The ship
USS LST-749 was a tank landing ship. She was laid down on 10 April 1944 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by the Dravo Corporation on Neville Island, launched on 20 May 1944, and sponsored by Mrs. George W. Scott. She was commissioned on 23 June 1944. Lieutenant Ralph B. Flynn had her. DANFS names him at the commissioning and gives the initial B. NavSource's command table prints Ralph Benson Flynn, USN, and carries the tour through 21 December 1944. Neither account says he was killed.
The DANFS text used here is a 2004 reprint. It gives her the Leyte landings in October and November 1944 and one battle star. NavSource prints two Leyte windows, 18 October to 6 November and 19 to 29 November 1944. The current history.navy.mil page was not the text opened for this card.
21 December 1944
That DANFS reprint says a Japanese aerial attack off the Philippines sank her on 21 December 1944. It does not say kamikaze, and it does not name a rescue ship. She was struck from the Navy list on 19 January 1945.
H-Gram 040 says kamikaze hit LST-460 and LST-749 that day. Both were lost, along with 107 soldiers and sailors of the 774 aboard the two ships. The 107 is the two ships together. H-Gram then says that at dusk, after the remaining twelve LSTs had unloaded at Mindoro and started back toward Leyte, four kamikaze attacked. That dusk sentence is a later attack.
Converse (DD-509) has a DANFS line, the one used on the page for John Barr Colwell, that on 21 December she rescued 266 men from LST-749 under suicide attack. That figure is the destroyer's history. It is not LST-749's DANFS, and it does not match the 107 of 774. Colwell had left Converse on 27 September 1944. He was not LST-749's captain.
The Navy chronology for 21 December lists LST-460 and LST-749 sunk by suicide planes in the Mindoro area, at 11°13' N, 121°04' E. That is the chronology's place for the action. It is not a surveyed wreck.
Young (DD-580) names LST-479 that afternoon, with LST-460 and the Liberty ship Juan de Fuca, at roughly 17:18. H-Gram 040 and the chronology name LST-749. Those sentences are left as they stand.
NavSource has no photograph of this hull. None is on the card.