September 1944

..Escorted Churchill aboard Queen Mary to Halifax
.23 Returned to New York
.25 Left 35th Street Pier
.26 Delaware Bay. Joined the Pasadena and Wisconsin along with four other .destroyers.
27 Left Delaware Bay as lead destroyer escorting Wisconsin and Pasadena.

October 1944

. Arrived Christobal, Panama
.Passed through canal to Balboa
.Left Balboa. Several liberties are mercifully not recorded here.
.On the 4-8 watch at 1625 I picked up contact on what sounded like a school of fish. I kept .checking it until I turned it over to"Chollie" Gruber SoM3/c. I asked if he wanted to report it but he said no but after listening for a while I asked Mr. Berk to check it. He said to report it and then investigate it. We lost it on the 14kc stack and picked it up on the 30kc stack at a range of about 1200 yards. It was only about 15 degrees off the bow and had a definite submarine echo. General Quarters was sounded and I had to go to the fantail where I was the gun captain on the three twin 20mm guns. We made four runs dropping depth charges each time.The first time was only two charges because the racks jammed. The second was nine charges and the third and fourth were eleven each. After we dropped the last pattern, screw noisedswere heard but they said it was the "foxer gear" (a device to distract sound directed torpedoes which might be fired at the ship) but I was on the fantail and the foxer gear had never been streamed. There was no evidence of having gotten the submarine.
12 Came into San Pedro, California
.14ÄLeft San Pedro
.20 Came into Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island in the Hawaiian Islands.

December 1944

.16 Left Hawaiian Islands after completion of qualification tests.Destination--Eniwetok atoll .in the Marshall Islands.
19 Crossed the International Date Line
.23 Arrived Eniwetok - stayed overnight
.24 Shoved off from Eniwetok for Guam
.25 Christmas Day. Full holiday routine. Passed 300 miles from Jap held Truk Island. .Spotted Jap plane 17 miles from us
27 Passed Guam early this morning. Did not stop but dropped offtransport that was with .us. At midnight we passed 87 miles from aipan and 7:00 am we were 26 miles from Jap held Rota Island.
28 Arrived at Ulithi Island to join the Third Fleet. There are acouple of hundred ships .here. We expect to shove off in the morning but don't know, as yet, where to. We are topping off provisions and ammunition refueling.
30 Left Ulithi with Task Force 38 -- Task Group 38.2 for fast carrier attacks on several .points unknown at present. Expect to be under weigh approximately 20 days.

January 1945

2 Refueled several hundred miles off Formosa, our objective. It is said the Japanese .know we are coming and are ready. What they are going to do about it I don't know. We'll probably find out tomorrow. Word was passed about 1700 we were to make our first attack early tomorrow morning.
3 Very poor weather for dive bombing attacks. Altitude visibility only about 1500 feet. We .are reported to have lost 20 planes butnothing official. We sent 6 TBF's after three Jap transports. One of the planes had it's landing gear shot up and had to land in the water near us. We picked up the survivor. They said one of the transports was low in the water and the other two were burning badly. Large fires and explosions were seen over our target. As yet Task Force has encountered no attacks from planes or enemy task forces. I hope our luck holds. We do expect it tonight or tomorrow morning.
4 Set over two more strikes this morning. The weather all night had been clear and would .have made a perfect day for bombing but when morning came, it clouded up. Visibility closed in to 500 feet and below that over the target. It varied from 0 to 2,000 around us. We secured from GQ about 9:30 am. I slept till 11:15 then got up for chow. I was nearly in the mess hall when the general alarm sounded. A Japanese twin engine bomber had been sighted. Several other groups of planes (unidentified) were reported ranging from 5 miles to 78 miles. Evidently none of them could find us because not a shot was fired. Several mines were sighted and exploded that had evidently been laid by mine laying aircraft or subs during thenight. It was definitely confirmed that we lost only 7 planes yesterday/ We secured about 1430. We are supposed to retire to the fueling rendezvous tonight. We refuel tomorrow but after that, what? I don't know.
5 Fueled ship today. It was revealed today that we are moving down to Luzon for .neutralizing strikes on her airfields. It is rumored that it is to be a softening up of it for an invasion by the 7thFleet. Then, it is said, we will move back to Formosa on the inside next to China to try and keep her planes on the ground. The weather has cleared up and we are going within 35 miles off the coast of Luzon so I figure we will catch Hell but good.
6 Started our attacks on Luzon this morning with a pre-dawn attack.The attack continued .throughout the day. We received no attack from the Japs because they were too busy with the 7th Fleet. Started back to Formosa but the weather was extremely rough and several cans split seams and had to turn back to a repair group since they were taking on water and were unable to maintain the pace. Finally we got the word the entire task force was turning back to Luzon as we were needed badly
7 Continued our air strike on Luzon with minor losses. Still no airattack from the .Japs.
8 Retired our position the refueling rendezvous. Word was passed to get plenty of sleep .because we would need it the next few days because we would meet the enemy for sure. It's a funny thing because I'm not too nervous. Perhaps it is because I don't allow myself to think about it too much. I've got to live through it. I saw Admiral Halsey when we refueled from the New Jersey.
9 At 3:45 this morning they called "stand by for submarine attack."Everyone promptly .went to GQ only to find out another ship had had a contact and lost it so we went back to bed with the GQ team of Sonar and the depth charges remaining on alert. As we rejoined at 1345 they called GQ for air attacks but it proved to be a false alarm. The weather was rough and tons of water were cascadingacross the lower decks. Spray was coming over the bridge at each wave. It was whipped by a high wind that made it feel like sleet.It looks to me like Admiral Halsey is trying to bait the Japanese Navy out for a final battle. At present we are going to meet a convoy of Japanese reinforcements. I hope we get them. Bombed Formosa again.
10 Entered into the north end of the South China Sea. We are now bottled up, more or .less, with the Japanese on four sides of us. Weare supposedly going after a 100 ship Jap convoy that is bringing up reinforcements to Luzon. They say the biggest ships of the convoy are cans so it ought to be duck soup for us since we have cans, cruisers, wagons, and aircraft carriers. We expect to meet them day after tomorrow. This morning our planes shot down to Jap planes. One of the ships hit another one (plane) but it came on for about 15 miles. When it burst through the clouds it was a ball of fire. It tried to crash dive on a carrier and the pilot bailed out. It was, at first, thought to be one of ours but they found a Jap life raft and chute so it was confirmed as definitely Japanese. No raids on anything today.
11 We had regular morning general quarters this morning. At 0900 westarted refueling .and finished at 1000. We kept going deeper into the South China Sea and were designated as a picket ship for the rest of the day. About 1630 two Zekes were reported to our CAP coming in low and fast on one of our pickets. The general alarm was sounded and when I arrived at my GQ station they had been downed all ready and you could see where they were burning on the water at the horizon's edge. We secured in about 45 minutes and were told to expect a raid in about and hour and to be on the alert. We hade vening GQ because of this at 1915 and secured at 2000. No raids.
12 GQ was scheduled for 0530 this morning as we had arrived at Camranh Bay where .the Jap force was supposed to be. At 0525 two bogeys were reported and the general alarm was sounded. These were reported later as friendly. One of the ships on our starboard side had radar contact on a small vessel and decided it to be a sailing vessel. Received orders to destroy it. We could see both the firing and the shells in the air. We saw lights on our starboard side and found they were flares dropped by planes over an airfield but no planes were on it. Two flares were fired in the air atapproximately the same bearing and ascertained to be from one of oursubs that submerged afterward. Evidently our prize chicken has flown the coop. The force has now split. Part of it going in tobombard the beach. This consists of cruisers and BB's. The CV's and most of the DD's stay out and send in planes. They also send them after the ships that escaped. The sailing vessel that was fired on turned out to be the sub that fired the flares. The total number of ships sank by our planes was 27...2 cruisers, 5 cans, 3 destroyer escorts and 8 unidentified. The rest were cargo vessels.
13 Refueled today. Heard the scuttlebutt that we are going to HongKong now. The seas .were very rough today making refueling difficult. A man from another ship washed overboard during the operation and we picked him up. We were driving into the wind all night which batters the devil out of a ship. One of the other ships lost mount #1 (5" .38) over the side. All we got was the guard around a couple of 40 mm guns smashed. It was so rough they didn't even have the routine GQ this morning.
14 Struck Formosa again
.15 Struck Hong Kong
.17 Refueled today. Weather extremely rough. One can lost two men. We had several .injuries.
seas on the edge of a hurricane. High winds and swells 40 to 50 feet .high. Took a 56 degree roll last night (she was only built to take 61.) Didn't get much sleep because it was so rough. Do not know where we are going now.
This was not in the diary: the Haynsworth lost its motor whaleboat and all the life line stanchions were ripped from the deck perimeter. It was rumored three destroyers turned turtle with all hands lost. We started splitting with a break from the main deck aft of the quarter deck extending across the first superstructure deck and down to the main deck. After the storm had subsided a bit I walked out there and when we would plow into a wave it would gap at least six inches. For several days you ate standing up in the mess hall with your arm around a stanchion and a cup of coffee in one hand and a sandwich in the other. If you were lucky enough to have a bunk against the bulkhead you could shorten the chain so it formed a "V" with it. Then you could slide the mattress in that area a get some rest. At that time I was in 205L and every time thes crews came out of the water I thought we would shake apart. We were lucky though...we came out alive.
19 Refueled today. Still unknown as to where we are going.
.20 We leave the China Sea today via Balintang Channel at the northern end of Luzon. .Went to GQ early in the afternoon but it only lasted about a half hour. GQ was sounded at 1600 and 2230 when we cleared Balintang Channel. Today was my birthday (20 years old) and I said the Japs couldn't miss showing me some fireworks. Sure enough, about 1930 some planes came over the after part of the Task Force. The firing was beautiful to see with the 40 mm going into the air in almost a solid stream. It was like the sentence of death punctuated with the flash of larger guns. The planes got away. We didn't fire because it wasn't in our clear fire bearings.
21 Made strikes (by planes) on Luzon. I had just finished eating when we were called to .GQ. This was about 1145 and lasted until 2030. One of the other task groups was under air attack. Three ships were hit. Two carriers (Langley and Ticonderoga) and one can (Mattox). All were hit by Japanese kamikaze planes. About 1830 -1900 a plane approached on our starboard side and we started firing on it. It burst into flame and tried a suicide dive on a tin can but couldn't make it and crashed into the water.
22 Topped off fuel today. We were assigned as picket again today.Outside of that, .nothing happened.
23 We were to finish fueling this morning or early afternoon but couldn't find the tankers. .We were assigned as mail ship again until 1500. The whole forward torpedo deck is stacked three deep with mail bags. There is about the same amount on the quarterdeck. There was only one good bag out of all this for the Haynsworth crew.

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