Linebackers of the Sea

Book excerpt: Author Ray Lubeski served aboard the destroyer USS Harlan R. Dickson (DD-708) from 1955 to 1958. This history entitled Linebackers of the Sea covers American destroyers that fought in WWII and their heroic crewmen, including many who died in battle. The ships covered in this book generally duplicate those included in Robert Sinclair Parkin's 1995 history entitled Blood on the Sea: American Destroyers Lost in World War II. However, Lubeski does not clarify the exact scope of his book, since some destroyers lost in WWII (e.g., Hull (DD-350), Brownson (DD-518)) do not get included, and other destroyers that fought but did not sink (e.g., Hazelwood (DD-531), Murphy (DD-603)) are included. Most of the 75 destroyers and three other ships in this book have a separate chapter that covers each ship's history. The first half of the book has ships that saw action in the Atlantic, and the last half tells stories of ships in the Pacific. The author writes that he obtained most destroyer histories from Wikipedia with supplements for some ships based on interviews of survivors or their relatives. These firsthand accounts greatly enhance the histories, but only about a third of the destroyers included in the book have personal stories, and a few of these are quite short such as the following one from a survivor of USS Pringle (DD-477), which sank after being hit by a kamikaze aircraft carrying a bomb on April 16, 1945 (p. 151). (World Wide Web)