Four bombs, six kamikaze crashes, and continuous strafing in 80 minutes, and the USS Laffey (DD-724) stayed afloat. This episode is a biography of an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer, from her construction at Bath Iron Works in Maine and commissioning under Commander Frederick Becton, through D-Day at Utah Beach, the E-boat fight after the torpedoing of USS Nelson, and the dud shell that ricocheted into her hull off Cherbourg.

In the Pacific she screened fleets at Leyte, supported Marines at Iwo Jima, and carried intelligence to Admiral Nimitz before being posted to Radar Picket Station One off Okinawa on April 16, 1945. We break down how Japanese pilots exploited the SC radar's overhead blind spot, the avgas fires fought with fog nozzles under machine-gun fire, the flooded magazines, the rudder jammed at 26 degrees that trapped her in a cir ...