Denver (CL 58) - Naval Cruise Book

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number one stack. One of the shells which passed through the ship played tag with number two barbette in its circuitous route as It missed the armor, causing white hairs among lower handling room personnel when they later viewed the holes. After the most exciting 72 hours of her existence, the DemtT retired to Port Purvis in the Solomons to lick her wounds and was then ready the evening of the ninth to escort the Third Echelon to Bougainville. The next few nights were sleepless for the D(.iircr men who remained at battle stations all night heckled by Jap planes which some- times only dropped flares but more often came in to attack. The night of 12-13 November started inauspiciously with two air attacks, both driven off by our AA fire. At 0451 all ships in the formation commenced firing at several enemy planes. A destroyer skipper shouted on the TBS, Torpedoes in water headed toward big boys. At 0455 while turning left at full rudder to avoid torpedo wakes, the Denver felt a tremendous jar which seemed to lift her out of the water and leave her quivering in the air. She had been hit in the after engine room by an aerial torpedo and immediately listed 7 degrees. Lights went out and the gyro repeaters and steering engines went dead. Soon she lay dead in the water, listing now thirteen degrees, too close to Rabaul and 200 lap planes for comfort. Excited by the increasing list a few men threw life rafts overboard until Captain Briscoe calmly announced, We ' ll take her home, boys. The engineers soon had us going ahead at about four knots on one shaft as the C and R men removed the list by pumping all the starboard tanks. The de- stroyers continued to steam frantically in circles around the Dimvr until the Sioux, an ocean-going tug, took her under tow about 0730. A sight muster of the crew revealed that twenty men were missing and thirty-seven wounded. Of those missing, two had been; stationed on a gun just above the torpedo hole, five had been in the handling room of mount five, and the rest had been in the after engine room. The rest of that day and night were spent steaming toward Tulagi at six knots at General Quarters in constant fear of an air attack with no air cover and less than half of the AA battery operative. The morning of the fifteenth, amid cheers and blasts on whistles from other ships in the harbor, the DnirtT proceeded to her anchorage in Port Purvis. There followed a dreary time with men eating topside, working night and day in oil and debris of all sorts, removing ammuni- tion, and repairing the ship. The bodies were recovered and taken to Tulagi ceme- tery A memorial service for the Denver men lost in action was held on the forecastle on November 18 by Chaplain Hindman, who was assisted in the service by a Priest from a neighboring ship. On November the 21st, a cofferdam having been constructed in the after mess hall, the ship got underway for Espintu Santo in the New Hebrides, towed by the U.S.S. Pawnee. She arrived there the 24th and went into a floating drydock a few days later. In three weeks the tremendous hole in the side had been closed and number three engine was back in commission. {U}

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December the 21st found the Dtm r home- ward bound via Samoa and Pearl. The Golden Gate Bridge was sighted in the late afternoon of January 2 and that night the ship tied up in Mare Island for a four-months overhaul and repairs. Work was commenced on January 2, 1944 and completed May 8, 1944. During this time her crew was given well-earned leave and rest, but training for further combat was not overlooked. Post repair training was conducted m the San Diego-San Clemente area. Diiult men still talk of their Mare Island duty; their description of it, in a word, is: Good! Always a fighting ship, however, in com- pany with the LI. S.S. Frankliii she joined Task Force 58 at Eniwetok and got into the thick of the Marianas campaign by partici- pating in the Third Bonins Raid on July 3-4, 1944. The raids on Iwo Jima, Haha Jima, and Chichi Jima Islands, now famous but then hardly known, were primarily carrier strikes, but the cruisers got in a little Fourth of July celebration at short range on Iwo Jima airstrips and other installations. As soon as the Dciu ' tr ' s portion of the bom- bardment was completed, she pulled off and everyone came topside to watch the heavies bombard for a while. Following the July 3-4 raids, the Dliu ' lt continued to operate in the famous Task Force 58 in the Marianas Campaign until early in August. This period saw the substantial completion of the Saipan Campaign and the start of the Guam and Tinian operations. Task Force 58 flew almost daily strikes against Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. Late in the month a two- day raid was made on Yap, Woleai, and Ulithi, but thanks to the excellence of car- rier fighter operations, both day and night, all enemy aircraft were splashed outside surface ship A A range. Early in August, 1944 she rejoined her old cruiser division, and became the flagship of Rear Admiral R. W. Hayler, and in Sep- tember earned the name of lighthouse buster when she shot down the Angaur Lighthouse during the Palau bombardment. Aircraft bombs did practically no damage to the structure, and the five-inch which began the Dciu ' cr ' .s- attack on it did nothing but leave little black spots on the side. The light was suspected of being used as an enemy command and observation post and had been the target of a number of ships to no avail. The Razor then closed to 3,000 yards and Turret 3 put thirteen out of fifteen six-inch projectiles into the masonry tower which dropped with a satisfactory crash and a cloud of dust. A bit later the Diinvr was back at Ulithi — this time to cover a landing. In view of light opposition expected, the bantamweight bom- bardment group included only this ship and two destroyers. She bombarded the islands outside the lagoon while mine sweeping was conducted inside the lagoon and main- tained a scheduled fire at the northern end of the atoll. During the bombardment a small native dog was seen trotting uncon- cernedly along the beach. A six-inch salvo left the guns of the Denver ' s main battery with a roar. When the dust cloud on the beach cleared oft, there was nothing but clear sand to be seen. At the end of the bombardment of the island, a reconnaissance detachment was put ashore and returned with two natives who informed the Army interpreter that all Japs had left three weeks 05