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Geraldine Reardon, HM3
to remember
MacDonald, Donald, RDML.
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Contact Info
Last Address DuBois
Date of Passing Jan 17, 1997
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The Navy's destroyers get a lot of the dirty work and seldom get much glory. But honors rained down on one destroyer last week. She received a Presidential unit citation and her skipper, handsome, ruddy Commander Donald J. MacDonald had a seventh medal pinned upon his chest. It made him the most decorated U.S. naval officer of this war.
U.S. destroyers, the "tin can fleet," are generally named after naval heroes. MacDonald's can, the O'Bannon, is named after a marine. The marine was Lieut. Presley N. O'Bannon, a whooping, crop-haired Irishman from Kentucky, who in 1805 led the Marines (seven of them) to the "shores of Tripoli." O'Bannon and a motley crew of Greeks, Arabs and Egyptians marched across the Libyan desert to attack the Barbary pirates in their stronghold at Derna. After considerable derring-do, O'Bannon breached the ramparts, raised the Stars and Stripes.*
The destroyer O'Bannon was to live up to this tradition. She first poked her sharp nose into the South Pacific in the summer of 1942.
The U.S. Navy then was fighting a desperate holding war. Most of the O'Bannon's crew were green hands. MacDonald, who was graduated from the Academy in 1931, was only 34. Her wardroom was filled with fresh-faced reservists. They had scarcely got their sea legs under them before they were under fire.
They went into action in August during the Guadalcanal attack. It was the beginning of a long and violent campaign. Up & down the lush green coasts and pale, flat waters of the Solomons, the 2,100-ton O'Bannon and her sisters steamed with bones in their teeth and a swift hard punch for Japanese ships great or small.
She and the other lean, thin-skinned cans, manned by youngsters fresh from colleges and high schools, screened the big ships, fought submarines, covered landings, popped Jap planes out of the coppery skies, blasted shore installations with their 5-in. rifles.
There was plenty of dirty work to do. On Nov. 12-13, when a U.S. force sank a Jap battleship, five cruisers, five destroyers and eight transports, the O'Bannon scored hits on a battleship and a cruiser which far outweighed and outranged her. For six months of almost continuous naval warfare she was in the thick of the campaign which did not end until Guadalcanal was secured.
Lucky and Valiant. Around South Pacific bars, MacDonald's O'Bannon became a legend. In June 1943, Admiral Halsey began the drive to knock the Japs out of the rest of the Solomons. The O'Bannon was in the thick of that campaign. She was with the outnumbered cruiser task force which plowed into the dark hole of Kula Gulf to intercept and destroy nine to eleven Jap cruisers and destroyers. That was the night the great cruiser Helena was lost (TIME, Nov. 1).
A few days later the O'Bannon was one of a small force which steamed boldly up to Jap-held Vella Lavella to rescue Helena survivors who were hiding there in the jungles. Two months later off the same shore, she and her sister the Chevalier and the smaller Selfridge met and engaged a force of nine Jap ships, sank three of them and put the rest to rout. The Chevalier, torpedoed, sank. The lucky and valiant O'Bannon survived to win her Presidential citation.
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Guadalcanal Campaign (1942-43)
From Month/Year
August / 1942
To Month/Year
February / 1943
Description The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and codenamed Operation Watchtower by Allied forces, was a military campaign fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theatre of World War II. It was the first major offensive by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.
On 7 August 1942, Allied forces, predominantly American, landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands with the objective of denying their use by the Japanese to threaten the supply and communication routes between the US, Australia, and New Zealand. The Allies also intended to use Guadalcanal and Tulagi as bases to support a campaign to eventually capture or neutralize the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. The Allies overwhelmed the outnumbered Japanese defenders, who had occupied the islands since May 1942, and captured Tulagi and Florida, as well as an airfield (later named Henderson Field) that was under construction on Guadalcanal. Powerful US naval forces supported the landings.
Surprised by the Allied offensive, the Japanese made several attempts between August and November 1942 to retake Henderson Field. Three major land battles, seven large naval battles (five nighttime surface actions and two carrier battles), and continual, almost daily aerial battles culminated in the decisive Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in early November 1942, in which the last Japanese attempt to bombard Henderson Field from the sea and land with enough troops to retake it was defeated. In December 1942, the Japanese abandoned further efforts to retake Guadalcanal and evacuated their remaining forces by 7 February 1943 in the face of an offensive by the US Army's XIV Corps, conceding the island to the Allies.
The Guadalcanal campaign was a significant strategic combined arms victory by Allied forces over the Japanese in the Pacific theatre. The Japanese had reached the high-water mark of their conquests in the Pacific, and Guadalcanal marked the transition by the Allies from defensive operations to the strategic offensive in that theatre and the beginning of offensive operations, including the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Central Pacific campaigns, that resulted in Japan's eventual surrender and the end of World War II.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
August / 1942
To Month/Year
February / 1943
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories Based at Nouméa, New Caledonia, O'Bannon first escorted Copahee (CVE-12) on a run to Guadalcanal where on 9 October, twenty Marines flew their F4F Wildcats off Copahee's decks, desperately needed as reinforcements at beleaguered Henderson Field. Through the remainder of the month O'Bannon sailed the New Hebrides and southern Solomons on escort duty. On 7 November at Nouméa, she joined Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan's Support Group, ready to sail with a convoy carrying critical reinforcements, replacements, food, ammunition, and aviation material.
On the approach to Guadalcanal, O'Bannon sighted and fired on a surfaced enemy submarine, holding it down while the convoy passed safely. On the afternoon of 12 November, the partially-unladen transports were attacked by sixteen enemy torpedo bombers; eleven were shot down. O'Bannon fired on four of the enemy planes.
Now came word that the Japanese were moving south in force. Two battleships, a light cruiser, and 14 destroyers were bound to destroy Henderson Field by bombardment, to break up the American reinforcement mission, and to cover reinforcement movements of their own. O'Bannon and the other ships of the Support Force, two heavy and three light cruisers, and eight destroyers, confronted the greatly superior enemy early 13 November in Ironbottom Sound, so named for the number of ships on both sides sunk there during the Guadalcanal campaign. O'Bannon boldly attacked the Japanese battleship Hiei, closing so near, the battleship could not depress her main battery far enough to fire on the gallant destroyer. O'Bannon's gunfire, in combination with the attacks of the rest of the force, damaged Hiei so badly that she was a sitting duck for the air attack which sank her next day.
This first engagement of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was short but furious; two American light cruisers, in one of which Rear Admiral Norman Scott lost his life, and four destroyers were lost, while two Japanese destroyers were sunk and Hiei prepared for her doom. Above all, the Japanese were turned back, and Henderson Field saved from destruction. The importance of this success is illustrated by the fact that next day Henderson aviators sank eleven enemy troop transports attempting to reinforce the island.
