USS JARVIS
9 AUGUST 1942
USS JARVIS
The morning of August 7th, 1942, saw the US Marines make their first landings on Japanese held Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain. The enemy counter attacked with airstrikes, the second coming around noon on the 8th. USS JARVIS (DD-393) was screening the disembarking transports at that moment. American escorts splashed 17 of the 26 attacking twin engine torpedo planes, but one transport, GEORGE F. ELLIOTT (AP-13), was hit and destroyed. JARVIS too, took a torpedo in her starboard fireroom that tore a 50-foot gash in her hull. The destroyer went dead in the water as fires spread. To lighten his listing destroyer, skipper LCDR W.W. Graham ordered all topside equipment jettisoned. Life rafts, stores, and all manner of loose gear went over the side in a successful effort to keep her afloat. The fires were soon stemmed, and JARVIS was towed across the sound to shallow water near Tulagi.
Here damage control parties were able to refire one boiler, and an integrity survey showed JARVIS to be sufficiently seaworthy to attempt Efate, New Hebrides, for repairs. Unfortunately, her radio had been knocked out in the attack, and Graham apparently never heard this order. Instead, unnoticed by any other American ships, JARVIS crept out of the anchorage around midnight 8-9 August in an attempt to reach the tender DOBBINS (AD-3) 1600 miles to the south in Sydney, Australia.
This same night a strong night-fighting Japanese surface force moved down “the Slot” to engage the American landings. By chance, at 0134 JARVIS passed only 3000 yards to the north of these blacked-out Japanese cruisers. The enemy mistook her for an Australian cruiser, and in a brief burst the destroyer YUNAGI fired a few torpedoes without effect. But Japanese interests lay in bigger game. Without a radio, Graham could send no warning.
About 0325 JARVIS passed the American picket destroyer BLUE (DD-387) but refused an offer of aid. In the darkness to the south, hostile warships battered each other in one of the American Navy’s most stunning defeats at the battle of Savo Island; while an uninformed Graham continued his struggle toward Australia. JARVIS was spotted at daybreak by a scout plane from SARATOGA (CV-2) barely making 8 knots, trailing oil, and down by the bows. Neither the destroyer nor any of her 248-man crew were ever seen again.
Japanese records examined after the war revealed that on this day JARVIS had also been spotted by enemy scouts. Thirty-one planes had been dispatched from Rabaul to sink an “escaping cruiser.” JARVIS was broken in two by torpedo hits and sunk at 1300. She could send no distress call, and Graham had jettisoned the life rafts the previous day.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 14 AUG 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 505.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 5 The Struggle for Guadalcanal. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1948, pp. 16, 36, 52, 55, 63.
Parkin, Robert Sinclair. Blood on the Sea: American Destroyers Lost in World War II. New York, NY: Sarpedon, 1995, pp. 70-73.
Roscoe, Theodore. United States Destroyer Operations in World War II. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, pp. 173-74.
Sweetman, Jack. American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2nd ed. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 169-70.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: USS JARVIS was the second of only two US Navy warships to be lost with all hands in WWII. The first was PILLSBURY (DD-227), attacked and sunk in the South China Sea on 2 March 1942 as our Asiatic Fleet was overwhelmed by Japanese forces at the start of WWII.
Midshipman James C. Jarvis was a 13-year-old officer candidate who geve his life in 1800 in the Quasi-War with France. USS GEORGE F. ELLIOTT (AP-13, AP-105) remember MGEN George Elliott, (1846-1931), a Spanish-American War veteran and the 10th Commandant of the US Marine Corps from 1903-10. DOBBIN (AD-3), remembers James Cochrane Dobbin, Secretary of the Navy in the 1850s under President Franklin Pierce. USS BLUE (DD-387) is named for RADM Victor Blue, (1865-1928), also a Spanish-American War veteran and later Chief of the Bureau of Navigation.
