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:
“It seems our fate to be incorrect ... and in our incorrectness stand.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“Slowly ... the truth is dawning upon women, and still more slowly upon men, that woman is no stepchild of nature, no Cinderella of fate to be dowered only by fairies and the Prince; but that for her and in her, as truly as for and in man, life has wrought its great experiences, its master attainments, its supreme human revelations of the stuff of which worlds are made.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)