World War II Antisubmarine Warfare Ships Are Remembered
The most important antisubmarine warfare ships during World War II were the so-called Destroyer Escorts (called DE’s). They were developed to combat the German, Italian, and Japanese submarines that were attacking and sinking Allied destroyers, aircraft carriers, supply ships, and troop carriers.
The first DE’s were ordered in November 1942, just prior to U.S. entry into the war. By the time the ships were launched in June of 1942, the U.S. was well in the war. Seventeen U.S. shipyards participated in the DE construction program, and they built more than 500 before the end of the war.
Usually the DE’s were part of merchant convoy escorts, and at other times they protected amphibious landing forces; and sometimes teamed up with escort aircraft carriers to form “hunter-killer” teams that sought out enemy submarines.
One of those DE’s was the USS Donaldson, on which a young Naval officer from Jasper Co. served as a junior officer.
“President Franklin Roosevelt was a Navy Man,” Glover Jordan said in his raspy, yet strong and resounding voice from his hospital room at Jasper Memorial.
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“When a committee of naval experts came before him and recommended that we build a new kind of ship to screen and protect destroyers, transfers, ammunition and supply ships, he gave the go ahead to build them. These new type of ships were called destroyer escorts. We made 535 of them and they were very seaworthy. At first they were referred to as the ‘Donald Duck Navy,’ but it wasn’t long before they earned the name of ‘Can Do Navy.’ “
Young Mr. Jordan was a senior at Emory University when he volunteered for a wartime naval program to produce much needed officers. He traveled to Columbia University in New York, where he completed Midshipman’s School. He graduated and was commissioned as an ensign in December 1943, and was assigned to duty on the USS Donaldson. To sum up the desperation and urgency of the times, he said, “We were taught in ninety days what the Naval Academy taught cadets in four years.”
DE’s were a little smaller than a destroyer and initially their main anti submarine weapon was depth charges, which rolled off the stern and fired from side launchers into the ocean in search of underwater submarines. To overcome the limitations of depth charges, a new antisubmarine weapon was acquired from Great Britain.
Mr. Jordan, sitting beside his hospital bed, described the effectiveness of this weapon when he said, “We had a devise on board that we got from the British called a Hedgehog. It was called that because the launcher spigots, which held the projectiles were somewhat akin to the protruding quills of a porcupine or hedgehog. The spigots were all in rows and they fired projectiles with tail fins like a bomb on the bottom of it and the front part was 30 pounds of TNT.
“We could find a submarine from about 3,000 yards then we would move the ship around to keep it in front of us. When it was time to fire, all 24 spigots went off about a second apart, and fired the projectiles up in the air in a circular pattern, but they wouldn’t go off unless they hit a sub. That 30 pounds of TNT could rupture the outer hull of a sub and was a deadly weapon.
“Our ‘Hunter Killer’ group was made up of four DE’s, and we got credit for two kills. You knew you had destroyed a sub when you heard an underwater explosion that sounded like a thunderclap, and sometimes it would knock out every light bulb on the ship.”
For reasons unknown, what we know as a hurricane in the Atlantic, is know as a Typhoon in the Pacific or the China Sea. Mr. Jordan explained, “We never got hit by enemy fire, but we got hit by a typhoon that almost sunk our ship. The wind was blowing at 120 knots and gusts reached 150. It was difficult to breathe and everyone’s ears stopped up due to the low pressure.
Talking was out of the question as the noise was absolutely indescribable. The Donaldson fought for her life in a typhoon of such magnitude that large carriers were tossed around like toys. At one point we ended up with water coming through the ventilator on the main deck, which drained down and shorted out our electric motors causing us to lose all power for a while. We lay over on the side about seventy-nine degrees and I remember my feet being hung out in space while my life went by my eyes.
“The eye of the typhoon came over us and everything got still and quiet. I looked up to see a bright blue sky just like a big culvert 20 miles across. When the other side hit us the captain steered the ship into those monster waves at an angle to keep us from capsizing. When we finally weathered the storm and called a muster, we found that three of our crew were missing and were never seen again.
“Three ships sank in this great storm. After an extensive search ninety-two men were rescued after some of them had spent over thirty-six hours in the water with some suffering shark attacks. The final muster showed seven hundred ninety men had been lost and eighty had been injured.”