USS Leutze (DD-481) was a in the United States Navy during World War II. She was named for Admiral Eugene H. C. Leutze (1847–1931). Leutze was laid down on 3 June 1941 by Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington and launched 29 October 1942; sponsored by Miss Caroline Rowcliffe, granddaughter of Rear Adm. E. H. C. Leutze, daughter of Rear Adm. Gilbert Jonathan Rowcliff. The ship was commissioned 4 March 1944. History Leutze completed the necessary performance trials and continued the training of her crew on escort missions to Pearl Harbor and Eniwetok during June and July 1944. On 2 August she departed Seattle for the war zone a sleek new destroyer and returned 1 year and 1 day later a battered veteran about to be scrapped. In this short interval she had played a part in five invasions and a major naval battle before a kamikaze ended her fighting days. After departing Seattle, Washington, the destroyer rehearsed in the Hawaiian and Solomon Islands for the invasion of the Palaus. Arriving off Peleliu 12 September (D-Day-3), Leutze bombarded enemy positions ashore and suffered her first casualty when shrapnel from an enemy shell sprayed the ship. Withdrawn on 24 September, she joined Task Group 77.2 (TG 77.2) at Manus Island, Admiralties, for the invasion of the strategically important Philippines. Action off Leyte began 18 October with little serious opposition to the preinvasion bombardment but rose to a crescendo climax with the Battle of Leyte Gulf 24 and 25 October. Leutze, first firing on an enemy plane two days earlier, suffered 11 casualties on the morning of the 24th when hit during an enemy bombing and strafing run. That night in Surigao Straits with Rear Adm. Jesse B. Oldendorf’s 7th Fleet support ships, she attacked with torpedoes the ships of Japan’s Southern Force under Adm. Shoji Nishimura. During this phase of the last major battle between surface ships, Nishimura lost two battleships and three destroyers in a vain attempt to force his way through the Straits and attack the American invasion fleet. Thereafter with its surface fleet decimated, Japan again resorted to airstrikes. Although Leutze emerged unscratched, on a single day 1 November, four sister ships of her screen were crashed by suicide planes. After a period of tender overhaul, she steamed out of Kossol Roads 1 January 1945 for the invasion of Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, Philippines. En route the ship received