Stevenson (DD 645) - Naval Cruise Book

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ZA, Sealife Za Zke Qaaai af japan tgazalmaecfl We started in the logistic business in mid-March and stayed in it until the war's end. As time went on, as first Iwo lima fell, then Okinawa and finally Iapan, most of the boys came to realize the real significance of our work and to appreciate the fact that sailing quite a bit of the time within ZOO miles of the Iap coast was inviting submarine and air attack. Our months of duty at Camp Iefferson were often' months of boredom, once during the Okinawa campaign, we were at sea for more than 42 days without sight of land. Between operations we would run back to Ulithi for a brief breather, a can of beer and a ball game or two. Ulithi isn't the garden spot of the world as Leonard once said, If I owned Ulithi and hell, I would rent out Ulithi and live in hell . Although we constantly were in peril from floating enemy mines, only once during all of these months of slow cruising from point to point did we ex- perience an actual danger. That was the lune 5th typhoon. You may remem- ber that one of the Admirals was quoted as saying that it did more damage to the fleet than the lap Navy. We took tons of green water over our bridge and once rolled 52 degrees to hang there for about fifteen seconds. Yeah, that was certainly a bad moment. Most of the boys were scared. We couldn't help but recall that in an earlier typhoon four of our ships floundered and sunk. That, plus the news that the new cruiser Pittsburgh had just had her bow torn off by the seas didn't add to our peace ot mind. I-Iowever, it all came out to the good: The ship came through comparatively undamaged and we didn't lose a man. Later we found that the wind had reached an incredible velocity of 138 miles per hour. Then we understood how it was possible for the whale boat to be ripped off along with one of the davits by the brutal force of the storm whose very center we had steamed through. When the storm abated in the middle of the next morning, the Stevenson was seen busily rounding up her crippled, limping charges and resuming Business as usual as though nothing had happened. At the close .of the Okinawa campaign the Stevenson put into Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, for repairs and rest for her crew. Returning to Ulithi for sup- plies and fuel, we put out to sea on Iuly 3, l945, in what later days proved to be the closing campaign of the war. For more than 69 days we were constantly at sea, steadily. plying back and forth, never more than five hundred miles off the lapanese coast and much of the time within two hundred miles. Again we had been picked for the duty of screening the Logistics Support Group so that Admiral I-Ialsey's concentrated shore bombardment and Fleet Airwing strikes could continue without letup. Thus on August l5, l945, the word to Cease Firing sped through the vast trackless wastes of the Pacific, the wartime career of the U.S.S. STEVENSON came to end, her guns idle after plying the submarine infested sealanes of the Atlantic and the wide reaches of the Pacific for nearly three years. Shortly after the end of the war, we were operating with one of the Fast Carrier Groups but were soon detached to become Bird Dog Charlie , main- taining continuous patrol of our picket station so as to be able to rescue any of the Army groups flying to Tokyo in case their planes had to make a forced landing. We listened with great interest to the preparations for the signing of the Peace and then finally came the word for us to proceed to Tokyo Bay.

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