Kamikaze Destroyer: U S S Hugh W. Hadley (D D 774)

Kamikaze Destroyer: USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD774)

Jeffrey R. Veesenmeyer

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Naval History 3

Bennington, Vermont

2014

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First Edition

Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey R. Veesenmeyer

Additional material copyright of named contributors.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The views expressed are solely those of the author.

ISBN 9781576383834

This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 133 Elm Street, Suite 3R, Bennington VT 05201.

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Notice

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of Louis J. Veesenmeyer, and to the shipmates who served with him on the USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD774).

The Veesenmeyer family archives only includes one photo for Louis Veesenmeyer. There is no photo of him in his Navy uniform. This drawing (Photo 1)—in Navy Whites—captures how Louis Veesenmeyer might have looked when home on leave. The drawing was created by Ryan Oswald, a third generation nephew. Oswald has mastered a unique portrait technique. It was drawn with white colored pencil on black paper.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Louis J. Veesenmeyer

On the Cover

The painting of the USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD774) is by Charles L. Waite. It was painted for Thomas L. Dwyer ENS (Capt USN ret.), who served as torpedo officer aboard the Hadley. Dwyer gladly provided permission to include his painting on the cover of this book.

The battle scene depicted is quite accurate. Planes were splashing while shell bursts filled the sky. The four flags hoisted on the halyard is not historically correct though. Those flags were sent up only after the battle was over and the ship appeared to be sinking. Commander Mullaney ordered all flags raised in his last measure of defiance and pride.

That moment coupled with the fury of battle made for a more visual effect when Charles Waite painted the scene. Waite was a 35 year career Navy officer. He entered the Navy in 1942 and first served as Medical Officer for a submarine squadron. His service took him through duty stations in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He taught submariners how to escape from a sunken vessel and helped to create the U.S. Navy Air Decompression tables still used today. He retired as a Rear Admiral. One of his many hobbies in retirement was painting. He achieved the same excellence in art as he had throughout his Naval career.

Acknowledgements

I am so grateful to the shipmates and relatives of the USS Hugh W. Hadley for allowing me to be part of their family. They’ve shared their stories, books, photos, oral histories and friendship. I especially appreciate all the help I received from Doug Aitken and Tom English.

Doug Aitken sent me a banker box of materials for this book. It included the entire ship’s log, articles from magazines, action reports, a CD of photos and maps…pretty much everything he has archived about the Hadley for the past 60 plus years. I’d email him a question and he’d send back an answer that could fill a chapter.

Tom English forwarded the questionnaire I passed out at the 19th Hadley Reunion, to shipmates who hadn’t attended. Phil Goebel and Leo Helling filled out the questionnaire, sent it back to me and offered to be interviewed. Tom also provided me with the Hadley Reunion mailing list. My letter mailed to the entire Hadley list enabled me to make contacts with shipmate Terry Stokes and many Hadley family members.

Bob Bell and Frank Boffi had videotaped oral histories of their Navy careers. They made duplicate CDs so I could have a copy.

The National Museum of the Pacific War (NMPW) had five oral histories of Hadley shipmates in their archives. Reagan Grau, the Archivist at NMPW provided me with interview tapes for Doug Aitken, Tom English, Frank Boffi, Marty Weibel and Perry Camp.

Lincoln Grahlfs gave me a copy of his book, Undaunted. It’s the story of the ocean rescue tug he served on during the War. This was the tug that towed the Hadley back to the states. Grahlfs’ book provided detailed accounts of the trip back to the States as experienced from the other end of the tow line..

The Hadley Memorial website is a phenomenal resource. Shipmate, Bob Eaton started the site in 1996. This was at a time when many businesses had yet to embrace web site marketing. Eaton was in his 70s when he created and maintained a web presence for his Hadley shipmates. There are over 50 bios of shipmates; photos, maps, articles, reunion updates and the full Hadley roster. I’m grateful to Bob Eaton. Sadly, he passed away in 2010. I’m hopeful that someone will take over as webmaster. This is a site that should be maintained in perpetuity.

My family was very supportive too! It was my interest in the genealogy of the Veesenmeyer family tree that lured me to the Hadley. My great uncle, Louis Veesenmeyer was one of the men killed-in-action. His niece, Bonnie Wasik provided me with the only known photograph of Louis. She also had the original telegram that was sent to his mother (my great grandmother) notifying her of his death. Bonnie has the letters of condolences sent from Commander Mullaney and Chaplain Edwin Winder. There are a couple of newspaper clippings too, but that’s all our family knew of how Louis Veesenmeyer died.

My nephew, Ryan Oswald has a unique artistic talent. He was able to use the photo of Louis Veesenmeyer (in civies) and render his likeness in dress uniform. What’s so unique about Ryan’s art is that all of his portraits begin as solid black. He draws in reverse, using white colored pencil on black paper. More examples of this technique can be seen at Facebook.com/Ryan Oswald.

My Aunt, Jeanine Horstman, is the only living relative who knew Louis. She was young when he left for the Navy but remembers him as a really good guy. Your dad and grandfather would be really proud of you for writing this book, she has told me. My uncle, James Horstman provided his own library of Pacific War books. These books were wonderful resource tools. He also gave me his Marantz tape recorder. This proved to be invaluable for taping phone interviews with shipmates.

My daughter Jennifer Peters gave the book a thorough proofreading with an English teacher’s eye for good grammar and punctuation. Good friend Marty Ochs did a final proofreading from a military history buff’s perspective.

Joy, my wife was the real trooper. She got to proofread several early drafts, complete with typos, missing words and spelling errors. Her love of reading—and of me—made the book readable. She allowed me to attend the 2012 Hadley Reunion in San Antonio, while keeping our business going at home. She joined me for a trip to Charleston, South Carolina so I could walk the decks of a Sumner Class destroyer, the USS Laffey. And when I moved my office to the basement for more work space and fewer distractions…Joy just turned up the Food Channel and baked more cookies. I would say to her, I’m going down to the Hadley boiler room, and she’d wave goodbye.

When I began this book I thought it was going to be about a special ship. I soon realized that the story was more about the men who had made the ship special. Their personal stories bring this book to life. Their personal stories are interspersed throughout each chapter. Personal stories are indented and identified by name. These are not exact quotes. I’ve edited most interview comments for clarity and readability. But, the stories do reflect the shipmate’s own thoughts and memories of each event. Thanks to all who shared these memories.

When I attended the 19th Hadley Reunion in San Antonio I hoped to meet a shipmate who remembered Louis Veesenmeyer. A few men remembered the name but none had worked or bunked with him. I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to learn more about how or where Louis was when he died.

I think Doug Aitken sensed my disappointment. He dug deeper in official records and found my answer. In the Action Report by the Executive Officer, Commander Brownlie, Louis Veesenmeyer is mentioned. In section 6 of the report Brownlie lists those men who were Outstanding in performance of duty. Louis was one of the nine men who replaced the missing gun crew on gun mount 44. They fired at the last kamikaze as it released its bomb and crashed into the aft deck. The bomb made a direct hit on the 40mm gun that Louis and the others were manning. All nine men were killed. Now I know. Thank you, Doug.

And thanks again to everyone who helped me make this book a reality.

Jeffrey R. Veesenmeyer

February 2014

Introduction

As a young boy in the late 1950s I would sit with my father on Sunday afternoons watching Victory At Sea. The beginning of each episode was mesmerizing. Huge ocean swells were reflected in the morning light while the marvelous musical score of Richard Rogers made me feel I was aboard ship. Narrator, Leonard Graves, would make the black and white World War II footage nearly come to life with his stories of valor and heroism.

My dad would identify the ships, planes and guns in each episode as we watched the battles on our 16 inch Magnavox TV screen. And he would tell me his own sea stories. Dad, Seaman Robert Veesenmeyer, had joined the Navy in 1944 at age 17. His dad, my Grandfather, told him to stop cutting high school classes or join the Navy. Dad chose the Navy. Gramps took him down to the recruiting station, signed for him and he was off to Great Lakes Naval Training Center. For the next eight weeks Dad was very sorry he quit school. High School had never seemed so good once he got a taste of boot camp.

I think he told me the boot camp stories to encourage me to do well in school. The stories I really enjoyed hearing were about him firing the guns and rockets for shore bombardment training. He was on a LSM(R). This was a landing ship medium rocket designation. His ship was designed specifically for beach landings. Dad was training for the invasion of Japan. But, the war ended before he got there.

Dad told stories about liberty in San Diego and Pearl Harbor with his best buddy, a Marine. They had cut school together to see Glen Miller tours in Chicago. Now they were both touring the Pacific together. That buddy would become Dad’s brother-in-law and my Uncle Jim. Dad told me about his five uncles who served during the war. Four of them joined various branches of the Navy. I learned that Veesenmeyers were Navy men. My grandfather tried to join the Navy but at age 38, he was turned down. Gramps youngest brother, Eddie, would probably have joined the Navy had the war not ended before his 17th birthday. Uncle Elmer served on the hospital ship, USS Bountiful (AH9). Uncle Ray was in the Coast Guard, Uncle Jackie was on the destroyer USS Strong (DD758) and Uncle George got drafted into the Army. Uncle Louis Veesenmeyer was killed by a kamikaze at Okinawa. A Japanese plane had crashed into his machine gun mount during an attack on the USS Hadley. That’s the story that really resonated with me while watching Victory At Sea. I was captivated by scenes of Japanese pilots crashing into ships in the South Pacific. I imagined how Uncle Louis must have felt watching the kamikaze plane diving directly at him.

That was all I knew about the Hadley until I began researching the Veesenmeyer family tree several years ago. One of my internet searches brought up the Killed-In-Action page of the USS Hugh W. Hadley website. There on the list was Louis J. Veesenmeyer along with his shipmates who were killed on 11 May 1945. I delved into the website. The more I read about the ship, the men and the battle—the more I realized I had found a war story that needed to be told. I discovered and bought a book titled The Fighting Bob. It was about the USS Evans and included the famous kamikaze battle that the Evans and Hadley fought together. Many books and articles about the Okinawa campaign include coverage of the battle fought by the Hadley, Evans and four other support ships. But no book existed on the USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774). Now there is.

I attended the 19th Reunion of the Hadley in San Antonio, Texas during May of 2012. The Hadley shipmates welcomed me. When I hinted that I was considering writing a book about them, the stories flowed. We visited the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. This is a must see if you are interested in World War II military history. It’s a phenomenal museum. The highlight for the Hadley crewmembers was the Okinawa room. The museum created a display showing the Combat Information Center (CIC)—complete with vintage air and surface radar equipment—as it would have looked on the Hadley 11 May 1945. The display provides an amazing audio visual replication of the CIC during the battle. The original scoreboard from the bridge of the Hadley is on display. The 25 Japanese flags painted represent the planes the Hadley crew got credit for shooting down. Watching the 12 Hadley shipmates viewing the display—I knew this is where the book should begin. Listening to their sea stories during the reunion I knew their stories would fill the book.

Each chapter of Kamikaze Destroyer includes personal stories from Hadley shipmates. They are taken from recorded oral histories, interviews and bios they’ve provided about their time in the Navy. These are the stories that have been told to their families and shared with each other over the years. Many additional stories and bios are included in the last chapter titled, Scuttlebutt and Sea Stories.

This book is written so that the sea stories of the Hadley crew will live on. Enjoy the voyage. It’s been a wonderful journey for me.

Jeffrey R. Veesenmeyer

2014

Chapter 1: The 19th Reunion

Look at this big blip on my radar screen. I’ve got bogeys approaching from the north. They’re about 55 miles out and closing fast. There must be over a hundred planes out there!"

Twelve aged shipmates stood along the rail. With many emotions evident on their faces, they watched and listened to a museum display of the USS Hadley Combat Information Center (CIC). The audio continued and coordinates were given to the Combat Air Patrol (CAP) pilots who were directed to the approaching planes. Sound effects of plane engines and 50 caliber gun blasts could soon be heard over a pilots report…tally-ho enemy planes, they’re swarming like bees—this is going to be a turkey shoot.

These old salts—all in their 80s or 90s—are in the Okinawa display area at the National Museum of the Pacific War (NMPW) in Fredericksburg, Texas. This is where their ship, the USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774), is featured. The date is May 11, 2012—exactly 67 years since the historic battle that gave their ship the title of Champion Kamikaze Killer.

These men and their families are visiting the display for the first time. The Hadley display is new to the museum. It shows the inner-workings of a CIC identical to the Hadley’s. This display shows how CIC—the nerve center for ships assigned to radar picket duty—would have looked during the Okinawa campaign in 1945.

The shipmates attending this 19th Hadley reunion include Doug Aitken, Bob Bell, Frank Boffi, Tom English, Dell Burt Hall, Jim Harden, Don Hile, Robert Hodenson, Oliver Jacobson, Leo Polek, Marty Weibel, and Harold Woodford. The look in their eyes says it all. As they view the CIC display they are remembering 67 years ago to the day. Of the 362 man Hadley crew these are the only living members who were able to visit the museum.

Doug Aitken looked respectfully at the replica of his duty station on the Hadley. As a young Lieutenant Junior Grade (JG), he and two other young officers oversaw about twelve (enlisted) Radarmen who stood their four hour round-the-clock duty watches here. The tiny dark room glowed with radar screens, light tables and instrument panels. This was the first line of defense for a destroyer and for the fleet of over 1,000 ships that were stationed off the coast of Okinawa.

Aitken had helped the museum with the audio portion of the display. He explained the room layout to the group. It’s all black of course, he explained, ceilings, floors, walls, all black. No portholes. We couldn’t see anything outside of this room. Dim red lights. Our primary lighting came from the plotting boards—aircraft and surface plotting boards—and radar scopes. He continued, We had surface search radar on the port side, with a plotting table for it. The air search radar was over there on the starboard side with another plotting table for tracking aircraft. He looked up, "Hanging from overhead we had various microphones and speakers and electronic gear and, of course, the ever present large brass voice tube for the duty CIC officer to yell urgent findings to the bridge…and for them to yell back at us."!

The museum’s historically correct collection of vintage high tech equipment is displayed for a new Sumner Class Destroyer CIC. It even included the low tech blackboard and a radar chair that was bolted to the deck.

Most of these shipmates had never seen the Combat Information Center when aboard the Hadley. It was considered off limits. The enormous value to the military made it highly classified. But Tom English had been there. He had been training as a Striker Radarman. English wondered out loud if he could still fit in that tiny radar operator’s chair.

Aitken continued to point out the equipment to the intent group of shipmates. He mentioned that the sonar equipment for detecting submarines was actually in a separate smaller adjacent compartment on the starboard side of the Hadley. Bob Bell, a sonar equipment operator, said that no one would have been working on the sonar equipment during the battle. We were moving too fast. Sonar only works at under five knots, Bell added: We were maneuvering at 26 knots as the planes closed. The screws (propellers) make too much noise at that speed. That’s all the sonar operators would hear. Speed and evasive maneuvers were a destroyer’s second line of defense.

The young men in the CIC on 11 May 1945 would have been glued to their screens, directing CAP fighters, and communicating with the bridge about approaching aircraft. CIC personnel couldn’t see the battle but they surely could hear it. They all prayed that none of the kamikazes would get through the Combat Air Patrol and the ship’s gunnery defenses.

The final line of defense was Hadley’s gun crews and fast maneuvering. They’d start firing the six 5"/38 caliber guns when planes were a few miles out. Then the 40mm guns opened up at 4,000 yards and finally when the many 20mm guns started firing…planes were so close you could see the rivets in the fuselage.

Most of the kamikazes didn’t get through on that day. The evidence is just across from the CIC display in the Okinawa room of the NMPW. The scoreboard from the superstructure of the USS Hugh W. Hadley is mounted in a sealed-in-glass display. It was saved before the ship was scrapped in 1946 and presented to Mrs. Hadley, the widow of the ship’s namesake. It has 25 Rising Sun flags painted on it. That’s one for each Japanese plane credited to the Hadley gunners at Okinawa. Twenty-three of the planes were downed in a period of 1 hour and 40 minutes during Hadley’s final battle. Years later, in 2002, Doug Aitken tracked down the scoreboard and cleaned it up. The crew presented it in a ceremony to the Museum (NMPW) on 11 May 2003 at the 15th Hadley Reunion.

The audio and battle sound effects continued from the CIC display. The shipmates stared down at the mass of dots on the air search radar screen, imagining all those kamikazes. Each man was alone in his thoughts for a few moments—thinking about where he was and what he was doing—those fateful days, leading up to 11 May 1945.

Chapter 2: Roger Peter #15

Deck Log—USS Hugh W. Hadley: Thursday, 10 May 1945, 1305 Made all preparations for getting underway to relieve RP15 in company with USS Evans (DD-552).

The USS Hadley (DD-774) and USS Evans (DD-552) arrived on Radar Picket (RP) Station #15 at 1550 on 10 May 1945. Victory in Europe (VE Day) had just been announced the day before. There was no celebration aboard the Hadley. That was day 1,247 of the war in the Pacific. Their ordeal wasn’t over yet.

The U.S. invasion forces did send a Victory in Europe message to the doomed Japanese defenders on Okinawa though. On the night of 8 May every gun from every ship and shore battery at Okinawa was aimed on a Jap target. At precisely midnight each fired a single shell in unison. The blast of hundreds of shells exploding at the same time rocked the entire island. The message was clear. The Japanese were now alone in their battle with the world.

The Hadley and Evans were relieving USS Sproston (DD-557). The crew of the Sproston was very anxious to be leaving RP #15. This sector to the northwest of Okinawa was in direct line with attacking planes from Kyushu airfields in southern Japan. RP