A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS HOWORTH DD-592
The Tin Can Sailor, July 2001
The USS HOWORTH (DD-592) was launched at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on 10 January 1943 and commissioned on 3 April 1944. By July, she was underway screening a large convoy of marines bound for Pearl Harbor and continued west to Hollandia, New Guinea, to join the Seventh Fleet. After brief stops at Purvis Bay and Manus on escort duty, she arrived at the newly-taken Morotai, Netherlands East Indies on 30 September. She spent two busy weeks in the Solomons escorting convoys and screening for enemy submarines. The HOWORTH steamed out of Humboldt Bay on 16 October. Arriving off Leyte Island in the Philippines on the 22nd, three days after the initial landings, she entered San Pedro Bay to guard the transport anchorage during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Following a brief trip to the Palau Islands and Guam, DD-592 returned to Leyte Island on 23 November to cover the landing of the U.S. Army’s Seventy-Seventh Infantry Division near the city of Ormoc on 7 December.
Mindoro Island was next, and on 13 December, the HOWORTH was part of the escort for the NASHVILLE, when the ships came under kamikaze attack. She was only 6,000 yards away, fighting off attackers, when a plane crashed into the cruiser, turning its midships into an inferno, killing 133, and injuring 190. Undeterred the invasion force drove on toward Mindoro. Upon arrival, the HOWORTH moved into Mangarin Bay to support the assault troops by knocking out enemy emplacements ashore. She had just completed a shore bombardment mission when three “Zekes” dove through her antiaircraft fire. Skilled maneuvering avoided serious damage as the first two planes crashed into the water, but the third glanced off the forecastle to port, damaging her mast and radio antenna and showering the main battery director and the bridge with gasoline. No fires resulted and the ship returned to Hollandia for repairs to her antenna. She was back in action in January 1945, fighting off kamikaze attacks en route with the first reinforcements for the Lingayen Gulf operations and the invasion of Luzon.
In early February 1945, after seventy days repelling air attacks in the Philippines, she proceeded to Ulithi and from there to Saipan where forces were gathering for the invasion of Iwo Jima. On 19 February she supported the initial landings on Iwo and remained underway for the next twenty-six days. During that time, she carried out eight twenty-four-hour shore bombardments, all within range of enemy shore batteries. Her 5-inch guns fired 2,449 rounds of 38-caliber ammunition. In between bombardment missions, she screened other ships of the invasion fleet and took her turns on picket station. Once the island was secured, she returned to Ulithi for repairs and provisions and then, joined the armada bound for the invasion of Okinawa on Easter Sunday, 1 April 1945.
Her first five days on picket and patrol duty were relatively routine, but on 6 April, a deadly wave of more than 200 suicide planes attacked the U.S. forces. The HOWORTH was steaming north toward Ie Shima, off the west coast of Okinawa, when the attacks began. Despite the great number of planes shot down by the American combat air patrol, enough got through to deliver death and destruction. At one point, the HOWORTH was splashing planes on every quarter. In short order, her guns brought down six, one of which severed her radio antennas and another passed over the fantail cutting down the lifelines before plunging into the sea. A seventh, however, could not be diverted and crashed into her main battery director on the bridge spreading burning gasoline and knocking out her steering control. Nine men died and fourteen were injured, but the destroyer’s engines and guns never stopped. Damage control parties put out the fires; steering was taken over aft; and her 40-mm guns splashed an eighth attacker. By the time she had sped safely out of the area, the destroyer’s gunners had fired 332 rounds of 5-inch, 1,414 rounds of 40-mm, and 1,930 rounds of 20-mm ammunition during the fifty-eight minute battle. Because of the seriousness of the damage she had received, the HOWORTH was ordered back to the U.S. for repairs.
Underway again in mid-July, the ship was headed for Adak in the Aleutian Islands on V-J Day. Upon reaching Adak, she joined the North Pacific Fleet and DesRon 45 and on 31 August 1945, left for occupation duty in Japan with a group of escort carriers and destroyers. On 14 September, the HOWORTH and two other ships entered Hakodate, Hokkaido, to remove several hundred Allied prisoners of war, many of whom were survivors of the Wake Island and North China garrisons. They carried the men to Yokohama for medical attention and transport home. The HOWORTH continued to operate in the Western Pacific until November 1945 when she returned to San Diego. There on 30 April 1946, she was decommissioned and remained in the Pacific Reserve Fleet until March 1962 when she was sunk in torpedo tests off San Diego.
