Last Battle of the USS Cassin Young-- Part 3

When a bomb sank the aircraft carrier USS Princeton in the Philippines in October 1944, the Cassin Young rescued 120 men.

In the spring of 1945, the ship shot down five kamikazes off Okinawa, but a sixth one struck by the foremast, killing1 and wounding 59.  In July 1945, just two weeks before the Japanese surrender, a kamikaze hit the main deck near the forward smokestack, killing 22 and wounding 45.  The crew restored power to one engine, contained the fire and the Cassin Young was underway twenty minutes later.

It was decommissioned in 1960 and spent nearly twenty years mothballed in Norfolk Navy Yard until the Navy agreed to loan it to the National Park service for display in Boston.  Today it is a second attraction to the USS Constitution, but a tribute to the Charlestown Navy Yard which had 52,000 workers during World War II.

The ship opened to visitors in 1978.  In 2009, the Cassin Young drew 203,000 visitors.

Not Bad for a Destroyer.  --GreGen