This U.S. Navy Destroyer Was Hit By 5 Kamikaze Strikes and 3 Bombs (And Survived)

Warfare History Network

Security, Asia

A World War II story like no other.

Two warships have been named in honor of Seaman Bartlett Laffey, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient. The second Laffey was built as a Sumner-class destroyer by Bath Iron Works of Maine. Commissioned February 8, 1944, the USS Laffey (DD-724) had already amassed a proud record before her heroic stand on April 16, 1945. After participating in the June 1944 Normandy landings in France, where the crew battled German land batteries and provided gunfire support for the infantry ashore, the ship headed for duty in the Pacific.

Unlike Normandy, where the German air arm was conspicuously absent, Laffey’s crew faced an intense air war off the Philippines––at Leyte and Lingayen Gulf, and also at Iwo Jima. For the first time in these battles, Laffey’s crew faced kamikaze aircraft and, although they then escaped unharmed, the officers and young sailors, led by the gifted skipper, Arkansas-born Commander F. Julian Becton, Annapolis Class of 1931, witnessed up close the horrific damage just one suicidal pilot––never mind a whole swarm of them––could do by purposely smashing into a ship.

“All Hell Broke Loose”

The crew’s main ordeal occurred on April 16, 1945, off Okinawa, an island only 350 miles south of the Japanese home islands. While Laffey prowled the waters at Picket Station No. 1, the northernmost and thus the most dangerous of the 16 picket stations ringing Okinawa, the destroyer’s radar screen suddenly filled with blips. In the next 80 minutes, 22 kamikaze aircraft broke off from their companions to attack the ship. Laffey’s gunners, superbly trained by Becton, splashed the first eight, but as the following account depicts, the next four ravaged the ship’s aft section.