AS LONG AS A GUN WILL FIRERADAR PICKET STATION 1
APRIL 16, 1945
The fires on the Laffey weren’t going out. Skipper Julian Becton was forced to slow the destroyer’s speed to keep from fanning the flames. An ominous column of black smoke was billowing into the sky, a beacon for more kamikazes.
In quick succession, two more Val dive-bombers swept down on Laffey. The first attacked from astern, close to the water and partly obscured by the cloud of smoke trailing the destroyer. Despite taking repeated hits, the Val plowed into Laffey’s aft gun mounts. Gun captain Larry Delewski was blown over the side by the explosion. Amazingly, Delewski was unhurt, and so were two other crewmen who went into the water and were later picked up by one of the gunboats.
Flames were leaping from Laffey’s fantail, and the black smoke thickened over the ship. Firefighters worked desperately to keep the fires from reaching the ammunition magazines. Just when it seemed that Laffey’s condition could get no worse, an eleventh attacker crashed into the stern in almost the same spot as the one before. Another gun crew was killed instantly.
Yet another Val came diving from astern. Unlike the committed kamikazes, this one planted his bomb directly into Laffey’s stern, then pulled up and soared back into the sky. The explosion of the bomb severed the cables and hydraulic lines to the destroyer’s steering gear, jamming the rudder at 26 degrees to port.
Keep moving and keep shooting. The advice Becton had received now seemed like a bad joke. He had no choice except to steam in a leftward circle. He couldn’t straighten the ship’s rudder, and he had only a few remaining guns.
For the kamikazes still circling, the crippled destroyer was an easy target. Two more Vals came boring in from the port quarter. The first exploded into the aft deckhouse, sending up a cascade of fire and shrapnel. Right behind it came the second, crashing in almost the same spot. Flaming gasoline covered the aft half of the destroyer.
Belowdecks, the crew was fighting to save the ship—and their lives. Two machinist’s mates, George Logan and Stephen Waite, were trapped in the emergency diesel room. With no light and no ventilation, they signaled the engine room of their predicament. Their fellow machinist’s mates John Michel and Buford Thompson managed to chisel a hole in the bulkhead large enough to thread an air hose into the compartment. Two more machinist’s mates, Art Hogan and Elton Peeler, went to work with cutting torches, finally opening a hole large enough to haul the trapped men to safety.
Overhead, a dozen Corsairs had showed up to engage the attacking kamikazes. As Becton watched from his bridge, a Nakajima Ki-43 Oscar fighter came streaking toward Laffey’s port bow, flying through a hail of 40-millimeter and 20-millimeter fire. Directly behind it, flying through the same fire, came a Marine Corsair, blazing away at the Oscar that was aimed at Laffey’s bridge.
The Oscar missed the bridge, but his wing ripped through the port yardarm of the mast. With a spectacular crash, the yardarm crashed to the deck, carrying the American flag with it. A half second later, the pursuing Corsair hit the same mast, tearing off the air-search radar antenna.
Astonished, Becton watched the crippled planes flounder back over the water. Each was struggling to stay airborne. The fatally damaged Oscar wobbled, then dropped its nose and crashed into the sea. The Corsair clawed its way up for a few hundred feet more, then a tiny figure tumbled from the cockpit. Moments later, Becton saw a parachute canopy blossom, and the pilot descended to the water.
On Laffey’s bridge, nineteen-year-old Ari Phoutrides, the quartermaster of the watch, was supposed to be writing down everything that happened. “I couldn’t even hold a pencil,” Phoutrides recalled, “let alone write.”
With all other communications lines severed, Phoutrides was the captain’s lookout and messenger. Phoutrides spotted a kamikaze coming in low on the port beam. “I had to practically beat the OOD [officer of the deck] over the head with my fist before he paid any attention to me. This was the only time I’ve hit an officer and gotten away with it.” Alerted to the danger, the gunners splashed the kamikaze just in time.
The Corsairs were taking down some of the kamikazes, but not all. A Judy dive-bomber came roaring in on the port beam with a Corsair nipping at his tail. Laffey’s gunners opened up on the Judy, trying to keep from hitting the American fighter, finally exploding the kamikaze 50 yards short of Laffey. The shrapnel slammed into the destroyer, slicing the communications lines to the 5-inch guns and wounding most of the gunners.
That made seventeen attackers so far, and there seemed to be no end in sight. With the electrical controls of their gun mounts gone, Laffey’s gunners were down to old-fashioned manual control.
Two more kamikazes, both Oscar fighters, were converging from the starboard side. The first exploded from a direct hit in the nose by a manually controlled 5-inch gun mount. The second, boring in on the starboard bow, also went down from 5-inch fire.
Laffey was almost finished. The assistant communications officer, Lt. Frank Manson, asked Becton if he thought they’d have to abandon ship. “No,” snapped the captain. “I’ll never abandon ship as long as a gun will fire.”
Luckily, Becton didn’t hear the lookout next to him, who added in a low voice, “And if I can find one man to fire it.”
On his CAP station over the northern picket ships, Grim Reapers skipper Lt. Cmdr. Wally Clarke was finally getting into the action. He had just received a vector to intercept bogeys coming from the northwest.
Clarke’s number three, Lt. (jg) Charles “Bo” Farmer, was the first to spot them: twelve o’clock high, at 20,000 feet. Bo Farmer had the same score as Clarke—four kills—from his earlier combat tour. Like Clarke, he was one tantalizing number away from being an ace.
Climbing through 16,000 feet, they got a good look at the bogeys. These weren’t the sitting-duck Nates and Val kamikazes like Kirkwood’s flight had just finished blowing out of the sky. These were Tony and Zero fighters—real fighters—and they were there to cover the kamikazes.
As the Corsairs approached, the Japanese fighters peeled off, swooping down to meet them. Instead of a turkey shoot, this was going to be a classic, no-holds-barred dogfight.
Clarke’s Tail End Charlie, Ens. Ray James, saw the distinctive shapes of three Tony fighters swooping down toward him in a perfect pursuit curve. The Tony was unique, the only Japanese fighter powered by an in-line, liquid-cooled engine. When the Tony made its first appearance in the Pacific, it was mistaken for a German Messerschmitt Bf 109.
James winced as he saw the tracers of the first Tony’s 12.7-millimeter machine guns searing past him. But the Japanese pilot had been too eager. The bullets missed James’s Corsair, and now Wally Clarke was whipping in behind the Tony. Seconds later, Clarke had him in his sights, gunning the Japanese fighter out of the air.
Behind the Tonys came four Zeroes. One made the mistake of overshooting his high-side run on Tail End Charlie Ray James. James took advantage of the mistake, maneuvering behind the Zero’s tail. He stayed there, all six machine guns firing, until the Japanese fighter went into the water.
Up above, the other three Corsair pilots were mixing it up with the remaining Japanese fighters. Bo Farmer was having a field day, splashing three Zeroes and a Tony fighter. Clarke climbed up after an escaping Zero, catching the fighter and blowing it to pieces.
The fight was over as quickly as it had begun. The surviving Japanese fighters scattered like quail. Clarke’s flight was returning to the orbit point when another call for help crackled on the tactical frequency. A destroyer—USS Laffey—was in trouble.
When they arrived over the radar picket ship, they found a swirling tableau of antiaircraft fire, swarming kamikazes, and friendly fighters, including Wildcats and Hellcats from other carriers and a contingent of Marine Corsairs from the Okinawa airfields.
Clarke and his wingman, Ens. Jack Ehrhard, went after a pair of Vals that were positioning for a run on the Laffey. Clarke flamed one, and Ehrhard put enough rounds into the second to send it smoking toward the water.
Minutes later, they spotted a Japanese Betty bomber low on the water, racing at top speed from a pair of pursuing F6F Hellcats. Sportsmanship between fighter pilots, especially those from different carriers, was virtually nonexistent. Clarke and Ehrhard rolled in on the Betty, neatly cutting out the Hellcats.
In his eagerness to nail the Betty, however, Clarke overran the bomber before he could get it in his sights. That left his wingman, Ehrhard, to claim the prize, while the disgruntled Hellcat pilots watched from astern.
But the Betty didn’t crash, even after Ehrhard poured a hail of lead into it. The bomber skipped off the water, pulled up, then splashed down in a semicontrolled ditching. As the Corsair pilots swept overhead, they saw three figures clamber out of the wreck of the bomber. The Japanese crewmen were bobbing like otters in the water, within paddling distance of a nearby enemy-occupied island.
This was not a day—nor an era—for compassion. None of the American pilots had charitable feelings for the enemy who had been killing American sailors all morning. One after the other, .50-calibers firing, they strafed the water around the downed Betty until nothing was left but a dark froth.
Laffey’s gunners were being killed or wounded as fast as they could be replaced. Even though the CAP fighters were engaging the kamikazes, shooting down or chasing away most of them, Laffey was still a target.
A bomb struck her just below the bridge, wiping out the two 20-millimeter mounts and killing both gun crews as well as several already wounded men being treated below in the main-deck-level wardroom being used as a dressing station.
Then came a Judy dive-bomber, hurtling in from the port quarter. Laffey’s gunners blazed away with their remaining 40-millimeter and 20-millimeter guns, but the blunt-nosed shape of the Judy continued to swell in size. At the last moment before impact, a Corsair caught the kamikaze from behind. The Judy crashed into the water close aboard. The blazing hulk skidded into the destroyer’s hull, causing a dent but no serious damage.
For the moment, no more enemy planes seemed to be targeting Laffey. Peering into the sky, Ari Phoutrides had the feeling that it was over. He could see more than a dozen fighters—Corsairs and Hellcats—chasing the few remaining kamikazes.
For the wounded Laffey, it was almost too late. Fires in the aft half of the ship were still burning out of control. The destroyer was slowly flooding. Her shattered fantail was nearly submerged. Though her engines were running, the rudder was still jammed hard to port. Captain Becton was trying every combination of engine thrust to steer the destroyer southward, away from the kamikaze hunting ground. Nothing worked.
The destroyer-minesweeper Macomb steamed up to assist with the frantic damage control efforts and to take the destroyer under tow. With her flooded stern and jammed rudder, Laffey was untowable by a single vessel. In the early afternoon, a pair of fleet tugs arrived. After using pumps to control the flooding, they managed to haul the destroyer back to the Hagushi anchorage at Okinawa.
Laffey wasn’t the only casualty that day on RP1. Both her gunboat escorts had taken heavy damage. LCS-116 was struck topside, suffering seventeen dead and twelve wounded. LCS-51 had a gaping hole in her hull, with three men wounded.
In the fading light at the anchorage that evening, sailors from other ships gawked at the mangled USS Laffey. It was hard to believe any ship could take that much punishment and keep fighting. Several ships of Laffey’s size had been sunk from a single kamikaze.
No other vessel in the war would take as many kamikaze hits and remain afloat. In twenty-two separate attacks Laffey endured six kamikaze crashes and two bomb strikes. Thirty-two of her crew were dead, and seventy-one were wounded. In exchange, her gunners took down nine kamikazes. In seventy-nine minutes of hellish combat, USS Laffey had earned herself a niche in naval history.