Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [103]
A torpedo from Monssen hit Yamashiro, now crippled. The next American destroyer attack, by Squadron 24, probably achieved two hits. It is still disputed whether battleship gunfire or torpedoes were responsible, but what is certain is that the battleship Fuso, laid down in 1912, caught fire and broke in two after a huge explosion. Bewilderment persists about how readily such a huge ship succumbed, but senility plainly rendered it vulnerable. At 0335 the last American destroyer squadron engaged, urged to “Get the big boys!,” of which only two were left, one damaged. The “tin cans’” moment had passed, however. All Desron 56’s torpedoes missed. Shells from the American battleships and cruisers began to straddle the Japanese. One of Desron 24’s torpedoes may have hit Yamashiro, but she was already racked by the fire of American fourteen-and sixteen-inch guns. Some naval officers later criticised the destroyers’ performance in the Surigao Strait, asserting that they erred in launching torpedoes 3,000 yards beyond optimum range. Technically, such strictures are valid. Torpedo-guidance technology was relatively unsophisticated. It required extraordinary luck and skill to score hits at distances of four or five miles, in the strong currents of the strait. But this was not a situation in which suicidal courage was needed. A close engagement would almost certainly have resulted in gratuitous American destroyer losses, when Nishimura’s squadron was anyway doomed.
The American big ships sounded general quarters only at 0230, shortly before the flares of explosions from the destroyer actions became visible. A small black mess attendant who served belowdecks in Maryland’s ammunition supply pleaded emotionally for a post where he could do some shooting: “I want to be on the guns—I know I can hit them good. I know I can.” With a nice touch of human sympathy, he was posted to a 20mm mount. In the shell decks below the turrets, men shifted charges for the ships’ slender supply of armour-piercing ammunition—the battleships carried mostly high-explosive projectiles for shore bombardment. Warrant gunners checked temperatures: precision was indispensable to accurate fire. “We didn’t know too much, but like all sailors, we could sure speculate,” said Lt. Howard Sauer, in the main battery plot high in the foretop of Maryland.
All the odds were with the Americans, but in Sauer’s words, “We remembered the Hood”—a 42,000-ton British battle cruiser which blew up in consequence of a single hit from the German Bismarck in May 1941. They watched red tracers converging on the skyline, then heard the order to Oldendorf’s battleships: “All bulldogs, execute turn three.” Barely maintaining steerageway at five knots, they thus presented their flanks and full broadsides to the enemy. As Nishimura’s ships closed within range, the vast turrets traversed. Gunners pleaded for the order to fire: “Shoot, shoot, shoot.” One by one, main batteries reported readiness: “Right gun turret 2, loaded and laid,” and so on. On the command “Commence firing,” the chief fire controller in each turret touched his left trigger to sound a warning buzzer, prompting upper-deck crewmen to close eyes and muffle ears. Then a right finger pressure prompted brilliant flashes, thunderous detonations: “On the way.” Amid the concussions, Howard Sauer recalled, “we rode the mast280 as it lashed to and fro, just as a tree moves in a strong gale.”
Jesse Oldendorf’s flagship Louisville was so impatient to fire that the gunners failed to press the warning buzzer, causing the admiral to be temporarily blinded by muzzle flashes. He slipped into the cruiser’s flag plot and gazed at