Destroyer Laffey
The first Laffey sunk at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the second Laffey was built by Bath Iron Works in Maine as a destroyer and commissioned February 8, 1944.  After bombarding German beach defenses at Normandy on D-Day she cruised to the Pacific to participate in the liberation of the Phillippines, the first carrier strikes on Toyko, and the Iowa Jima and Okinawa landing operations.

While escorting carriers off Okinawa in April 1945, the Laffey was assailed by 22 Japanese bombers and suicide kamikazes.  Five kamikazes and three bombs hit her killing 32 and wounding 71 of her 336 men.  They shot down eleven attackers and kept the Laffey afloat.  She was decommissioned in 1975 after bombarding the North Korean coast in 1953 and later operating in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

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