pre-dawn darkness of 19 October, she collided with Trippe (DD-403), killing four and wounding three of the latter’s crewmen when her prow pierced Trippe’s starboard quarter. The accident also caused enough damage to Benson to keep her in the New York Navy Yard undergoing repairs until after Allied troops had invaded North Africa.

When she was again ready for action, Benson resumed convoy-escort duty across the North Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. In July 1943, she turned her attention to supporting the invasion of Sicily. She sailed from Oran, Algeria, on the 6th with Task Group (TG) 80.2, the escort group of Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt’s Western Naval Task Force, and escorted convoy NCS-1 to the assault area at Gela, Sicily. She arrived off the beaches there several hours before dawn on the night of 9 and 10 July and spent the next two days in the antiaircraft screen fighting off almost incessant raids by Luftwaffe warplanes. On the 11th, a bomb exploded close aboard the destroyer wounding 18 of her crewmen, but inflicting only superficial damage to the ship. The next day, she set out to escort attack cargo ship Betelgeuse (AKA-11) to Algiers where she arrived on the 18th.

More patrol and escort duty in the Mediterranean followed until 24 August when Benson joined TF-81 in final preparations for landing on the mainland of Italy. At dawn on 9 September, the Allied troops went ashore on Salerno’s beaches and met fierce opposition while the Luftwaffe struck continuously at the warships of the invaders. At mid-morning on 11 September, a German Do. 217 warplane released a radio-controlled glide bomb which struck Savannah‘s (CL-42) No. 3 turret and pierced through the light cruiser until it exploded in her lower ammunition handling room, opening seams in the ship’s hull and tearing a large hole in her bottom. Valiant and efficient damage control parties stemmed the stricken cruiser’s flooding, corrected her list, extinguished her fires, and enabled her to resume moving under her own power. Benson then helped to escort Savannah to Malta for temporary repairs that enabled her to return to the United States for permanent patching.

Benson soon returned to Salerno, rejoined the antiaircraft screen, and, on the morning of September 19th, shot down an FW-190 fighter-bomber. While supporting ground operations in Italy, she also conducted numerous shore bombardment missions and escorted other ships to various Mediterranean ports. On 2 October, she rescued the survivors from a downed Royal Air Force “Wellington” bomber.

At the end of January 1944, the destroyer departed Casablanca, Morocco, and escorted Convoy GUS-28 to New York where she entered the navy yard for an overhaul. Then, following training exercises along the east coast, she got underway with TG 27.4 on 20 April and proceeded to Oran where she arrived on 1 May. After upkeep, she headed for Gibraltar on the 9th with Convoy UGS-40. Two days later, she helped to fight off an attack by about 30 German planes, shooting down two Ju. 88 bombers, probably destroying a third, and damaging two others. Best of all, no ship from the convoy was lost or damaged.

In the months that followed, Benson continued to escort convoys and individual ships between various Mediterranean ports. In mid-August 1944, she joined TG 80.6 to help screen other warships involved in the invasion of southern France. She also served as a traffic control vessel during that operation and, from time to time, took part in the bombardment of German positions ashore. While on patrol duty in a fire-support area near Toulon, the destroyer blockaded enemy merchant ships in San Remo harbor and fired on supply buildings in the vicinity. She also supported the French cruisers Montcalm and Jeanne d’Arc during their bombardment of San Remo. Early in January 1945, she sailed to Leghorn, Italy, to shell German troops threatening to break through there. During this duty, she was attacked by enemy small combatants, either German E-boats or Italian MAS boats, but escaped injury and later escorted the French cruiser Georges Leygues in her bombardment of enemy-held shipyards in Pietra, Italy.

Detached from this duty late in January 1945, Benson returned to the United States for yard repairs and training during February. After a convoy-escort run to Plymouth, England, in April, the destroyer received orders to the Pacific. Accordingly, she transited the Panama Canal on 12 May and then reached Pearl Harbor on the 29th. The destroyer spent bit more than a month in Hawaiian waters and then got underway on 14 June to escort Lexington (CV-16), Cowpens (CV-25) and Hancock (CV-19) back to the western Pacific. Then, following upkeep at Leyte in the Philippines, she proceeded to Ulithi. Until VJ day on 15 August, the warship performed convoy and patrol duty between Ulithi and Okinawa. She served in the screen for the first occupation troops for Yokohama, who landed on 2 and 3 September 1945.

In the two months following the surrender of Japan, the destroyer escorted five different convoy groups between the Philippines and Tokyo Bay. Ordered back to the United States for inactivation, Benson got underway from Yokohama on 4 November 1945 and moored at Charleston, S.C., on 6 December. She was decommissioned there on 18 March 1946, placed in reserve, and assigned to the Charleston Group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. On 26 February 1954, Benson was transferred to the government of Taiwan, and she served the Taiwanese Navy as Lo Yang (DD-14) into the mid-1970’s. As the result of a survey made of her early in 1974, the Taiwanese replaced her with another American destroyer that the Navy loaned them in 1975, the former Taussig (DD-746), which then became Lo Yang (DD-14). Meanwhile, Benson‘s name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 November 1974; and she was sold to Taiwan, presumably for cannibalization and scrapping.

Benson (DD-421) earned four battle stars for her World War II service.