Eniwetok on the 10th for fuel-before arriving at Ulithi Atoll on 13 March. Leaving St. Louis at Ulithi, Ammen and Beale returned to sea on their way back to Leyte. Ammen and her colleague reached their destination on St. Patrick's Day 1945 and set about practicing for the invasion of the Ryukyu Islands. On 27 March, she stood out of Leyte Gulf with TF 55, the Southern Attack Force, bound for the assault on Okinawa. The task force arrived off the assault beaches early in the morning of 1 April-Easter Sunday, April Fool's Day, and L-day for the invasion of Okinawa. Ammen took up screening station in the transport area while the troops in the transports made final preparations. The first wave rolled ashore just after 0830. Ammen spent the first 10 days of April providing antisubmarine and antiaircraft protection for the troop and cargo ships unloading at Okinawa. On the 10th, the destroyer joined TG 51.2 in a voyage to the Marianas, arriving back in the Ryukyus on the 20th. Her return to Okinawa on 20 April marked the beginning of Ammens service on various of the radar picket stations established in the waters surrounding Okinawa to warn of approaching air raids and to help repulse them. Few tasks in World War II proved more arduous. It consisted of a grueling schedule of duty against fanatical and, more often than not, suicidal Japanese aviators. Ammen received her baptism in the Okinawa hail storm that night. After tracking her first bogey on radar picket duty just after midnight on the 21st, she failed to detect a second plane that flew in low and dropped a bomb fairly close aboard on her starboard quarter. The near miss exploded in the water, showering the warship with fragments. In that brief encounter, eight of her crew suffered wounds. Ammen remained on station until the evening of the 21st, when she was relieved by . The destroyer proceeded to the Hagushi beaches where she transferred the more serious of her casualties to before entering Kerama Retto for repairs and replenishment. Following patrol duty on the 26th and 27th, she took over support ship duties from on radar picket station number 1 north of Okinawa late in the morning of the 28th. That afternoon, an enemy raid-part of the fourth of the 10 major air assaults mounted by the Japanese in the effort to thwart