Show Notes
On the foggy, moonless night of September 8, 1923, fourteen destroyers of Destroyer Squadron Eleven were running south from San Francisco to San Diego at 20 knots, a speed run meant to test the Navy's newest ships and their crews. Less than five minutes after a fatal turn to port, seven of them were wrecked on the rocks of Honda Point, California, in what remains the largest peacetime loss of U.S. Navy vessels in history.
23 US Navy servicemen lost their lives. They were:
From USS Young
Buchan, Ralph Kenneth
Duncan, Earl
Grady, Everett William
Harrison, Earnest Carl
Jones Ernest
Kirby, Edward Clinton
Kirk, Henry Thompson
Martin, James Tidwell
Morris, Wade Hampton
Overshiner, Gordon Jerome
Reddoch, Clitus Allen
Rogers, Leo Floyd
Salzer, Charles Alfred
Skipper, Hugh Woodfan
Slimak, Joseph John
Taylor, Max H.
Torres, Enrique
Van Schaack, Vern Russell
Young, John
Zakrzewski, August
USS Delphy
Conway, James Wheaton H.
Dalida, Sofronio
Pearson, James Watson
Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at shipwrecksandseadogs.com.
Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at seansigfried.com.
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