What I like is the destroyer that brought the Japanese up alongside the Missouri. The USS Buchanan. The ships named Buchanan all have interesting histories as well. The DD Buchanan in WWII was the 2nd of three. It's claim to fame would be that of transporting the Japanese, which I was unaware of until I saw the clip.
The first Buchanan WWI was "lent" to the British at the outset of WWII and they proceeded to turn it into a giant ramming bomb with which to destroy the drydock doors at St Nazaire France. If you've never read the story of the raid on St Nazaire I highly recommend it. Those guys had testicles that clanked when they walked.
The raid put the only drydock big enough in Europe to handle the German battleships out of commission for the duration of the war. This led to the Germans tending to want to keep their battleships up north where the only other drydock big enough to handle them was located. Smart move on the Brits part. Some of the raid party were Scots and they went in wearing kilts.
Anyhoo, I served on the third Buchanan. It's main claim to fame would be that it was one of the ships involved in a little skirmish called the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. It was used as a target quite a few years ago now and it took several rockets and a 2000 lb laser guided bomb and remained afloat. The torpedo that was supposed to take it out failed to detonate. This was on June 13th. On the 14th they sent a demo crew on board and scuttled it with explosives. Strangely enough her hull number was 14, so there are those that believe she simply refused to go down on the 13th because she prefered the 14th.
The Buchanan line was named after a Civil War Confederate officer. It was the only surface ship in the US Navy named after a Confederate. Last I heard, and due of course to the art of being politically correct, there are no plans to name another ship Buchanan.
And you're welcome, I posted them cause I thought they was neat.
