CHAPTER 21 – THE LONG WAY HOME
01:14 (South Pacific Time)
Wednesday, August 26, 1942
Turtle Bay Airfield, Espiritu Santo Island
New Hebrides, South Pacific
Private Joshua Hearst felt bored to death and not a little sleepy as he readjusted the sling of his rifle on his right shoulder. Right now, his guard duty in front of one of the aircraft hardstands of the only operational airfield on Espiritu Santo felt rather pointless to him. Apart from enemy air raids or shelling from submarines, what could happen on an island full of American soldiers, Marines and sailors? It was not as if someone would try to steal the PBY-5 amphibian patrol aircraft he was guarding tonight. Lost in his thoughts and made less vigilant by his fatigue, Joshua didn’t hear or see the dark silhouette that stealthily came out of the jungle behind the amphibian aircraft and then cautiously walked to it at a crouch. The intruder then silently entered the plane by one of its side doors, spending less than four minutes inside before coming out and returning inside the jungle, all with Joshua remaining blissfully unaware of the visit.
Just inside the jungle tree line, Obergefreiter Michel Drücker stopped and crouched beside Hugo Margraff, speaking to him in a whisper.
‘’Another charge set, Hauptmann.’’
‘’Good! We will wait for the others to return here, then we will move to another group of aircraft. Those six B-17 heavy bombers to our left sure look like juicy targets to me.’’
‘’They certainly are, Hauptmann. It is nice to be able to do some ground work again.’’
‘’I concur! With the good food and lack of opportunity to exercise on the U-800, we were in serious danger of becoming fat.’’
Both men had to wait only a few more minutes before their five other comrades came back to them through the jungle. Hugo grinned on getting their short reports: all ten PBY-5 amphibian patrol aircraft parked on the airfield, which were the most dangerous planes for the U-800, had now explosive charges with timers hidden inside them. Once the six B-17 heavy bombers would be prepared for demolition, his men would be free to go pour some refined sugar in the fuel tanks of the 26 F4F WILDCAT fighters parked on the main apron.
It was not yet three o’clock when the seven commandos were back aboard the U-800 and were pulling their inflatable rubber boat out of the water. As they deflated their boat in order to store it inside the submarine, a large group of sailors, including two of the Japanese torpedo specialists, came on deck as the big twin 12.7 centimeter gun mount rose from its under deck well, with the well cover plates sliding open to let it out while also providing a larger platform to stand on for the gunners who would operate the twin guns. At the same time, the electric motors of the U-800 came to life, quietly powering the big ducted propeller. With sailors manning the optical rangefinder and night fire director inside the two underwater observation domes atop the conning tower, the submarine slowly sailed down the eastern coast of Espiritu Santo, passing outward of the small Mafia Island and Aessi Island in order to stay as long as possible out of sight of coastal observers. On the open bridge of his boat, Otto Kretschmer shook his head at the lack of vigilance shown again by the Americans. Either they were still shell-shocked from their devastating losses at sea a week ago, or they were indeed slow learners. Well, maybe this time they would get the lesson. His bet was that the Americans had stationed their picket destroyers further away from the island, relying on their defensive minefields to protect their main anchorage areas. The problem was that Otto already knew where those minefields and their entrance gaps were situated, having both watched American ships negotiating them to enter or exit the harbor areas and also having used his high definition sonar earlier in the night to accurately pinpoint their locations. From radio intercepts and direction-finding triangulations made by Japanese stations in and around Rabaul, Otto knew that most of the surviving ships that had been off Ndeni had withdrawn afterwards to either Espiritu Santo or Noumea, the two most important American outposts in this corner of the South Pacific save for the bases in Australia. He thus counted on having plenty of choices as targets for his guns tonight. The trick would be to shoot both accurately and at a rapid rate, in order to do the maximum damage in the least amount of time, so that he could then submerge and disappear before the Americans could react. His gunners and pointers already had been told by him what were their priority targets. Now, he only needed to wait and observe.
‘’LOAD STAR SHELLS!’’
At Fritz Lent’s command, two sailors stepped forward and rammed the 12.7 cm shells they were carrying into the breaches of the twin guns, then stepped back to get more shells, this time of the explosive-fragmentation type. The U-800 was now sailing past the Pallikulo Peninsula, at the southeastern tip of Espiritu Santo, with the entrance to the main anchorage area now visible in the light of the full Moon. The submarine was apparently still undetected by the time it came in full view of the main anchorage area used by the American fleet. To Otto’s satisfaction, that anchorage area proved to be full of ships of various types, from heavy cruisers to transport ships. Wanting to keep the benefit of surprise for as long as possible, he pointed the bow of his U-800 towards the bigger ships visible inside the anchorage.
‘’Gunners, standby! We will start firing after launching our bow torpedoes. Torpedo fire control, prepare our eight bow torpedoes for a tight spread, center of aim at Heading 272, running depth of three meters.’’
‘’Bow torpedoes set and ready, Herr Kapitän!’’ Replied via intercom von Wittgenstein after a few seconds.
‘’Fire all eight bow tubes in quick sequence!’’
‘’Firing bow tubes now!’’
The muffled noise of compressed air coming out of the bow torpedo tubes was heard in the next second, with eight separate discharges marking the launch of the deadly ‘eels’. Otto waited a few minutes, time for his torpedoes to cover most of the distance to their targets, then gave a brief order to his gunners.
‘’Main deck gun, open fire!’’
Barely two seconds later, the twin 12.7cm guns spit out their first two shells, fired high towards the night sky. A few more seconds later, two intense points of light lit up in the sky, descending slowly under their parachutes and illuminating the dozens of American ships in the anchorage area with a dancing, ghostly light. With explosive-fragmentation shells already loaded, the chief gunner of the U-800 aimed his twin guns at one of the tanker ships now plainly visible. Since they wanted to do the most damage possible in the least time possible, the decision had been taken in advance not to waste shells on warships that would take dozens of hits to be taken out. Instead, tanker ships, being highly flammable and having no armor, would constitute the best targets for Lent’s gunners. The U.S.S. SABINE was hit by two 12.7cm shells nearly at the same time as the eight torpedoes fired by the U-800 started striking ships around the harbor. The heavy cruiser U.S.S. SAN FRANCISCO shook under the impact and explosion of three torpedoes, while the seaplane tenders U.S.S. CURTISS and U.S.S. MACKINAC received two torpedoes each. Hit in one of its fuel holds, which were full of oil fuel, the U.S.S. SABINE erupted into flames, soon turning into a floating bonfire. The fleet oiler U.S.S. KASKASKIA was hit next and also caught fire. Helped by a human chain waiting with shells already in their arms, the gunners of the 12.7cm mount delivered a withering fire on the remaining tanker ships inside the anchorage, shooting shells at a combined rate of 26 rounds per minute. Once the last shell carried by the human chain was fired off, Otto gave a command by loudspeaker.
‘’CLEAR THE DECK! PREPARE TO DIVE!’’
As his gunners and the shell carriers ran back inside the conning tower while the main gun mount lowered back in its well, Otto looked with satisfaction at the anchorage area: over six tanker ships and fleet oilers were now burning merrily and would soon sink, while two seaplane tenders and one heavy cruiser were listing severely and were in danger of sinking. As well, a number of PBY amphibian patrol planes and of torpedo patrol boats docked to wooden quays along the shore near the town of Lungaville had been either destroyed or seriously damaged in the last salvoes. The shocked and surprised Americans were slow to react and the U-800 had time to dive out of sight before anything but hurriedly aimed gunfire could be directed at it, with all American shells missing by a wide margin. The brief battle concluded with a series of explosions coming from Turtle Bay Airfield, as the charges placed by the Brandenburg commandos started exploding. Ten minutes later, the heavy cruiser SAN FRANCISCO capsized, victim of massive and rapid flooding caused by the fact that its watertight doors had not been closed at the time it was torpedoed. The two seaplane tenders that had also been torpedoed soon followed the cruiser to the bottom of the harbor, the aviation gasoline they carried having turned them into blazing wrecks.
In the control room of the U-800, as it sped away from Espiritu Santo underwater, Otto went to see Takeshi Nagaoka, who was waiting near the radio room.
‘’You may now send out the coded message ‘Shoho One and Two executed’, Commander.’’
‘’Hay!’’ Replied Takeshi with a most Japanese bow before going inside the radio room. Going to his navigation plot table, Otto briefly looked at the chart spread on it before shouting an order to his helmsman, Peter Schültz.
‘’HELM, STEER TO HEADING 175! MAKE YOUR DEPTH 300 METERS!’’
‘’AYE, HERR KAPITÄN!’’
Otto then went to his elevated command chair, situated a few paces behind the helmsman position, and sat in it, relaxing and letting out the tension of the last fight. However, the Americans in the South Pacific were not finished with him yet.
11:07 (South Pacific Time)
Thursday, August 27, 1942
Tontouta Airfield, five kilometers north of Noumea
New Caledonia
‘’Nearly sixty planes destroyed on the ground by shelling! This is inexcusable! Even the radar station is destroyed.’’
Rear-admiral John McCain, who commanded the American land-based air forces in the South Pacific, gave a less than friendly look at Vice-admiral Ghormley on hearing his indignant exclamation.
‘’Admiral, what was inexcusable was the lack of coastal defenses against such a sea bombardment by a submarine. You were the one who insisted on concentrating our few guns to cover the approaches to the Great Road anchorage, in positions where the Ducos Peninsula was blocking their northward view.’’
McCain then looked critically at the fuel tank farm on the said Ducos Peninsula: it was still burning merrily after being hit by a dozen shells in the early morning.
‘’I now have only a handful of operational aircraft still available and little fuel for them. With the aircraft we lost yesterday on the ground in Espiritu Santo, I have only a pair of patrol planes left, not enough by far to cover the sea approaches to New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. If the Japanese battle fleet chose to show up today, we would know it only when its ships would open fire on us.’’
‘’Please don’t remind me of that, John.’’ Grumbled Ghormley, who was looking at the burned-out or twisted remains of the fighters, bombers, transport aircraft and patrol amphibians that had been destroyed by heavy shells. The growing noise of aircraft approaching made him look up with curiosity, hoping that they would be reinforcement aircraft sent at last from Australia. What he saw instead froze his blood.
‘’ENEMY AIRCRAFT OVERHEAD!’’
John McCain snapped his head upward at once but had to quickly agree with Ghormley’s identification: he could see dozens of VAL dive bombers, KATE horizontal bombers and ZERO fighters, all planes that normally operated from carriers.
‘’TAKE COVER, EVERYBODY!’’
The two admirals, along with their small retinue of staff officers, sprinted towards the nearest cover available, a shallow drainage ditch some forty meters away, where they hurriedly lay down on their stomach. However, to the surprise of McCain, the Japanese aircraft, save for four ZERO fighters, continued on towards Noumea and its anchorage a few kilometers south of the airfield. The four ZEROs that dove down however shot up and destroyed on the ground three P-39 fighters, the only planes not destroyed in the previous shelling, that were attempting to take off in a hurry. As for the close to forty other Japanese planes, they started bombing and strafing the various ships anchored around Noumea and the shore installations. Ghormley banged his fist in the dirt of the ditch, furious. He was now liable to lose much of what was left of his fleet, something that would truly spell catastrophe for the Allied cause in the South Pacific. A strafing pass by one of the four ZERO fighters then forced him to lower his head and sink deeper into the ditch. What he couldn’t know yet was that another major Japanese air raid was also hitting Espiritu Santo, targeting the ships still anchored there.
11:21 (South Pacific Time)
Royal Australian Navy heavy cruiser AUSTRALIA
Cruising off Ndeni Island, Santa Cruz Islands
Rear-admiral Victor Crutchley, who now commanded what was left of the warships covering the troopships and various cargo ships supporting the American Marines landed on Ndeni, hurriedly moved to the port open bridge wing of his flagship when a lookout reported smoke trails on the northwestern horizon. Unfortunately, none of his aging cruisers were equipped with radar and his air cover had evaporated with the sinking of the U.S.S. HORNET and the destruction on the ground of the planes based in Espiritu Santo and in Noumea. The poor weather had also limited the use of the seaplanes based on his heavy cruisers. His force was thus down to the old eyeball technique. What he saw through his binoculars alarmed him at once: a numerous fleet was coming at him from the Northwest, meaning that it could only be an enemy fleet. From the panicked radio reports from Espiritu Santo and Noumea, it was evident that this enemy fleet probably comprised a number of aircraft carriers. Whatever else composed the enemy fleet, one thing was instantly evident to Crutchley: the transport ships that had carried the Marines and their equipment and supplies to Ndeni had to go away at once if they didn’t want to be utterly swept away. He thus called to a bridge officer.
‘’Advise at once Admiral Turner that a numerous enemy fleet is approaching from the Northwest and that I counsel that his transports leave at once.’’
‘’Right away, sir!’’
As the bridge officer ran away, Crutchley started wondering how badly outnumbered and outgunned his four cruisers and twelve destroyers would soon be.
11:23 (South Pacific Time)
Bridge of the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship YAMATO
Main Japanese Battle Force, on approach to Ndeni
‘’Admiral, the scout seaplane from the cruiser TONE signals that the enemy covering force is composed of four cruisers and six destroyers, with six more destroyers staying behind with a fleet of transport ships anchored off Ndeni.’’
‘’Good! Tell Admiral Kondo to send his cruisers and destroyers around the enemy’s left flank and to go for the enemy transports. In the meantime, our destroyer screen is to deploy in extended line ahead of the battleships and prepare to deliver a torpedo attack at long range. Once they will have fired off their torpedoes, they will then block the enemy destroyers from approaching our heavy units.’’
‘’Understood, Admiral!’’
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, sitting in the command chair of his flagship, the mighty, 70,000 ton battleship YAMATO, contemplated in his mind the naval battle to come. He could have stayed in his Central Pacific base of Truk and commanded this battle from afar, as he had done before in other battles. However, two main reasons had pushed him to lead this battle from the front. First was the need to put a new shine on his name, which had been severely tarnished by the costly defeat suffered at Midway, nearly three months ago. As a consequence of that defeat, his prestige had decreased considerably and his authority was now questioned by many in Tokyo, even though he now knew thanks to the U-800 that the Americans had been able to ambush him because they had been able to decipher his coded messages. However, Yamamoto had learned from that: apart from ordering that a new variant of code be used, he now refrained from sending extensive orders via radio, instead using couriers as much as possible. He had also learned the hard way at Midway that dividing his forces into widely separated groups only made each group unable to support each other and also complicated greatly ship deployments. His second main reason to lead from the front this time was that he had lost most of the confidence he had previously in Vice-admiral Chuichi Nagumo, his carrier commander. Nagumo had proved too cautious on a number of occasions, notably during the attack on Pearl Harbor and at Midway, and Yamamoto was resolved to closely watch his performance today and to be ready to take over from him if need be. As a result of his ruminations, he was now coming at the enemy with a concentrated, powerful force arranged so that its elements could provide immediate mutual support to each other. If he succeeded in destroying the enemy fleet off Ndeni and in either chasing away the American Marines from the island or in cutting them off and starving them into submission, then he would be in a strong position to cut off the maritime supply link to Australia that came from the United States. With that done, there would then be a real prospect of being able to force Australia to abandon the fight in this war and to chase the United States Navy from the South Pacific, leaving Hawaii isolated in the Central Pacific. All in all, the strategic consequences of the battle to come would be profound indeed.
On the HMAS AUSTRALIA, Rear-admiral Crutchley paled when lookouts were able to give him the approximate composition of the enemy force coming at him.
‘’Six battleships and eight heavy cruisers, plus destroyers? May God help us! BRIDGE OFFICER, RADIO TO ADMIRAL TURNER: OVERWHELMING ENEMY FORCE OF BATTLESHIPS AND HEAVY CRUISERS APPROACHING. YOU MUST LEAVE NOW!’’
‘’Uh, yes sir!’’ Replied the young officer, paling visibly. Next, Crutchley gave by radio an order to his six covering destroyers to leap forward and deliver a torpedo attack on the enemy battleships, with the hope of disrupting the enemy battle line and throw its aim off. He was however not very confident about the chances for success of such an attack: the general performance of the torpedoes used by the American destroyers and submarines in this war was still abysmal and was marked by low reliability and frequent failures to detonate on impact. In contrast, Japanese torpedoes didn’t seem to suffer such problems at all.
After fifteen more minutes, it became evident to Crutchley that the enemy commander had also sent his destroyers forward for a torpedo attack. The six American destroyers of his screen were now on a collision course with seven Japanese destroyers and one light cruiser. What he didn’t know was that the Japanese destroyers were armed with heavy, 61 centimeter-diameter Type 93 LONG LANCE torpedoes, whose performances were still mostly unknown to the Allied navies. The LONG LANCE had tremendous range and speed compared to the current American torpedoes and could reach out to 40,000 meters at 38 knots, or 20,000 meters at 48 knots, plus had a 490 kilo warhead that was nearly double that of the ones in American and British torpedoes. As a consequence, the seven Japanese destroyers started launching their torpedoes well before their American counterparts and were thus free afterwards to maneuver at will and engage them with gunfire before the American destroyers could launch their own torpedoes. That duel didn’t go well for the American destroyers, who were each armed with four or five five inch guns, compared to the six five inch guns per Japanese destroyer. With the various ships maneuvering wildly to avoid enemy fire, most of the shells missed at first but, as the range decreased rapidly, hits started to register, splitting open the thin steel hulls and superstructures of the destroyers, destroying pieces of machinery, starting fires and inflicting atrocious wounds to the sailors on the destroyers that were hit. The U.S.S. BLUE was the first to sink, shells touching off a fire that reached its forward magazine and made it blow up. The U.S.S. RALPH TALBOT was next to sink, cut in two by a LONG LANCE torpedo delivered from short range. The AKIGUMO, on fire from end to end after an epic gun duel with two of the American destroyers, then went dead in the water, its engine room shot to pieces. Both the U.S.S. ELLET and the YUGUMO were forced to abandon combat as well, riddled with shells and on fire, but not before the YUGUMO launched a second, ultimate torpedo salvo towards the American heavy cruisers in the distance. None of the American destroyers got close enough to launch their torpedoes at the Japanese heavy units before they were either sunk or disabled and forced to withdraw. In contrast, a total of 82 LONG LANCE torpedoes sped towards their targets as the opposing destroyer squadrons fought their gun duels. Due to the long distance at which they had been fired and to the fact that the Allied cruisers had started zigzagging, precisely to avoid torpedoes, most of the LONG LANCEs missed but continued on towards the American transport ships, anchored well behind the line of cruisers. One unlucky transport ended up being hit by a stray LONG LANCE and was cut in two and sank, but that would prove to be only a beginning. As for the four Allied cruisers, they mostly managed to avoid the incoming torpedoes, save for the Australian light cruiser HOBART, which was unlucky enough to be hit by two torpedoes that sank it in minutes.
On the YAMATO, Admiral Yamamoto watched with apparent calm the destroyer duels ahead of his battle force, studying the enemy cruisers in the distance and watching their moves and how they deployed. He had much bigger guns than those of the enemy cruisers and could have started firing while still outside of the enemy’s reach. However, he knew from experience that such long range gunfire wasted a lot of ammunition and ended causing comparatively few hits. He still had numerous targets for his fleet apart from that amphibious force and its covering cruisers, thus decided to close the range further before opening fire.
‘’SIGNAL THE FOLLOWING: BATTLESHIPS ARE TO SPLIT IN THREE PARALLEL DIVISION COLUMNS. EXECUTE NOW!’’
The six Japanese battleships took about twelve minutes to split and adopt the new formation. By then, the three surviving Allied heavy cruisers had turned to their starboard in order to form a single line across the path of advance of the Japanese, thus forming the classic ‘T’ tactic that allowed all the main guns to fire on the enemy. Yamamoto was however no beginner at that game and promptly gave another set of orders.
‘’SIGNAL OUR BATTLESHIPS TO TURN TO PORT BY 45 DEGREES IN COLUMN OF DIVISIONS! EACH COLUMN IS TO TARGET THE ENEMY CRUISER IN ITS ORDER OF SUCCESSION. START RANGING FIRE WHEN WITHIN 20,000 METERS. EXECUTE NOW!’’
The three pairs of battleships soon turned to port by 45 degrees, enough to unmask all their main turrets while still advancing towards the enemy. Despite this obvious move that put a crushing number of heavy guns to bear on them, the Allied heavy cruisers gave no signs of retreating, making Yamamoto nod his head and speak quietly to the captain of the YAMATO, who was standing beside him.
‘’Those are brave men facing us. They know that they are going to their doom, but still will fight in order to give time to their transports to flee. Unfortunately for them, Kondo’s cruisers will be able to bypass them and get to the transports anyway.’’
On the HMAS AUSTRALIA, Rear-admiral Crutchley did see the start of the flanking move by the Japanese cruisers but, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it: if he turned towards the Japanese cruisers to intercept them, then it would be the enemy battleships that would have a free path to the transport ships. His only hope was that Rear-admiral Turner could somehow pull a miracle and make his transports leave fast enough to escape. However, the chances of that happening were awfully low. He gulped hard on watching the six Japanese battleships bearing down on his three cruisers: his biggest guns were of eight inch caliber, while the main guns of the Japanese battleships had a caliber of fourteen inch at a minimum. He was going to face 49 battleship main guns with 25 cruiser main guns, and this with much thinner armor on his ships. This could not end well, unless he used the slightly higher speed of his cruisers to escape. Crutchley however dismissed that option at once. Going to the nearest ship intercom box, he switched it on and spoke in as calm and firm a voice as he could muster.
‘’MEN, WE ARE ABOUT TO BATTLE A MORE NUMEROUS AND MORE POWERFUL ENEMY, BUT OUR ACTIONS TO COME WILL GIVE TIME TO THOUSANDS OF OTHER SAILORS AND MARINES TO WITHDRAW. I KNOW THAT YOU WILL FIGHT WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH AND COURAGE AND WILL HOLD THE LINE. MAY GOD BLESS YOU ALL!’’
As he switched off the intercom, he had another look at the incoming enemy battleships and whispered to himself.
‘’A thin blue line indeed!’’
The YAMATO, with its main fifteen meter baseline optical rangefinder situated higher than on the other battleships and thus having a better long range view, opened fire first, using only one of its three main turrets to fire a ranging salvo from approximately nineteen kilometers to the Allied heavy cruisers. The leading battleships in the two other division columns, the KONGO and the KIRISHIMA, also started firing ranging salvoes a minute later. As for the Allied cruisers, they soon followed suit with their smaller guns. With the range closing constantly, it took about four minutes of slow firing for the gunners of the YAMATO to find the range to their target, the HMAS AUSTRALIA. With one salvo of three guns finally bracketing closely the Australian heavy cruiser, the chief gunnery officer of the YAMATO made a final adjustment in range and bearing, then gave a terse order.
‘’ALL TURRETS, FIRE!’’
Nine eighteen inch guns erupted in one massive volley, sending out nine giant shells towards the HMAS AUSTRALIA. All of them landed in the waters around the cruiser, missing it, but one exploded near enough underwater to violently shake the heavy cruiser and deform some of its hull plates, creating a leak that flooded a few secondary compartments. The gunners of the AUSTRALIA, who had rangefinders with a much smaller optical baseline than those of the Japanese battleship, were still trying to get the correct range on the YAMATO when another full salvo from the behemoth landed around it. This time, one shell clipped the top of the cruiser’s main mast, while another shell exploded in the water close to its stern, jamming one of its two rudders and deforming one of its propeller shafts by enough to make it start to vibrate wildly. The engineering officer of the AUSTRALIA had no choice then but to stop that propeller shaft before it could rip off its bearings. Losing speed and also being difficult to steer with a jammed rudder, the AUSTRALIA became an easier target for the YAMATO and the NAGATO, the battleship following the flagship. Two 1,460 kilo armor piercing shells slammed into the Australian cruiser a minute later, arriving at a velocity of 550 meters per second, and easily penetrated its side armor before detonating. One of those shells exploded in the forward port side boiler room, instantly killing the men working there, wrecking the boilers and cutting the pressurized steam pipes. The other shell blew inside the forward crew quarters section and ripped open the upper part of the hull like a tin can. Thankfully, all the men were at their battle stations and that hit caused only a couple of casualties. As the eight inch shells from the Australian cruiser were finally scoring a couple of hits on the YAMATO, but without being able to penetrate its thick armor, four sixteen inch shells from the NAGATO slammed into the AUSTRALIA. Two of them exploded inside the turbine rooms, one hit the base of the forward funnel and collapsed it and the last one punched into the forward superstructures, exploding just below the command bridge. The blast from below propelled the bridge’s steel deck upward, smashing the bridge occupants, including Rear-admiral Crutchley, between the deck and the ceiling. With the command staff and fire control systems gone, the gunners of the AUSTRALIA found themselves reduced to local control, aiming with their turrets’ secondary rangefinders. Still, as their ship slowed down to a stop, without steering and with minimal power available, the Australian gunners kept firing at the incoming Japanese battleships, even managing a few hits on the NAGATO and the YAMATO. However, their shells caused only minor damages and a few casualties, most of them exploding against the Japanese armor plates without penetrating. Five sixteen inch shells and three eighteen inch shells then slammed into the heavy cruiser, along its hull and superstructures. Two of the four main turrets were taken out of action, while the antiaircraft gunners were decimated, with fires starting everywhere. With the AUSTRALIA now burning nearly from end to end, an ultimate eighteen inch shell struck it, penetrating the forward eight inch ammunition room. A huge explosion followed, cutting the heavy cruiser in two and blasting away a fourth of the ship. The two mangled parts then sank quickly in a couple of minutes, with o