| DD405 | ...the greatest greyhounds of the fleet | DD782 |
With much sadness, your RRA officers must announce that due to personal reasons,
Roy McKinney has resigned as President of the ROWAN Reunion Association. Roy has done an outstanding job running this association for the past five years and his hard work and dedication will be missed by all. We wish him well and a big "thanks" for his contributions. We hope to see him at our future reunions. BZ ROY.
Bob Caulk has accepted the appointment of Acting President until a new President is elected at the September reunion.
Bob will be your official greeter, host, chairman of the business meeting and master of Ceremonies.
Roy was also Editor of THE ROWAN. Our Historian, Larry Sprague, has accepted the appointment of Acting Editor until the business meeting. That is why you may notice some subtle differences in the format of the newsletter.
Leo sent me the microfilm that he and George had obtained from the government and he is right. it is almost illegible. Paper copies aren't legible at all but I am able to view it on screen and copy the readable information off by hand. It starts with the commissioning crew on 31 March 1945. This data will be added to the ROWAN history I am creating. Hope to have the complete of plank owners done by September so I can take it to Diego.
While visiting Laughlin, Nevada, as usual I was wearing my ROWAN ball cap and a fellow saw it and stopped me to ask about it. He had served on the USS Plunkett(DD431), a Gleaves class, during WWII. He was familiar with the 405 and said she had a god reputation in the fleet. He recalled when she was sunk and then shortly afterwards the USS Bristol,which had picked up ROWAN survivors and the USS Buck were both lost. While we were chatting, another fellow who had seen my cap walked up and introduces himself as an old USS Wainwright (DD419,Sims class) veteran. The Wainwright was with the ROWAN during the Convoy PQ-17 disaster. We had quite an interesting discussion for about an hour and they both had nothing but good things to say about the 405. The Plunkett man's name was Bob Meade and the Wainwright man was Les Grimm from Piedmont, Ohio. I think they were both Torpedomen and had never met before. Small world.
Did you see the newspaper article about the Navy issuing orders to replace urinals on the surface fleet with a "gender neutral" commode called the "Stainless Sanitary Space System"? True story. It said, "From an engineering perspective, urinals are, in fact, an on-board disaster. Because of a design that uses a low water flow, urinals on ships generate more odors than standard toilets. They have a greater "overspray" problem that corrodes flooring and walls." Admiral Rowan, where are you when we need you?
(from "History of the US Navy", Robert W. Love, page 369)
"...the Chinese apparently believed that Eisenhower's failure to launch an immediate offensive into North Korea indicated his determination to continue Truman's stalemate strategy and seek a negotiated truce. With this in mind, they launched their own offensive in the spring of 1953 to gain as much territory as possible before the war ended. The Soviets had provided their allies with hundreds of MIG fighters, and in March, General Clark was alerted to the upcoming offensive by their renewed activity over North Korea. The Communists also strengthened their defenses on North Korea's East Coast, installing fire control radars and anchored ranging buoys to improve their coastal defense gunfire. Fearing that the enemy was about to attack the islands off Wonsan, General Clark reinforced the blockade force and flung air strikes against communist concentrations on the peninsula. On 5 May 1953, the battleship New Jersey fired 115 rounds into the Hodo Pando complex, silencing these guns until the end of the month, After renewed enemy activity, the area was saturated on 17 June by the destroyers Irwin, Rowan, and Henderson, but the opposing batteries continued to return fire. A gunfire group consisting of the New Jersey and the cruisersBremerton and Manchester returned to the waters off Hodo Pando on 11 July, fired 164 rounds over forty-eight hours, and finally silenced their opponents for the rest of the war. The East Coast Bombardment Force also increased its shelling of inshore targets, while continuing the frustrating campaign against the coastal railroads."