November 25th, 1944

World War ll

USS ESSEX

November 25, 1944. Japanese Yokosuka D4Y3 Suisei model 33 (Judy) about to hit USS Essex (CV-9). Pilot was LT Yamaguchi Yoshinori, who was part of the Yoshino Special Attack Corps and flew from Mabalacat Air Field in the Philippines. Seventeen men lost their lives—the Japanese pilot and 16 Essex crewmen.

USS ESSEX

The early afternoon of November 25, 1944, found Intrepid still launching strikes against targets in the Philippines. Throughout the morning, enemy attacks had gradually increased in scale, frequency and intensity. At 12:33pm, as Intrepid and USS Hancock sailed side by side, a kamikaze dove toward them. On its way down, it veered toward Hancock and exploded just above the ship. Hancock was showered with wreckage, starting fires and destroying aircraft waiting to take off.

From Intrepid’s flag bridge, Rear Admiral Gerry Bogan ordered his ships into a series of evasive turns. Twenty minutes later, two more kamikazes approached Intrepid. As Bogan watched, the ship’s anti-aircraft guns brought down one plane, but the other plane kept coming. Years later, Bogan described how the aircraft climbed to 400 feet and then “did the wingover and dived right in the center of the flight deck.”

A German V-2 rocket struck the intersection of High Holborn and Chancery Lane in the Holborn section of London, killing 6 and wounding 292. Then, in the worst V-2 attack of the war, another one landed across the street from the Woolworths department store in New Cross, South London and killed 168.
German submarine U-482 was sunk west of Shetland by the Royal Navy frigate Ascension.
The Canadian corvette Shawinigan was torpedoed and sunk in the Cabot Strait by German submarine U-1228.
Japanese cruiser Yasoshima (formerly the Chinese cruiser Ping Hai) was bombed and sunk in Drusol Bay, Luzon by American aircraft.
Japanese cruiser Kumano was sunk at Santa Cruz, Philippines by American aircraft.
Japanese destroyer Shimotsuki was torpedoed and sunk northeast of Singapore by the American submarine Cavalla.

November 25th, 1944

USS Intrepid (CV-11), November 25, 1944

A Japanese air raid on 25 November struck the fleet shortly after noon. Two kamikazes crashed into Intrepid, killing sixty-nine men and causing a serious fire. The ship remained on station, however, and the fires were extinguished within two hours. She was detached for repairs the following day, and reached San Francisco on 20 December.

Task Force 58

The US Navy's Fast Carrier Strike Force that Won the War in the Pacific

The new breed of American fast aircraft carriers could make thirty-three knots, and each carried almost one hundred strike aircraft. Brought together as Task Force 58, also known as the Fast Carrier Task Force, this armada at times comprised more than one hundred ships carrying more than ten thousand men afloat. By 1945, more than one thousand combat aircraft, fighters, dive- and torpedo-bombers could be launched in under an hour.

Rod Macdonald covers the birth of naval aviation, the appearance of the first modern carriers in the 1920s, through to the famous surprise six-carrier Kidō Butai Japanese raid against Pearl Harbor, and then the early U.S. successes of 1942 at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. The fast carriers allowed America, in late 1942 and early 1943, to finally move from bitter defense against the Japanese expansionist onslaught, to mounting her own offensive to retake the Pacific. Task Force 58 swept west and north from the Solomon Islands to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, neutralizing Truk in Micronesia, and Palau in the Caroline islands, before the vital Mariana Islands operations, the Battle of Saipan, the first battle of the Philippine Sea and the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. The strikes by Task Force 58 took Allied forces across the Pacific, to the controversial Battle of Leyte Gulf and to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Task Force 58 had opened the door to the Japanese home islands themselves —allowing US bombers to finally get close enough to launch the devastating nuclear bombing raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Task Force 58 participated in virtually all the US Navy’s major battles in the Pacific theatre during the last two years of the war. Historian Rod Macdonald has created the most detailed account to date of the fast carrier strike force, the force that brought Japan to its knees and brought World War II to its crashing conclusion.

November 6, 1944 Burial at Sea

November 25th, 1944

USS Essex struck by Lt. Yoshinori Yamaguchi's special attack D4Y3 Model 33 aircraft, at 1256 hours on 25 Nov 1944

Yasoshima being attacked by US carrier aircraft west of Luzon, Philippine Islands, 25 Nov 1944

USS Essex struck by Lt. Yoshinori Yamaguchi's special attack D4Y3 Model 33 aircraft, at 1256 hours on 25 Nov 1944

USS Essex struck by Lt. Yoshinori Yamaguchi's special attack D4Y3 Model 33 aircraft, at 1256 hours on 25 Nov 1944

Damage control parties trying to bring fires under control on the flight deck of USS Intrepid following the crash of a Japanese special attack aircraft off the Philippines, 25 Nov 1944. Note the bulge in the deck

Damage control parties trying to bring fires under control on the flight deck of USS Intrepid following the crash of a Japanese special attack aircraft off the Philippines, 25 Nov 1944

Damage control parties trying to bring fires under control on the hangar deck of USS Intrepid following the crash of a Japanese special attack aircraft off the Philippines, 25 Nov 1944

Damage control parties trying to bring fires under control on the hangar deck of USS Intrepid following the crash of a Japanese special attack aircraft off the Philippines, 25 Nov 1944

A Japanese D4Y Suisei fighter splashing into the sea after being shot down during an attack on the American fleet as seen from USS Essex, 25 Nov 1944. Note battleship USS South Dakota and US fighter in level flight

Anti-aircraft crew member of USS New Jersey watching a special attack aircraft diving into USS Intrepid, 25 Nov 1944; note OS2U Kingfisher float plane on the port catapult

USS Essex struck by Lt. Yoshinori Yamaguchi's special attack D4Y3 Model 33 aircraft, at 1256 hours on 25 Nov 1944

U.S. TASK FORCE

58

Task Force 58

USS ESSEX

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