A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS GWIN DD-772
The Tin Can Sailor, April 1999
Launched on 9 April 1944, the ex-DD-772 was commissioned on 30 September. The fourth ship to bear the name GWIN, her namesake, William Gwin, was a Mississippi gunboat commander during the Civil War. Gwin was fatally wounded in action 27 December 1862 at Haines Bluff on the Yazoo River.
A unit of Division 9, Mine Squadron 3, the GWIN sailed for Hawaii as the flagship of her squadron. By 21 January, she was part of Battleship Division 7 during the preliminary bombardment of Iwo Jima. During the shelling, her gunners brought down an enemy plane 1,200 yards from the ship.
On 17 March, she joined pre-invasion operations around Okinawa and for the next five months, screened for enemy submarines and aircraft, worked with the minesweepers, and provided fire support. On 27 March, she was with the O’BRIEN (DD-725) when two enemy planes attacked the other ship. The GWIN’s gun crews splashed one, but the other succeeded in crashing the O’BRIEN. The GWIN moved in to screen the stricken ship from further attack and picked up five survivors.
During April, the GWIN provided illuminating fire for the marines fighting ashore on Okinawa, acted as a mine sweep support vessel, an inner and outer aircraft screen, and a radar picket ship. During an air raid on 16 April, her gunners downed two Japanese dive bombers. By month’s end, she had shot down five enemy planes and assisted in the destruction of three others.
The evening of 4 May was forever etched in the memories of the GWIN’s crew. They were on radar picket station off Okinawa when the Combat Air Patrol reported eight to ten high-flying enemy planes to port. The DM’s gunners swung their batteries to face the oncoming enemy. Suddenly, a new alarm reached the gunnery control station. “Enemy planes coming in low to starboard!” Just in time, the gun crews swung their batteries around to train them on a second contingent of kamikazes that swept in out of the setting sun. They opened fire on the two closest attackers, bringing them down at about 3,000 yards from the ship.
Meanwhile, a lookout spotted a third suicide plane, heading directly for the ship some 2,000 yards off her starboard beam. The main battery quickly splashed it and then immediately swung around to deal with another plane coming in from the port side. The seas had not yet closed over these last two planes when the machine gunners in the stern spotted a fifth attempting to sneak in. The fire from their light guns splashed the plane 2,000 yards from the ship.
While the main battery was engaged, another kamikaze began its low run from the opposite side. Dusk and clouds of smoke covered the plane’s approach, which was first sighted by the after gunners. They opened fire, but the plane was now less than 2,000 yards away. Before the main battery could swing into play, the badly damaged plane crashed the GWIN.
GM2c Charles Meikel, gun captain on the 40-mm mount, urged his crew to keep up their devastating fire, which did not cease until the plane crashed in flames, demolishing his mount and wounding half his men. Amid exploding shells, Meikel helped put out the fire. Manning the hoses at his side were GM3c Robert D. Brubaker and Slc Frank Spinuzzi, both first loaders on the 40-mm gun. CMN James H. Blake led the repair party that rushed to quell the fires raging around the kamikaze. Four fellow crew members were killed and eleven were injured as the suicide plane carried away the ship’s after 40-mm gun director. Under attack from all quarters, the GWIN’s gunners had downed five Japanese planes in just six hectic, but heroic minutes. With the fires under control, her wounded cared for, and the decks cleared of rubble, the GWIN resumed her radar picket duty for two more days.
Following repairs, the GWIN returned to minesweeping operations around Okinawa, in the East China Sea, and, with the end of hostilities, the approaches to Tokyo Bay. Finally, on 29 August, she steamed into Tokyo Bay. There and in the East China Sea, as flagship of a minesweeper force, she remained on duty for the rest of the year.
With their share of the “mopping up” complete, the GWIN’s crew headed for home, reaching San Pedro, California, on 23 February 1946. She continued on to Charleston, South Carolina, where she was decommissioned and placed in reserve on 3 September 1946.
When fighting in Korea and the Soviet Union’s growing threat in the Atlantic called for a stronger American presence at sea, the GWIN was recommissioned at Charleston on 8 July 1952. For the next few years, she divided her time between Caribbean and local exercises, European cruises, and duty in the Mediterranean. She began 1955 with new radar and sonar equipment and her armament was changed, giving her six, 5-inch 38-caliber dual-purpose guns and sixteen 40-mm guns. At the end of October 1957, she returned to Charleston where she participated in a Mine Field Service Test that marked the last mine warfare duties she was to engage in before decommissioning. She headed for the Philadelphia Navy Yard 12 January 1958 and there was decommissioned on 3 April.
Sold to Turkey on 22 October 1971, the GWIN was renamed the MAUVENET (DM-357). In 1992, she was steaming toward the twenty-first century in top shape with updated guns and equipment when she joined other NATO-force ships for exercises in the Aegean Sea. On the night of 1 October, the defensive group prepared to simulate its response to an enemy surface group moving to block its operations. No one had forewarned the tactical acquisition system operator (TASO) or the Sea Sparrow missile launcher’s two-man crew aboard the SARATOGA (CV-60 ), however. At midnight, the order was relayed to the TASO to lock on to the nearest surface target. Four minutes later, the carrier launched two missiles, which in seventeen seconds tore into the bridge of the MAUVENET, killing five men, including the captain, and injuring thirteen others. Forty-seven years after Okinawa, modern technology and the push of a button accomplished what the 4 May 1945 kamikaze attack on the GWIN could not do. Following a survey of the damage, the Turkish Navy decided to salvage as much as could be removed from the MAUVENET and to scrap the ship.
