Perhaps no other ship in the US navy can ever surpass the tragicomic history of the William D. Porter and its crew. Its unenviable resume included wrecking a sister ship with its anchor, friendly-firing another one, and accidentally shooting a live round into a base commander’s front yard. However, all these incidents paled in comparison to the time the William D. Porter almost assassinated the president of the United States.
In 1943, the ship, along with three other destroyers, had been assigned to guard the USS Iowa, which carried FDR and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull en route to the Tehran and Cairo Conference. During the trip, the William D. Porter caused a major scare when one of its depth charges accidentally fell to the water and exploded, causing the rest of the convoy to think U-boats had found them.
After that incident, the crew—in a training exercise—inadvertently launched an armed torpedo right at the USS Iowa. The big ship managed to dodge it just in the nick of time.
Although the William D. Porter did finally serve with distinction during the Philippine and Okinawa campaigns, the ship met a demise as bizarre as its mishaps. On June 10, 1945, a kamikaze plane it shot down dove underwater and exploded, sinking the vessel. Miraculously, all the crewmembers survived.
