Robert John Maitre enlists in the United States Navy only one month after his 17th birthday.  His father Frank signs as his guardian, officially giving Robert his consent to join the Navy. He is listed as being 5’8″, 132 pounds with auburn hair and blue eyes. His first rank is Apprentice Seaman.

Robert is sent to the Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island to begin Naval Basic Training.

Robert completes his basic training at Newport NTS and is now officially ready to join the war.

After graduation, Robert gets seven days leave to visit his family one more time before joining his future ship.  He heads to Yonkers, NY as a proud member of the United States Navy.  After seven days of leave, he is sent to Boston to await orders and to be told what ship he will be assigned to.

In Boston, Robert is assigned to the USS Champlin(DD-601).  On September 12th, 1942, he boards the USS Champlin for the first time.  The Champlin is a brand new ship and Robert is a member of the very first crew and present at her commissioning.

The USS Champlin spends the months of October and November 1942 doing drills and making training runs up and down the United States’s east coast as they prepare for their upcoming missions abroad.

The USS Champlin leads a convoy to Naval Station Argentia in Newfoundland.

Robert receives his first promotion of the war when he is promoted from Apprentice Seaman(AR) to Seaman 2nd Class (S2c)

The Champlin escorts the USS Indiana and the USS Columbia to the Panama Canal.

The USS Champlin leaves New York with a task force of 38 total ships and are now officially a part of the overseas American forces of WWII.

After a 20 day journey, the Champlin arrives in Casablanca, Morocco.  After a couple of days of patrolling off the coast, the Champlin spends three weeks moored in port.  

The crew witnesses a German air raid on New Year’s Eve, but no planes come within firing range of the Champlin.  The air raid consisted of 8-10 German planes.  The Champlin would remain moored in the harbor of Casablanca for the next three weeks.

From January 19th to February 7th 1943, the Champlin escorts a slow convoy from Casablanca to New York.

The USS Champlin joins two other ships and undergoes anti-submarine training exercises off the coast of New London, Connecticut.

The Champlin begins its second slow convoy to the war zone, this time escorting convoy USG G from New York to Casablanca.  Three days into the voyage, two ships accidentally collide and both sink.  76 survivors are rescued.

At 21:10, the convoy makes contact with German U-Boat #130 and the Champlin begins her attack, dropping depth charges on the submarine.  The submarine was forced to the surface at 21:55, and the Champlin begins attacking with her 20mm guns.  Over the next couple of hours, the Champlin continued to attack, with a final blow being delivered with a 9 deep charge pattern attack at 01:56 on March 14.  The USS Champlin is given credit..Read More

The convoy has five ships hit by torpedos during the next couple of days.  The USS Champlin picks up survivors from the SS Molly Pitcher, a Liberty ship that was torpedoed and damaged by German U-boat U-167 about 500 nautical miles west of Lisbon. The Molly Pitcher was abandoned and finally sunk the next day by German U-boat U-521.

From March 24th to April 16th, the Champlin escorts a convoy from Casablanca back to Boston Navy Yard.

From May 1st to May 26th, the Champlin escorts LST’s from Brooklyn to Oran, stopping for five days in Bermuda (May 5-9).  The crew gets to relax all five days with very little activity or duty.  They will soon be escorting thousands of troops to North Africa for war.  

The trip from Bermuda takes 17 days, and the convoy of LST’s arrives in Oran, Algeria to help support the American troops fighting in North Africa.

The Champlin heads to Gibraltar to escort a convoy back to Oran.  The convoy consisted of slow ships from the United Kingdom headed to North Africa in support of the Allies.  The crew is showing a bit of fatigue, as evident on the ship’s war diary, where the ship’s Lieutenant mistakenly writes the date as May 2nd instead of June 2nd (see image).

A secret mailgram is received by the officers of the Champlin alerting them that they will be participating in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.

Operation Husky begins on July 10th with an Allied army amphibious landing.  The USS Champlin participates in the battle, acting as a screen and in firing support of the invading troops on Beach Yellow Two.  The Champlin begins firing on the beaches at 04:00 on July 10th, firing 32 rounds.  They are attacked by enemy planes at 05:13 and successfully fight them off with 40mm and 20mm guns for the next hour, watching one of..Read More

The Champlin sees action on the second day of the invasion when they are attacked by a German Focke-Wulf 190 (Fw 190), but the plane escapes with no damage. Robert and the crew of the Champlin then witness nearby LST ships misidentify an American plane for an enemy plane and watch them shoot it down.  The plane crashed and exploded on the beach in front of them. View the full After Action Report

After a successful mission at Sicily, the Champlin first heads back to Oran, navigating through mine fields on the way, then escorts a convoy to New York, arriving in New York on August 4th, 1943.  The crew undergoes training in New York until August 20th, 1943.

On August 21st, as the war in Italy raged on, the Champlin escorts another large convoy full of troops and supplies from New York to Oran, followed by a return escort trip from Oran back to New York.  Both trips take less than a month and they dock back in New York on September 22nd, 1943.

October 1943 saw the Champlin make their first convoy escort to the United Kingdom, when they escorted a convoy from New York to Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

On November 1st, 1943, the Champlin joins another convoy and heads back to Oran, bringing more troops and vital supplies to the front.

On November 7th, 1943, while on their way to Oran, the convoy comes under attack by a German air raid, armed with aerial torpedos.  The SS Santa Elena, a troop transport ship, is sunk by a torpedo.  The Champlin helps rescue survivors of the ship.

Robert receives his 2nd promotion of the war when he is promoted from Seaman 2nd Class (S2c) to Seaman 1st Class (S1c).

From November 13th 1943 to March 11th 1944, the Champlin escorts six different convoys across the Atlantic, with stops including New York, Belfast, and Wales.  The convoys are bringing hundreds of thousands of troops and supplies from the United States to the United Kingdom in preparation for the invasion of Nazi Germany.

The USS Champlin is assigned to Task Unit 27.5.4, and is in charge of submarine patrol in the Atlantic.  They make contact with a German U-boat that first day on duty, sending two depth charges into the sea.

On just their third day of submarine patrol, the USS Champlin and accompanying destroyers make contact with a German U-boat, U-856, and spend nearly the entire day trying to destroy it, making and losing contact with the U-boat nearly ten times.  The exhausting battle came to a head at 16:52 when the U-boat’s periscope was spotted just off the Champlin’s port beam.  Seven minutes later, the Champlin scored a direct hit on U-856, causing the..Read More

After being hit with shrapnel on April 7th, Captain John “Jack” Shaffer, III was taken to the Emergency Cabin immediately, and would undergo an operation early the next morning in an effort to save his life, but his wounds were simply too serious.  At 08:03 on April 8th, 1944, Captain Shaffer died. Commander John Jackson Shaffer, III was an exemplary Commanding Officer who served with honor his entire military career.  He had even been aboard..Read More

On the way back to New York for repairs, the crew has a funeral service on board for Commander John “Jack” Shaffer ending in his burial at sea.

The Champlin is sent to Brooklyn’s Navy Yard and put in dry dock to be repaired from the damage she sustained in the ramming of the submarine on April 7.

As the U.S. Fifth Army advanced through Italy, the Champlin is was called upon numerous times to patrol off the Italian coastal cities from May through August 1944.  They saw action on June 2nd while bombarding enemy positions north of Anzio.

Robert is told that although his enlistment was supposed to have expired on June 23rd, 1944, he is being extended for indefinitely, and at the most six m0nths after the end of the war.  In other words, he is told his time in the Navy is far from over.  This action was not unique to Robert and has more to do with the timing as D-Day in mainland Europe had just happened, and the Champlin..Read More

Until August 13th, the Champlin runs patrolling missions up and down the Italian coast, including off the cities of Naples, Piombino, and Civita Vecchia. Naples harbor, summer of 1944: Crew of the Champlin on leave, visiting Pompeii:

On August 15th, the Champlin becomes a part of Operation Dragoon (originally called Operation Anvil).  Operation Dragoon was the code name for the Allied invasion of Nazi-held Southern France, with the goal securing the vital ports on the French Mediterranean coast and increasing pressure on the German forces by opening another front.

For the next couple of weeks, the Champlin stayed in the shores off Southern France in support of the invasion.  They acted as a guide for transports and landing crafts.  Air attacks from German planes were common at dusk and the Champlin found themselves firing upon these enemy planes each night. On August 17th, the Champlin got credit for shooting down a low flying German plane.

From August 23rd to August 28th, the Champlin participates in multiple bombardments of enemy positions on shore. On August 27th, off the coast of Nice, France, the USS Champlin gets credit for destroying four enemy tanks.

In September of 1944, after nearly two years of continuous movements in war zones, the Champlin heads back to the United States for four months of rest, repairs, and training.

Robert is granted five days leave from the USS Champlin and heads home to 106 Valentine Lane in Yonkers, NY.  He has to celebrate early though, since he is due back to his ship on Christmas Eve.

Robert and crew members who were onboard during the operations in Italy and France are awarded battle stars.  Robert is given two stars, one for the Italian campaign and one for Operation Dragoon.

The most important mission the USS Champlin had during the war came on January 31st, 1945.  They were instructed to be an escort of the USS Quincy in Task Force 21.5 from Gibraltar to Malta.  On board the USS Quincy was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was on his way to the Malta Conference. FDR and Winston Churchill aboard the USS Quincy on February 2nd, 1945:  

The first half of 1945 is spent escorting convoys and important ships to and from ports throughout the Mediterranean.  Their time in European waters comes to and end after the Nazi’s surrender on May 8th, 1945.  The USS Champlin heads back home to the United States to prepare to enter the Pacific Theater and fight the Japanese.

Upon returning to the United States, Robert is given eight days leave.  His timing could not be better, as they are in New York on VE Day, with the city celebrating the surrender of Nazi Germany.  

Although Nazi Germany had surrendered, the war was not over.  The USS Champlin was now preparing to deploy to the Pacific Theater to help defeat the Japanese.  Robert and the Champlin leave New York on May 23rd, 1945, stop at Guantanamo, Cuba for training on May 29th, and pass through the Panama Canal on June 4th.  They arrive in San Diego, California on July 4th, 1945.

After undergoing repairs in San Diego, the Champlin leaves for Pearl Harbor on July 4th, 1945 and arrives six days later on July 10. The USS Champlin is pictured third from the right at Pearl Harbor in July 1945:

On August 1st, the Champlin got their first taste of action in the Pacific when they participated in the bombardment of Wake Island.  The island had been held by the Japanese since December of 1941, and spent the rest of World War II in Japanese hands. The Japanese held Wake with more than 4,000 troops and erected extensive fortifications to protect it. The U.S. military never tried to retake the atoll but cut it off from..Read More

The USS Champlin arrive on Saipan the same day that the United States drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  However, the Japanese do not surrender, causing the feeling that the war will last even longer.  On August 9th, a second atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.  On August 12th, the USS Champlin arrives in the waters outside Okinawa, and since the Japanese have not yet surrendered, the fear of kamikaze attacks is intense.  On..Read More

Japan finally announces their surrender on August 15th, 1945 and officially signs the instrument of surrender on September 2.

On September 9th, the Champlin reaches Tokyo Bay.  Only a week earlier, the Japanese had surrendered aboard the USS Missouri docked in the same bay.

The day after arriving in Tokyo, Robert comes down with a serious illness and is transferred to the USS Benevolence hospital ship for treatment.  The exact illness is not stated in the records, but it takes him a full month to recover and he never steps foot back on the USS Champlin again.

While onboard the USS Benevolence, Robert is interviewed and expresses his desire to not enlist in the Navy.  He is transferred to the nearest intake station on December 12th, 1945.

On December 24th, 1945 at Lido Beach, NY, Robert is officially discharged from the United States Navy.  He has spent exactly 41 months in the Navy, serving his country during WWII.