then determined the fire to be on board a beached ship, and reduced speed to draw closer. Going alongside at 0600, Bebas sent over her fire and rescue party to fight gasoline fires raging in John H. Couch's holds two and three, but the flames had gained the upper hand. After recovering her men, the warship backed away and shelled the merchantman's number two hold, in an attempt to stop the fire or to sink the ship. Bebas was subsequently assigned "killer operations and local escort" duty under the auspices of the Commanding General, Fiji Island garrison, and carried out those tasks through January 1944. She then resumed convoy escort and patrol work in the Solomons, New Hebrides, and New Caledonia areas. In April 1944, the destroyer escort returned to the United States for an overhaul at Hunters Point. Clearing the west coast on 30 May, Bebas proceeded via Pearl Harbor to the Marshall Islands and reached Eniwetok on 27 June for convoy escort duty between Pearl Harbor and the Marshalls through the end of July. She then joined a "hunter-killer" task group formed around the escort carrier and provided support for the occupation of the Western Carolines and for the invasion of the Philippines at Leyte. Next, after performing screening and escort duties out of the Palaus and Ulithi late in October, Bebas underwent repairs at Espiritu Santo and then escorted shipping between the Palaus, Ulithi, and Eniwetok during the first three months of 1945. On 2 February 1945, Bebas cleared Eniwetok in company with the tankers and SS Egg Harbor, bound for Ulithi. On the second night out, Bebas and her two charges identified another convoy as friendly and then picked up a surface radar contact which a quick exchange of information showed to be "definitely suspicious." Radar plot indicated that the contact was crossing the track of both convoys. Bebas obtained permission from the convoy commodore to pursue the target and went to general quarters. The quarry disappeared, but was picked up on sonar—a definite submarine. Reducing speed to carry out a deliberate attack, Bebas stalked the submarine. Soon after her first "hedgehog" attack failed, she followed up with a second and heard one sharp and two muffled detonations soon thereafter. A third "hedgehog" pattern yielded negative results. An hour later, wood fragments, varying in length from two to ten feet, found on the water near the