Get to know the heroic WWII namesake of the Navy’s newest ship

The U.S. Navy commissioned its latest ship, the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock Richard M. McCool, in a Sept. 7 ceremony at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.

With the vessel’s crew and several other relations of the ship’s namesake in attendance, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro lauded the bravery of McCool and recommended the on-hand “sailors and Marines [for bringing] this unimaginable warship to life in service to our nation.”

“Capt. McCool’s management within the face of grave hazard and his acts of heroism to avoid wasting the crew and the ship our nation entrusted to him are certainly an instance for all all through,” Del Toro stated.

It was through the bitter World Battle II Battle of Okinawa that the braveness of Richard McCool can be on full show.

Aptly dubbed the “Storm of Metal,” the operation was launched to wrest the island from Japanese management, sever the final southwest provide line to mainland Japan and open to island to be used by American medium bombers.

On April 1, 1945, roughly 60,000 U.S. Marines and troopers of the U.S. Tenth Military waded ashore from touchdown craft onto the seashores of Okinawa, Japan, in what can be the most important amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater.

Although the American landings have been at first largely unopposed, the fights that ensued would show to be a number of the warfare’s most horrific.

“By the point Okinawa was secured by American forces on June 22, 1945, the US had sustained over 49,000 casualties, together with greater than 12,500 males killed or lacking,” in response to the Nationwide WWII Museum.

“Okinawans caught within the combating suffered vastly, with an estimate as excessive as 150,000 civilians killed. Of the Japanese defending the island, an estimated 110,000 died.”

Significantly brutal through the chaos on Okinawa have been the seemingly interminable assaults by Japanese kamikaze pilots, who, because of the sheer dimension of the U.S. amphibious assault, had their choose of Navy ships sitting off the island’s coast.

On April 6, a complete of 34 U.S. Navy ships off Okinawa have been hit by kamikazes within the first of 10 main assaults. The incessant onslaught lasted 5 hours and featured a staggering 355 kamikazes and greater than 300 fighter escorts.

To stifle the continued assaults, the U.S. encircled the island with 15 radar picket stations. Every station featured not less than three radar-equipped destroyers, which may detect imminent assaults, and 4 LCS ships that will act because the destroyers’ guards and shoot down incoming planes.

On Might 10, 23-year-old Lt. Richard Miles McCool Jr., then in control of LCS-122, settled in off the coast of Okinawa.

“Arrival in Okinawa was very heat, with air raids each few hours of each night time, and generally within the day,” McCool wrote in his ship’s historical past log. “The task consisted of anti-suicide boat patrol and radar picket patrol. … On the twenty ninth of Might [LCS-122] shot down one enemy plane and was given credit score for an help on one other.”

Precisely one month after arriving at Okinawa, McCool and the crew of LCS 122 have been on picket responsibility when the close by destroyer USS William D. Porter — the identical “Willie D” that nearly killed President Franklin D. Roosevelt — was severely broken in a kamikaze assault.

The destroyer initially evaded the Japanese “Val” dive bomber, however the Willie D’s string of unhealthy luck would quickly proceed.

Although the Val appeared to splash harmlessly close by, the submerged plane ended up beneath the destroyer and promptly exploded.

“The ship leapt out of the water and fell again; her energy out, steam strains burst, and fires breaking out,” in response to the Nationwide WWII Museum. “Though the ship’s crew fought valiantly after three hours, the commanding officer ordered the ship deserted. Because the order got here down, slightly below 300 crew needed to evacuate. Performing her responsibility as a ‘pallbearer,’ LCS-122, with McCool in command, labored to rescue the ship’s crew. Extremely, there have been no fatalities.”

The next day, nevertheless, McCool and his crew weren’t so fortunate.

As he recalled in an interview with the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the LCS ships have been sitting in a diamond formation to offer a display screen for the destroyers when three Japanese Val dive bombers have been noticed closing in quick.

The ship’s anti-aircraft weapons erupted as the primary kamikaze got here in low — so low, in actual fact, that McCool “was afraid that the folks within the 40mm gun mount may need been hit by the wheels,” he recalled.

The shot-up plane “handed roughly eight toes above the ahead finish of the deck home and splashed on the port facet no more than 100 yards away,” the after-action report said.

“Consideration and all fireplace was instantly shifted to the 2 remaining oncoming planes,” the report added — the second of which didn’t miss.

As sailors tore into the remaining bombers with a wall of gunfire, the second Val, smoking after hits by one of many ship’s 20mm weapons, slammed into the vessel’s starboard facet on the base of the conning tower.

“Hearth instantly broke out all through the amidships part of the ship, whereas pyrotechnic and 20mm ammunition began exploding,” the after-action report said. “A bomb carried by the airplane handed by the ship, rising on the port facet. It exploded because it hit the water, showering the port facet with shrapnel.”

“I don’t actually bear in mind a lot of what was occurring after that,” McCool recalled. “After I lastly got here to, I used to be the one particular person there within the conning tower. … I shimmied over the port facet of the conning tower and dropped onto the deck from there.”

Peppered with shrapnel and struggling extreme burns, McCool refused medical therapy and rallied his males to combat the flames shortly engulfing the vessel.

McCool “proceeded to the rescue of a number of trapped in a blazing compartment, subsequently carrying one man to security regardless of the excruciating ache of extra extreme burns,” his Medal of Honor quotation reads. “Unmindful of all private hazard, he continued his efforts with out respite till support arrived from different ships and he was evacuated.”

For his actions, McCool was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry S. Truman in December 1945.

His full Medal of Honor quotation may be discovered right here.

McCool remained within the Navy till 1974, when he retired after 30 years of service on the rank of captain.

Richard M. McCool handed away on the age of 86 on March 5, 2008, in Bremerton, Washington, together with his spouse and youngsters at his bedside.

He’s buried on the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland.