80 years ago this week, the brand new Fletcher-class tin can USS Robinson (DD-562), a destroyer of Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet slips along the beach at Peleliu in the Palau group on Operation Stalemate II’s D-Day, 15 September 1944.
“Her turrets trained land-ward, gun crews, and lookouts eagerly scan the beach for a Japanese pill box or gun position to blast at almost point-blank range.”
Naval History & Heritage Command Catalog # USN 46648
As noted by Robinson’s report for the seizure & occupation of Peleliu, Angaur & Ngesebus Islands, Palau Islands, 9/12-29/44:
Close fire support of operations on a hostile beach is most effective when delivered from ranges of two to three thousand yards when five-inch and forty millimeters are used.
Keep in mind the mean draft on a Fletcher-class destroyer is 13 feet of water, so coming in that close is definitely a risk to the hull not to mention exposing the ship to Japanese guns ashore with virtually anything 13.2mm and larger able to reach out that far.
But Robinson was already a pro even though she had only been in combat for three months. A fighting greyhound that received eight battle stars for her World War II service, she had already provided naval gunfire support for the landings at Tinian in July 1944 and had bombarded Saipan the month prior in addition to other ops in the Marianas.
USS Robinson (DD-562), bow view, port side while at Puget Sound Navy Yard, 8 April 1944. Robinson was built by Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation and commissioned on 31 January 1944. Her first action, following shakedowns, was in June 1944 off Saipan– plastering enemy batteries on Beach Yellow One. NH 108351
She would go on to use her guns again to support the Leyete landings in October, weather the storm of Japanese kamikaze waves in the Phillippines in which five of the eight destroyers in her squadron were hit by suicide planes, fire five torpedoes in the night action against Nishimura’s battlewagons in the Surigao Strait, support the landings at Mindoro, and the Lingayen Gulf, and end the war supporting the Borneo liberation.
All between June 1944 and June 1945– a busy year indeed.
As detailed by her humble three-page War History:
This vessel fired 10,331 rounds of five-inch ammunition, 7,151 rounds of 40mm, and 1,719 rounds of 20mm at the enemy.
The lucky Robinson suffered no battle damage and recorded no personnel casualties during WWII.
Following honorable Cold War service including taking part in NASA recovery missions, Robinson decommissioned at Norfolk in June 1964 and was larger struck after a decade in mothballs.
She was expended as a target during a fleet exercise on April Fools Day 1982 when her luck finally ran out.