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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Posted on 03/07/2003 5:27:45 AM PST by SAMWolf
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are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, commanding the Eighth United States Army in Korea (EUSAK), was dissatisfied. While the recently concluded Operation Killer had attained its terrain objectives and interrupted the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) plans for an immediate major offensive, it had not caused anywhere near the amount of enemy casualties Ridgway had desired. Ground taken today can be lost tomorrow, but an enemy soldier killed today has no hope of fighting tomorrow. LtGen Ridgway wanted blood, not land.  Set to jump off on 7 March 1951, Operation Ripper had two primary objectives. The first was to inflict maximum casualties on CCF forces and by means of constant pressure all along the line keep them off balance and disrupt their offensive buildup. The second and lesser objective was to outflank Seoul, leaving the CCF with the choice of withdrawing or defending the city under unfavorable circumstances. During Operation Ripper the First Marine Division would attack as part of the 8th Army's IX Corps, the 1st Cavalry Division on its left and the 2d Infantry Division on its right. The 2d Infantry Division was an old associate. It was as a part of that division, then designated the 2d Division United States Regular, that the famed Marine Brigade had fought in France in 1918. In Korea the First Provisional Marine Brigade had fought alongside the 2d Infantry Division in the defense of the Pusan Perimeter the previous summer. Directly in the path of the IX Corps advance lay the towns of Hongchon and Chunchon. Both were important communications centers that would make the CCF's job of launching a new offensive much easier. Hongchon would be within the zone of action of the 1stMarDiv. Facing the division in its advance from Hoengsong would be the harsh terrain that so defines Korea: steep, rugged, wooded hills cut up by a tangle of rushing streams and minor rivers. The area was almost devoid of roads; the few that did exist were little more than oxcart trails. Dominating the whole, and just shy of the operation's initial objective dubbed Phase Line Albany, was the 2,900-foot mountain the Koreans called Oumsan. For the defender the area was a natural stronghold. For the attacker it was a truly nasty place.  If the difficulties posed by the terrain weren't bad enough, the weather, which had been so foul throughout Operation Killer, showed no signs of improving. Corporal Austin Stack, a machine-gunner in First Lieutenant James T. "Jim" Cronin's "Baker" Company, 1st Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, remembered the period as the time of his lowest morale in Korea. Being constantly cold and wet, pelted by rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow, and slogging wearily through a mixture of half-frozen, boot-top-deep snow, mud and slush can dim the spirits of the most cheerful optimist and give pause to even the most determined masochist. A mess kit infrequently full of hastily prepared SOS turned into cold soup by a driving, icy rain can leave the diner looking for somebody—anybody at all—to belt over the head with that mess kit, soup and all. In spite of the daunting terrain and weather, Operation Ripper began well. On a cold, clear morning that quickly gave way to clouds and snow, the 1stMarDiv went into the attack with the 7th Marines on the left and the 1st Marines on the right. As in the early stages of Operation Killer, Chinese resistance was light, confining itself to scattered small-arms fire from the enemy's line of outposts. By nightfall the day's objectives had been secured at a total cost of seven Marines wounded. The suspicions of the first day were confirmed on the second. The Chinese were continuing the withdrawal they had commenced the previous month, carefully picking their fights and giving battle only to cover the withdrawal of other units. They were falling back, but they were doing it very skillfully and under control. When it was required, they were ready to put up a blistering fight in one area in order to let units withdraw from an adjacent piece of ground.  First Lt Eugenous M. Hovatter's Able Co, 1st Bn, 7th Marines ran into one of those fights the next day during an attack on a rock-strewn hill just to the left of Oumsan. Well-aimed small-arms and mortar fire pinned the company to the ground 300 yards short of the final objective, knocking out Second Lieutenant Clayton Bush, who went down with a shredded right arm, and killing or wounding five other members of his 2d Platoon. The company remained stuck where it was until air attacks and the supporting 90 mm fires of a section of tanks allowed the infantry to gain the upper hand. Chinese resistance continued to be light and sporadic on the following day, 9 March, but not so light that Captain Robert P. "Bob" Wray's Charlie Co, 1/1 didn't run into a lethal hornet's nest on one of the mangled ridges before Oumsan. Sergeant John Chinner earned a Navy Cross, leading his machine-gun platoon through a storm of enemy fire coming from a carefully sited cluster of well dug-in bunkers. Single-handedly and armed with only his .45-caliber M1911A1 pistol and a supply of captured hand grenades, Chinner stormed the ridge line through murderous fire, neutralizing five bunkers and either killing or forcing their occupants to flee. Darkness fell with Charlie Co in uncontested possession of the ridge. As they had done so often, the Chinese turned and pulled out.  Throughout the next two days Marine units devoted themselves to local patrolling, while friendly units on the right that had been outpaced by the Marine advance caught up. Then, early on 11 March, it was back to business, with the pattern of previous days repeating itself. In a brisk little engagement filled with the crackle and rip of rifle and machine-gun fire, a patrol from George Co, 3/1 attacked the defenders of Hill 549, guarding the southeastern approaches to Oumsan. Then 1stLt Horace L. Johnson's Marines, aided by supporting fire from a pair of tanks, closed to hand-grenade range and blasted the defenders from their well-camouflaged bunkers. Action flared in the zone of the 7th Marines as well. Battling forward against the prepared defenses of key ridges leading to Oumsan's southwestern slopes, Capt Jerome D. Gordon's Dog Co, 2/7 found itself staggered by the volume of fire directed at it from a maze of bunkers. At Yudam-ni in November, Dog Co, then commanded by Capt Milton A. "Milt" Hull, had been shot to shreds holding the vital height of Hill 1240. Thus most of the Marines going forward against the lower slopes of Oumsan were relative newcomers to Korea, but they lacked nothing of the fighting spirit of their predecessors.
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Today's classic warship, USS Gregory (DD-82)Wickes class destroyer
Displacement. 1,191 t.
Lenght. 314'4"
Beam. 30'11"
Draft. 9'2"
Speed. 34.75 kt.
Complement. 141
Armament. 4 4", 12 21" tt.
USS Gregory, (DD-82) was launched 27 January 1915 by the Fore River Ship Building Co., Quincy, Mass.; sponsored by Mrs. George S. Trevor, great granddaughter of Admiral Gregory; and commissioned 1 June 1918, Comdr. Arthur P. Fairfield in command.
Joining a convoy at New York, Gregory sailed for Brest, France, 25 June 1918. She spent the final summer of the war escorting convoys from the French port to various Allied ports in Britain and France. As the war neared its close, Gregory was assigned to the patrol squadron at Gibraltar 2 November 1918. In addition to patrolling in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Gregory carried passengers and supplies to the Adriatic and aided in the execution of the terms of the Austrian armistice. After six months of this duty, the flush-deck destroyer joined naval forces taking part in relief missions to the western Mediterranean 28 April 1919. In company with USS Arizona, Gregory carried supplies and passengers to Smyrna. Constantinople, and Batum. She then sailed for Gibraltar with the American counsul from Tiflis, Russia and some British army officers. Debarking her passengers on the rocky fortress, Gregory sailed for New York reaching the States 13 June 1919.
After brief tours in reserve at Tompkinsville, N.Y., the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Gregory sailed to Charleston, S.C., 4 January 1921. A year of local training operations out of the southern port ended 12 April 1922 when Gregory entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She decommissioned 7 July 1922 and went into reserve.
As war broke again over Europe, threatening to involve the United States, Gregory and three other four-stackers were taken out of mothballs for conversion to high-speed transports. The DDs were stripped of virtually all their armament to make room for boats, while other important modifications were made for troops and cargo. Gregory recommissioned 4 November 1940 as APD-3 and joined Little, Colhoun, and McKean to form Transport Division 12. None of these valiant ships were to live through the Pacific war all but McKean were lost during the Guadalcanal campaign.
Gregory and her sister APD's trained along the East. Coast for the following year perfecting landing techniques with various Marine divisions. On 27 January 27 with war already raging in the Pacific, she departed Charleston for Pearl Harbor. Exercises in Hawaiian waters kept TransDiv 12 in the Pacific through the spring, after which they returned to San Diego for repairs. They sailed for the Pacific again 7 June, reaching Pearl Harbor a week later to train for the upcoming invasion of Guadalcanal, America's first offensive effort in the long Pacific campaign.
Departing Noumea 31 July 1942, Gregory joined TF 62 (Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher) and steamed for Guadalcanal. After sending her Marines ashore in the first assault waves 7 August, Gregory and her sister APD's remained in the area performing a variety of tasks in one of history's most desperately fought over areas. The versatile ships patrolled the waters around the hotly contested islands waters which were to gain notoriety as "Iron Bottom Sound" and brought up ammunition & supplies from Espiritu Santo.
On 4 September Gregory and Little were returning to their anchorage at Tulagi after transferring a Marine Raider Battalion to Savo Island. The night was inky black with a low haze obscuring all landmarks. and the ships decided to remain on patrol rather than risk threading their way through the dangerous channel. As they steamed between Guadalcanal and Savo Island at ten knots, three Japanese destroyers ( Yudachi, Hatsuyuki and Murakumo) entered the Slot undetected to bombard American shore positions. At 0056 on the morning of 5 September, Gregory and Little saw dashes of gunfire which they assumed came from a Japanese submarine until radar showed four targets apparently a cruiser had Joined the three DD's. While the two outgunned but gallant ships were debating whether to close for action or depart quietly and undetected, the decision was taken out of their hands.
A Navy pilot had also seen the gunfire and, assuming it came from a Japanese submarine, dropped a string of five flares almost On top of the two APD's. Gregory and Little, silhouetted against the blackness, were spotted immediately by the Japanese destroyers, who opened fire at 0100. Gregory brought all her guns to bear but was desperately overmatched and less than 3 minutes after the fatal flares had been dropped, was dead in the water and beginning to sink. Two boilers had burst and her decks were a mass of fames. Her skipper, LT. Comdr. H. F Bauer, himself seriously wounded, gave the word to abandon ship, and Gregory's crew reluctantly took to the water. Bauer ordered two companions to aid another crewman yelling for help and was never seen again; for his brave and gallant conduct he posthumously received the Silver Star.
At 0123, with all of Gregory's and most of Little's crew in the water, the Japanese ships began shelling again aiming not at the crippled ships but at their helpless crews in the water. All but 11 of Gregory's crew Survived, 6 of them swimming through the night all the way to Guadalcanal. Gregory sank stern first some 40 minutes after the firing had begun, and was followed 2 hours later by Little. Fleet Admiral Nimitz, in praising the courageous ships after their loss, wrote that "both of these small vessels fought as well as possible against the overwhelming odds . . . With little means, they performed duties vital to the success of the campaign." Gregory's name was struck from the Navy List 2 October 1942.
Gregory received two battle stars for service in World War II.
In July 1992, nearly fifty years after her loss, a sunken U.S. Navy high-speed transport was discovered and briefly examined on the sea floor some miles off Lunga Point. Though its specific indentity could not be determined, this ship is either USS Gregory or her sister, USS Little.
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