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Geraldine Reardon, HM3
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MacDonald, Donald, RDML.
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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.
Northern Solomon Islands Campaign (1943-44)/Battle of Vella Lavella
From Month/Year
October / 1943
To Month/Year
October / 1943
Description The Battle of Vella Lavella was a naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II fought on the night of 6 October 1943, near the island of Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands.
Background
After their defeats on New Georgia and in the Battle of Vella Gulf, the Japanese had evacuated their garrisons in the central Solomons. A staging post had been established at Horaniu on the north tip of Vella Lavella for the evacuation barges. In October 1943, 600 soldiers remained, and a force of nine destroyers—Fumizuki, Matsukaze, YÅ«nagi, Akigumo, Isokaze, Kazagumo, YÅ«gumo, Shigure, Samidare—was dispatched under Rear Admiral Matsuji Ijuin to rescue them.
Battle
At 22:30, they spotted a U.S. force of three destroyers—Selfridge, Chevalier, and O'Bannon, commanded by Captain Frank R. Walker—approaching from Vella Gulf. A second division of three U.S. destroyers—Ralph Talbot, Taylor, and La Vallette—was also sailing up the west coast of Vella Lavella. Walker did not wait for his other three destroyers to come up but attacked immediately. Both sides launched torpedoes and opened fire at about 23:00.
YÅ«gumo, first in the Japanese line, was hit several times, knocking out her steering, and she was finished off by a torpedo and sunk at about 23:10. However, one of her torpedoes hit Chevalier, detonating the forward magazine. O 'â??Bannon then collided with the crippled Chevalier, and for some time the two ships were locked together. Selfridge attacked alone and was hit by a torpedo at 23:06 and disabled. All three ships were severely damaged, and reinforcements were still 15 minutes away. However, the rest of the Japanese turned away, having perhaps misidentified the three approaching destroyers as cruisers.
Aftermath
Shigure and Samidare off Bougainville just hours before the battle.
Chevalier could not be saved and was sunk around 03:00. The Japanese completed their evacuation mission, ending the second phase of Operation Cartwheel with the Allied capture of the central Solomons after a three-month campaign that cost the Allies six ships; the Japanese lost 16.
