1945-04-07
Operation Ten-Go
Southwest of Nagasaki, on the way to Okinawa
Vice Admiral Seiichi Ito left Tokuyama on 6 April 1945 in Yamato, with the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers, bound for Okinawa. Hatsushimo was in that force and was not sunk. Fuyutsuki and Suzutsuki were in that force and were not sunk. Hanazuki, Kaya, and Maki turned back at the Bungo Strait. On 7 April aircraft from Task Force 58, not one carrier, hit the force southwest of Kyushu. Asashimo had fallen behind with engine trouble and was sunk apart from the others. Aircraft sank Hamakaze. Yamato's forward magazine exploded and she sank at 1423, at 30-22 N, 128-04 E. Ito and her captain, Kosaku Aruga, were lost. Yahagi sank under bombs and torpedoes at 30-47 N, 128-08 E. Rear Admiral Keizo Komura and her captain, Tameichi Hara, survived. Near misses wrecked Isokaze. Yukikaze took off 285 men and fired into the abandoned ship. The loss is credited to the air attack, not to Yukikaze. Two bombs and a near miss took Kasumi's steering. Seventeen of her men were killed and forty-seven injured. Fuyutsuki took the survivors off, including Lieutenant Commander Shohei Matsumoto, and scuttled her with two torpedoes. Yukikaze was not sunk. The Americans lost ten aircraft and twelve crewmen.
Sunk in this fight
6 ships.
Track chart of the Yamato task force, 6 and 7 April 1945. The sheet says it is from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Campaigns of the Pacific War. Public domain. North is up. The track leaves the Bungo Strait and runs west. The sheet marks Yamato sunk at 1423 on 7 April. It marks a sighting by a search plane from Essex, and it marks the force under air attack. It does not name the carrier that sank her. Task Force 58 is plotted to the south on 6 and 7 April. A dashed line is labeled the proposed track. The times are the sheet's.
