experienced her third near-fatal encounter of the day when a Mitsubishi Zero "Zeke" tried to bomb and crash into her in a single pass. Stanly'''s luck held as the bomb fell short and the plane overshot. Miraculously, her total casualties for all the day's action amounted to only three wounded sailors. Late that night, she entered "Busted Ship Bay" at Kerama Retto for repairs. After 10 days at Kerama, she returned to Okinawa for an anticlimactic period of radar picket duty. She departed with an Ulithi-bound convoy on 5 May and arrived in the lagoon four days later. The destroyer underwent further repairs and exited the lagoon on the 28th for gunnery exercises. During these drills, the barrel blew off her number 5 gun, killing two coxswains. Ironically, Stanlys only mortal casualties of the war occurred during training. The destroyer moved on to Apra Harbor, Guam, to repair the damaged gun mount. She arrived on 3 June and remained for over two and one-half months undergoing extended availability. She was still there when hostilities ended on 15 August. On the 20th, Stanly weighed anchor, stopped at Eniwetok and at Pearl Harbor, and entered Mare Island Naval Shipyard on the 30th. On 22 September, while still undergoing overhaul, Stanly was assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet. At the completion of overhaul, she steamed down the coast to San Diego to enter the Reserve Fleet, still in commission. Post-warStanly was decommissioned in October 1946 and shifted her berth to Long Beach, California (USA), in January 1947. She remained in the Pacific Reserve Fleet until 1 December 1970 when her name was struck from the Navy list. Her hulk was sold in February 1972 to Chou's Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., for scrapping. AwardsStanly'' earned nine battle stars for her World War II service, and the Presidential Unit Citation (US) as part of DesRon 23 the "Little Beavers", for its "extraordinary heroism in action against enemy Japanese forces during the Solomon Islands Campaign, from 1 November 1943, to 23 February 1944"—the only destroyer squadron so honored. Some live footage of her appears in the 1949 film Sands of Iwo Jima at 1hr 23min. References External links navsource.org: USS Stanly hazegray.org: USS Stanly World War II destroyers of the United States Ships built in Charleston, South Carolina 1942 ships Fletcher-class destroyers of the United States Navy