A kamikaze attack typically involved a Japanese plane streaking down through bursts of antiaircraft fire and lines of tracers to crash into a ship. But it could also occur virtually without warning. That was the case on 13 December 1944 when a lone Japanese Zeke unexpectedly appeared out of a low-hanging cloud and slammed into the USS Nashville (CL-43).
The cruiser, having left Leyte Gulf the previous day, was helping escort an invasion convoy to the Philippine Island of Mindoro, where she was to serve as command ship. On board were the operation's Navy and Army commanders and their staffs. Transporting high-ranking officers was a familiar task for the ship; she had carried General Douglas MacArthur to several Pacific invasions.
As the hour neared 1500 on the 13th, the Nashville was about four miles off Siquijor Island when a Zeke with a 63-kg bomb strapped under each wing flashed out of a nearby cloud. Making 350 knots, the plane passed astern of the Nashville and made an abrupt vertical bank toward her bridge. Instead of hitting there, the fighter's right wing snagged on one of the cruiser's port twin 40-mm mounts, and the plane crashed amidships into the port 5-inch battery. None of the cruiser's guns had a chance to fire a single shot at the kamikaze.
What followed was a superhuman effort by the ship's crew—including the author, Boatswain's Mate Second Class Robert Shafer—to fight raging gasoline fires and save crewmates' lives.
In the early afternoon on December 13, my buddy James Vaughn had gotten off duty watch and both of us decided to catch some sleep topside. We knew just the place—sky control. This was an eight-by-eight-foot platform over the bridge, all steel and surrounded by five-foot-high steel shields. It had no roof so that the sky-control gunnery officer could see in all directions. His job was to order the antiaircraft guns below to fire if the ship was attacked by enemy planes from any direction. We knew this station was not occupied and would be the perfect place to rest.
We had been asleep for about two hours when suddenly out of nowhere a plane streaked by our ship. As it turned and once again headed for us, I could see it was Japanese. The plane quickly dropped out of my sight. There followed a crash and a tremendous explosion. Instantly, flames were everywhere. "My God!" I thought. "We were hit and hit bad."
Vaughn, lying next to me, reached for the top of the shield to pull himself up. Screaming, he turned around facing me. Both his hands were gushing bright red blood, and the fingertips of at least one were missing. We knew we had to stop the bleeding, so I took both our skivvy shirts off and wrapped his hands. Then, I took his belt off and made a tourniquet for one arm and used my belt for the other. Vaughn just sat there holding out his hands. I told him to try to keep the shirts on them.
I then started down the ladder to look for help but couldn't believe what I saw below. It looked like flames were quickly consuming the main deck, and dead and wounded men were all over. Fires were setting off the ammunition just behind gun stations. Rounds were exploding and shrapnel was flying everywhere. Some of it had cut big gashes into the barrels of the guns. As I watched, more of them appeared like magic. Meanwhile, bleeding men were screaming for help. I could see that the fires below were burning on both sides of the ship, and the flying shrapnel was bloodying and killing men. I grabbed a corpsman and told him where Vaughn was and that he needed help immediately.
My head was suddenly filled with descriptions of battles the Navy had fought in the days of sailing ships, when the gutters on both sides of the ship ran deep with the blood of its dying and wounded Sailors. Looking down again, I saw our gutters running full of blood, and I got sick. Usually, they carried only water, but not today.
I continued to climb down the ladder but heard a voice say: "Sailor, pay attention. I'm going to pass you a fire hose and I want you to try to put out the fire below us on the bridge." Surely he couldn't be talking to me, but when I looked down toward the bridge no one else was there, so he had to be talking to me.
Without thinking, I went down to where he could pass up the hose. I was a skinny kid then, and it was heavy, but I pulled it up and got some slack on the nozzle. I turned the water on but got no pressure. Then I noticed little streams of water coming out of the hose where shrapnel had pierced it. I thought I must be crazy to be up here, but I had to see if anyone could be saved. I went in a compartment, but sadly, all I found were six charred bodies. They never had a chance. The fire there was not hard to put out, as there wasn't much to burn.
Other Sailors, meanwhile, were putting out other fires. Down below the bridge level the radio shack was engulfed in flames. Miraculously, I got in with my tattered water hose. I was hoping that with even the little water coming through it I could do something to put out the already-dying fire. As the smoke cleared, I could see what was left of the 20 Sailors there, still sitting in their chairs. I could only hope the smoke or shrapnel killed them before they burned.
When I came out of the shack, I was glad to see my buddy "Red" Hall. The hose was getting very heavy, and Red was six feet tall and built like a bull. He picked it up, and we headed for the next fire, which was in an ammunition compartment.
The 40-mm pom-pom shells inside were hot and beginning to glow. We quickly wet them down before they started to blow. Of course, we were also getting hot. Red lifted the hose over both of us, and the water trickling out of the shrapnel holes soaked us down and felt good.
With that fire out, we headed to the next problem. Along the way I saw one of my lookouts, "Foghorn" Burns, sitting a short distance away with a terrified look on his face and screaming for help. We took him out in the open air and told him to wait for us. We had another fire to put out.
On the other side of the ship, an ammunition compartment was smoking and flaming. If we couldn't get the fire out, shrapnel from those shells would soon be flying around. By holding our hose high so the water trickled on us, we'd be able to get in close. Red and I were about to start in when Foghorn reappeared. This time, he had a large piece of jagged metal in his leg. We made a tourniquet for him, and a corpsman came along and gave him a shot of morphine. He told us to quickly take care of the fire because it was getting worse.
Returning to the burning compartment, we saw that the 5-inch shells inside were red hot. Just then, the loudest boom I ever heard sounded as one of the shells exploded. Everything went black. Unable to see a thing, I held on to Red, and we got out of there. The noise of that shell and others going off brought help at once. A corpsman gave me a shot and bandaged my eyes. Sitting there, I wasn't able to say a word. I wanted to explain I was blind, but I couldn't speak. Six hours later, I awoke to men screaming, crying, and praying. I then noticed the horrible smell of burned flesh. Sailors were gagging and choking at the odor.
The next day, the corpsman who had bandaged my eyes took the dressings off, and the doctor came in. He told me to stand and read the eye chart across the room, but I couldn't even see it, let alone read it. Take a step forward and try, said the doc. Still nothing. Sweating blood, I walked across the room, right up to the chart. Nothing. I was blind.
The doctor explained that I had suffered a flash burn from the explosion. He gave me some magnifying glasses, and wearing them I could see the eye chart from across the room. I would soon get my eyesight back to 20-20, he said.
That afternoon, my division officer told me he had a problem. The Lookout Division had lost four men whose bodies had to be identified before burial, and he couldn't do it. I said I would. As I stood looking down at the bloody body bags, I tried to imagine how it happened, how the men had been sitting at their lookout up over the 5-inch guns when red-hot shrapnel took them out. Still looking down at the bagged remains of my comrades, I remembered the good times we'd had. Two of them, my friends George Washington and John Stoles, had once gone home on leave with me.
In addition to the dead and Sailors wounded by shrapnel and fire, we had many men who were psychologically shot. Although I was scared and shook up by the kamikaze attack, for some reason it didn't affect me as it did them. Some saw ghosts in hallways, while others sat and stared into space. It was heartbreaking to see them that way.
The next day, the Nashville pulled into Leyte Gulf. The dead were taken off the ship and put on a big barge that headed for the cemetery, and the physically and emotionally wounded were ferried to a hospital ship. The official casualty count was 133 dead and 190 wounded. These shipmates will long be remembered. In fact, I still wonder what happened to Foghorn.
Reflections of a KamikazeA rare survivor of a kamikaze, or Special Attack, mission, Kaoru Hasegawa was the navigator of a Yokosuka P1Y1 Frances bomber shot down while trying to crash into a battleship on 25 May 1945 off Okinawa. What follows are excerpts from an interview Naval History's Fred Schultz conducted with him that appeared in the October 1995 issue of the magazine.
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