Pacific ships

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Shubrick

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ClassGleaves class
TypeDestroyer (DD)
HullDD-639
BuilderNorfolk Navy Yard
Launched1942-04-18
Commissioned1943-02-07
FateAfloat. Survived the kamikaze hit of 29 May 1945, in which 35 men were killed or missing. Decommissioned 16 November 1945; her hulk was removed for scrapping in 1947.
Armament (class)Split-plant sisters of the Bensons. Five 5-inch guns and two funnels.
Command

Laid down, displacement, length, beam, draft, speed, and complement are not stored for each hull, so this table leaves them out.

The armament line is the class drawing, not a measurement of this hull.

Shubrick
USS Shubrick (DD-639) underway in 1943, while she was still in the Atlantic. The Commons file title gives the wrong hull number, DD-638. This is not a photograph from Okinawa. Official U.S. Navy photograph NH 107206, Naval History and Heritage Command, via Navsource. Wikimedia Commons File:USS Shubrick (DD-638) underway in 1943.jpg. Public domain.

USS Shubrick (DD-639), a Gleaves-class destroyer, was the fourth ship named for Rear Admiral William B. Shubrick. She was launched at Norfolk on 18 April 1942 and commissioned on 7 February 1943. She came to the Pacific late, after a war in the Atlantic and Mediterranean: Sicily in July 1943, where a bomb hit her at Palermo on 4 August, Normandy on 6 June 1944, and southern France in August 1944.

She transited the Panama Canal on 1 February 1945 to join the Pacific Fleet and left Pearl Harbor on 21 April escorting the battleship Mississippi to Okinawa. On 12 May she and one other destroyer supported the landings at Tori Shima and shot down two attacking aircraft. She completed one radar picket patrol in mid-May.

On her way to her second picket station she was attacked at 0010 on 29 May 1945 by two kamikazes, one of which crashed into her. The bomb blew a 30-foot hole in her starboard side and one of her depth charges exploded. The destroyer Van Valkenburg came alongside at 0113 and removed classified material, the wounded and unneeded men. The crew controlled the flooding and the ATR-9 towed her to Kerama Retto. Thirty-five were killed or missing and 25 wounded.

Sources: Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS) as reproduced on Wikipedia, NavSource Online (commanding officer list), and Wikimedia Commons (photograph record).

The pictures on this page are the originals.