Seki's unit taking off October 25, 1944 (A6M2, 301st Hikotaki, 201st
Kokutai, ikishima-Tai)
St. Lo's magazine detonates after Seki's attack.
A formation of nine more Shinpu took off from Mabalacat.
Leading the group was Lieutenant Yukio Seki, one of twenty-four volunteers who
stepped forward—every Mabalacat aviator, to a man—after Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi’s
19 October meeting.
Seki, 23, was at once an odd and natural choice to command
the mission. An Imperial Japanese Naval Academy graduate fresh out of advanced
flight school, Seki was a skilled pilot with some carrier-based combat
experience. Seki had more in common with the Taffy 3 pilots than the Japanese
flight novices whose deficiencies in age, skill, and experience would make them
prime “body crashing” fodder in the months ahead. At the same time, though,
Seki was a poster boy for the best in Japan’s latest generation of military
manhood. He was wolfishly handsome, trim, and ramrod straight.
As the son of a
widowed mother, Seki’s pedigree was unpretentious and unassailable. He was the
personification of the new samurai, a role model and sacrificial example for
others—many others it turned out—to emulate and follow.
The group’s official name became the Shinpu (a compound
noun, written using the Chinese characters for “god” and “wind”). Special
Attack Unit with Seki as commander. Composed of all the pilots and remaining
aircraft of what had formerly been the navy’s 201st Air Group, Shinpu Special
Attack Unit was organized into four flight sections, each section’s name chosen
to symbolize an essential virtue of Japanese manhood. The aircraft resources—twenty-six
Zekes—were further divided: half would be used for body crashing, half for
escorts and witnesses.
Ready to go and perhaps as motivated as they might ever be,
Seki and the other original volunteers nevertheless had to linger several days
before realizing their fate. During that time, there were a number of missions,
but each was either aborted or produced dismal results—mistaken target
coordinate s, mechanical failures, planes lost in bad weather, or jumped by
American C.A.P.s. As new aircraft filtered into the Philippines during these
frustrating days, they became part of Shinpu Special Attack Unit. Organized
into new flights with their own glorious names, the planes were ferried south
to airstrips on Cebu Island and then onto Mindanao to be closer to the
developing action.
Meanwhile, while every Mabalacat mission got its ceremonial
send-off, the fanfare for each became increasingly self-conscious and subdued.
Whether mission takeoffs sparked pride, resignation, or dread, “failed” returns
implicitly carried the stain of shame. When grounded, the original volunteers
sat idle, free to relax (if they possibly could) and to contemplate their
destiny. Though squadron mates offered encouragement and consolation, an
ominous question loomed: Just how many times could a person set off prepared to
die and return alive?
As it was, for all the glory that had been initially
showered on this first contingent of body crashers, they might end up as no
spearhead at all. Though officially unsanctioned, there’d already been earlier
body crashing episodes—some perhaps as early as mid-1944. Now these new
units—not to mention ones being formed by the IJA—might grab the first glory,
dulling the first volunteers’ legacy while eventually leaving them just as
dead.
Then, at 1020 on 25 October, Seki’s formation of Zekes broke
through and made contact with Taffy 3.
Now Things Will Start
Rolling
One Zeke dived at Kitkun Bay (CVE-71). Ron Vaughn, an
18-year-old Texan positioned as a lookout on Kitkun Bay’s after port catwalk,
watched as the plane climbed, rolled, and plunged straight down toward the
flight deck. Kitkun Bay’s 40-mm gunfire battered the plane. Vaughn saw a
portion of the plane’s tail section crumple, causing it to veer drunkenly from
its trajectory. One of the attacker’s wings managed just a glancing blow to the
ship’s port-side catwalk—but its bomb exploded in the water just off the bow,
with blast and shrapnel claiming a score of casualties.
Moments later, Kalinin Bay took a deeper mauling from a
plane that succeeded in crashing its deck. Two other Zekes were shot down and
two more driven off by gunfire from Fanshaw Bay and White Plains (CVE-66). But
then the remaining three planes drew a bead on St. Lo.
The wing of one Japanese plane, shot down by St. Lo,
fluttered right in front of Tom Van Brunt, barely missing his Avenger. Then he
saw another plane careen toward St. Lo and watched as it too was shot out of
the air. What Van Brunt didn’t see—and what St. Lo gunners missed as well—was a
third Japanese plane approaching astern. Van Brunt recalled later: “He came
right up the wake, pulled up, nosed over, and then crashed into the flight
deck.”
Aboard St. Lo, crewmen were caught in the abrupt squeeze of
contradictory events. First, they’d exhaled and stood down after spending the
early morning square in the crosshairs of a Japanese fleet. Then they—and
particularly the flight deck crews—were working furiously to recover aircraft.
And now back to GQ as bogeys snooped in.
Few eyewitnesses agreed completely about what happened next.
Many were convinced the entire Japanese aircraft sliced through St. Lo’s flight
deck, igniting fuel and ordnance in the hangar area below. Brock Short, 19, a
signalman positioned on the island just aft of St. Lo’s conning bridge, instead
was sure he saw a bomb drop from the plane’s wing just before the plane itself
disintegrated atop the deck. It was this bomb, Short was convinced, which
“doomed our ship.”
This much was certain. In the next twenty-seven minutes, as
explosions rocked and fractured St. Lo, all its crewmen abruptly turned their
attentions to the singular, urgent business of survival.
Larry Collins, 29, one of St. Lo’s communications officers,
was in the wardroom when GQ sounded. He jumped up and sprinted toward his GQ
station on the fantail. His accustomed route was through the hangar deck, “but
the Lord steered me another way.” Collins went up the usual ladder, but instead
of getting off at the hangar deck, he kept climbing to the gallery level. The
plane hit while he was still climbing. Collins turned and ran forward.
Explosions seemed to chase him. They came one after another—maybe a half
dozen—and with each explosion the ship shuddered.
Hearing blasts, Radar Technician Evan H. “Holly” Crawforth
ran from the mess deck to a forward ladder also leading to the hangar deck.
Someone cautioned him: “Don’t go up.” He started to turn back, “but I just had
to see.” Crawforth glimpsed smoke and fire sweeping across the deck and a huge
hole in the flight deck just behind the elevator. He ducked back below and took
a roundabout series of passageways back to his duty station in Radio 2.
Radio 2 was dark but filled with sailors. “I told them to
get the hell out. We went over to radar, which had a door opening onto the
catwalk.” The door was jammed but they quickly unhinged it, tumbled out, and
ran forward along the starboard catwalk, away from the smoke and fire.
Crawforth inhaled the acrid scent of exploded ordnance. After emerging
unscratched from the morning’s ordeal, it was hard to believe they’d finally
been hit.
Joe Lehans, 27, St. Lo’s radar officer, was in that same
gallery level radar compartment when he felt the first jolt of the crash. Dust
puffed from the air ducts and settled across the room. Then there were
explosions—and it was clear the ship was listing. The radar equipment and
everything associated with it were classified Top Secret. Lehans knew what he
had to do. First, he grabbed an armload of messages and instruction manuals and
stuffed them into a weighted canvas bag. Next, he loaded and cocked his
.45-caliber pistol. With the weighted sack in one hand, Lehans backed out of
the compartment like a bank robber with his gun blazing, shooting up screens
and consoles. When he got outside to the catwalk, he heaved the weighted bag
overboard.
Briefly, inexplicably, Lehans then started toward his
stateroom intent on retrieving his Remington electric shaver. Very quickly he
let that idea go. Lehans did, however, dip back into the darkened radar room to
retrieve a canvas bag stuffed with his own assortment of survival gear—gloves,
an extra life belt, several .45 ammunition clips, and pieces of chocolate in
watertight containers.
On St. Lo’s bridge Seaman Bill Pumphrey was getting final
instructions from the ship’s skipper Captain Francis McKenna. Pumphrey, a
20-year-old from the West Texas plains town of Paint Rock, was the Captain’s
Bridge Talker, a position of both privilege and isolation. Several minutes
before, McKenna had calmly given the order to abandon ship and would by
tradition be the last man to leave.
Now McKenna was releasing Pumphrey so he
could go over the side. He thrust a sheaf of papers into the young sailor’s
hands, ordering Pumphrey to take care of the papers, but by no means to be
killed or captured while they were in his possession. Pumphrey gulped audibly,
rolled the papers into a tube, thrust them under his shirt and belt, removed
his talker’s headphones, saluted McKenna, and started for the ladder leading to
St. Lo’s flight deck.
Meanwhile, Larry Collins joined lots of others jammed onto
St. Lo’s forecastle. He’d been there less than five minutes when another ship’s
officer called down from the flight deck. “Captain says abandon ship.” Some men
headed for knotted escape ropes being rigged over the side. Some jumped. One
man near Larry hopped immediately to the rail, perched there for a moment, then
leaped.
Windmilling his arms and legs, the sailor gleefully shouted “30 days
leave!” all the way into the water.
When Holly Crawforth got forward, sailors were evacuating
the wounded—putting life jackets on them, looping lines around their torsos,
and lowering them painstakingly to the water. The process, Crawforth
remembered, “was just too slow. Finally, all we could do was put jackets on
them and drop them over the side.”
Crawforth got to a knotted line hanging from one of the
forward gun tubs. He didn’t get very far on the line—maybe ten feet. “The man
above me lost his grip and peeled the rest of us off as he fell.”
Crawforth hit
the water hard and plunged deep. When he finally surfaced, Crawforth tried to
use his life belt but it was torn: the last of the CO2 used to inflate it just
bubbled out. He ditched the belt and began swimming.
Larry Collins jumped from the rail still wearing his helmet,
and when he hit the water the chin strap wrenched his jaw and his teeth dug
deep into his tongue. Collins’ mouth filled with blood as he swam away to
windward. Finally, he turned on his back and inflated his life belt. Survivors
gathered together and waited. St. Lo was drifting downwind and still exploding.
“Her whole port side flew up in the air, and pretty soon she was gone.”
It had taken the wounded St. Lo barely thirty minutes to
sink. She carried with her to the bottom of the Philippine Sea the extinguished
lives of 140 sailors and airmen. There were more muffled explosions once she’d
submerged and then, all at once, silence. The Divine Wind had claimed St. Lo as
its first kill.
There was little for Tom Van Brunt and his shaken crew to do
now. A landing refuge had been pulled out from under him and, along with it,
who knew how many good friends and squadron mates. Using right rudder, Van
Brunt nosed the Avenger west toward Leyte and Tacloban where, with more than a
little luck, he, Frederickson, and South were able to land in one piece. Burt
Bassett, Van Brunt’s University of Florida fraternity brother was standing near
the runway as Van Brunt’s shrapnel-ridden Avenger touched down and taxied to a
stop. He was surprised to see Van Brunt emerging from the cockpit—they’d not
seen or heard from each other since before the war. They had some catching up
to do. The day was over for both, they’d each lost a ship, but they’d each come
through it without a scratch.
Back in his headquarters in Manila, Onishi received reports
from the surviving observer pilots from the morning missions out of Mindanao
and Mabalacat. The first strike reported hits on at least two carriers, with
each set ablaze. The results of the second strike—Onishi knew it had been led
by Seki—were even better: four American carriers hit, with at least two
severely damaged. Sensitive to the imperative of supplying inspiring results to
his emperor and his countrymen, Onishi fairly leaped to the conclusion that his
body crashers’ morning work had sunk six aircraft carriers. “Okay,” he muttered,
leaning back in his chair. “Now things will start rolling.”
