Ships
- USS Hoel (DD-533) Captain, 25 October 1944
Commander Leon S. Kintberger had Hoel by the morning of 25 October 1944. William Dow Thomas, who had commissioned her, was still aboard, as commander of the screen.
She closed the battleships and opened fire on the way in. A salvo hit the bridge and the gun director. Kintberger was wounded. She kept going. At about 9,000 yards she fired five torpedoes at the leading battleship. They did not hit. At about 6,000 yards she fired the other five at the leading cruiser. Kintberger watched them run, and at the time they should have arrived he saw columns of water. No Japanese ship confirms the hit. She is not credited with one.
For the next hour she stayed in the way of the heavy ships. Kintberger counted more than forty hits. Around 0830 an 8-inch shell stopped the last engine. He ordered the crew to prepare to abandon. At 0855 she rolled over and sank. He lived, and he was given the Navy Cross. He wrote afterward that the rafts were seen from the air that day, and that it still took two days for ships to come.