Five Exemplary U.S. Navy Ships

By Mark Antonio Wright

Thursday, October 15, 2015

This week, the U.S. Navy is celebrating 240 years of active service. To commemorate the fleet’s enduring moto, non sibi sed patriae — “Not for Self but for Country” — we present five of the most exemplary warships to ever fly the Stars and Stripes.

1. USS Johnston (DD-557)

The Johnston, a Fletcher-class destroyer, was a small ship (weighing in at only 2,700 tons) but she packed a punch. During the ferocious action off Samar Island in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Johnston, along with two other American destroyers, charged a powerful Japanese force of four battleships and six heavy cruisers attempting to shell the American landing beaches and a task force of carriers. In a desperate ploy to keep the Japanese away from the invasion beaches, the Johnston, captained by an irascible Indian from Pawnee, Okla., Commander Ernest J. Evans, ordered his ship to boldly attack their superior foe. The Dictionary of American Fighting Ships describes the battle:

    The destroyer’s 5-inch guns could not yet reach [the Japanese warships]. She charged onward to close [with] the enemy — first a line of seven destroyers; next, one light and three heavy cruisers, then the four battleships. To the east appeared three other cruisers and several destroyers.

After launching ten torpedoes, sinking the Japanese cruiser Kumano, and engaging a giant battleship,

    [The Johnston] took a hit which knocked out one forward gun, damaged another, and her bridge was rendered untenable by fires and explosions resulting from a hit in her 40-mm ready ammunition locker. Evans shifted his command to Johnston’s fantail, yelling orders through an open hatch to men turning her rudder by hand. At one of her batteries a Texan kept calling “More shells! More shells!” Still the destroyer battled desperately to keep the Japanese destroyers and cruisers from reaching the five surviving American carriers.

The Johnston eventually succumbed to the overwhelming Japanese fire; out of a complement of 327 men, only 141 survived. Commander Evans was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor: “The skipper was a fighting man from the soles of his broad feet to the ends of his straight black hair. He was an Oklahoman and proud of the Indian blood he had in him. We called him though not to his face — the Chief. The Johnston was a fighting ship, but he was the heart and soul of her.”

2. USS Enterprise (CV-6)

The World War II-era Yorktown-class carrier USS Enterprise, the seventh U.S. Navy ship to bear the name, was one of only three pre-war American carriers to survive the war, earning 20 battle stars and participating in nearly every major engagement of the Pacific Campaign. “The Big E,” as she came to be known, is the most decorated of all American warships.

At sea during the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Enterprise was a key component of the counterattack that rolled back the Japanese Imperial Navy’s gains and eventually drove it from the Pacific. Displacing nearly 20,000 tons and capable of carrying up to 90 aircraft, the Enterprise participated in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and the battles of Midway, Guadalcanal, the Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf.

The Enterprise later supported the landings at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where she suffered a direct hit by a kamikaze pilot that killed 14 sailors. The Enterprise’s Presidential Unit Citation reads:

    For consistently outstanding performance and distinguished achievement during repeated action against enemy Japanese forces in the Pacific war area, December 7, 1941, to November 15, 1942. Participating in nearly every major carrier engagement in the first year of the war, the Enterprise and her air group, exclusive of far-flung destruction of hostile shore installations throughout the battle area, did sink or damage on her own a total of 35 Japanese vessels and shoot down a total of 185 Japanese aircraft. Her aggressive spirit and superb combat efficiency are fitting tribute to the officers and men who so gallantly established her as an ahead bulwark in the defense of the American nation.

3. USS Nautilus (SSN-571)

The USS Nautilus, the fourth Navy vessel to carry that name, entered service in 1955 as the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. The attack sub broke ground in countless ways, not least of which was the February 4, 1957, milestone, when “the Nautilus logged her 60,000th nautical mile to bring to reality the achievements of her fictitious namesake in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

But, in July 1958, the Nautilus attempted her biggest exploit yet. As recorded by The Dictionary of American Fighting Ships:

    [The Nautilus] set a course northward [out of Pearl Harbor]. She submerged in the Barrow Sea Valley 1 August and on 3 August, at 2315 (EDST) she became the first ship to reach the geographic North Pole. From the North Pole, she continued on and after 96 hours and 1830 miles under the ice, she surfaced northeast of Greenland, having completed the first successful voyage across the North Pole.

    Proceeding from Greenland to Portland, England, she received the Presidential Unit Citation, the first ever issued in peacetime.

“The skill, professional competency and courage of the officers and crew of Nautilus,” read the historic boat’s citation, “were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Armed Forces of the United States and the pioneering spirit which has always characterized our country.”

4. USS Constitution

“Old Ironsides” is perhaps the most famous of American warships and the oldest active ship in the Navy, first putting to sea in July of 1798. One of the six original frigates authorized by the Naval Act of 1794, Constitution fought in the War of 1812, the French Naval War, and the campaigns against the Barbary pirates.

During action against the Royal Navy in the War of 1812, the Constitution captured five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane, and Levant.

After serving as the flagship of the American Mediterranean and African squadrons, the Constitution circumnavigated the globe beginning in May 1844, making port calls in Rio de Janeiro, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Singapore, Vietnam, and China.

At the beginning of the 20th century, she was designated as a museum ship, but, because of rising maintenance costs, Congress and the American public had to intervene several times to save the Constitution from the scrap heap. Restored with a majority of privately donated funds, Old Ironsides set off on a three-year tour of the country in 1930, successfully transiting the Panama Canal in 1932.

For her 200th birthday in 1997, Commander David Cashman proposed that the Constitution be fitted out to sail, a daunting proposition as the old ship had not sailed in more than 100 years (she had been towed by the minesweeper Grebe during her 1930s tour).

Today, the fully restored 44-gun frigate rests in Boston Harbor, still on active service with the U.S. Navy after nearly 220 years.

5. USS West Virginia (BB-48)

The West Virginia has a rather interesting distinction: She was sunk in battle at Pearl Harbor — but was refloated, repaired, and refitted in order to fight another day.

Displacing more than 33,000 tons and armed with eight 16-inch guns, the West Virginia was one of America’s most powerful pre-war warships and one of the intended targets of the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, along with the other ships moored along “Battleship Row.”

Berthed alongside the USS Tennessee, “West Virginia took five 18-inch aircraft torpedoes in her port side and two bomb hits. . . . The first bomb penetrated the superstructure deck, wrecking the port casemates and causing that deck to collapse to the level of the galley deck below.”

As the ship was hit by a total of six torpedoes, sinking, and burning heavily, Captain Mervyn S. Bennion led the defense from the bridge, though mortally wounded. Bennion was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for “his conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and complete disregard of his own life.”

But the West Virginia would have her revenge. Refloated in May 1942, the West Virginia rejoined the fleet after extensive repairs in time for the invasion of the Philippines in October 1944. Too slow to serve with the modern fleet of fast carriers, the West Virginia was intended to be used primarily for shore bombardment, but the Japanese navy’s surprise attack through the Surigao Strait forced the old battleship into an old-school fleet action.

In a sharp fight against a task force of cruisers and battleships under Japanese Admiral Nishimura, the West Virginia protected the invasion beaches and took part in the last naval engagement between line-of-battle ships in War World II.

After shelling Japanese positions on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where she took a direct hit from a kamikaze, the West Virginia sailed into Tokyo Bay on the last day of August 1945 to take part in the formal Japanese surrender ceremonies. The “Wee Vee” went from sunk-in-action to victory in 44 months.