On this evening eighty-five years ago, US Navy Destroyer Squadron 11 (DESRON-11) was conducting exercises off the coast of Central California.
The group of 14 ships was cruising in a single line formation in the fog utilizing dead reckoning and radio silence simulating wartime conditions.
Due to the dangerous nature of the coast of Santa Barbara County along with the fog and strange tidal currents along the coast that day the ships erroneously turned into the coastline believing they were turning into the Santa Barbara Channel.
One by one each ship steamed through the murky fog and into the maw of the rock outcroppings known as the "Devil's Jaw".
Of the 14 ships in DESRON-1, seven were lost (USS Delphy, USS S.P. Lee, USS Young, USS Woodbury, USS Nicholas, USS Fuller, USS Chauncy) with 23 sailors killed with three more ships making it into the area of the rocks but avoiding being sunk (USS Farragut, USS Percival, USS Sommers) and four ships stopping in time to avoid the rocks altogether (USS Kennedy, USS Paul Hamilton, USS Stoddert, USS Thompson).
Subsequent court martials of Commodor Edward H. Watson and each of the ship captains whose ships were lost were later overturned.
The US Navy hired a private contractor to conduct a salvage operation on the wrecks and then blow up whatever remained visible of them.
My friends, Ernie and Alice Porter of Atascadero later conducted another salvage operation on what remained of the ships during the period 1949-1951.
I had the privilege of viewing and handling and ultimately acquiring from them some of the last remaining items they had leftover from that salvage operation.
To this day this remains the worst peace-time disaster in US Navy history.
For additional information and the source of the info in this anniversary reminder check the following links:
Honda Point Memorial
Honda Point Disaster Wiki
Honda Point Disaster Image Archive
For additional reading I recommend these books:
"Jaws of Honda" by Mary Hoag Copyright 2001 ISBN 0-9707277-0-4
"Tragedy at Honda" by Charles A. Lockwood and Hans Christian Adamson Copyright 1997 ISBN 0-9655527-2-1
Kimmer
I remember being able to see fairly large hunks of destroyer exposed at low tide down at Honda Point when I was a young .mil brat st VAFB back in the late 60s. Probably not much left to see after all these years.
ReplyDeleteDid Ernie and Alice ever write a book about their recovery endeavors? I think it would be very interesting! If they haven't someone should jump on that one, I'm sure it would make for an awesome read.
Jim in Santa Barbara