Clint Johnson - Tin Cans and Greyhounds: The Destroyers that Won Two World Wars

Copyright 2019 by Clint Johnson

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To all Destroyer Men who served in the Tin Can Navy while aboard these Greyhounds of the Sea.

When at grips with the enemy on the sea, under the sea, or in the air, no taskforce commander ever had enough destroyers. They were indispensible in every operation, a lance to thrust forward, a shield.

ADMIRAL WALDEN L. AINSWORTH

Commander of Destroyer Forces in the Pacific, 1942

I may deploy a bold argument in this book, but Ill guess tens of thousands of Destroyer Men would agree with me.

Destroyers played the major role in fighting both world wars.

Yes, soldiers of all nations fought each other face to face. Airmen were the most likely to die in combat, falling from the skies due to machine gun and cannon fire, ground anti-aircraft artillery, weather, and mechanical failures. Sailors braved the dark, unforgiving ocean from the single coxswain on a landing craft to the admiral on a battleship commanding tens of thousands of men in hundreds of ships.

But I think all of them depended on Destroyer Men.

It was destroyers that escorted the convoys which successfully supplied troops on battlefields in both world wars. It was destroyers that sank the submarines stalking the convoys. It was destroyers that rushed in to rescue men from sinking ships. And it was destroyers that scraped their keels on the oceans sandy bottom to provide bombardment support for beach landings of the soldiers who would fight the land war.

This book started when I stumbled on the stories of the USS Jacob Jones (DD-61), the only U.S. warship lost in World War I, and the USS Jacob Jones (DD-130), the only U.S. warship lost in American mainland waters in World War II. The coincidences in the stories of their sinking struck me as intriguing, but I soon realized that there was not enough there for an entire book.

Researching those two ships showed me there was no general history of the development of the destroyer classes that spanned both world wars. I wanted to learn more about the destroyers of the principal warring nations of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan.

I was surprised at some things I found.

Great Britain essentially invented the destroyer in the 1870s and thought it would rule the waves. But it was Japan that sobered the rest of the world just thirty years later when its British-built and home-built destroyers played a major role in sinking much of the supposedly superior Russian fleet.

Had America not sent dozens of destroyers to a tiny Irish coastal town in May 1917, Germany might have defeated Great Britain before the end of the year.

While Germany had the technological ability to build the V-1 and V-2 rockets, it invested little toward designing good destroyers.

Readers know the German Enigma machine codes were broken, but may not know that a handful of British Destroyer Men risked their lives, and some died, in capturing the machines and codebooks.

Japans most historic destroyer did not win any battles for its own country, but it played the major role in the most important American naval victory of the war.

Had it not been for the dogged determination of United States Destroyer Men, Guadalcanal might have stayed in Japanese hands in 1942 and the U.S. invasion fleet off the Philippines in 1944 might have been destroyed.

After finishing this manuscript, I came away with a profound respect for the ships called the Greyhounds of the Sea and their crews who proudly call themselves Tin Can Sailors.

I only wish the governments in all four of these nations had saved the earliest and most important examples of their destroyers. What a marvel it would have been to walk the decks of the first destroyer in the U.S. Navy, the USS Bainbridge (DD-1), or the USS Clemson (DD-186), the lead ship of the post-World War I era class that proved so valuable through World War II.

The sole survivor of the deadly Japanese Kagero -destroyer class from World War II was the Yukikaze, which was scrapped in 1970. What was Great Britain thinking in 1967 when it scrapped the HMS Petard, arguably that nations most famous World War II destroyer? The Petard captured Enigma machine codebooks and sank three different submarines in three different oceans, and it was still cut up. The United States unceremoniously sold the USS OBannon (DD-450) in 1970, and it was broken up two years later. The OBannon was a ship with seventeen battle stars, of which Admiral William Halsey said: The history of the Pacific war can never be written without telling the story of the USS OBannon . Time after time, the OBannon and her gallant little sisters were called upon to turn back the enemy. They never disappointed me.

Regrettably, I could not continue this book through the Korean and Vietnam Warswars that saw the continued service of World War II era destroyers. There simply was not enough space. To those Destroyer Men who served during that time, I apologize.

While we have a few destroyers preserved as ship museums, the most famous are long gone. Soon we will also lose the last of World War IIs Destroyer Men. If you meet an elderly Destroyer Man, talk to him. He may well have some World War II stories that he is waiting and willing to tell.

Clint Johnson, January 2019.

Weather today fine, but high waves.

T he graceful but deadly Greyhound of the Seas, the destroyer, was designed in response to a crude weapon originally controlled by a man holding ropes on the waters edge.

The idea for a shore-controlled weapon evolved from an attack during the American Civil War.

On the night of October 27, 1864, United States Navy Lieutenant William B. Cushing successfully sank the CSS Albemarle, a 158-foot-long Confederate ironclad, by lowering a wooden spar with a keg of gunpowder dangling from its end under the Albemarles keel. Cushings attacking craft was a simple 45-foot-long wooden launch powered by an exposed steam engine.

The concept of a small boat sinking a capital ship by something other than cannon fire was intriguing, but the practicality of reaching an alert enemy ship with a keg of explosives was doubtful. Cushings successful attack was daring, but also lucky. The Albemarle was tied up at a wharf on the narrow Roanoke River in Plymouth, North Carolina, guarded by sleepy pickets who did not alert the Albemarles crew that an unidentified launch was approaching.

Still, the Albemarles sinking sparked imaginations.

Just two years after the Albemarles sinking, the self-powered torpedo was introduced by British-born engineer Robert Whitehead. Whiteheads original prototype in 1866 was based on an Austrian naval officers concept of a warhead-tipped cylinder powered by wound springs turning a propeller and guided by ropes held by handlers onshore.