A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS LINDSEY DD-771
The Tin Can Sailor, April 1999
Naval aviator Eugene E. Lindsey was killed in action 4 June 1942 in the Battle of Midway. The destroyer bearing his name, DD-771, was launched 5 March 1944. She was reclassified DM-32 on 19 July and was commissioned 20 August 1944.
The new destroyer minelayer, a unit of Mine Division 9, Mine Squadron 3, sailed from San Francisco on 25 November 1944, bound for Ulithi in the western Pacific. From the heart-shaped harbor at Ulithi, she headed for Iwo Jima, arriving on the morning of 17 February. Operating off Iwo Jima until 19 February, the LINDSEY’s gun crews provided close-in covering fire as minesweepers cleared the harbor and knocked out six enemy guns ashore. On 23 February, she returned to Ulithi to prepare for the invasion of Okinawa.
She arrived off southern Okinawa on the night of 23 March 1945. As at Iwo, her primary task covered sweeping operations and planting navigational radar buoys to mark the cleared channels for the inbound troop transports. On the morning of the landings, the LINDSEY was on patrol off the east coast of Okinawa where she responded to frequent air raids. The next day, she was still on patrol at 0038 when her radar picked up three bogies. The LINDSEY’s gunners had them in their sights at 5,000 yards and opened fire. At 1,500 yards they brought down a twin-engine bomber off the starboard bow. The remainder of the group fled. Six hours later, a single-engine Zeke was taken under fire by all the ships in the area. It suddenly changed targets in mid-dive and swooped in on the LINDSEY. As the DM’s gunners opened up with 40-mm and 20-mm fire, the captain ordered her speed increased to twenty-five knots. The plane had just begun its wing-over and, as a result, passed over her stern and crashed about twenty-five yards to starboard.
During the days that followed, the LINDSEY alternated between sweeping operations, planting buoys, shore bombardment, and radar patrol. Despite the great number of ships and the ever-present smoke screen that made patrolling a “ticklish affair,” her gunners claimed a fourth enemy plane. On 8 April, north of Nakagasuku Wan, YMS-103 and PGM-18 struck mines. Ordered in to assist, the LINDSEY received some seventy survivors for treatment. Her doctor, Lieutenant (j.g.) Francis E. Burgess, worked tirelessly giving medical aid to the wounded.
On the afternoon of 12 April, the LINDSEY was on her way to the aid of the JEFFERS (DD-621), which was under heavy air attack. At 1445, Aguni Shima was six miles off her starboard bow when General Quarters heralded a mass kamikaze attack. The LINDSEY was one of their chief targets.
Her gunners’ first targets were three low-flying torpedo planes closing on the ship’s starboard bow. These were followed by four Vals that came in over Aguni Shima evading the ship’s radar. Almost immediately, the unit split, one going across the ship’s bow and the other three astern. As the ship pivoted to starboard to keep her attackers under effective fire, her starboard guns blazed away at one kamikaze as he screamed in at 300 feet above the water. Shells ripped fragments from his fuselage and within seconds, the diving plane was little more than smoking wreckage hurtling toward the ship. At 1450, it crashed and exploded on the starboard side at the base of the bridge superstructure. Shrapnel tore holes in the bridge and pilot house –both wardroom and galley were demolished — and flames engulfed one 20-mm mount, killing its crew of three. Two members of a nearby gun crew were also killed at their posts and three others were wounded. The forward fire room was in flames.
Within thirty seconds a second Val started its run on the ship. Her 40-mm and 20-mm guns opened up, setting the dive bomber afire and neatly clipping off one of his wings. Forty-five seconds after the first plane struck, the second hit the ship on the port bow between the main deck and the waterline near No. 1 mount. The plane’s bomb exploded sending shrapnel into the forward magazine, which exploded ripping some sixty feet off the ship’s bow, from the main deck to the keel. No one at battle stations in the forward section of the ship survived. Around her, the sea was a deadly combination of water and burning gasoline. Only the “all back full” ordered by her captain, Commander T.E. Chambers, prevented the pressure of the in-rushing sea from collapsing the fireroom bulkhead and sinking the ship.
Above decks, the ship was engulfed by smoke and flying debris, paper, clothing, and provisions. Tons of water thrown mast high extinguished the fires started by the first hit. Later, linen from the wardroom was found in the rigging and clothes and bedding from the CPO quarters on the No. 1 stack. Along with the No. 2 gun mount, the main deck was now level with the bridge. One of No. 1’s five-inch guns, weighing almost five tons, had been thrown completely over No. 2 mount and onto the bridge rail where it hung pointing skyward with a projectile still lodged in the rigging. A training motor from the No. 1 mount was blown aft, landing on the gunner’s seat of the starboard 40-mm quad mount. The entire action, from the initial sighting to the second crash, lasted just three minutes. Figuring that the LINDSEY was sinking, the remaining enemy planes left in search of other targets.
First reports indicated that all fire control equipment in plot was knocked out of alignment, all forward lighting, telephone, and power circuits were out, and CIC had lost all communication with other parts of the ship except through voice tubes. Eventually, an emergency phone was rigged from the bridge to CIC, but that was the limit of communications. Mount No. 1 was gone, No. 2 was inoperative, and the four forward 20-mm guns were out of service. The rest of her guns were in either local or manual control, but over the next two days, the ship’s force had restored much of the control over her working guns. Following the attack, the AARON WARD (DM-34) came alongside to provide assistance and antiaircraft cover.
Damage control was not the LINDSEY’s only immediate need. Lieutenant Burgess, the ship’s doctor was among the fifty severely wounded and her chief pharmacist’s mate had been blown over the side. Medical help from the CHAMPION (AM-314) came immediately after the call for assistance.
At 1701, the fleet tug TAWAKONI (ATF-114) arrived to take the LINDSEY in tow. Despite slow going because of a large piece of plating trailing from the ship’s starboard bow, the LINDSEY made the twenty-mile trip to Kerama Retto by nightfall. At 2025, she was safely inside the nets of the anchorage and at 2318 the PCE 853 was alongside taking off wounded. A check of the ship’s casualties showed fifty-seven crew members had been lost, another fifty-seven wounded.
What followed were days and nights filled with air alerts as crews worked on repairs, which continued in floating dry dock starting on 17 April. On 28 April, she left under tow for Guam, where after arrival on 6 May, she received a temporary “snow plow” bow that would enable her to make the trans-Pacific trek. She sailed east under her own power, stopping briefly at Pearl Harbor and San Pedro before heading for the East Coast. She arrived in Norfolk 19 August 1945.
After extensive repairs at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the LINDSEY steamed for Charleston, South Carolina, on 6 March 1946. She was decommissioned on 25 May 1946 and entered the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia. She was stricken from the navy’s lists and ordered to be disposed of as a target on 1 October 1970. The order was carried out on 9-10 May 1972.
