Эсминец USS Edsall: История и гибель корабля

Clemson class destroyer

USS Edsall (DD 219), was a , the first of two United States Navy ships named after Seaman Norman Eckley Edsall (1873–1899). She was sunk by a combined Japanese air and sea attack, approximately 200 miles east of Christmas Island on 1 March 1942.

Edsall was laid down by the William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company on 15 September 1919, launched on 29 July 1920 by Mrs Bessie Edsall Bracey, sister of Seaman Edsall, and commissioned on 26 November 1920.

Edsall sailed from Philadelphia on 6 December 1920 for San Diego, California for shakedown. She arrived at San Diego 11 January 1921, and remained on the United States West Coast until December, engaging in battle practice and gunnery drills with fleet units. Returning to Charleston, South Carolina, 28 December, Edsall departed 26 May 1922 for the Mediterranean. Arriving at Constantinople on 28 June, Edsall joined the U. S. Naval Detachment in Turkish Waters to protect American interests as the Near East was in turmoil with civil strife in Russia, and Greece at war with Turkey. She was part of the international effort to alleviate the postwar famine in eastern Europe. She helped evacuate refugees, furnishing a center of communications for the Near East and standing by for emergencies. When the Turks expelled the Anatolian Greeks from Smyrna (Izmir), Edsall was one of the American destroyers which evacuated refugees. On 14 September 1922, she took 607 refugees off Litchfield in Smyrna and transported them to Salonika, returning to Smyrna on 16 September to act as flagship for the naval forces there. In October she carried refugees from Smyrna to Mytilene on Lesbos Island. She made repeated visits to ports in Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, Greece, Egypt, Mandate Palestine, the Syrian Federation, Tunisia, Dalmatia, and Italy, and kept up gunnery and torpedo practice with her sisters until her return to Boston, Massachusetts, for an overhaul on 26 July 1924. Edsall sailed to join the U. S. Asiatic Fleet on 3 January 1925, joining in battle practice and maneuvers at Guantanamo Bay, San Diego, and Pearl Harbor before arriving at Shanghai on 22 June. She was to become a fixture of the Asiatic Fleet on the China coast, in the Philippines and Japan. Her primary duty was protection of American interests in the Far East. She served during the civil war in China, and the early part of the Sino Japanese War. Battle practice, maneuvers and diplomacy took her most frequently to Shanghai, Yantai, Hankou, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Kobe, Bangkok, and Manila. In late October 1927, Edsall visited the Siamese capital Bangkok, and had three of the Royal Princesses aboard for tea. In return Edsalls skipper, Commander Jules James, was given an engraved silver cigarette case by the Thai Royal Family.

On 25 November 1941, two days in advance of the "war warning" which predicted that hostile Japanese action in the Pacific was imminent, Admiral Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, dispatched Destroyer Division (DesDiv) 57 (Whipple, Alden, John D. Edwards and Edsall) with the destroyer tender Black Hawk, to Balikpapan, Borneo, to disperse the surface ships of his fleet from their vulnerable position in Manila Bay. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (local date 8 December 1941 due to the International Date Line), Edsall was en route to Batavia (now Jakarta) with her sister ships when word was received. DesDiv 57 was ordered to Singapore to rendezvous with Royal Navy Force Z. She embarked a British liaison officer and four men at Singapore from and was sent to search for survivors of and , sunk by Japanese aircraft off the east coast of Malaya on 10 December. Edsall intercepted a Japanese fishing trawler, Kofuku Maru (later renamed and used extensively by Australian special forces) with four small boats in tow and escorted them into Singapore before turning them over to
Edsall and her division joined the heavy cruiser Houston and other US units at Surabaya on 15 December 1941 and escorted shipping retiring to the relative safety of Darwin, Australia. During the first week of 1942 Edsall escorted the Pensacola Convoy from Torres Strait back to Darwin. After fueling operations in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Edsall and Alden were escorting the Darwin bound oiler Trinity in the Beagle Gulf west of Darwin. On the morning of 20 January 1942 the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine Japanese submarine I 123 sighted Trinity, and misidentifed her as a transport. I 123 fired four Type 89 torpedoes at