Divine Wind
25 OCTOBER 1944
DIVINE WIND
Sometime after 1000 this morning five Japanese planes of LT Yukio Seki’s Shikishima special group took off from Malabacat, Luzon, and headed at wavetop level to the American ships off Samar. There, by 1050, RADM Clifton A.F.”Ziggy” Sprague’s escort carriers of Carrier Task Unit 77.4.3, “Taffy 3,” had miraculously escaped VADM Takeo Kurita’s main Japanese surface force in the phase of the Philippine landings known as the battle of Samar. At the moment, Sprague’s CVE’s were licking their wounds and recovering aircraft.
The five enemy planes approached unnoticed. Once inside radar range they popped up to 5000 feet and dove for the carriers. So rapid was their appearance that the Combat Air Patrol (CAP) was unable to respond. One crossed the bow of KITKUN BAY (CVE-71) then rolled directly at her bridge. He overshot, crashing into the port catwalk where he released a 100 kg bomb that did considerable damage. Two planes were shot down before reaching FANSHAW BAY (CVE-70); the remaining two dove for WHITE PLAINS (CVE-66). Anti-aircraft fire exploded one within feet of that carrier, showering the flight deck with debris. LT Seki in the other caught fire and pulled-up 500 feet, making a last second turn at ST. LO (CVE-63). To the incredulous eyes of ST. LO’s gunners, LT Seki deliberately crashed his flaming Zero into the flight deck! Burning debris penetrated to the hangar deck below and within seconds a chain of seven explosions rocked the carrier as stowed bombs and torpedoes began detonating. The aircraft elevator, chunks of deck, and whole aircraft were thrown as high as 750 feet skyward. In a few more minutes the entire ship was ablaze. A giant plume of thick smoke, flame, and hissing steam rose over the doomed carrier. In a little less than a half hour ST. LO and 100 of her crewmen were gone, the first US Navy warship to fall victim to kamikaze aircraft. In a similar attack a few hours earlier SANTEE (CVE-29) and SUWANNEE (CVE-27) had been damaged.
In the year 1281 the Japanese homeland was spared the conquering arm of Kublai Khan when a fortuitous August typhoon wrecked two of Khan’s fleets. According to Japanese mythology Divine Providence had sent this kamikaze, a word meaning “divine wind” or “tempest.” As the Japanese air forces were ravaged in the last year of WWII the name was invoked to refer to a select group of pilots who embodied Nison Seishin, the spirit of Japan. Donning Divinely inscribed hachimaki (headbands) and ceremonial swords, these pilots would embark after the ritual last drink of saki. Initially the greatest impediment to the American defense was the utter disbelief among our gunners that Japanese pilots would commit such an unthinkable act.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 1-2 NOV 26
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Hoyt, Edwin P. The Kamikazes. New York, NY: Arbor House, 1983, pp. 78-79.
Inoguchi, Rikihei and Tadashi Nakajima. The Divine Wind: Japan’s Kamikaze Force in World War II. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1958, pp. 57-64.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 12 Leyte. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1958, pp. 300-03.
Poolman, Kenneth. Allied Escort Carriers of World War Two in Action. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1988, pp. 224-25.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: It is hard to overstate the utter shock and disbelief that Americans experienced when faced with enemy suicide strikes. The idea and the development of kamikaze training and tactics is credited to VADM Takijuro Onishi. Despite modern criticism, suicide aircraft proved the single most effective anti-ship weapon the Japanese Navy deployed throughout WWII. More US Navy sailors died in WWII at the hands of kamikaze’s than from any other weapon system.
Seki’s Shikishima group and another, the Yamato group on nearby Cebu Island, were the two suicide aircraft units stationed in the Philippines on this date. Four Zero fighters sent along to escort the kamikaze’s this morning reported that four of the five were successful. Seki and another pilot were incorrectly reported to have struck the same carrier sequentially, promptly sinking it. A third kamikaze was said to have struck and damaged another carrier, and a fourth reportedly struck and sank a cruiser. This last is curious because “Taffy 3” had no cruisers in the area. It is surmised that the Japanese observer misidentified a destroyer that had been damaged earlier in the Battle of Samar.
Renaming a ship already in commission is taken by sailors to be a sign of bad luck. In ST. LO’s case,she was commissioned in October 1941 as MIDWAY. However, this name had been pulled just 15 days earlier (10 October) to be used for the fleet carrier CVB-41.
