Wreck of USS Little (APD-4)

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, destroyer (ship), United States Navy

USS Little was the fifth member of the Wickes Class of Destroyers built for the US Navy, laid down at the Fore River Shipyard in June 1917 and commissioning into service in April 1918. Immediately deployed to the Atlantic convoy lanes, Little and her crew escorted Allied convoys to Europe through the closing months of World War One, after which she returned stateside and entered the Naval Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia. Decommissioned and laid up in mothballs in July 1922, the Little remained pierside at Philadelphia until her selection for reactivation and conversion into a High Speed Transport in late 1940 brought her back into commission and service with the US Atlantic Fleet in November 1940.

Following the outbreak of World War Two, Little joined the US Pacific Fleet and began exercises with as the Flagship of Transport Division 12, a formation of similarly-converted WWI-era Destroyers. Deploying to Fijian waters to continue their amphibious workups in late Summer 1942, the Little and TransDiv 12 departed Fiji in convoy with the large US invasion armada bound for the Island of Guadalcanal in early August 1942. Assigned to shuttle small groups of Marine Raiders and supplies between the Allied base of Espiritu Santo to numerous islands in the Solomons Islands chain for most of August as US forces went ashore, the Little and her sisters were pulled from their supply runs and ordered into the growing Battle of Guadalcanal on August 30th where their high speed and amphibious capabilities were needed to deliver both Marines and badly needed supplies into the Japanese controlled waters of Ironbottom Sound.

Arriving off the landing beaches at Lunga Point in the afternoon of the 30th, the Little and her sisters began discharging troops and supplies ashore but came under almost immediate air attack from Japanese bombers, forcing them to cease their resupply mission and get underway to defend themselves. Undamaged in the resulting action, the crew of the lightly armored and lightly armed Little were unable to save their sistership USS Calhoun (APD-2) from receiving mortal bomb damage off Honaria before their attackers withdrew. Remaining offshore for the balance of the daylight hours, Little and her divisionmates completed their supply mission under the cover of darkness before withdrawing to Tulagi to reload for subsequent runs which were completed successfully on the nights of September 1st, 2nd & 3rd. Arriving in Tulagi Harbor on the morning of September 4th, Little’s routine operations were interrupted by reports that Japanese raiders had landed on Savo Island, prompting both the Little and her sistership USS Gregory (APD-3) to load US Marine Raiders and depart immediately for Savo.

Putting her contingent of Raiders ashore on Savo shortly after sunrise, Little patrolled off Savo’s shores through the day before the Marines reported no evidence of the enemy landing and staged for pickup. Stowing her last Landing Craft just before midnight Little shaped a course for Lunga Point where she and the Gregory landed the Marines and re-entered Ironbottom Sound shortly after 0000hrs. With no moonlight and low cloud cover making the notion of dead-reckoning through the reef-lined entrance to Tulagi Harbor in the darkness much too dangerous to Division Commander Hugh W. Hadley to condone, the Little and Gregory were ordered into patrol loops between Lunga Point and Savo Island until daybreak. At roughly the same time as the two ships took up their stations, a force of three Japanese Destroyers entered Ironbottom Sound after escorting a resupply run of the 'Tokyo Express' and were shaping a course to conduct a running shore bombardment of Henderson Field. The two forces unknowingly made their way past each other in the darkness without making contact around 0030hrs and as the Little and Gregory turned at the Northwestern edge of their patrol loop and made their way back towards Lunga Point at 0100hrs, lookouts sighted several gunfire flashes ahead of them in the darkness.

Straining to identify the source of the action, the crew of the Little raced to their battle stations just as a PBY Catalina on night patrol overflew them, its crew likely thinking the long, narrow and tapered Wickes Class hulls steaming beneath them were a pair of Japanese Submarines, dropped a full string of parachute flares directly over the Little and Gregory. The sudden burst of light to the North surprised both lookouts and gun crews aboard the three Japanese Destroyers who were roughly midway through their bombardment of the US airbase. Quickly shifting their attention to the well-lit enemy ships, gun crews raced to switch their ammunition from proximity-fused artillery shells to armor-piercing anti-ship rounds. Aboard Little, Commander Hadley sighted the distant Japanese Destroyer formation as it too was illuminated by shore-fired flares, and despite his ships being clearly illuminated, totally outgunned and unlikely to last long in the coming engagement, ordered his gunners to open fire with the Little's bow mounted 4-inch gun. USS Gregory followed shortly thereafter as both ships increased speed to unmask their rear batteries on the three Japanese ships, which were in the favorable position of turning broadside to the onrushing American ships. The gun crews on Little were in the process of firing their third round downrange when the first Japanese artillery shells detonated well above the hull and showering everything topside with a rain of shrapnel that killed most of the exposed gun crews and shredded the landing craft on her decks, starting diesel fuel fires that brightly lit the ship as the parachute flares burned out. In short order the number of shells detonating above Little grew to full broadside strength, causing further carnage among Little’s topside crew before Japanese gunners exhausted their ready supply of artillery shells and began hurling AP shells into their precisely ranged adversary. The highly accurate armor piercing shells were easily able to penetrate the Little’s lightly armored hull and after several direct hits the APD’s boilers were knocked out and the Little began to slow to a dead stop. The Japanese kept up their attack as they made a hasty Northward withdrawal from the area, passing close enough to the derelict Little to strafe her decks with machine gun fire before they disappeared into the night, leaving the battered ship to her fate.

Powerless, flooding and with several topside and internal fires growing out of control, Little was ordered abandoned as fears of a magazine detonation grew too great to ignore. Little remained afloat and aflame for a full two hours after her final battle before she finally swamped and sank on an even keel in this general area at approximately 0330hrs on September 5th, 1942. Little’s 93 surviving crew were rescued the following morning by PT Boats, but musters would later reveal that 48 of her crew, including her Captain and Commander Hadley, had gone down with the ship.

For her actions on the night of her loss, USS Little received her second and final Battle Star for World War Two service.

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