(Translated by https://www.hiragana.jp/)
>From the “Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships,”
(1969) Vol. 4, p.487; (1981) Vol. 8, pp.107-110.
WARREN
Joseph Warren--born on 11 June 1741 at Roxbury,
Mass.--graduated with distinction from Harvard College in
1759. After a year as headmaster of the Roxbury Grammar
School, he entered the medical profession and later
practiced as a physician in Boston. There, he became
interested in politics and formed an early association with
the firebrand Samuel Adams.
As the break in relations between the colonies and
Great Britain approached, Warren abandoned his medical
practice to enter military service. While still in Boston,
he dispatched William Dawes and Paul Revere on their famous
nocturnal rides to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of
approaching British troops on 18 April 1775.
Elected a major general by the provincial congress on
14 June, Warren went out to Bunker Hill to look over the
defenses shortly before the British attack on the afternoon
of 17 June 1775. Although he consistently refused to take
command, claiming that he would take part in the battle only
as a volunteer, Warren eventually tried to exert leadership
in rallying the colonial militia at Breed’s Hill.
Unfortunately, he was shot and killed by a British soldier
while engaged in the attempt.
APA-53
Displacement: 13,910 t.
Length: 468’8”
Beam: 63’0”
Draft: 23’3” (limiting)
Speed: 16.5 k.
Complement: 658
Troop Capacity: 1,400
Armament: 2 5”; 8 1.1”; 10 20mm
Class: SUMTER
Maritime Commission Standard Type: C2-S-E1
Class Statistics
SUMTER class (APA 52-54, 94)
Overall Length: 468’8”
Extreme Beam: 63’
Trial Displacement: 13,910 t.
Limiting Draft: 23’3”
Trial Speed: 16.5 k.
Accommodations:
Ship’s Company: (APA-52)
Officers: 39
Enlisted: 410
Troop Capacity: (APA-52)
Officer: 91
Enlisted: 1,472
Ship’s Company: (APA-53)
Officers: 38
Enlisted: 619
Troop Capacity: (APA-53)
Officer: 93
Enlisted: 1,400
Ship’s Company: (APA-54)
Officers: 57
Enlisted: 478
Troop Capacity: (APA-54)
Officer: 93
Enlisted: 1,340
Ship’s Company: (APA-94)
Officers: 56
Enlisted: 498
Troop Capacity: (APA-94)
Officer: 95
Enlisted: 1,422
Cargo Capacity:
170,000 cu.ft. (all ships)
1,300 t. (APA 52-54)
1,4500 t. (APA 94)
Armament: (Aug 1945)
2 5”/38 all ships
4 twin 40mm mounts all ships
10 single 20mm mounts all ships
Engines: Geared turbine drive
General Electric all ships
Boilers: 2 each
Babcock & Wilcox header-type boiler all ships
Propulsion:
Propellers: 1
Designed Shaft Horsepower: 6,000
JEAN LAFITTE--named for the legendary pirate of
Barataria, La., who assisted General Andrew Jackson in
defending New Orleans against the British in 1815--was a
C2-S-E1-type merchant ship laid down under a Maritime
Commission contract (MC hull 415) on 19 April 1942 at
Chickasaw, Ala., by the Gulf Shipbuilding Co.; launched on
7 September 1942; sponsored by Mrs. F. L. Leatherbury;
renamed WARREN and classified a transport, AP-98;
redesignated as an attack transport, APA-53, on 1 February
1943; and placed in commission, in ordinary, on 19 February
1943. Taken to the Key Highway plant of the Bethlehem Steel
Corp. soon thereafter, the ship was decommissioned on
10 March 1943; and was recommissioned on 2 August 1943,
Comdr. William A. McHale, USNR, in command.
WARREN soon sailed south to the Norfolk Navy Yard,
where the work converting her to an attack transport was
completed and she was fitted out for service. She next
conducted her shakedown and type training in the waters of
Chesapeake Bay. In intensive exercises, the ship practiced
the amphibious tactics and techniques that she would soon be
putting into practice.
On 1 November 1943, WARREN departed Hampton Roads and
headed for Panama, reaching the Canal Zone on the 5th after
a brief stop at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, en route. Following
her transit of the Panama Canal, WARREN pushed on for San
Diego and reached that California port on 17 November. The
ship subsequently underwent repairs and a drydocking at Long
Beach before she returned to San Diego for more amphibious
training. From 26 November 1943 to 13 January 1944, WARREN
landed troops of the 4th Marine Division in practice
assaults at Aliso Canyon and San Clemente Island.
On the latter day, Friday the 13th, of January 1944,
WARREN sailed for the Central Pacific with men of the 1st
Battalion, 25th Regiment, 4th Marine Division, embarked.
Steaming via the Hawaiian Islands, the attack transport
arrived off the northern islets of Kwajalein Atoll in the
Marshalls at dawn on 31 January. The marines embarked in
WARREN were assigned the task of taking two small islands in
the atoll, nicknamed "Ivan" and "Jacob." Those isles lay to
the south of Roi and Namur, two heavily fortified areas of
the atoll. Her marines were to secure both a guarded
passage into the lagoon and artillery bases from which to
soften up the defenses on the main islands, Roi and Namur,
in support of the landings slated to take place the
following day. The initial men ashore encountered minor
opposition, and the casualties sustained were very light.
WARREN eased into the lagoon on 1 February and
continued the process of discharging munitions and cargo for
her troops ashore. After a channel had been blasted through
the coral, the attack transport's beach party supervised the
arrival of supplies on "Ivan." WARREN herself remained in
the lagoon with other ships from her division for the next
five days.
WARREN departed Kwajalein on 4 February, leaving the
island still smoking "and reeking with the stench of
unburied dead." As the ship's commanding officer later
wrote, "we knew now the horror of war."
Sailing southward, the attack transport reached
Funafuti in the Ellice Islands on 9 February, before she
continued onward, arriving at Noumea, New Caledonia, on
19 February. She ultimately weighed anchor from New
Caledonian waters on 7 March and got underway for
Guadalcanal--the scene of once-bitter fighting. She arrived
off Lunga Point on the morning of the 10th and spent the
majority of her days over the next three months in the
Guadalcanal-Tulagi area. The only exceptions were trips to
Kwajalein to pick up marines from the 22d Marine Regiment
and to Cape Gloucester--where she landed the troops from
elements of the Army's 40th Division and returned to the
Russells with men of the 1st Marine Division embarked.
At the end of May, WARREN completed the loading of the
men of the 3d Battalion, 3d Regiment, 3d Marine Division,
and headed north in convoy--her objective Guam, where she
was to debark the marines after their comrades had landed at
Saipan in the Marianas.
However, because of the fierceness of the Japanese
resistance on Saipan, WARREN's mission was aborted; and she
therefore spent over a week cruising off that island,
standing by with her marines forming a reserve force.
Ultimately, however, WARREN's leathernecks were not needed,
and the ship returned to Eniwetok, to commence a three-week
stay in the Marshall Islands.
WARREN finally received the nod to go into action once
more, and she accordingly sailed for Guam, sending boatloads
of marines from the 3d Marine Division ashore on 20 July.
Over the ensuing five days, WARREN remained off the bitterly
contested beaches, her beach party lying pinned-down in
their foxholes ashore. "So perilous was the position on the
WARREN beach--the left flank of the assault," wrote WARREN's
commanding officer, "that supplies could not be landed
there." Time and time again, WARREN's hospital corpsmen
exposed themselves to enemy fire evacuating wounded marines
and the ship's boat crews went to the reef's edge to pick up
the precious cargo of human lives beneath the enemy's mortar
fire.
After departing Guam on 25 July, WARREN evacuated
marine casualties to Espiritu Santo. She then shifted to
the Russell Islands in the Solomons, where she embarked men
of the 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine
Brigade--combat veterans of the Guadalcanal campaign. The
attack transport then took those combat-hardened marines to
the island of Peleliu in the Palaus. Despite the
carrier-based air strikes and intense bombardment which
preceded the initial landings of 15 September, the marines
who went ashore that day still met fierce resistance from
the Japanese defenders. The enemy, firmly entrenched in
caves and tunnels that honeycombed the hills overlooking the
beach and the strategic airfield, proved difficult to
dislodge.
Again, WARREN's beach party worked to keep the supplies
flowing from the ship to shore where they were needed,
providing the necessary supplies and ammunition for the
hard-pressed marines. Meanwhile, as the casualties began
coming back to the ship, the attack transport's medical
department worked diligently to save the wounded. Among the
first ships to discharge her cargo, WARREN remained offshore
in the ensuing days, becoming a floating hospital, as
doctors and corpsmen worked to sustain lives of men
evacuated from "the flaming hell of Peleliu."
The routine remained almost the same during the days
and nights that WARREN lay off the beachhead. Each night
there would be more burials at sea while the crew waited at
battle stations for what became almost a regular visit by
snooping Japanese planes. It was not until 22 September
that WARREN departed Pelelieu, bound for New Guinea.
She arrived at Hollandia on 25 September and stayed
there until 15 October, when she embarked the men and
equipment of the 52d Field Artillery, 24th Division
Artillery, 24th Division, USA. As part of TG 78.6, she
subsequently sailed for the Philippine Islands, as General
Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return--this time
well-backed by ships, men, and planes--to the islands from
which he had been so unceremoniously ejected in 1942.
On 22 October--two days after the initial landings on
Leyte commenced--WARREN discharged her cargo and disembarked
her troops before pulling out of the area that evening.
WARREN returned to Leyte on 14 November, this time with six
Red Cross nurses as passengers in addition to the 1st
Battalion, 127th Regiment, 32d Division, USA. The attack
transport's commanding officer later recounted: "We all
recalled that old superstition of the sea--'women on board
ship bring bad luck'--when a Jap torpedo plane came close to
hitting us with its deadly charge the afternoon before we
sailed into Leyte Gulf." WARREN relied on more than luck to
enable her to escape damage--it was the straight-shooting of
the after 5-inch gun that did the trick.
The enemy aircraft, a torpedo-carrying "Jill," bore in
at the attack transport while flak blossomed about it. Only
at the last instant a 5-inch shell blew the right wing off
the "Jill," sending the plane sliding past WARREN's fantail
and into the sea. Later that day, the attack transport
witnessed other air attacks in her vicinity and watched
while an Army Air Force Lockheed P-38 Lightning darted
daringly through the flak to explode a Japanese fighter in
mid-air with a burst from her machine guns.
Leyte was still a hot target, so WARREN's unloading was
efficient and rapid, discharging her cargo within a few
hours and getting underway that evening and then slipping
away in the darkness, bound for New Guinea. After stopping
at Manus, in the Admiralties, and Oro Bay, WARREN reached
Milne Bay, New Guinea, on 27 November. The attack transport
remained at Milne Bay through Christmas Day.
Underway on 26 December 1944, WARREN picked up her
convoy at Manus and then set out for Leyte again on
2 January 1945. Nine days later, she reached Lingayen Gulf
off Luzon where the ship lost the first members of her crew
to enemy action.
The first boat to leave the ship during the landings
carried half of WARREN's beach party, along with several
members of the Army shore party embarked. Due to the heavy
smoke screen and a faulty boat compass, the landing craft
landed on a Japanese held beach near the town of Damortis.
It was a fatal mistake. Before it could get underway, the
boat came under artillery, mortar, and machine gun fire,
wrecking the vessel, killing several men, and wounding
others. The remaining men abandoned the craft and began to
swim away from the beach, but the Japanese automatic weapons
opened up on them as they struggled to get out of range.
Only 17 men out of 28 survived the deadly hail of fire. It
was two hours before the survivors--many of them badly
wounded--were picked up.
By their firing on WARREN's boat, the Japanese gave
away positions that pre-attack bombardments and bombings had
not reached. Accordingly, destroyer RUSSELL (DD-414) and
two fast transports moved in close and joined Army heavy
artillery in bombarding the area until all opposition was
silenced completely.
On the 13th, a Japanese plane came out of the clouds
off the ship's port bow, apparently intent on crashing into
WARREN. Antiaircraft fire reached up and blossomed in the
sky around the intruder. While still several hundred yards
away from the attack transport, the plane leveled off,
swooped directly over WARREN and headed for attack transport
ZEILIN (APA-3).
As WARREN's men watched, horror-stricken, the drama
unfolded before their eyes, as the kamikaze plunged headlong
into ZEILIN. WARREN herself was raked by machine gun fire
from a "friendly" ship. Shells coming from the port quarter
pounded the attack transport's port side. One man of her
boat group, manning a gun in the cockpit in one of the
ship's landing craft, was killed outright. On the flying
bridge alone, there were 22 casualties.
WARREN completed her unloading on 15 January and
returned. Ultimately, the attack transport completed one
last voyage carrying troops, landing the men of the 1st
Battalion, 163d Regiment, 41st Division, USA at Mindoro in
the Philippines, after lifting them from Biak Island, New
Guinea. Later discharging all surplus supplies and all but
two of her landing craft, WARREN steamed eastward via
Eniwetok and stopped at Pearl Harbor on 18 March before
heading on toward the west coast of the United States on
20 March.
Reaching Portland, Oreg., on the 27th, WARREN underwent
an overhaul there, lasting into June of 1945. Subsequently
shifting to San Diego and then to San Francisco, the attack
transport departed the west coast on 24 June, bound for the
Marshalls, and arrived at Eniwetok on 6 July. From there,
she sailed via Ulithi to Okinawa and arrived off that island
on 23 July. Over the next few days, WARREN unloaded the men
and material of the 66th Construction Battalion ("Seabees"),
undergoing nearly constant air raid alerts as the enemy
maintained its pressure on the invading Americans.
From 1 to 3 August, WARREN steamed in circles off
Okinawa, riding on the outer edge of a typhoon, and sailed
for Ulithi on the 6th. Arriving at her destination soon
thereafter, WARREN lay at anchor in Ulithi lagoon when the
word of Japan's capitulation was received.
WARREN put into Cebu harbor to load units of the Army's
Americal Division; but, before she embarked those troops,
her orders were changed. Instead, she was to proceed to
Manila. There, she embarked the troops of the Army's 43d
Division and headed for Tokyo Bay, reaching that body of
water on 13 September, less than two weeks after the formal
surrender ceremony on board the battleship MISSOURI (BB-63).
The attack transport subsequently sailed for Okinawa,
where she embarked men of the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment,
1st Marine Division, and their equipment. She sailed from
Okinawan waters on 29 September and reached the mouth of the
Taku River--the approaches to the city of Tientsin,
China--on 2 October. She thus completed the second of her
occupation tasks, disembarking the marines over the ensuing
days.
WARREN departed Taku Bar on 11 October and reached
Manila a few days later. She then left Philippine waters
for a three-day voyage across the South China Sea to the
Gulf of Tonkin. Reaching Haiphong on 26 October, WARREN
embarked 1,800 troops of the Chinese 52d Army before she
departed that port, bound for Manchuria.
However, because of unsettled conditions between
Chinese Communist and Nationalist forces in Manchuria--a
part of the brewing civil war that would reach its climax in
the expulsion of the Nationalists from mainland China to
Formosa in 1949--WARREN sailed instead to Chinwangtao,
China, the seaport at the base of the Great Wall. There,
she debarked her passengers on 7 November. Two days later,
WARREN dropped down the coast for her second visit to Taku
and Tientsin.
On 16 November, WARREN sailed for Manila and
participation in the mass movement of men back to the
continental United States, Operation "Magic Carpet." After
lifting a contingent of "seabees" to Guam at the end of
November, WARREN streamed a "homeward bound" pennant on
1 December and set her course for the California coast.
Reaching San Francisco on 17 December, WARREN remained
at that west coast port until 14 January 1946, when she got
underway for New Orleans. Transiting the Panama Canal soon
thereafter, WARREN pushed on to the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico. Decommissioned on 14 March 1946, WARREN was struck
from the Navy list on 17 April 1946 and turned over to the
War Shipping Administration on 1 August of the same year at
Mobile, Ala.
Subsequently acquired by the Waterman Steamship Corp.,
the ship apparently kept her original name JEAN LAFITTE, for
only a short time. Renamed ARIZPA in 1947, the former
attack transport was converted for merchant service and
operated under the Waterman house flag until 1966, when she
appeared on contemporary merchant vessels registers as
operating with Litton Industries Leasing Corp. of
Wilmington, Del. ARIZPA operated with Litton until 1976,
when she was transferred to the Reynolds Leading Corp., also
of Wilmington. She remained with that firm until she
disappeared from merchant registers in 1979.
WARREN received four battle stars for World War II
service.
Transcribed by Michael Hansen
mhansen2@home.com