Deck view of an LSMR, from this hobbyist’s page. New stuff to me, these special ships carrying rockets to support troop landings, encountered in Little Ship Big War, The Saga of DE343, by Edward Peary Stafford.
Good book it is, with much day-to-day detail of life aboard a destroyer escort in the last months of World War II. I had no idea, for instance, that the infamous kamikazes did not just dive down on a ship, but also came in low, on the water, to collide with the front, back or side of a ship At Okinawa, there were twin-engine suicide bombers, suicide boats, even suicide swimmers with bombs. Japanese jihadis!
DE343, the USS Abercrombie, was named for a Devastator pilot shot down at Midway. His namesake ship saw a lot less action, but when it did it was hair-raising. Stafford also wrote The Big E, a newly republished 1964 bestseller which I may read next.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 