while navigating in the gale. Ordered to assist the stricken Hopkins, Hobson skillfully and carefully navigated through the perilous, mined area in gale-force wind and sea, and made repeated attempts to land alongside the liberty ship to offload her troops, although each time Hobson was forced to back off as the ships pounded heavily in the extreme weather. Through Lt. Cdr. Loveland's skillful ship-handling and that of his deck crew, the damage to Hobson was superficial. Hobson remained close aboard the stricken cargo ship until daylight when safe water was finally reached, the ships having crossed thirteen and one-half miles of unswept water. Hobson remained on scene over the next twenty-four hours, and until S.S. Johns Hopkins was successfully returned to port by a Navy fleet tugboat with no loss of life or injury to her personnel or troops. Service as a destroyer- minesweeper In October 1944, with the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters secured, all eight surviving destroyers of DesRon 10 returned to various east coast navy yards where over a period of approximately six weeks, they had their No. 4 5-inch guns replaced with gear for sweeping acoustic mines. On 15 November they were reclassified as destroyer-minesweepers (DMS 19–26). Hobson sailed for the United States on 25 October and arrived at Charleston via Bermuda on 10 November 1944. There she entered the Naval Shipyard and was converted to destroyer-minesweeper and commissioned DMS-26 on 15 November 1944, Lt. Cmdr. Joseph I. Manning, commanding. Throughout the month of December, she underwent trials and shakedown training off Charleston and Norfolk. In January 1945, the eight newly converted destroyer-minesweepers made their way from their conversion shipyards to the Pacific as the core of the 12-ship Mine Squadron (MinRon) 20, with flag on the Ellyson. Hobson and several others in the squadron sailed on 4 January 1945 via the Panama Canal, with stops at San Diego for training and inspection, and then stood out from San Francisco for Hawaii, arriving at Pearl Harbor on 11 February 1945. Hobson was part of Mine Division (MinDiv) 58, along with Forrest (pennant), Fitch and Macomb. At Hawaii, she underwent further mine warfare training before sailing on 24 February 1945 with eight of the twelve ships of MinRon 20 as Task Unit 18.2.3 for Ulithi via Eniwetok and a role in the history of the last and greatest of the Pacific amphibious operations, Operation Iceberg, the assault on