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Historical Article: Melvin the Giant Killer
Posted on: 2014-01-04 14:53:48 Destroyer USS MELVIN vs. Battleship IJN FUSO By John Dudek @ The Wargamer In the faint, quarter-moonlit wee hours of an otherwise pitch black 25 October, 1944 morning, the Japanese combined battleship and cruiser Task Force C and the US Navy destroyers of DESTROYER SQUADRON 54 quickly approached each other on opposing course headings, with a combined speed of well over 45 knots - like two run-away locomotives headed on a collision course on the very same track. Radar lookouts on two US destroyers, McDERMUT and MONSSEN, sighted the oncoming Japanese at a range of almost 15 miles at 0254 hours. The US destroyers in their two separate columns were ordered to make a smoke screen to hide their torpedo attack approach. The US destroyers rang up full speed as they started their torpedo attack runs. Their sterns dug deep into the ocean's trough of the Surigao Strait as their torpedo tube mounts swung out to track the oncoming Japanese task force. The torpedo crews anxiously awaited a planned crucial change of course turn to starboard that would give them the best possible torpedo firing solution for shooting at the rapidly oncoming Japanese ships. Two of the distant Japanese warships stood out over all the other ships of FORCE C. Both of these massive warships had distinctive, impressive and very high "pagoda masts" atop their forward superstructures. They were the veteran WWI era sister battleships, the IJN FUSO and the IJN YAMASHIRO. Read on... |