The Rogue Destroyer That Defied Navy Command - Video

The United States Navy built Fletcher-class destroyers to escort, screen, and protect. USS Kidd received that same hull, those same guns, and promptly ignored the job description.

She was 376 feet of five-inch guns, torpedo tubes, and anti-aircraft batteries. She was fast enough to outrun almost anything in the fleet. And she was armed heavily enough that Japanese pilots learned to avoid her the hard way. On her smokestack, a grinning pirate. Above her mast, the Jolly Roger.
America had sent a pirate to war.

From Wake Island to Okinawa, Kidd didn't screen the fight. She went looking for it.