USS Hammann

The Story of USS Hammann

She was a small ship with a large heart, a destroyer who met her end while trying to save a stricken giant. USS Hammann was a Sims-class destroyer — fast, nimble and lightly built — the kind of escort that screened the great carriers and battleships through the dangerous waters of the early Pacific War. Her name is forever bound to one of the most famous ships she tried to save: the carrier USS Yorktown, at the decisive Battle of Midway. At Midway, in June 1942 — the clash that broke the back of the Japanese carrier fleet — Yorktown had been bombed and torpedoed and left dead in the water, abandoned and listing heavily, seemingly finished. But the tough old carrier stubbornly refused to sink, riding the swells through the night. Hopeful that she could yet be saved and towed home, the Americans returned to her, and a salvage party went back aboard to fight the flooding and bring her back to life. Hammann came alongside the wounded carrier, lashed herself to Yorktown's side, and supplied power, pumps, water and support to the desperate salvage effort, the little destroyer pressed right up against the towering hull of the ship she was trying to save. Then, on the afternoon of 6 June 1942, disaster struck. The Japanese submarine I-168 had stalked the crippled carrier through the day and slipped undetected through the thin screen of escorts. It fired a spread of torpedoes. One or more passed beneath Hammann and struck Yorktown — but one struck the little destroyer squarely amidships. Hammann was torn nearly in two and sank in just a few minutes. And as she went down, the tragedy deepened: her own depth charges, set for action, detonated in the depths beneath the men struggling in the water, and the underwater shock killed many who had survived the sinking itself. Around eighty of her sailors died — more, it is believed, from the blast of her own charges than from the torpedo that sank her. It was a cruel, compounding catastrophe. Yorktown finally rolled over and sank the following morning, despite everything. Hammann had given herself entirely in the attempt to save the carrier, going down at the larger ship's side in the act of trying to bring her home. She is remembered as a destroyer who died doing her duty — faithful to the last to the ship she was fighting to save, a small escort whose loss is inseparable from the larger drama of Midway. To reconstruct USS Hammann is to honour that loyalty and sacrifice — the little destroyer lashed alongside the wounded Yorktown, pouring her strength into a ship far larger than herself, and dying in the attempt. Her story is a reminder that the great battles were won not only by the famous carriers and battleships, but by the small ships and the men who gave everything in their service, and whose courage and sacrifice deserve to be remembered alongside the giants.