Sinking of IJN Musashi
by Matt Stein
"It is a Tuesday morning. Azure and cobalt do not do justice to the color welling up out of the clear Pacific, as its depths reflect the beating sun with a glow almost electric blue, a blue fire. Here, ringing the Philippine Islands, the placid beauty of these tropical waters gives no hint that in just a few hours they will have in their midst huge slicks of thick fuel oil and struggling young sailors and pilots, and that overhead the air will be rent by the blasts of a thousand naval guns firing and of bombs detonating; the jackhammer-chatter of innumerable machine guns firing and the whistling scream of aircraft plummeting from the sky.
This particular Tuesday morning is October 24, 1944; exactly 60 years over 3000 weeks - ago. Your grandfathers are young adults, and your fathers younger still. On this day some of them are here, riding upon and within the thousands of naval craft patrolling these waters, unloading supplies at anchor or guarding the huge American invasion fleet stationed off the Leyte beaches. Yet more sailors drone overhead in aircraft, newly aloft with the sunrise on various missions: anti-submarine patrol, ground-support and area reconnaissance.
And to the west there are yet more young sailors aboard numerous ships of a large and powerful fleet, and their business also concerns the Leyte landing fleet. For they are coming resolutely - at high speed and with their cunning plan already in play - to destroy it. These ships are Japanese; the warships of Admiral Kuritas Center Force. Like a dagger plunging into the heart of the Philippines, Center Force had at dawn entered the Sibuyan Sea. Whereupon the dagger had immediately been blunted; submarines Darter and Dace, lying in ambush in the night, had stalked and successfully nullified as any further threat three of Kuritas heavy cruisers. Two of them sunk.
But Center Force still retained the core of its might in fact the two heaviest warships, with the largest-caliber rifles ever to put to sea in the two super-battleships of the Yamato class; Yamato and Musashi. After the interception by the two submarines, no other American naval vessels were to engage neither these giants nor their entourage; yet more battleships, cruisers and destroyers, deployed in concentric rings surrounding them. Instead, as the morning drew on American patrol planes began to appear, hovering at extreme range from the task force; tiny harbingers of what was to come.
Especially at this early date, no one unfamiliar with naval airpower, could have been impressed or alarmed by the sight of a few tiny flying machines, buzzing gnat-like and cautiously around the armada of heavily armed- and armored ships. But both adversaries at a very high cost to each - had already learned differently. The Americans would send not a few planes, but hundreds of them attacking in unison before the day was to end. The Japanese task force grimly increased speed and prepared to sell itself as dearly as possible. They were well aware of American naval aviators, and the punishment they could inflict.
And the first wave of USN pilots knew exactly what they were encountering, too. Almost immediately they targeted the two super-battleships and, soon thereafter, the Musashi in particular. Perhaps it was because she was puting up a noticeably less intense AA barrage than Yamato; the latter had 12 more 5 AA barrels than Musashi, for whom installation of these had been delayed. In their place, Musashi had only 6 Triple-25mm batteries as a temporary stopgap; 24 AA barrels but of a far smaller caliber, much closer to that of a heavy machine gun. Whatever the reason, the USN pilots concentrated their coordinated dive-bombing and torpedo attacks on Musashi, scoring multiple torpedo hits on her port bow, in quick succession:
Click on Image to Enlarge
Now seeing blood in the water, the pilots concentrated almost exclusively on Musashi. In earlier battles it had been learned that numerous bomb- and aerial torpedo hits were required to actually sink a major warship, and battleships most of all. Realizing this and appreciative of the tremendous size of the Yamatos the pilots were unrelenting in their attacks on the giant battleship, specifically targeting the area of her damaged port bow. Training her turrets around to repel attackers from every quarter, the giant battleship also twisted and lurched through high-speed turns, skidding through the water to throw off the aim of dive-bombers:
Click on Image to Enlarge
Rather than slow the rest of the task force to remain in protection of Musashi, Kurita opted to remain at high speed, to protect his remaining, undamaged units. Musashi attempted to keep up even if she could not remain in station but was doomed to failure by the precise nature of the damage to her port bow. Her armor plates had been bent outward, forming a giant, forward-opening scoop which brought seawater aboard; more and faster with every knot of speed. If she slowed down, she would be hit by yet more torpedoes and bombs. If she remained at speed, she would sink herself. In the end, she did a little of both. She finally lost her last bit of headway, to be abandoned by the last of the task force ships, when her entire bow had flooded to the point where her foredeck was awash:
Click on Image to Enlarge
Without explosion or conflagration, simply because the pumps could not keep up with the flooding, Musashi finally rolled over to port and disappeared beneath the waves of the Sibuyan Sea. The final plunge of the largest battleship ever sunk, up to that time - an end brought about entirely by airpower. (Her sister Yamato would also be sunk and also by USN airpower - the following spring.) The age of the much vaunted dreadnought battleship and the world navies fixation with it was well and truly ended. All in the course of one hot, lazy afternoon. October 24, 1944; a Tuesday."
