Tin Can Titans

by John Wukovits

  Shooting starshells at night to illuminate Japanese positions prevented an already stressed crew from getting much sleep, but delivered an impressive display. “It was interesting watching the shells float downward through a thick white cloud,” Raines wrote Ray Ellen three days after the landings. “They would burst in the midst of the cloud and cause it to glow like snow and then drift downward through the layers and finally through the bottom and light up the whole island.”

  Firing shells, Burns worked in coordination with the shore fire control party, which consisted of a Marine with a walkie-talkie on Iwo Jima calling out grid locations of targets to the destroyer. Howorth’s five-inch guns turned to those locations, fired a few salvos, and then waited until they received another request from the Marine. One time Raines heard the Marine shout, “Look at those bastards run!” and knew that his ship’s batteries had hit their mark; another time the Marine said, “It might interest you to know your shooting is very good. The results are very gratifying.”

  On another occasion the Marine contact called in grid coordinates for a gun that the Japanese rolled in and out of a cave. The Marine told Burns that when he shouted, the ship should immediately commence firing on that spot. The Marine waited until he saw the Japanese begin to roll out the gun, then shouted over his walkie-talkie, “Open fire immediately.” Howorth’s guns boomed fifteen shells directly on the location and silenced the offending gun. “I’m glad, in spite of the sacrifice I feel that you and I are making, that I had something to do with killing some of them,” Raines gushed to Ray Ellen about their work off Iwo Jima. “I really feel grand about it. I get a special kick out of killing them. I only wish I were in close enough to see their bodies and parts of bodies go sky high when our shells hit.”13

  He had second thoughts on those occasions when they moved toward the beaches to provide close-in gunfire support. According to a Navy press release, “Heavy shells from Jap shore batteries dropped all around her, and machine gun bullets chewed into her skin and superstructure spasmodically.”14

  Howorth escaped harm, but the kamikazes off the Philippines and those bullets made him realize that their good fortune could change in an instant. He wrote Ray Ellen after one close encounter off Iwo Jima, “It just occurred to me that a guy could very easily get killed out here and consequently consider that all the chances we’ve taken and still remain unscratched as far as personnel injuries are concerned, we are pretty lucky.”

  On March 14, almost one month after leaving for Iwo Jima and just after watching a group of B-29s land on the hastily patched airfield, Burns received orders to return to Saipan. Two days later Howorth entered Saipan’s harbor, where the crew spotted three American nurses standing on a hospital ship. Raines waved to them from the bridge, and when the nurses waved back, “the whole ship started waving and whistling. The poor girls’ arms ached I guess by the time we passed.”15

  After the trying experiences with kamikazes and mines off the Philippines, in comparison Iwo Jima had been a relatively calm experience. No Japanese aircraft attacked Howorth, and daily patrols and bombardments often kept them a safe distance from land. Some wondered whether the Japanese had reached the end of their resources.

  Okinawa would provide an alarming answer.

  “Enemy Planes Were All Around”

  More than twelve hundred ships, including Howorth, O’Bannon, Nicholas, Taylor, and two hundred other destroyers, gathered to seize Okinawa. Under the command of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, the hero of Midway, and Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, the massive naval units rivaled those that had assembled off the coast of Normandy the previous year for D-Day. Once Okinawa was in their hands, the Americans intended to use airfields there as bases for the waves of bombers and fighters set to attack the Home Islands, and the rest of the island as a staging area for the final assault against Japan proper.

  “The Ryukyu invasion would in a sense mark the end of the road in the vast ‘ocean’ phase of the war against Japan,” explained an article in the New York Times on April 1. “The road began at Guadalcanal almost three years ago.”16 During the intervening years, the nation’s military had pushed the Japanese back three thousand miles, retaken most of their conquests, and cut their supply routes to precious natural resources in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.

  A key part of that progress was Desron 21. Two and a half years after the original trio arrived off Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, four of those squadron destroyers participated in the Okinawa invasion, including two of the original three vessels. The Japanese would fight to the last man to retain the island, which stood 350 miles south of Kyushu, as an American assault on Okinawa, which was considered a part of Japan, would be akin to attacking Tokyo. Should Okinawa fall, little remained to stop the Americans from invading the Home Islands, something that had never come to pass in Japan’s long history. “We figured we might get hit by more kamikazes because we were moving closer to Japan,” said Seaman Bramble, “but you never know.”17

  At a March 29 meeting with his military, Hirohito urged them to consider every option, including kamikazes, as the fight for Okinawa “will decide the fate of our Empire.”18 Imperial General Headquarters concluded that in such a desperate situation, there was no longer any alternative to using kamikazes on a scale not previously seen in the war. The plan, named Ten Go (Heavenly Operation), called for a series of kikusui (floating chrysanthemums), colossal air raids involving anywhere from fifty to three hundred aircraft, to assault American ships off Okinawa. Except for the newest aircraft and most experienced pilots, which would be retained in the homeland to defend Japan’s shores, every available aircraft, including seaplanes, outdated fighters, training planes, and scout planes, would be used to repel the invaders.

  Tokyo radio broadcasts cautioned the Japanese people that “the war situation continues to grow more serious with each added second” and that the decisive battle on Okinawa would determine their war fortune. The broadcast emphasized the importance of defeating the Americans on Okinawa, as a defeat meant that much of southern Japan, including Tokyo and other large cities, “will come within the flying radius of the enemy B-24s.” The Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Hochi admitted in an editorial that losing Okinawa would leave Japan “no hope of turning the course of the war” and that “the loss of Okinawa will mean the collapse of the vanguards of Japan.”19

  Kamikaze pilots were an enigma to Raines and every other American sailor in the Pacific. They knew that an attack could inflict grievous harm on a ship, maybe even sink it, at the cost of one plane and one pilot, but the idea that a man would willingly fly an aircraft into a ship remained incomprehensible to them. Admiral Halsey contended that kamikaze pilots could not be understood by Americans: “The psychology behind it was too alien to ours; Americans, who fight to live, find it hard to realize that another people will fight to die.”20

  Most kamikaze pilots sacrificed their lives out of a sense of duty and honor, and hoped with their deaths to help their nation avoid defeat. They followed the code of bushido, observed by the ancient samurai warriors and revered for centuries in Japan, which emphasized honor, courage, and loyalty to the emperor. Voluntary death was preferable to living in shame. The highest honor, granted to most kamikaze pilots, was to be enshrined at Yasukuni, a special shrine visited twice a year by the emperor.

  Before leaving for their final flight, each pilot wrote a farewell letter to his parents. “I have been given a splendid opportunity to die. This is my last day,” wrote Flying Petty Officer First Class Isao Matsuo of the 701st Air Group to his parents on October 28, 1944. “The destiny of our homeland hinges on the decisive battle in the seas to the south where I shall fall like a blossom from a radiant cherry tree.” Matsuo thanked his parents for their years of nurturing and hoped that his sacrifice “will in some small way repay what you have done for me. Think well of me and know that your Isao died for our country.”21

  Ensign Ichizo Hayashi, a graduate of the Imperial University at Kyoto
, wrote his mother, “I am going to score a direct hit on an enemy ship without fail. When war results are announced you may be sure that one of the successes was scored by me. I am determined to keep calm and do a perfect job to the last, knowing that you will be watching over me and praying for my success. There will be no clouds of doubt or fear when I make the final plunge.” He added, “It is gratifying to live in this world, but living has a spirit of futility about it now. It is time to die. I do not seek reasons for dying. My only search is for an enemy target against which to dive.”22

  Japanese radio broadcasts placed so much faith in kamikaze attacks that they called them “sure-hit and sure-kill” aircraft.23

  Dating back to their runs up the Slot in the Solomons more than two years earlier, Desron 21 ships were accustomed to facing tight predicaments, but fending off swarms of kamikazes was a specter of another level. “Okinawa,” Raines wrote to Ray Ellen in late March. “Just looking at it on the map breaks us out in a cold sweat.” He added that “Okinawa spells Kamikaze Corps to us,” and admitted that the crew was particularly worried. “Somebody’s gotta get it and we may be lucky or unlucky.”24

  Howorth’s crew tried to distract themselves by watching movies on the ship’s fantail. On March 29 men gathered for the 1942 Academy Award–winning film Mrs. Miniver, the story of a courageous British family withstanding Hitler’s air blitz of London. They admired the husband and wife, played by Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson, but walked away at the film’s end more unsettled than they had expected. Was this a foreshadow of coming events?

  Early in the morning of April 1, Easter Sunday, Commander Burns took Howorth between the troop transports and the landing beaches at Okinawa to sweep the area of mines. He then moved out to sea to patrol while landing craft ferried in the first waves of Marines toward the island. Howorth was not alone, as a ring of ships screened Okinawa, prepared to intercept enemy submarines, suicide boats, torpedo craft, and aircraft. Raines thought that, for such a huge assault against a major island, the ship enjoyed a relatively calm day, but kamikazes struck four other vessels. Prior to their appearance, gun crews had considered themselves successful if they shot down 80 to 90 percent of enemy attackers, but now they had to destroy every single plane to avoid serious harm. Defensive tactics were improvised at best and mostly fell to the skipper, who had to change speed and course at an instant’s notice.

  The calm ended the next day, when before daylight three aircraft flew near the ship, twice drawing fire from Howorth’s antiaircraft guns. One swerved away, a second veered toward the landing beaches, and the third, according to Howorth’s war diary, “without warning… passed close aboard down the port side, flying low.”25 The enemy plane appeared so suddenly that the ship’s gun crews never had a chance to open fire before it departed.

  A nearby American destroyer’s five-inch shells provided more of a threat when, because of incorrect fuse settings, they hit close to Howorth. Raines watched each succeeding shell splash two hundred feet closer to his destroyer, “and after six rounds we were really worried. It got to the point that the very next shell (we felt certain) would hit the ship.” Suddenly the splashes stopped, and although Raines concluded, “I think the Howorth bears a charmed life,” he recognized how close everyone had come to death. “I could just feel that shell ripping into our superstructure.”26

  After patrolling off Okinawa for two days, on April 4 Raines and the crew near him watched as the escort carrier USS Wake Island, “having been damaged by enemy suicide planes, passed through patrol stations with escort.”27 The carrier was another reminder that death and destruction could materialize in seconds.

  “Be sweet Mommie and remember that I love you with everything I’ve got,” Raines wrote to his wife. “No sleep last night due to Bogies but things are squared away now. Bye darling. More later.”28

  April 6 promised to be more of the same. The ship patrolled off Okinawa’s west coast until late in the afternoon, when, according to a Navy press release, “all hell broke loose.”29 The swarm of kamikazes marked the first kikusui of Japan’s massive Ten Go operation.

  “There was not much going on for the first few days,” said Seaman Bramble. Howorth had been posted to picket duty at one of the sixteen stations about Okinawa, placed there to intercept kamikazes and to provide an early warning system to alert the ships closer to shore that the enemy was on their way. Few crews looked forward to the duty, as those destroyers would be the first to absorb the attacks. “We were on picket duty, and I was on the bridge when we heard over the radio that twenty kamikazes were coming in from one direction and another twenty from a different direction.” We figured, ‘Here it comes.’”30

  While the combat air patrol splashed the majority of the aircraft, some battled through in the north to sink the USS Bush (DD-529) and the USS Colhoun (DD-801). Kamikazes dived into targets off southern Okinawa and off the east coast, sinking three destroyers, one LST, and two ammunition ships. Burns later wrote in his action report, “It was soon obvious that the combat air patrol was putting up a great fight, but that the enemy was beginning to sift through because of overwhelming numbers.”31

  Seaman Bramble, the port wing lookout, nicknamed “Radar” because of his keen eyesight, spotted two groups of enemy aircraft coming in on the starboard quarter. Combat air patrol splashed some of the invaders, but others charged through to strike the destroyer Mullany (DD-528) and dive toward Howorth. Burns radioed to the central fighter director over TBS that they were “under heavy attack,” while a nearby ship stated there were at least forty kamikazes in the area.32

  Antiaircraft fire from both Howorth and the cruiser St. Louis downed one plane, briefly boosting the spirits of some, but those feelings quickly dissipated. “We shot down that first plane and everyone on the bridge yelled like we had just scored a touchdown,” said Seaman Bramble. “Then things got itchy.”33

  Several more kamikazes barreled toward the destroyer. The first of them emerged from clouds sixteen thousand yards out and glided toward Howorth. Every deck gun joined in, and in seventy seconds they fired seventy-six 5-inch, four hundred 40mm, and five hundred 20mm rounds at the kamikaze. Even though the plane started smoking from hits, it continued toward the ship. It passed between the stacks, flipped over in a roll, and severed with its left wing all radio antennas and wires before splashing into the water just off the ship’s starboard side.

  On the bridge, Raines tried to focus on his duties, but it was difficult to block out the sounds and images. Radar screens showed several groups of kamikazes approaching, but Raines was more concerned with four planes on their starboard bow, which split into two groups and commenced a coordinated attack on his ship.

  Burns called for top speed and began maneuvering to bring all his guns into play. The five-inch guns fired first, joined by the 40mm guns when another kamikaze drew within four thousand yards of the destroyer. Raines and Bramble wondered how anything could weave through that curtain of steel, but the plane continued directly toward the middle of the ship—his station. Fortunately, Howorth shells knocked down that kamikaze, which fishtailed into the water two hundred yards from Howorth.

  The next kamikaze, hoping to sneak in while Howorth’s guns were focused on another target, attacked at the same time. Deck guns swerved toward it as soon as they had splashed the previous one, directing streams of shells toward the latest kamikaze. Now emitting smoke, the plane droned onward and passed between one of the five-inch guns and the fantail 20mm battery, scraping the deck and clipping lifelines before smashing into the water. “The captain was maneuvering to get the guns in position to fire at the plane and everyone was shouting as one came between the stacks,” said Seaman Bramble. “The captain was good at maneuvering the ship.”34

  Yet another kamikaze attempted to sneak in, but Burns swerved the ship in time to bring his 40mm and 20mm guns into play. Those guns fired so rapidly that, even though repair parties and torpedomen helped break out additional ammunition, they had difficulty
keeping the guns supplied. The plane went out of control and crashed 250 yards out. “It was now obvious that the ship had its hands full,” wrote Burns. “Enemy planes were all around.”35

  With Howorth’s gun crews focused on that plane, one more kamikaze started a high, fast glide on the disengaged bow to try to come in dead ahead, giving Burns, Raines, and most of the men in the bridge a clear view of the oncoming plane approaching from the starboard side. “Just before we got hit, the navigator on the bridge told me I had better get off my chair,” said Seaman Bramble. “He also shouted, ‘Target, angle zero!’ meaning the kamikaze was coming right at us. When you see everyone else hitting the deck, you know something’s about to happen. I hit the deck just before the plane hit right above us. I might have died had I still been in that chair.”36 Five-inch shells from the forward battery ripped into the plane, but the kamikaze smashed directly into the bridge, igniting fires, killing men, and hurling Raines into the water. The final plane made a run on the port side, but 40mm gun crews shot him down five hundred yards astern of the ship.

  Those final five kamikazes attacked in less than eight minutes. During that interval, Howorth’s gun crews fired 332 five-inch shells and more than 3,600 40mm and 20mm rounds. Four men were dead and fourteen wounded, with another five, which included Raines, listed as missing. “Once again ‘Lady Luck’ was on board ship,” wrote Burns. “The plane that crashed could have caused considerably more damage. The contributing factors in stopping these suicide planes proved to be high speed, a large volume of accurate fire, good battery discipline, and radical maneuvers.”37