Fate
Of the first wave of attacking aircraft to filter through the outer screen on 6 April, she splashed two and later knocked down a third. Disregarding the danger, she proceeded alongside to assist the thrice-hit and burning Newcomb (DD-586). The fourth plane to hit this ship skidded across the deck and exploded its bomb against Leutze’s port quarter. The kamikaze almost severed her fantail and left seven crew members missing, one dead, and 30 wounded. Lt. Leon Grabowsky, Leutze’s acting commanding officer, received the Navy Cross for his part in aiding Newcomb, and in the fighting of his own ship.
Recalling her firefighting parties from Newcomb, she maneuvered clear, brought her flooding under control and was towed to Kerama Retto anchorage for emergency repairs. Departing 10 July via Guam and Pearl Harbor, she reached Hunters Point Drydocks, San Francisco, 3 August. Following the end of the war, her repairs were halted. Leutze decommissioned 6 December 1945, was struck from the Navy Register 3 January 1946, and ultimately purchased for scrap by Thomas Harris, Barber, New Jersey, 17 June 1947.
Read more about this topic: USS Leutze (DD-481)
Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“Is it impossible not to wonder why a movement which professes concern for the fate of all women has dealt so unkindly, contemptuously, so destructively, with so significant a portion of its sisterhood. Can it be that those who would reorder society perceive as the greater threat not the chauvinism of men or the pernicious attitudes of our culture, but rather the impulse to mother within women themselves?”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)