USS Gregory (DD-802) was a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy, the second Navy ship named for Rear Admiral Francis H. Gregory (1780–1866), who served from the War of 1812 to the Civil War. Gregory was launched by the Todd-Pacific Ship Building Co., Tacoma, Washington, 8 May 1944; sponsored by Miss Ann McGuigan, daughter of Captain McGuigan, superintendent of construction at Tacoma; and commissioned 29 July 1944, Commander Bruce McCandless commanding. 1944 – 1947 After shakedown along the West Coast, Gregory sailed for the Pacific with Hull (DD-802), reaching Pearl Harbor on 23 October 1944. Two months of local operations terminated in January 1945 as Gregory began practice for the impending invasion of Iwo Jima, next-to-last great campaign of the long and bloody Pacific war. Gregory sailed for the island 22 January, arriving off Iwo Jima via Saipan and Eniwetok on D-day, 19 February. For the next month she remained off the rocky coast under almost constant fire to screen transports and provide fire support for the invasion forces. Departing Iwo Jima 15 March, Gregory reached Saipan 4 days later to prepare for her role in the Okinawa campaign. Okinawa, last step prior to invasion of the Japanese home islands themselves, involved over a thousand ships and half a million men, under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, in the Pacific's war largest amphibious effort. Gregory joined this modern armada as it sailed from Saipan 27 March and was off Okinawa 1 April 1945 as the first waves of Marines waded ashore to bloody battle. Her task group, under Admiral Jerauld Wright, conducted a "demonstration landing" on the southeast coast, hoping to distract some Japanese attention from the actual invasion along Okinawa's western coast. This diversion complete, Gregory remained off Okinawa on patrol and radar picket station. On the afternoon of 8 April, Gregory’s lookouts spotted three Japanese planes coming in out of the setting sun, a favorite kamikaze device. One of the suicide craft, pieces of fuselage spinning wildly off as Gregory’s guns registered hit after hit, crashed into the destroyer amidships just above the waterline to port. Gregory shuddered under the impact and began to slow in the water as power failed in her forward engine and fire rooms flooded. The two other kamikazes mercilessly pressed on their attack, but the wounded DD downed both of them in blazing gunfire. Gregory then steamed to the anchorage at Kerama Retto