Henry A Wiley (DM 29) - Naval Cruise Book

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Wiley, in the face of rugged duty, crip- pling or fatal to scores of ships, suffer- ed only a few scratches, no cuts. The Wiley made her war debut at Iwo Jima. The official battle action report for February 16 to March 9, 1945, says she was engaged in Bombardment, il- lumination and routine screening . That's short, and true, but these five words include a series of one-act plays like this one: The Place: lVIt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. The Time: Night of February 20-21, 1945. As the action unfolds the stage is cov- ered by the curtain of night. Land, sea and sky blend into a uniform blackness. The first sound is a radio request, di- rected to the Wiley from the beach, ask- ing that the ship come in near the moun- tain to lend all possible fire support. The J aps, it was explained, were massing for a suicide counter-attack. A black ghost in a black night, the Wiley starts in at a good clip. As the ship cuts its way through the water and nears it goal, speed is reduced. But she doesn't stop. CThe action report will eventually say she pulled up within 500 yards of the shore line, but men who claimed to hear the bow scrape bottom will say even half that figure represents a masterpiece of understatementj. But finally the Wiley stops. The night has an ominous quiet, broken only at intervals by the crack and flash of Japanese sniping. Then the word is passed: Now hear this-the searchlight crew man your stations . A sailor mumbles the thought that immediately hits all minds, We'll be a perfect target . The curtain goes up as the darkness is slashed by the light's glare. The beam searches out the low plateau and breaks against the sheer, cave-pocked face of Suribachi. The silence that a mo- ment ago blanketed everything is simul- taneously shattered. All hell breaks loose as the guns open fire-rapid fire. There is the stutter of the 50's . . . The bop- bop-bop-bop of the 20's . . . The hard, sharp crack of the 40's . . . The thunder of the six 5-inchers. It is like all the Public Park American Fourth-of-July Fireworks displays rolled into one. A few shells from unknown sources burst near the ship and sometimes there is the spa-n-n-n-g of a rifle bullet against steel. That's it. The lights go out, the fir- ing stops, the black curtain falls back into place, the Wiley eases out to sea. POSTSCRIPT: There were no drama critics from the newspapers there. The actors themselves made up the audience. The principal players ashore, for whom the Wiley men constituted a .supporting cast were the Fifth Marines. They liked the play. They transmitted a review which went something like Well Done and We owe you a cigar on that one . And that's all there was to it-except that with a few changes in time and scenery the Wiley duplicated the per- Page twenty-three

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THE WILEY AND THE WAR This is the story of the.U.S.S. Henry A. Wiley, a destroyer-mine-layer, and how she helped build the last two stepping stones to Tokyo and Victory. This is the story of the men and the boys of the Wiley-of the officers who directed her movements and operations and the enlisted men who fired her guns and ran her engines and dropped her buoys and manned her decks and cooked the chow and cared for the sick and per- formed the scores of other big and little tasks that go into the maintenance of a little city at sea. This isn't the whole story. Yo-u do not take war and wrap it up with neat little ribbons of nouns, adjectives, verbs, ad- verbs, and exclamation points and say: This is how war was. Here, rather, are some of the days . . . some of the nights . . . some of the spectacular and frightening and routine events which the men and the Wiley saw and heard and felt . . . days like May 4, 1945, off Okinawa, when the Wiley went to the aid of the sinking U.S.S. Luce to become not only the first ship in the Okinawa area to knock a Baka Bomb from the air, but the first in the fleet to win credit for two . . . Nights like at Iwo J ima, when the Wiley pulled up close to shore and helped repel a'suicide attack by enemy troops . . . Close enough that the crew could have tossed potatoes at the Japanese soldiers had they not been so busy pumping 5-inch and 40MM and ZOMM and 50 calibre shells in that di- rection. Planes and bombs splashed and shores bombarded by a destroyer-minelayer. What kind of ship is that? A fighting ship, a versatile, tough, streamlined fighting ship, that originat- ed in the shipyards as a half-breed, part destroyer and part minelayer . . . and wound up the war recognized as a thoroughbred with a hard-won and well- won berth in the frontline fleet. The Wiley didn't lay a single mine. She planted some buoys as mine field markers with her mine-laying equip- ment and she provided protection for minesweeps, but she fulfilled her destiny running interference for the big ships . . . serving as radar picket . . . moving up with the battlewagons and cruisers for shore bombardments . . . making the airways extra hazardous for Japanese Jills, Jakes, Judys, Bettys, and Bakas. Some Navy men say the destroyer minelayer, with the possible exception of lack of torpedo tubes, is an improve- ment over the traditional destroyer. Their thought is the built-in ,mine ap- paratus tends to give greater structural strength, that the ship can better sur- vive damage. The men of the Wiley wouldn't know about that for sure on the basis of their own experience. The Page twenty-two I

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formance with a fair degree of regular- 1 downed American pilot as well as sur- seen a Japanese pilot adopt the salt fy, vivors from an American destroyer. Had And, through the days and the nights at Iwo, guys wondered when the next mail call would be and argued the re- spective merits of various guns and ships and planes and pinup girls and dreamed of a postwar life devoted primarily and fundamentally to sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep. For the folks back home, the invasion of Okinawa started April 1, 1945, when the troops moved in for what eventually proved to be the last lap of the road to occupy Tokyo. The Wiley was at Okinawa eight days before that. Okinawa wasn't secured until late June. Between March and June the Okinawa campaign, for the Navy, proved in per- sonnel and ship losses the most rugged acicion of the war since Pearl Harbor it- se f. The Wiley was in all of it. V She began the campaign as a suppo-rt vessel for mine sweeps assigned to clear the Okinawa Gunto area of mines and other menaces to invasion navigation. Before it was over she had splashed ten Japanese planes and two Baka bombs, had assists on two other downed planes and was credited with still another prob- able . . . She had bombarded beaches . . . Dropped depth charges on subma- rine contacts . . . Searched for Jap sui- cide ammunition barges . . . Pickedup a water method of Hara-K1r1 by discard- ing his life jacket as the Wiley approach- ed with the intention of rescuing him . . . Had felt the jar of an exploding Jap torpedo, which missed . . . And had put in a full share of duty as radar picket, one of the most vital and at the same time most hazardous of all the Okinawa Fleet operations. It is a long time from the twenty-first day of March until the twenty-third day of June in any year. But, comparative- ly, the period 28-29 March, 1945, seems in the memories of many Wiley men to make up the greater share of the total campaign time. Starting at 6:15 a. m. the 28th they were at battle stations continuously un- til the following night. They began by dunking their first Japanese plane, a Nate attempting a suicide dive. Before the hour was out, they downed another. In the same morning they were alerted for suicide boats, and also delivered har- assing fire to the beach. Before mid- night a vicious air attack was beaten off, but the ship was jarred by a torpedo which exploded at the end of its run- a near miss. The next day was no better. A Jake aimed a bomb which fell into the Wiley's wake, 70 yards astern. Two Nates, with suicide intentions, were knocked down-the second splashing just 75 yards off the starboard bow af- ter the ZOMM guns had sliced off a wing. Page twenty four