The Battle off Samar was nearly over.
By 10:30 A.M., October 25, 1944, RADM Clifton Sprague’s task group—Taffy 3—had managed
to escape the clutches of VADM Takeo Kurita’s Center Force.
Sprague had lost one of his carriers, USS Gambier Bay; two of his destroyers, USS Hoel
and USS Johnston; and one of his destroyer-escorts, USS Samuel B. Roberts.
Over 1,100 American sailors had died, but Kurita’s fleet had turned around.
The U.S. Navy had protected Leyte Gulf.
The liberation of the Philippines could proceed.
However, the Japanese still had one more ace up their sleeve.
They had one more weapon to drive the 7th Fleet from the shores of Leyte—and it was
particularly devastating.
The Japanese called them Shimpu.
But the Americans knew them as Kamikaze.
These were the imperial air fleet’s crash-diving pilots.
These men flew their aircraft, not for the purpose of sinking American ships with conventional
weapons, but with the intent of using their airplanes as weapons.
Deeply devoted to their nation and their Emperor, they believed that, when facing defeat, Japan’s
fighting men needed to sacrifice their lives in this way to ensure the destruction of the
enemy.
Before climbing into their cockpits, they sang in Japanese, “Thus for the Emperor,
I will not die peacefully at home.”
The idea of intentionally sacrificing one’s life for the Emperor was not new, but it seemed
to have profound meaning for those officers who suggested it as an official tactic.
After the Marianas Turkey Shoot, when the Japanese had lost over 300 airmen, Captain
Eiichiro Jyo argued that the numerical superiority of the American ships required something other
than “ordinary attack methods.”
Jyo had been inspired by news he had heard from some of his pilots who reported how a
burning Nakajima B5N torpedo bomber had crashed into the hull of an American battleship, USS
Indiana.
Although the American ship had been barely damaged, Jyo believed that crash-diving was
the solution to Japan’s shortage of planes and pilots.
Armed with this cruel arithmetic, he suggested to his superiors a plan to sink the U.S. fleet
at the cost of a handful of Japanese aviators.
Jyo never witnessed the fulfilment of his suggestion.
He was killed on October 25, when his light carrier, the Chiyoda, was sunk off Cape Engaño.
However, other officers carried out his vision.
Several men ordered impromptu crash-dives in the summer and autumn of 1944, but VADM
Takijirō Ōnishi received credit for establishing the first official Kamikaze unit.
On October 18, 1944, after he had assumed command of the 1st Air Fleet, Ōnishi held
a meeting with his pilots at Mabalacat Airfield—formerly Clark Field.
Speaking to the 201st Air Group, he asked for volunteers to step forward and form the
first crash-diving unit.
Eagerly, or so it seemed, twenty-three men stepped forward.
Ōnishi happily anointed them, Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kogekitai—the “Divine Wind Special Attack
Squad.”
The name held significance.
Kamikaze was a phrase that originated from thirteenth-century Japanese legends, when
it was believed that major typhoons—conjured by God—had saved Japan from a Mongol invasion.
Symbolically, the crash-divers would save Japan in the same way that the typhoons of
old had saved Japan from a foreign horde.
They would be the modern-day divine wind.
Ōnishi appointed LT Yukio Seki—a twenty-three-year-old veteran—to command the first squadron.
Each Kamikaze flew a Mitsubishi A6M5 Zeke with a 63-kilogram bomb slung under its belly.
Not everyone in Seki’s squadron planned to carry out the crash-dive attacks.
For each mission, a portion of the squadron flew as escorts.
They would run interference for the attackers and they planned on reporting their successes.
A few days after Seki’s squadron formed, CDR Tadashi Nakajima, the flight operations
officer for the 201st, flew a portion of his group—four Kamikazes and eight other pilots—to
an airfield on Cebu.
Having been inspired by Ōnishi, he addressed the pilots on Cebu and asked them to join
a second Kamikaze squadron.
He received another twenty volunteers.
For four days, the two Kamikaze squadrons—known colloquially as Shikishima Squadron and Yamato
Squadron—prowled the skies of the Philippine Sea.
Poor weather and bad luck prevented them from finding any American ships.
However, their leaders kept their spirits buoyed.
Before one of these missions, Ōnishi told Shikishima Squadron: “You are already gods
without earthly desires.
But one thing you want to know is that your crash-dive is not in vain.
Regrettably, we will not be able to tell you the results.
But I shall watch your efforts and report your deeds to the Throne.”
Finally, on October 25, the Kamikaze found their opportunity.
That day, Yamato Squadron launched six aircraft, four Kamikaze and two escorts.
At 7:30, after flying almost an hour, they discovered Taffy 1—the escort carrier group
assigned to guard the south end of Leyte Gulf.
Spying Taffy 1’s four escort carriers, the suicide pilots rolled into their dives.
At 7:40, one of them blazed through a wall of antiaircraft fire and smashed into the
flight deck of USS Santee, causing a raging fire on the hangar deck that took ten minutes
for the American sailors to quell.
At the same instant, another Kamikaze took a run at USS Petrof Bay, but American gunners
brought him down before he made contact.
The two remaining Kamikaze targeted USS Suwannee.
That carrier’s AA gunners brought down one plane and damaged the other with a flak burst
at 8,000 feet.
But after getting hit, that pilot spun his plane over on its back and bore down on Suwannee,
crashing into the flight deck about 40 feet in front of the rear elevator.
The plane’s bomb bounced into the hangar deck and then exploded, killing about 60 men.
Not long after that, LT Seki’s unit—Shikishima Squadron—also hit pay dirt.
That morning, nine planes launched from Mabalacat airdrome—six Kamikaze and three escorts.
At 10:50 A.M., after a frustratingly long search, they reached Taffy 3, which had just
wrapped up its battle with Kurita’s Center Force.
Much like Yamato Squadron, Shikishima came in low and aimed for the group’s escort
carriers.
The first pilot rolled into his dive, firing his machine guns as he went.
He aimed for USS Kitkun Bay’s island structure.
But unable to keep his aim, he missed.
His wing glanced off the catwalk and he plunged into the sea.
Only one American sailor was killed.
The next Kamikaze attacked RADM Sprague’s flagship, USS Fanshaw Bay.
American AA gunners brought him down and he crashed alongside the ship, doing no harm.
The third Kamikaze went after USS White Plains.
Likewise, AA fire knocked this plane out of the sky; however, his bomb skipped off the
water and exploded near the hull, raining shrapnel on the deck, injuring eleven men.
The next two Kamikazes aimed for USS Kalinin Bay.
One pilot swooped through the AA fire and crashed into the port side of the flight deck.
The other one followed him and hit the aft portside stack.
Both explosions caused heavy damage, killing five men and wounding fifty more.
The sixth pilot—believed to be LT Seki himself—aimed for USS St. Lo.
He came in low and level and dead astern, as if lining up to land.
The escort carrier’s 20-millimeter guns opened up on him, but they failed to bring
down his plane.
St. Lo’s helmsman put the carrier in a tight turn to starboard, but it did no good.
The Japanese pilot turned with the ship.
When he was over the flight deck, he raised his nose up a little, and then pushed it directly
down.
The Zeke broke apart, with the engine skidding all the way off the bow.
Meanwhile, the bomb exploded atop the flight deck, boring a huge hole into the wooden planks.
The remainder of the fuselage went into that aperture, crashing into the hangar deck.
Unfortunately, immediately below where the Kamikaze had hit, the sailors had parked eight
TBM Avengers and were in the process of loading them for combat.
Torpedoes, 5-inch rockets, and 2,000-pound bombs were stacked on all sides of the planes.
All at once, they exploded.
In turn, this blast produced others.
Soon, all the ammunition below decks detonated.
After eight successive blasts, the carrier was engulfed in flames.
Shipfitter Second Class Roy Carl Goedecke was a twenty-five-year-old sailor on USS Dennis,
a destroyer-escort that served with Taffy 3.
His ship was closest to St. Lo.
He saw the whole thing—the grim moment when the Kamikaze struck.
"I went up on the foc’sle and the St. Lo was just a little bit on the side of us.
Then all of a sudden I heard a plane coming and I looked up and there came the first kamikaze
that ever was.
And it came down and it dove on the St. Lo and hit it on the aft elevator.
And when it did it went on down to the hangar deck.
They had a lot of ammunition stored there and it just blew up.
I’d say two explosions occurred and chunks of metal as big as automobiles went up in
the air.
It blew stuff upwards of 200 feet in the air.
I thought then, that’s it.
It’s gonna go down.
Well, no more time than that and the men started getting off the ship.
Some of them came down on lines and some of them just jumped off.
It went down stern first and those men were just rolling off of it falling into the water.
It was the darndest thing I ever saw."
Barely five minutes after this devastating Kamikaze strike, Captain Francis McKenna knew
there was no chance to save his ship.
USS St. Lo began listing to port and the fires raged out of control.
Wisely, he ordered, “abandon ship.”
Exactly as Goedecke remembered, St. Lo went down by the stern, rolling over as it went.
The sinking took only a few minutes.
At the time of the attack, there were 889 officers and men on USS St. Lo.
Already, the fires and explosions had killed as many as 130.
With little choice, the 700+ survivors now had to make their way down rope ladders and
into the water.
Luckily, there were four ships—one destroyer and three-destroyer escorts—capable of rescuing
them: USS Heermann, Raymond, John C. Butler, and Dennis.
Roy Goedecke remembered the role he and his shipmates played in the rescue efforts:
"The St. Lo kind of rolled over to the side and the stern went down first.
The men were falling off there like dead flies.
They were just falling off!
It could be that some were dead while others were wounded really badly.
And I imagine the sharks got them.
It didn’t take long for the sharks to get there.
They started swimming over to us.
We stopped.
We were within 200 yards.
We lowered the lifeboat and picked up some of the survivors.
We lowered some climbing nets and then some lines and we reached down and got the ones
that we could.
Some were too weak to climb the nets and we had to climb down and get them.
What made it bad was to see some of them get halfway over and then they would just go down.
Some didn’t have life vests on and they couldn’t swim that far.
Around the ship there were dead bodies floating.
It was bad.
Of course we picked them up as well.
I don’t know how long it took to pick them up.
It seemed to me two or three hours.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, then.
All the other ships were hauling ass, and that left us there by ourselves."
The crew of USS Dennis rescued 434 survivors, more than double what a typical destroyer-escort
usually held.
Another 312 survivors were pulled from the water by the crews of other ships.
Naturally, space was at a premium on these small destroyers and destroyer-escorts.
But the crews of Raymond, Dennis, Heermann, and John C. Butler kindly gave what little
they had to ease the sufferings of the men of St. Lo who had just lost their home in
a matter of minutes.
Goedecke recalled how this generosity was later remembered.
"I gave one guy my bunk and I met him again years later at the last reunion.
He said, ‘I remember you.’
‘How do you remember me?’
He said, ‘ You gave me a suit of dungarees.’
I said, ‘How did you know it was me?’
He said, ‘I know it was you.
You gave me a set of dungarees and your bunk to sleep in.
I sure do appreciate that.
I never did thank you before and I appreciate it.’
Well, I just did what anyone else would do.
Everybody was giving them things because they were all oily and wet.
And some of them didn’t have any clothes on at all.
It blew the clothes off of them."
The loss of St. Lo did not escape the notice of the Japanese.
As Shikishima squadron’s Kamikazes made their attacks, the observer flight recorded
the hits.
Chief Warrant Officer Hiroyoshi Nishizawa and his two wingmen returned to Mabalacat
airdrome to report the news.
LT Seki had sunk an American carrier!
Ōnishi was elated.
The experimental Kamikaze squadrons had not been a waste of life after all.
The next day, Yamato Squadron made another attempt, going after Taffy 1.
Shortly after noon on October 26, one Zeke made it through the AA fire and plunged into
USS Suwannee, one of the carriers that had been hit the previous day.
This Kamikaze struck a TBM Avenger that had just been recovered.
The explosion detonated nine other TBMs on the flight deck.
By the time the fires were brought under control, Suwannee’s casualty figures had increased
to 107 dead and 160 wounded.
The two back-to-back crash-dive attacks gave the crew of USS Suwannee reason to pause.
Had all of these suicide attacks been intentional?
The next month, when another wave of Kamikaze went after Task Force 38, the sailors in the
U.S. Navy had their answer.
But for now, the Japanese Air Fleet believed it had a weapon that might actually bring
the U.S. Navy to its knees.