Ships
- USS Saufley (DD-465) Captain, 6 December 1943 – 12 February 1945
He is not Cockell, and he is not Cockran. He is also not Joe Brice Cochran, Naval Academy 1926, the destroyer captain and later rear admiral whose Legion of Merit citation is a different document; not Deale Binion Cochran, Academy 1942, of Helena; and not Edward Lull Cochrane of the Bureau of Ships. Once the wartime Registers print a file number, his is 75016, later written 075016.
The rank, for part of the war, is right. The ship is right for at least one day that can be proved. The two dates are not in any Register used here, and they were not confirmed from a deck log or a war diary. They are left out of the story of his life and taken up with the other untraced dates at the end.
Origins
The Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of 1 July 1944 prints a date of birth beside his name, 12 April 1911, and a date of entry, 24 August 1931. The same two dates sit on his line in the commanders’ block of the Register of 1 July 1945. The Lucky Bag of the Naval Academy class of 1935, page 260, gives the town the yearbook was willing to print: Genoa, Nebraska. Under the photograph the nickname is “Peggy.”
No parent’s name, no county, and no appointing senator have turned up in the Registers read for this essay. The 1 January 1933 Register lists “Dale Eugene Cochran” among the midshipmen and indexes him as a midshipman on page 377, but the state-of-appointment column on that page is scrambled in the copy at hand and is not used. Genoa is what his classmates put under his name. He was twenty when the Academy took him in, on 24 August 1931, late in the summer when many of the men who would graduate with him had already entered in June. The Register does not say why his date is August rather than June. It does say he was twenty, not a plebe of sixteen or seventeen. Four years later, on the day the Navy made him an ensign, he would be twenty-four.
The sketch the Lucky Bag printed over that photograph is classmate prose, not a service record, and it is the only picture of him before the fleet that has been found. It says he took pleasure in helping other people, and that out of “multitudinous other competitors” he was chosen vice-president of what the yearbook calls the WFBR Matrimonial Agency. Before each leave he went out for wrestling, “this seasonal impulse” carrying, he claimed, the advantage of a chance to try a half-nelson he had perfected. The mechanical joke is the one the class remembered: in his second-class year the “Big Bad Wolf” discovered “his patented door check,” and “more affection is lavished on this door check than on the contents of his strong box.” The lines printed with the sketch are “Wrestling 4, 3, Numeral. Reception Committee. 1 P. O.” The yearbook does not, on the pages read here, define those marks. They are left as printed.
That is the whole of the boy from Genoa that a document will support. No letter home, no high-school notice, no father’s trade. A wrestler who went out for the sport when leave was coming, a midshipman put on the Reception Committee, and a door check the sketch says he cherished more than whatever money he had locked up. The Navy that followed did not make him an aviator and did not send him to submarines. The designator the later Registers give him is 1100, an unrestricted line officer, not a member of the aeronautic organization. The door check and the half-nelson are the last intimate sentences anyone published about him.
Formation
He stood in the class the Register’s own note identifies as commissioned ensign on 6 June 1935. On 1 July 1936 the ensigns’ section, beginning on page 222, lists signal number 6227, Dale Eugene Cochran, date of rank the class ditto under 6 June 1935, present duty or station “Milwaukee.” The men on the lines around him are carried the same way, by ship: Chicago, Tuscaloosa, Perch, and the rest. The Register does not give him a billet. It does not mark a special course or a qualification. He was one more ensign of that June, sent to Milwaukee and not otherwise described. Hull number and captain are not taken from this Register, and the ship-history page that would fix them was not retrieved. What the book does fix is the duty name and the fact that, a year out of Annapolis, the Navy had not yet printed a specialty beside him.
By 1 July 1940 the specialty had at least a parenthesis. He is signal 5419, indexed as lieutenant (junior grade), page 210. The lieutenants (junior grade) of his class on that page take their date of rank from 6 June 1938, three years to the day from the ensign’s commission, and his line is ditto under that date. Where his classmates are carried simply as “Chicago” or “Tuscaloosa” or “Perch,” his station reads “Duty connection, Palmer (ord.).” The same volume uses “Duty connection” with a ship’s name, and often the same “(ord.),” for other officers: Prairie, Curtiss, Albemarle, Barnegat, Belknap. The Register’s own abbreviation is ordnance. It does not say whether he was ordered to a ship still fitting out, to a ship in commission, or to a tender’s guns. It says the Navy had taken the ensign off Milwaukee and put the lieutenant (junior grade) to ordnance duty in connection with Palmer.
On 1 July 1942 he is in the lieutenants, signal 5112. The page is headed with the class note that these officers were commissioned ensign on 6 June 1935. The first explicit rank date in that block is lieutenant, 1 January 1942, and no later rank date interrupts the dittos before his name. The Register of 1 July 1944 repeats the permanent half of that line and adds the wartime temporary rank. He is signal 4946, in the lieutenant commanders, file number 75016, on page 88. The block that includes him takes its date of temporary rank from 1 May 1943, its permanent rank as lieutenant from 1 January 1942, and then prints his own birth and entry: 12 April 1911, 24 August 1931. No number stands in the column of special courses and qualifications. Classmates on the same pages carry the codes for submarines, torpedoes, aviation, and the Naval War College correspondence courses. His line does not.
That is the formation the peacetime and early-war Navy actually recorded. Eight years from midshipman to lieutenant commander, on the class timetable: ensign in June 1935, lieutenant (junior grade) in June 1938, lieutenant in January 1942, temporary lieutenant commander in May 1943. One ship named and not described. One ordnance billet whose ship is named and not described. No aviation designation, no submarine qualification, no postgraduate course the Register thought worth a digit. The man the Lucky Bag had teased about a door check reached the rank at which the Navy gave officers destroyers, and the Registers stopped saying where he was.
War years as lived
The Registers of the war years dropped the station column that had made Milwaukee and Palmer visible. From the summer of 1942 until a single signed report in February 1945, the official books used here have his rank and not his ocean.
What they have is precise, and it is not the rank the compilations recite without a second look. On 1 July 1944, the summer after the date those compilations give for his taking Saufley, the Bureau still printed him as a lieutenant commander, temporary rank from 1 May 1943, permanent lieutenant from 1 January 1942. On 1 July 1945 the same man, identified by the birth date 12 April 1911 and the entry date 24 August 1931, stands in the commanders. The temporary-rank ditto at the head of that commanders’ block, and on the dittos that run unbroken down to his birth date, reads 1 March 1944. Permanent status is still lieutenant from 1 January 1942. The lineal list of 1 January 1952 still prints commander and the figures 3 01 44 beside the name spelled correctly, with birth figures 4 12 11 and the pay-entry figures 6 06 35. So the Navy, after the fact, carried 1 March 1944 as a commander’s date of rank. The Navy, on 1 July 1944, had not yet listed him in that grade. Both sentences are in the Registers. They are not reconciled by anything found for this essay. A promotion dated in March and first printed the following summer is possible. An OCR ditto read one officer too far is also possible. What is not possible is to say, from the July 1944 book, that he was already a commander when the later book’s date says he became one.
The only day on which a document in hand both names him and puts him on a ship’s bridge is 1 February 1945, and the document is his own report. A published transcription of a declassified National Archives action report, USS Saufley (DD-465), serial 033, dated 1 February 1945, is addressed from “The Commanding Officer” to the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, and is signed D. E. Cochran. The subject is an action the ship had just fought. The enclosures are the ship’s surface action report of that date and her gunfire radio log.
He reported the morning in the ship’s own order, zone time minus nine. Saufley was coming back from a night retirement out of Nasugbu Bay, Luzon, in company with Commander Task Group 78.2 in the Coast Guard cutter Spencer, screened by Saufley and Conyngham. Base course was 083 degrees true. At 0723 the ship was in condition of readiness I, material condition Able set. At 0744 a small boat was seen bearing 083 degrees true, at first thought a motor torpedo boat, distance in the narrative 5,000 yards. The task-group commander sent Saufley to look. Cochran’s report says the boat, once closed, appeared to be one of the “Q” boats “frequently reported in this area,” maneuvering radically at high speed. At 0749 speed went to 20 knots and the destroyer left the screen. At 0752 the boat was identified. With the task-group commander’s permission, Saufley opened with the 40-millimeter battery at 0758. The boat was seen heading for Spencer. At 0800 the ship commenced firing with the entire battery. At 0802 cease fire: the boat, the report says, was completely destroyed. What remained was a gasoline slick and scattered debris the ship could not distinguish.
The same report then puts the ship on a second job the same morning. She was assigned a station in fire-support area Able, off San Diego Point in Nasugbu Bay, and fired thirteen salvos of the main battery into grid positions given by the shore fire-control party. The spotter was not where he could control the fire, so the results were unobserved. Direct fire went into the base of a heavily wooded cliff until the shore party ordered cease fire and released Saufley back to the screen. The chronological lines put her lying to in the bay at 0900, closing the beach at 1005, on station 1.1 miles northwest of San Diego Point at 1010, firing from 1039, and secured from the fire-support mission at 1205. Visibility was good. The wind was from 075 degrees true at six knots. The sea was calm. The sky was half overcast.
He wrote the days that led into that morning as the commanding officer’s account, not as a cruise summary borrowed from someone else. Before 1 February the ship had left Leyte Gulf under orders of Commander Task Force 78, escorting Commander Task Unit 78.12.6 in the cutter Ingham toward the San Antonio–Castillejos–San Felipe area of southern Luzon. On 30 January she was detached to investigate and assist a plane reported down off Agutaya Island. At 0800 on 31 January she entered the San Antonio area and was released by Commander Task Group 78.3 in Mount McKinley. At 0940 she got underway as escort for the tug Grasp, bound for Nasugbu. That afternoon Grasp went into the transport area and Saufley relieved Russell in the screen. At 1830 Commander Task Group 78.2 in Spencer sortied with Saufley and Conyngham for the westward night retirement. The fight with the boat was the next dawn.
The report is plain about what the ship was for, and about what she spent. In the screen of Task Unit 78.2.8 she was one of Flusser, Shaw, Conyngham, Claxton, and Saufley. The mission against the boat was to investigate and, if it was enemy, destroy it. The mission against the beach was call fire. Ammunition expended was 5-inch/38 and 40-millimeter against the boat, and 5-inch/38 on the fire-support mission. One 5-inch gun had a defective powder case, which was removed and replaced; the gun was then unloaded through the muzzle. Fire discipline and gunnery communications were good. Enemy gunfire was not observed. No battle damage to the ship. No casualties to personnel. The boat was destroyed. On the beach, nothing was seen to show what the thirteen salvos had done. Combat information center, he wrote, “did not play a large part,” because the fire was direct. Communications were excellent. His conclusion is two sentences of a destroyer captain who had just killed a small fast boat in restricted water and then shot at a cliff he could not spot: “Q” boats were “definitely a menace in restricted waters” because radar found them with difficulty, and the bombardment had been too short for any recommendation worth making.
That is the war as a paper in his name actually lives it. He was thirty-three. He signed as commanding officer of the destroyer at Nasugbu, eleven days before the compilations say he was relieved at Subic Bay. The report does not say when he had come aboard, whom he had relieved, or whom he would turn the ship over to. It does say that on the last day of January and the first day of February 1945 the ship’s movements and the decision to open fire were reported over his signature. The boat was heading for the flagship when the main battery joined the 40-millimeter. He asked permission, got it, and finished the thing in four minutes of firing.
A compilation, Hall of Valor, citing Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin No. 346 of January 1946, says Lieutenant Commander Dale E. Cochran received the Legion of Merit for commanding a warship in assault operations against the Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Marianas from October 1943 to August 1944, and it lists a home of Vallejo, California. The bulletin was not found and was not read. The Register of 1 July 1945, which marks the Legion of Merit with the letter D, prints no such letter after his name, while classmates on the same page carry strings of award letters. The award, the home, and the fourteen months of Solomons-to-Marianas command are not narrated here as things the documents in hand have established. They are the sort of claim that would make the Nasugbu morning the last act of a long destroyer command rather than the one morning that can be opened and read. Until the bulletin or the deck logs are in hand, Nasugbu is the morning, and the rest is a gap.
Cost
The report he signed is careful on the point a captain is asked to be careful about. “There were no casualties to personnel.” The defective powder case was a gunner’s nuisance, not a burst. The enemy’s ordnance, if the boat had any that bore, was not observed. The price paid on 1 February 1945, in the only accounting he is known to have written, was ammunition, a powder case, and a small boat reduced to gasoline and debris. The shore bombardment’s results were unobserved, so he would not even claim the cliff.
What the morning cost the men in the boat is in the sentence “completely destroyed,” and nowhere else. He did not report prisoners, bodies, or a count. Later writers have called those boats suicide craft. His report calls them “Q” boats frequently reported in the area, fast, hard for radar to hold, a menace in restricted water, and a threat to Spencer once the boat turned toward her. He does not discuss the men who drove it. The document stops at the slick.
No fitness report, no letter of censure, no letter of commendation in a file that was actually read, and no casualty list with his ship’s name on it, has been found. If the Legion of Merit synopsis is right, the costly months were the ones before this report, from the Solomons through the Marianas, and this essay does not have them. If the synopsis is a misfiled name, then the only cost that can be charged to a page he signed is a boat and a morning’s powder. The Registers are silent either way. They promote him, or they carry a date of rank, and they never say who was killed on his watch.
The personal cost is the same silence. No wife is named in the Lucky Bag sketch or in any Register. No child. No obituary was found. The yearbook’s joke that more affection went to a door check than to the money in his strongbox is the last word anyone printed on what he loved. It is a classmate’s joke from 1935. It is not evidence about a marriage, and it is not used as one.
After
He did not disappear from the Navy when the compilations take him off Saufley in February 1945. The Register of 1 July 1945 still has him, a commander on the active list, permanent lieutenant underneath, born 12 April 1911, entered 24 August 1931. The Register of 1 January 1952 still has him. The alphabetical line is file 075016, Dale Eugene Cochran, commander, designator 1100, with the pay-entry figures that read 6 June 1935, the ensign’s day. The lineal line beside classmates who were lieutenant commanders with him in 1944 — Dinwiddie, Schacht, Mini — reads commander, 3 01 44, birth 4 12 11, and the same 6 June 1935.
On 1 January 1956 and again on 1 January 1957 the lineal list, with the name spelled Dale Eugene Cochran, still carries him as a commander, designator 1100, and the date-of-present-rank figures printed for him and for the commanders next to him are 7 01 55, with birth 4 12 11 and year group 35. The date beside the rank has moved. In 1945 and 1952 the commander’s date the books will support is 1 March 1944. In 1956 and 1957 the date of present rank printed in that column is 1 July 1955. The Registers do not, in the pages read here, explain the change. They do show that he was still a commander, still an unrestricted line officer, still not retired, eleven years after Nasugbu.
The 1 January 1958 lineal list still spells the name out: source code 1, which that volume’s notes define as the United States Naval Academy; year group 35; designator 1100; date of present rank 1 July 1955; birth 12 April 1911. He is not marked retired on that line. The alphabetical index of the same 1950s volumes is a worse witness. File 075016 is stable, and so is designator 1100, but the name collapses to “DALE EUCE,” “DALE EUCEN,” and “DALE BUGS,” and the rank on those garbled lines reads captain. The line that spells Eugene correctly says commander. The captain reading is not used. A neighboring Cochran on the retired list, Christian, is marked retired in plain letters. Dale is not.
No duty station is printed for him in any of these postwar Registers. No ship after Saufley, no shore bureau, no school, no command ashore. The Navy’s public list kept a Nebraska-born Academy man of the class of 1935 on the active list of commanders through the register of 1 January 1958, with a date of rank that the books themselves revised from March 1944 to July 1955, and then the local set of Registers stops. He was forty-six, turning forty-seven that April. What he did with the rank, and when he left it, is not in the books that were read.