Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [102]
As those with a view watched the PT-boat actions, the captain of one destroyer, Monssen, broadcast to his ship’s company at general quarters: “To all hands. This is the captain. We are going into battle. I know each of you will do your duty. I promise that I will do my duty to you and for our country. Good luck to you, and may God be with us.” The harshest predicament was not now that of men manning the upper decks, but that of hundreds more sweating in their flashproof denims and anti-flash hoods at switchboards and ammunition hoists, machinery controls and casualty stations below, where they could see nothing of events until a ghastly moment when explosives might rip through thin plate, blood and water mingle with twisted steel. Such images were vivid in the imaginations of most sailors, as they drank coffee and ate sandwiches through the interminable wait to engage.
Nishimura’s column was led by four destroyers. His own flagship, the old battleship Yamashiro, followed, with Fuso and Mogami at thousand-yard intervals behind. At 0240 McGowan reported “Skunk 184 degrees distant fifteen miles.” Fifteen minutes later, Japanese lookouts glimpsed the distant enemy, but their huge searchlights failed to illuminate Coward’s ships. Now the American destroyers began to close, thrashing down the twelve-mile-wide strait at thirty knots. Even with the Japanese slowed by an adverse current, Nishimura’s ships and the Americans were approaching each other at better than fifty miles an hour. At 0258, with the Japanese in plain sight, Coward’s squadron made protective smoke. He ordered the three ships in his own division: “Fire when ready.” A few seconds after 0300, the Americans began loosing torpedoes at a range just short of 9,000 yards. To have gone closer, the destroyer leader believed, would have invited devastation from Nishimura’s gunfire. A Japanese searchlight suddenly fixed Remey in its dazzling glare, making its crew feel “like animals in a cage.” The battleships began lighting the sky with star shells, while striving in vain to hit American destroyers making a land speed approaching forty mph. In seventy-five seconds, twenty-seven torpedoes left their tubes. Coward swung hard to port, then zigzagged through their eight minutes of running time. At 0308, they heard a single explosion aboard a Japanese ship, probably Yamashiro.
The two ships of Coward’s western group were much more successful. They fired at 0311, just as Nishimura ordered his ships to take evasive action, which turned them smartly into the tracks of the incoming torpedoes. McDermut achieved a remarkable feat, hitting three Japanese destroyers with a single salvo. One blew up immediately, a second began to sink, a third retired with the loss of her bow. Lt. Tokichi Ishii, forty-four-year-old279 engineer officer of Asugumo, suddenly found paint peeling from the deckplates above his head, in the heat from fires. A series of explosions rocked the ship as American gunfire detonated their own torpedoes. He saw pressure gauges crack, telephone wires burn. Smoke poured into the engine room. As the men coughed and choked, they strove in vain to close hatches and shut off ventilators. Finally, as conditions became intolerable, Ishii ordered his men topside. On deck, they worked frantically to douse the fires—and at last succeeded. Returning to the engine room, at 0345 he reported to the bridge that the ship had regained power. He was just descending the ladder to return