A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History
USS HAMNER DD-718
The Tin Can Sailor, January 1999
Launched on 24 November 1945, the USS HAMNER (DD-718) was named for Lieutenant Henry R. Hamner who had died during a kamikaze attack on the USS HOWORTH (DD-592) just months before. She was commissioned 12 July 1946 and reported to the Pacific Fleet that December.
When hostilities broke out in Korea in June 1950, the HAMNER was among the first U.S. ships to bombard Communist shore positions. She took her crew into action at Yongdok and Pohang Dong and in support of the amphibious operations against Inchon on 15 September 1950. Later service in Korean waters included operations around Kojo and Wonsan. Throughout her long career, the HAMNER returned regularly to the Western Pacific, visiting ports in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia. In December 1958, she was part of Taiwan Patrol Force 31 in the aftermath of the crisis over Quemoy and Matsu.
Stateside, the HAMNER’s home port was San Diego where she returned in January 1962 after her Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) conversion in the San Francisco Naval Shipyard. Subsequent operations in the Western
Pacific took her to South Vietnam early in 1965. On 20 May, she was off the coast of South Vietnam, shelling Communist positions in the U.S. Navy’s first shore bombardment since the Korean War. The gun crews of the ‘Dragon Wagon,’ as she came to be called, bombarded the Trung Phan area in June and the following month, covered the landing of Marines from the IWO JIMA (LPH-2) at Qui Nhon.
In October 1966, a fire aboard the USS ORISKANY (CVA-34) brought the HAMNER to the carrier’s aid. For hours her crew sprayed water on the burning ship, bringing the blaze under control and cooling the charred and buckled bulkheads. Back off Vietnam in November, the HAMNER’s gun crews concentrated on shelling junks carrying supplies to the Viet Cong. Within a fortnight, they had destroyed sixty-seven craft. Enemy shore batteries sprayed the HAMNER and the JOHN R. CRAIG (DD-885) with shrapnel, but the guns of the two destroyers soon hammered them to silence.
Home again in San Diego in 1967, the HAMNER operated as an antisubmarine warfare school ship. During the spring, she was plagued by gyro and boiler problems as well as DASH drone and torpedo malfunctions. By early fall, however, all systems were functioning, the drone had been replaced, and she was headed for the Western Pacific.
Back on Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf in October, the HAMNER operated as screen commander for the USS CORAL SEA (CVA-43). She was again beset by boiler problems, but that did not keep her from joining the USS ORLECK (DD-886) in the search and recovery of five of the six crew members in the crash of a SH3A Helicopter. Their recovery effort was not as successful two days later, when a seaman drove a tractor off the carrier’s flight deck. Neither seaman nor tractor were recovered.
Steaming off the coast of South Vietnam for ten days in November, the HAMNER fired 1,138 rounds of five-inch ammunition and then headed for North Vietnam. There, in December, she rode shotgun as the HMAS PERTH (D-38) shelled targets ashore. The subsequent breakdown of her MK-1A fire control computer and the loss of fire control capabilities sent the destroyer back to plane guard and screening duties. At 0130 Christmas morning, she was life guarding the USS RANGER (CVA-61) when one of the carrier’s men went overboard. The destroyer was immediately on the scene, and when the man made no effort to hold onto life lines thrown to him, one of the HAMNER’s crew jumped in and brought the panicked man to safety.
The HAMNER began 1968 with a newly repaired MK-1A computer and returned to the gun line. On 27 January, she began intensive gunfire support during the Tet counteroffensive operations near the demilitarized zone. Her gunners successfully targeted enemy installations and their spotters who had been directing fire at U.S. forces. In one instance, the ship’s gunners walked their fire along a tree line, putting concealed spotters to flight. Her fire control team continued to work closely with U.S. Marine spotters ashore. Initially, two North Vietnamese battalions outnumbered the Marines, and the HAMNER earned a heart-felt ‘Well done, and thanks!’ for the Marine’s ultimate success and lives saved.
Operating next off Hue City, the HAMNER delivered harassing and interdiction fire that effectively interrupted enemy supply and infiltration routes into the city. On 12 February 1968, she supported U.S. Army units fighting three miles west of Hue. To reach the inland targets, the ship stationed herself within one mile of the beach. Explosions followed by congratulatory reports from Army spotters, told the ship’s gunners of their success. They then resumed call-fire missions with Marine spotters ashore. At the end of twenty days on the gun line, the HAMNER had fired 7,298 five-inch projectiles, averaging one round every four minutes.
The HAMNER was definitely in need of her scheduled four-month overhaul at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard. She returned to the Tonkin Gulf in mid-1969 and spent the better part of the next three years in the Western Pacific. There, she alternated between plane guard and search and rescue duties and shore bombardment. In 1971, she spent her twenty-fifth anniversary in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard undergoing a regular overhaul. The year 1972 was highlighted by the HAMNER’s dramatic April rescue of the pilot of a downed A-7 attack plane in Haiphong Harbor. Under heavy fire from shore batteries, the destroyer steamed into the harbor with guns blazing. Her crew plucked the pilot from the waters, escaping without casualties to the ship or the men aboard.
Spring 1973 brought the news that the HAMNER would become a Naval Reserve training ship on 1 July. Cross decking began on 8 May with the exchange of crews with the USS JAMES C. OWENS (DD-776). Only one officer and thirty-four enlisted men of the original HAMNER crew remained at the end of a hectic ten days. The frantic activity didn’t cease as the new crew members familiarized themselves with their ship and got ready to put out to sea four days after their arrival aboard. They were due in the ship’s new home port at the Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco on 25 May. Their first training cruise began on 7 June. Over the next six years, cruising between San Diego and British Columbia, the HAMNER’s crews trained numerous U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen and Selected Reserve crews. In July 1975, she shifted her home port to Portland, Oregon, where her crew began referring to their ship as ‘the Old Gray Ghost of the Oregon Coast.’ The HAMNER held her last Reserve Weekend drills in August 1979. Following repairs to the aging ship’s hull, the navy officially decommissioned her on 1 October and finally transferred her to Taiwan 27 February 1981.
