As the battle for Guadalcanal became desperate, more and more troops, aviation fuel, and supplies were being funneled onto Guadalcanal. But this supply line needed protection, which fell to the limited carriers and to the fast-moving destroyers. On board one of those destroyers was 35-year old Pensacolian George Anthony “Tony” Gregory. Tony was the son of George Louis Gregory and Irene Spaeth. After Tony graduating from Pensacola High School in the class of 1928, he took a job as a machinist at the naval air station along with his father. When World War II began he was just as caught up in the patriotic fervor as the younger men, so he enlisted in the Coast Guard and headed for the South Pacific as a 2nd Class machinist mate. He was stationed aboard the destroyer USS Meredith whose job was to escort the transports hauling reinforcements and supplies to Guadalcanal. On October 12, 1942 he and his ship became part of a convoy of two destroyers escorting several cargo ships along with tugboats pulling a barge loaded with barrels of aviation fuel and bombs destined for the American planes at Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field.
But it was soon learned that enemy carriers were in the general vicinity, and if discovered it would leave the small convoy a sitting duck for their aircraft. The commander of the flotilla was aboard the Meredith and when he received the information he decided that discretion was the better part of valor. But at the same time, he was painfully aware that the planes on Guadalcanal desperately needed those bombs and fuel loaded on their barges. So, despite the danger he chose to send the other ships back and press on with only the Meredith and the sea going tug USS Vireo.
On the morning of October 15th, the two ships were sighted by an enemy patrol plane followed shortly thereafter by an enemy air strike. Before their arrival, the commander decided to abandon the slow-moving Vireo and take her crew aboard, He was preparing to torpedo the tug when enemy planes arrived from the Japanese carrier Zuikaku. The Meredith (below) fought valiantly downing three enemy planes before succumbing to fourteen bombs and seven enemy torpedoes. Within minutes, Pensacola High School’s Tony Gregory and 179 of his shipmates were killed and sent to the bottom of the ocean with their ship. To add insult to injury, the Japanese planes returned to machine gun the survivors floundering helplessly in the water. Less than a third of the Meredith’s crew lived through the sinking and then spent three days in shark infested waters before they were rescued and returned to Pearl Harbor.
Tony Gregory's USS Meredith in just before she was sunk with 179 of her crewmen