"That's Why We Are The E Ship, Sir!"

Al MacDiarmid

Aboard the USS Stoddard (DD-566). I was the First Lieutenant and Assistant Gunnery Officer. The gun boss was sick and off in the hospital. We were coming up for a graded shore bombardment exercise. It was important to me that we do well, because the gun boss had been lying to the CO about me, blaming me for stuff that he had screwed up.

I went to a briefing at the Amphib Base in Coronado. They had 3 targets on the island of San Clemente at which we could shoot our main battery, 5"/38 single mounts. The exercise would have an officer in a reinforced concrete observation post ashore.

Our designated target was a half track on the side of the hill. There was another low down on the beach at about the same bearing. A third target was 3 white rocks painted on the cliff. During the exercise we were expected to go to "counter battery", where a target was supposed to be shooting at us. We were to leave our target and kill the counter battery, then come back and finish off the designated target.

My director crew never got much practice at tracking anything, so I took the spotting binoculars off the slew sight and told the pointer and trainer to track the 3 white rocks continuously.

The exercise started badly. We got one free round to make sure the guns worked. We were supposed to shoot at a target and use that to spot the fall of shot, thus getting a free round. Unfortunately when the round went off, it missed the island of San Clemente entirely, going over the top.

The Captain was yelling at me to spot the fall of shot. Hard to do when the shell landed on the other side and into the sea. I nudged my pointer, who had contact with plot and asked if the Synch-E knob was in the right position. This knob is up for air to air and takes its inputs off the radar, centered for surface combat taking the inputs off the director and down for shore bombardment, taking its inputs from CIC. The answer came back, "Yes sir", as the gun barrel dropped dramatically when they shoved the knob down.

I had just gotten on the primary target when I heard "Counter battery, 3 white rocks" coming over the sound powered phones. I could hear this because the CIC officer, having to deal with too many things at once had his sound powered phones taped down so he didn't have to let go of a radio handset to push the button.

I told the people in the mounts to hang on. I called to have the Synch-E knob pulled up to the surface position. The mounts swung around rapidly to the rocks that were being tracked by the director. I called out, "Fire!" just as the Captain was getting the word from his sound powered talker that we had a counter battery. He jumped when the guns went off. Since I was on target and had a good solution, I killed the target in minimum time.

We swung back onto the primary target. I fired for effect on that and demolished that target as well. I was pleased.

Friday afternoon when we got back to port, I had to go to the debriefing at the Amphib Base. Nobody wanted to ask any questions as it would push the debriefing into happy hour time. At question time the officer in the pillbox ashore asked for the officer aboard DD-566. I answered.

He said, "What did you do?"

I innocently said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "You got on the target faster than anyone has ever done before, you killed the counter battery in so little time that we are going to have to change the scoring and you set a new high score for the exercise!"

I just smiled and said, "That's why we are the E ship, sir!"