A Little After Supper Entertainment
Guided Missile Destroyer USS Jason Dunham
Photo by: US Navy/Mass Comm Specialist 2nd Class Jonathan Clay
A History of the US Navy’s Destroyers, for your education and entertainment. They started as torpedo boats, and grew to what they are today. Such magnificent beasts should never be ignored. There’s a reason they’re called the Greyhounds of the Sea.
The film credits at the end indicate that it is another production at the Naval Photographic Center, which the CIA turned into a parking lot and a really ugly office building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41JoV7yxdGA
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Historical, Navy
Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts.
I deployed on all kinds of ships, but destroyers are my first love.
Some of my best missions were on Sprucans.
Tin Cans Forever!!!
In my helo days was on LAMPS Detachments on Knox Class FFGs and Spruance Class DDs. The brand new (then, now gone) Spru’s were sweet!
SH-2F Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System (LAMPS) Mk I. AW3Ed keeping a weather eye from the observer window.
The only problem with Spruance class DD’s was that they rolled like a mofo.
I remember one time leaving port Hong Kong. We weren’t even out of the port and we were taking 30 degree rolls…and we were heading into a typhoon cause the Commodore just had to get to Thailand for one of the first Cobra Gold exercises.
During that transit, I remember going to the mess decks and walking down the LOOOONG p-way on that deck and walking most of it on the bulkhead. The ship would roll to at least 45 degrees and then just sit there for what seemed forever. Pretty cool actually…and short chow lines! 😉
Another time I had to go outside the skin of the ship…in a typhoon!…HOLY SHIT! Anyway, I had to go up one deck to the main deck. I took a step to go up the ladder and at that moment the ship dropped into a trough…and I was at the top of the ladder! AWESOME!
Wasn’t Navy, but my great-uncle who i’m named after was on DE’s in the South Pacific during WWII, so tin cans have a special place for me as well.
On a related note, anyone know how I might be able to find out what ship he was on / what battles? All I have is his name, everyone from his generation in the family is gone now, and my father doesn’t have any more than that.
Thanks!
Right at your fingertips, Fyr. Hit the Military Records tab at the top of the site for directions.
Thanks Ed! I knew someone here would have the answer.
A little interwebs surfing, and I believe he served on the Melvin R Nawman, based on the little I now about his service, it seems to line up…
Cool !!!
I know he’s smiling right now knowing that you are interested in him and what he did back in his day when he was even cooler than you or any of us could ever be.
I did some genealogy work on my family and came up with some great information !!!
Cool as all hell video right there now. Y’all know how I am about All Things Artillery, including floating Artillery Platforms. I even like floating airfields that launch Aerial Artillery Platforms. Seeing the ordnance being deployed was kinda causing involuntary vascular reactions.
All that being said, I’d heard that the ‘cans were the real Navy anyhow. Had some FIRST cousins that served on them. Another was a bubblehead. Think they disowned him. 😆
What the hell were they burning for fuel, old tires?
The crews seemed to work a lot faster then also.
Today’s Tin cans are more deadlier than the ones that were around when I was in the Navy but they lack those sleek lines, 5 inchers and those slanted stacks which I loved to look at when we were in the D&S piers and the main base piers at Norfolk NOB. Did time on the USS Haynsworth DD 700, Sumner class. during my inactive reserve time.
Good video! Watching it I recognized the voice of the narrator and then came the credits (MCMLXVI) 1966 as the date of the video… Jack Webb, formerly of the TV series Dragnet (1951-1959) with reruns into mid 60’s. Went to that utube thingy and found this “counseling session” from Dragnet that may be applicable to goings on lately…
I watched that a couple weeks ago.
It’s sooooo cool to see him and Colonel Potter go after the kids and put them back in their place.
Unfortunately, kids today have no appreciation of anything that happened that they think is wrong, in which case they put their hands over their ears and go lalalalalalala !!!!!
There will be an awakening for this generation, I doubt that most of us are around to see it. I doubt it will be a pretty awakening…..
Corporal Dunham and the Marine Corps shared the same birth date November 10th.
The DE and DD ships have been given the moniker of the fightingest ships in the Navy, which should be a plural of the term Navies across the world.. The Battle of Leyte Gulf is but one of the magnificent displays of courage and mettle of ships that literally take on ships three times their size and get them to turn tail and run. Whether doing radar picket duty at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and taking Kamikaze hits while providing the huge amount of lead that permeated the skies to ward off those same Kamikaze planes and keep them from hitting the carriers that were so central to the War in the Pacific. They were chasing off Nazi Untersea boats in the Atlantic during the runup to the convoy system when America finally got into the war. The American DE is simply a remake of the Corvette of the British Navy, a ship which would roll constantly in the swells as they were only a few thousand tons. But they fought like Wildcats, no matter where the Destroyers, Corvette’s and Destroyer Escorts fought, they did themselves proud. On D-Day in Normandy, it was the Destroyers that came in and ran themselves aground just to fire their 5″ rounds directly into the German bunkers that lined Omaha Beach and turned it from the greatest slaughterhouse of the entire D-Day landing to a successful hard fought landing. General Omar Bradley told the American Press that if not for those Navy Destroyers at Omaha Beach, the landing would not have been successful. Any man or woman that served on one should hold their heads high to know that they truly were part of a great military muscle the likes of which, had never been seen until they came into being. They were given the worst and the hardest jobs of warfare in all theatres they served in, and they accomplished their missions or died trying. Five Star Salute from an old Grunt and many others out there that believe in the power of high spirited Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and the Destroyers and Destroyer… Read more »