WWII: America’s Best Battleship Was Nearly Sunk by a U.S. Navy Destroyer

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By Sebastien Roblin,The National Interest

Patriotic action movies would have you believe military units regularly perform like well-oiled fighting machines. But sometimes reality is closer to Bill Murray’sStripes.

Such at least was the case of the William D. Porter, whose mishaps were famously immortalized in an article by Kit Bonner.

Named after a swashbuckling Union Civil War captain, the Porter was one of 175 Fletcher-class destroyers built during World War II. Destroyers, dubbed “tin cans” because of their lack of armor, were relatively small but fast warships often tasked with protecting convoys and larger warships. Fletcher-class destroyers boasted ten torpedo tubes, depth charge projectors, and five radar-guided 5” dual-purpose guns allowing them to ably combat aircraft, submarines and surface warships.

The “Willy D’s” shakedown cruise in the summer of 1943 proceeded uneventfully under Lt. Commander Wilfred Walter. That November, she was then assigned to a secret task force charged with escorting President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the battleship USS Iowa to conferences in Cairo and Tehran.