Word: bannon
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...destroyer O'Bannon was to live up to this tradition. She first poked her sharp nose into the South Pacific in the summer...
...Navy then was fighting a desperate holding war. Most of the O'Bannon's crew were green hands. MacDonald, who was graduated from the Academy in 1931, was only 34. Her wardroom was filled with fresh-faced reservists. They had scarcely got their sea legs under them before they were under fire...
They went into action in August during the Guadalcanal attack. It was the beginning of a long and violent campaign. Up & down the lush green coasts and pale, flat waters of the Solomons, the 2,100-ton O'Bannon and her sisters steamed with bones in their teeth and a swift hard punch for Japanese ships great or small...
There was plenty of dirty work to do. On Nov. 12-13, when a U.S. force sank a Jap battleship, five cruisers, five destroyers and eight transports, the O'Bannon scored hits on a battleship and a cruiser which far outweighed and outranged her. For six months of almost continuous naval warfare she was in the thick of the campaign which did not end until Guadalcanal was secured...
Lucky and Valiant. Around South Pacific bars, MacDonald's O'Bannon became a legend. In June 1943, Admiral Halsey began the drive to knock the Japs out of the rest of the Solomons. The O'Bannon was in the thick of that campaign. She was with the outnumbered cruiser task force which plowed into the dark hole of Kula Gulf to intercept and destroy nine to eleven Jap cruisers and destroyers. That was the night the great cruiser Helena was lost (TIME...