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Guns for USS Kidd
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by Arnold Shrubb Lieutenant-Commander, RN Taking over a new ship is special but it is doubtful if the crew led by Lieutenant Commander Alan B. Roby considered themselves unusual on April 23, 1943 as they commissioned the new Fletcherclass destroyer USS Isaac C Kidd. Nine destroyers had been commissioned already that month and two others the same day. Roby had no idea his ship would be immortal. The importance of the destroyer could be seen from the building rate. Kidd was the 118th new US destroyer since January 1942 , and by 1945 there would be a further 229; 71 never returned home. Kidd and her sisters were designed to go in harm's way. Their 376 1/2 foot, 2050-ton hulls were bristling : five 5-inch guns for surface action and bombardment; five 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft batteries; close-range Oerlikons occupying spare deck space; ten torpedo tubes to threaten the capital ships; and depth charges, on racks and "K guns'', to crush submarines. Twin fire- and engine-rooms drove the ship at 35 knots. Named after the first US Admiral to be killed in action , the ship had an active career. Within six months she was engaged with 54 of her sisters on the assault on the Gilbert Islands and two months later with 83 others on the Marshalls. By the summer of the same year she was fighting (now with 138 other destroyers) in the Marianas. As workhorses of the fleet , destroyers suffered. Kidd came in for her share. Off Okinawa , twelve days short of her second birthday, she was hit by a kamikaze. The aircraft plunged into the starboard side, lodging in the forward fire-room. Men on the upper decks ran to the port side, but the aircraft's bomb passed through the ship and exploded to port . In spite of 93 casualties, Kidd survived and steamed under her own power to Ulithi. Repaired and modernized , she earned her eighth battle star in the Korean War. The Fletcher class has disappeared from the US Navy, but USS Kidd survives. She lies in Baton Rouge, 80 miles upriver from New Orleans. Under Dr. Malcolm Shuman, the ship is now demodernized. Spaces converted for later equipment have reverted to their 1945 roles; hull , original equipment are preserved. She rests, when the river is low, in a specially designed cradle with her sonar dome and propellers visible and floats in the spring and early summer.
SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1985
Schooner TIMBERWIND Capt. Bill Alexander
Box 247 SH, Rockport, Me. 04856
MARINE CHRONOMETERS Bought, Sold and Serviced Restoration and Appraisals
Photos courtesy USS Kidd , Baton Rouge, LA.
On April 16, 1984, a party representing NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic laid a wreath in the Mississippi and then toured the ship. She was incomplete in .two respects. Neither 20mm Oerlikon guns of the right mark nor " K gun" depth-charge throwers were available in the United States. Fortunately, NATO nations do not all have the same policy for disposal of weapons, and a Dutch officer knew that in a warehouse in Holland were both Oerlikon guns and depth-charge throwers, given to the Dutch Navy by the United States. A message from the US admiral's British deputy received a favorable response from the Dutch CNO. A program-change for the five-nation Standing Naval Force Atlantic was agreed by its German commodore and the Canadian Chief of NATO's WESTLANT Staff, and in November 1984 the Dutch ship HNLMS Zuiderkruis left her escorts and steamed upstream to Baton Rouge to deliver the guns. Appropriately, Rear Admiral Jan J. Leeflang, the Dutch Naval Attache represented his Navy at the ceremony, since it was a former Dutch Naval Attache who left the plans of the Swedish Oerlikon "accidentally" on a Navy Department desk in World War II, enabling the United States to start production. Kidd is the State's official war memorial, so the guns were accepted by the governor of Louisiana. NATO is a military organizaton, but it is also one where people work together in many different ways, and the restoration of a small , but important part of our maritime heritage was a worthy task. ..t
J.P. Connor & Co. Agents for Thomas Mercer, Ltd . P.O . Box 305 , Devo n PA 19333 Tel: 215-644-1474
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