History has given us a good account of military incompetence with multiple examples, but the case of the American destroyer USS William D. Porter she is worthy of occupying a prominent position in the ranking of the greatest military blunders of all time. Wilfred Walter, the ship's captain, called it bad luck. The disastrous career of this ship began in November 1943 with her first mission. It was nothing less than a secret and transcendental task:to be part of the escort of the battleship USS Iowa and provide anti-submarine cover. The USS Iowa it would transport the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on his way to two important meetings in Cairo and Tehran with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.
USS Porter
Trouble began even before the destroyer left the dock to rejoin the rest of the convoy. And it is that someone forgot to completely raise the anchor, so that when she began to maneuver backwards she got hooked on a merchant ship docked parallel to him, tearing part of his hull and ripping off railings and lifeboats. The captain of our ship, Wilfred Walter , he looked at her watch and realized that she was running late to meet with the USS Iowa , so he addressed the merchant ship with a quick apology and sped away from that port. We can imagine the faces of those novice sailors as they remembered in astonishment what had happened on their first day of work:
They are the nerves of the first day. I'm sure things couldn't get worse... -They didn't imagine how wrong they were-
Twenty-four hours later, the Porter took her position along with the rest of the convoy, not without ceasing to be the target of ridicule and jokes of all kinds by the rest of the sailors. During its journey across the Atlantic the convoy would have to navigate waters infested with German submarines. One of the escort tasks of the Porter would be to, in the event of a submarine attack, drop depth charges against those German U-Boats. On November 12 a huge explosion rocked the waters. All the ships in the convoy touched down in combat and began executing evasion maneuvers, because it was evident that an enemy submarine was prowling there. Perhaps the Nazis had information about the secret mission and were trying to end the life of the president of the United States who was traveling on the USS Iowa... Minutes later a timid warning was received from our destroyer:there was no German submarine, but one of the depth charges had not been secured and had accidentally come loose from its deck, falling into the sea and causing the explosion. After this new incident, Admiral Ernest King , in command of the convoy, picked up the radio and ordered Captain Walter to stop the nonsense and start doing the right thing, so Walter made a firm commitment to "improve the performance of his ship «. But...
After what happened, and understandably, everyone in the convoy was nervous. Perhaps as a distraction measure and to calm things down, President Roosevelt himself proposed to the crew of the Iowa that they give him a demonstration of her anti-aircraft defenses. Said and done, several weather balloons were launched into the air and the Iowa's guns began to fire under the watchful and complacent eye of Roosevelt, who also watched as the air dragged some of those balloons in the direction of our destroyer. It was then that Captain Walter, anxious to make a good impression after all that had happened, thought this was a unique opportunity to rehabilitate his bad image, so he ordered his gunboats to fire on any balloons missed by Iowa's gunners.
Everything went well, and the Porter even hit several of those stray balloons. Captain Walter was grown:it was his time, he had to show off, they would finally stop being the mockery of the US Navy! , so he ordered his crew to carry out a mock torpedo attack (during the drills the detonators of the explosive charges that ejected the torpedoes from their tubes were removed, so the torpedoes were not actually launched into the water). But of course, to correctly calculate the times of the false launches they also needed a target to aim at, and the closest target was the USS Iowa (the president's).
"Fire the one! ' cried the Porter's deck officer, 'and the launch of the first torpedo was simulated. Checking the course that the false torpedo would have taken was ordered. "Fire the two! «, and again the same operation. “Fire the three!” …but then something different happened:a whistling sound was heard and the crew saw a torpedo come out of the tube. They had just launched a torpedo against the Iowa and against President Roosevelt. . Amid the chaos, Captain Walter radioed the Iowa to turn quickly to starboard. The turn was so sharp that the President's wheelchair—with Roosevelt sitting in it—nearly fell overboard. Finally, and just barely, the USS Iowa managed to avoid the torpedo.
"Sorry, it was us." Was all Captain Walter could say.
After almost hitting the battleship carrying President Roosevelt with a torpedo, Captain Walter's embarrassed pardon did not prevent his ship from being immediately ejected from the convoy, nor did it prevent him and his entire crew from being subjugated. to a Court Martial which, after due investigation, was shown to be a mistake. However, the sailor who forgot to remove the detonator from the third torpedo, named Dawson, was sentenced to 14 years hard labor, although Roosevelt granted him a presidential pardon. Obviously no one was going to let the Porter even come close to a high-level mission anymore, so it was sent to the only setting where our ship's presence really didn't bother anyone:the Aleutian Islands , In alaska. There are zero presidents to assassinate in Alaska.
During the first months of exile the dark shadow of his embarrassing past seemed to dissipate; everything was going well. But one day, one of his sailors came back on board drunk and decided to play with his heavy artillery guns, opening fire and hitting a shell in no less than the garden of the base commander's house, which at that time was celebrating a party with other officers and their wives. Luckily it only caused material damage, but what little reputation the Porter had left (if he had any left) was definitely devastated... just like the flowers in the garden of his commander's house. Serving on the USS William D. Porter was considered a punishment , but the end of the war was drawing near and all ships were needed on the front lines, so the Porter was reassigned to the Pacific:they would finally have a real chance at redemption... or maybe not.
Once on the Pacific Front, and despite the efforts of Commander Charles M. Keyes , who relieved the unfortunate Captain Walter in the direction of the ship, the reputation of our destroyer did not improve. On the contrary, she sank further when she accidentally riddled the destroyer USS Luce during the opening moments of the Battle of Okinawa. After this new incident the Porter served as support for the troops that tried to conquer that island; she successfully used her anti-submarine defenses and even shot down five Japanese planes. Sadly, it was reported shortly after that she had also mistakenly shot down three American planes. And so we come to the end of this story. On June 10, 1945, the Porter was attacked by a kamikaze plane. Our ship fought back and the Japanese plane was hit and shot down by anti-aircraft defenses, crashing into the ocean but not exploding. The crew was euphoric:it seemed that things were changing for the better . But they hadn't realized that the kamikaze plane had strangely continued her trajectory underwater in the direction of the destroyer, and just as she passed under her keel it exploded. Three hours later the USS William D. Porter sank forever in the ocean.
In other words, the most clumsy and incompetent ship of World War II, true to her disastrous and hilarious story, was accidentally sunk by a plane that had already crashed into the sea.
Source:Fire at will!:Amazing stories from the First and Second World Wars