Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [63]
Conn’s place was taken by Lieutenant (jg) John D. Welsh, who dropped a half-tonner and two 250-pounders. But somewhere in the churning cauldron of flak bursts his SB2C Helldiver sustained a crippling hit. He survived as a prisoner but his gunner drowned. Another Bombing 84 plane ditched with battle damage.
The Corsairs packed a significant ordnance load including aerial rockets. Major Herbert Long was a veteran of the Solomons campaign and had notched his seventh kill the day before. Now he intended to put the Corsair’s offensive potential to good use against a ship steaming in Kure Bay. He recalled, “I was armed with only five HVARs [high-velocity aerial rockets] and fired them at what I thought to be a small freighter.” Only after his combat film was analyzed did he learn that he had attacked the light carrier Ryuho, which had been damaged in the Doolittle Raid. The chagrined marine said, “Needless to say, I paid closer attention during subsequent ship recognition classes.”
“Trigger” Long’s aim was good. In concert with other pilots, he inflicted two rocket and three bomb hits on the carrier. The flight deck bulged upward and a boiler room flooded, causing the ship to settle partway on the bottom. Twenty of the crew were killed, and Ryuho never left port again.
Other air groups piled in, eagerly choosing prestigious targets. For instance, Hornet’s Avenger squadron launched twelve planes and reported fourteen bomb hits on eight ships.
The World War I battleships Ise and Hyuga, twin sisters of 35,000 tons, had been modified with stern aircraft decks in 1943 but now lacked fuel, aircraft, and aircrews. Orbiting Kure Harbor, Wasp’s Air Group 86 selected Hyuga. Now immobilized and painted shades of gray and green, the hermaphrodite warship was rocked by several near misses but only hit once: a bomb exploded port-side above a boiler room, killing about forty crewmen. Her sister, Ise, bore a garish scheme of two shades of green with yellow, gray, and rusty splotches. Her exotic colors failed to hide her; she was hit by two bombs.
The third battlewagon, Haruna, was anchored in the roadstead. She merely suffered a grazing hit to starboard.
Predictably, the few remaining carriers attracted considerable attention. Launched only five months before, the 17,000-ton Katsuragi took a hit in the starboard bow that blew a five-foot hole in the plating and upper deck. Even worse, a near miss opened the hull, flooding one compartment and a fuel tank. Her older sister, Amagi, had been commissioned in August 1944 but never left home waters. A bomb struck the flight deck edge aft while her gunners cheerfully claimed a dozen planes downed.
The escort carrier Kaiyo spent much of her career in the periscopes of American submarines, surviving at least seven encounters while escorting convoys in 1944. At Kure U.S. aircraft made up the deficit, striking her port-side engine room and starting a fire. The carrier listed to port, and when the flooding reached the dangerous stage she was towed to shallow water to prevent capsizing.
Among the heaviest hit was light cruiser Oyodo, which absorbed three bombs. She sustained flooding and was towed to Eta Jima, where she was beached. Subsequently she spent three weeks in dry dock.
Meanwhile, fliers gawked at the 64,000-ton battleship Yamato. Underway in the Inland Sea, she drew the attention of Intrepid’s air group. She sustained damage from a hit on the bridge by a Bombing 10 Helldiver, likely flown by Lieutenant (jg) James B. Davidson. Though his SB2C was hit early in his dive, he pushed through bursting flak from ships and shore to score an observed hit by one of his three bombs.
While the Americans only inflicted moderate damage, Kure’s flak took a toll of the attackers: eleven Helldivers and two Avengers.