On the same spring morning Bunker Hill had won its desperate struggle to survive, Hugh W. Hadley was on picket duty at Station 15. It was early when the kamikazes came. During that long, dreadful day more than 150 suicide planes assaulted Hugh W. Hadley and her sister ship USS Evans. In half an hour between 8:30 and 9:00, Hadley’s gunners knocked a dozen enemy planes from the sky.

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Then, at 9:05, a Yokusuka MXY7 "Baka"–in essence, a rocket-powered flying bomb–laden with explosives hit the little destroyer squarely. Hadley then took hits from a bomb and another kamikaze in rapid succession. A third kamikaze hit then seemed to seal her fate. Her skipper, Commander Baron J. Mullaney, ordered the ship abandoned. A skeleton crew remained aboard, and in a 30-minute miracle her wounds were temporarily patched. She had lost 28 men, and 67 of her crew were wounded, but the ultimate triumph of Hugh W. Hadley was a testament to the skill of the U.S. Navy crewmen.

Michael E. Haskew, Editor, World War II

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