Japanese Hit This Destroyer 10 Times in 80 Minutes — What Happened Next Shocked Japan
Why Commander Frederick Becton drilled his destroyer crew until they hated him during WW2 — and what happened when 22 kamikaze pilots found his ship alone. This World War 2 story reveals how obsessive training met the ultimate test off Okinawa. April 16, 1945. Commander Frederick Julian Becton, captain of USS Laffey (DD-724), stood thirty miles north of Okinawa at Radar Picket Station Number One. Fifty kamikaze contacts inbound. He'd already lost two ships — watched the first USS Laffey burn off Guadalcanal in 1942, commanded USS Aaron Ward when she sank in 1943. So he trained his new crew like a madman. Three AM general quarters. Damage control drills until men collapsed. Gun crews loading blindfolded. Every regulation said this was excessive. His own officers called it punishment without purpose. They were all wrong. What Becton discovered that morning wasn't about following procedure. It was about muscle memory surviving when conscious thought failed. When an underwater explosion jammed Laffey's rudder at twenty-six degrees, the destroyer began circling uncontrollably. Twenty-two kamikaze aircraft dove from every direction. Standard destroyer doctrine said a ship in circles was a dead ship. But something Becton's obsessive training had created was about to prove everyone wrong. What happened in those eighty minutes would earn the ship a nickname the Japanese couldn't believe. The tactics proven off Okinawa that morning would influence US Navy damage control doctrine for decades. Whether they worked when it mattered most — you'll have to watch to find out. 🔔 Subscribe for more untold WW2 stories: / @wwii-records 👍 Like this video if you learned something new 💬 Comment below: What other WW2 tactics should we cover? #worldwar2 #ww2history #ww2 #wwii #ww2records
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