S1/c Warren Hunter Chapple USNR - Killed in Action April 16, 1945

[Bill Brouillard Jr.]

This is another Purple Heart that I have been the caretaker of for many years. S1/c Warren Hunter Chapple was born in Littleton Massachusetts in 1905 and was married in 1926 to a local girl Esther A. Tullson. Warren's son Kenneth was born in 1926 and daughter Mary was born in 1927. Warren was a weaver by trade and worked in various textile mills in the area. In November 1942 Kenneth who was 17 enlisted in the US Navy and spent the war years on the USS New Orleans. On July 3, 1944 Warren at age 39  enlists in the US Navy and following Boot Camp he was transferred on October 10, 1944 to the USS Pringle (DD477) with the rank of S1/c.

 

In November 1944, the Pringle supported the landings at Ormoc Bay, Leyte and conducted anti-submarine patrols and convoy escorts through the next month around the Philippine Islands. During one convoy escort to Mindoro in late December, the Pringle and her crew came under a massed Kamikaze attack, then a still relatively new tactic used by the Japanese. The Pringle was struck in her aft deckhouse by a Kamikaze, killing 11 of her crew and injuring 20 in addition to heavily damaging her Stern superstructure and gun mounts.

On the morning of April 16th, the Pringle's radar began picking up inbound aircraft, and the ship went to General Quarters with Warren Chapple at his battle station manning a 40mm gun. During the attack Pringle's crew shot down two Kamikaze planes before they could strike, and her escorts downed two more, but despite the significant amount of AA fire a single 'Val' Dive Bomber crashed into the Pringle's bridge.

 

The aircraft was destroyed by the impact with the Pringle's deck armor, showering the entire forward section of the ship with shrapnel and burning gasoline, but the plane's engine and it's bombload punched through the ships superstructure and main deck foreword of her #1 funnel and into her engine room where the bombs detonated, blowing out the hull and splitting the Destroyer's keel. As the action continued around her, the Pringle slowed to a halt and began to jackknife as she split amidships, heavily aflame. Her surviving crew abandoned ship at 1000hrs, and six minutes later, 258 survivors watched the USS Pringle slide beneath the surface. Sixty nine men were killed including S1/c Warren Chapple.

Kenneth Chapple survived the war and was discharged from the Navy in 1946 and passed in 2017.

[RAL]

A very interesting and sad tale, Bill.  

One does not usually picture a S1c as being 39 years old.  

 

Rich