Two crew members on the LCI(L)-600 were John Darrell Murphy and Tony Judkins, two best friends from Des Moines, Iowa who enlisted in the U.S. Navy December 10, 1943, and had their basic training near Chicago (Great Lakes) and were assigned to the East Coast and then to the newly-launched LCI(L)-600.
They went through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor and from there to Ulithi in the Caroline Island.
When it was sunk on January 12, 1945, it was on a mission to transfer a sailor from his ship to a hospital ship for medical treatment. The captain had ordered the crew to their battle stations. Tony Judkins, a cook, had his at the forward gun. His friend John Murphy manned a gun near the wheelhouse.
The official Navy report from the time lists an undetermined explosion followed, but recent research of Japanese war records shows that the Japanese submarine I-36 released four Kaiten Special Attack Submarines on Jan. 12, 1945 and one of them struck the LCI(L)-600.
More to Come. --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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