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SS American Legion


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Picked up a lot of photo negatives of the SS American Legion which landed the first troops during the invasion of Guadalcanal. Below is from wiki

 

Invasion of Guadalcanal
Three days before she was to sail from Wellington, she received an augmentation of her antiaircraft battery — a dozen Oerlikon 20 mm cannon. Under the direction of the ship's executive officer, Comdr. Ratcliffe C. Welles, and the gunnery officer, Lt. Comdr. Elmore S. Pettyjohn, USNR, American Legion's ship's force installed the battery on the ship's former sun deck in 48 hours, laboring continuously in inclement weather and having the battery in firing order by the time the ship upped-anchor and sailed on 18 July. Rendezvousing with Task Force 44 (TF-44) on the following day, the transport, with elements of the 5th Marine Regiment embarked, proceeded to Koro Island, in the Fiji Islands, for rehearsals for Operation Watchtower. During that training and practice evolution, the ship embarked war correspondent Richard Tregaskis, whose experiences would later be chronicled in the book, Guadalcanal Diary.[4]
Assigned to Task Group "X-ray", ten attack transports and five attack cargo ships, American Legion proceeded thence to the Solomon Islands. On the morning of 7 August 1942, she went to general quarters at 05:45 and manned "ship to shore" stations fifteen minutes later. At 06:14, attending cruisers and destroyers opened fire on the beachheads, softening up the beaches for the impending landing. American Legion and USS Fuller soon landed the first troops to go ashore on Guadalcanal.[4]
That afternoon, while the landings proceeded apace, American Legion joined in the antiaircraft barrage that repelled the initial Japanese air attacks on the invasion fleet, as she did the next day. Discharging cargo at "Red" Beach on the morning of 8 August, the transport got underway as a wave of Japanese twin-engined bombers came after the shipping off Guadalcanal. At noon, American Legion sighted the incoming planes, which dropped their bombs near the supporting cruisers and destroyers before heading toward the amphibious ships.[4]
During the action, one Mitsubishi G4M1 Type 97 land attack plane ("Betty") passed from starboard to port directly over American Legion's stern, at 100 feet (30 m). The after 20-millimeter guns and .50-caliber machine guns — as well as the larger 3-inch (76 mm) guns — all opened up in a deadly fusillade, while men on board the transport could see the Japanese aircrew manning their own machine guns to sweep the decks with gunfire. Some of this return fire fatally wounded Seaman 1st Class Charles Kaplan. Riddled from practically all quarters, the "Betty" crashed into the water close aboard on the port quarter.[4]
Rescue mission
American Legion, still lay off "Red" Beach in the predawn hours of the 9th, too, and began observing heavy gunfire commencing at 01:48 to the northwestward. Lookouts also saw flares and tracers, with parachute flares brightly lighting up the area to the northeastward. Transport Group "X-ray" ceased discharging cargo and darkened ship, remaining shut down for the rest of the night, crews at general quarters. American Legion's men did not know it at the time, but they were witnessing the disastrous Battle of Savo Island, in which three American heavy cruisers were sunk, one American heavy cruiser damaged and an Australian heavy cruiser sunk.[4]
The next morning, the transport began embarking survivors from the sunken heavy cruiser USS Quincy and from the destroyer USS Ellet, completing the transfer by 14:00. Within a half-hour, American Legion got underway, the majority of her cargo having been unloaded by her busy boat crews who had labored almost continuously since the 7th with almost no sleep and subsisting only on sandwiches and coffee. She left behind one officer and 19 enlisted men as part of the burgeoning naval base at Guadalcanal, having transferred them on the evening of the 8th.[4]
American Legion, with the rest of the amphibious ships of TF 62, then proceeded to Nouméa, New Caledonia, which she reached on 13 August. Soon afterwards she transferred her Quincy survivors to the auxiliary USS Argonne and the transport USS Wharton.[4]

 

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