It’s the evening of August 6th 1943. Four Japanese destroyers are racing into the V Gulf in the Solomon Islands, on a supply mission to an isolated island Garrison suddenly from the darkness ahead of them come the Silhouettes of American destroyers and then the sightings of torpedoes surging towards them. A few minutes later, the Japanese ships would lie in Ruins as a devastating Ambush played out. This is how it happened.
The story of the battle of Vel Gulf began in the middle of 1943, after the Japanese withdrawal from guo Canal at the end of 1942. The battle between the United States and Japan in the southwestern Pacific move northwards to the group of islands around new Georgia. At the end of June 1943, American troops landed on Vanunu, new Georgia itself and Rendova. From this position pressure was brought on the Japanese positions at Munda with artillery set up and torpedo boats based there to harass Japanese supply lines. On July, 2nd US troops landed at zanana and began a pushed westwards towards the airbase at Munda.
Japan moved quickly to bring in reinforcements in response, since it was now too dangerous to reinforce by seed directly the Japanese plan to strengthen a base at Via on the island of collum banjara, to act as a staging area for troops to be moved across to the Northern side of new Georgia and then marched across land to Munda. It was also hoped that via could be a strong Garrison in its own right to act as the next obstacle to American progress.
Trying to prevent this, the US landed troops at Rice, Anchorage on the north side of new Georgia on July 4th with a view to pushing South and cutting the route to munder off entirely. They were supported by a naval task force under rear Admiral Walden an worth, which, on July 5th conducted Shore bombardment in the area on Japanese positions. Over the next week, the Japanese began running troops and supplies into ve, with destroyers clashing twice with Ainsworth ships in the process. At the battles of cola gulf and collum Vagara in chaotic night actions fought at close range.
The Americans succeeded in Sinking the Light Cruiser jitsu and two destroyers but lost the cruiser Helena. Sunk had three other lights: Cruisers d by Torpedoes and failed to prevent the Japanese from Landing. Significant quantities of men and material at Via these battles exposed a long-standing weakness of American Cruisers to Japanese Destroyer Attack and prompted a shift in approach.
After a change of leadership and the appointment of rear Admiral Theodore Wilkinson, the light Cruisers were withdrawn from operations in this area, freeing up the Destroyers to be more aggressive instead of having to screen and support the larger ships on the Japanese side. Despite success in running supplies, through TVA, the mood was still relatively downcast at the main Japanese base of rasul about 400 mil to the north. The losses sustained in the two battles of collum banjara could I’ll be afforded as a punishing rate of attrition on Japan’s Destroyer Force. Continued up to the retreat from gaud Canal. Japan had lost 11 destroyers to the United States’s 15, but Japan’s lower industrial base made this an unsustainable exchange.
This had only gotten worse since, as months of fighting took its toll, Japanese Naval forces in the Solomons were organized under the eth fleet, which, in March 1943, possessed a single Heavy Cruiser as a flagship and Destroyer Squadron. Three, with the light Cruiser Sendai and three Destroyer divisions. In theory, each of these divisions contained four ships, but by mid 1943.
This was basically never the case as losses and the need for maintenance depleted.
The number of Frontline ships available in response reinforcements were deployed, but even these struggled to raise Force strength very much. In Late July, Captain tamichi Hara arrived at rbol to take command of his Destroyer division 27. Only to find that two of his ships had already been sunk and another had been deployed elsewhere to cover a gap leaving Hara only with Shur available, with no time to the ways. Chigurh was attached to Destroyer division 4, which is made up of three destroyers under Captain Kaiju Sugiura, who regular viewers of this channel might remember as the rear Admiral who would command the cruiser maguro on its last operation in May 1945.
For now, though, Siga’s destroyers were tasked with continuing to bring supplies and troops to collum banjara. On August 1st, Hara and Shakura joined another Supply Mission since the battles in the first half of July, the route through to Via had changed rather than passing, East of collum banjara through the Kula Gulf.
The Japanese ships were now traveling to the west of the island through the V Gulf. In so doing, they had eluded the patrolling Americans and the August 1 Journey. The second on this route, faced only a series of botch torpedo, boat attacks as they headed south. The only damage sustained was on the way back North when Amangiri rammed the torpedo boat, with a mildly famous Captain, prompting it to be replaced by Aarashi for the next mission. Their return to rasul relatively unscathed was a relief, but it concerned Captain Hara when on August 4th sigil informed him that they had been ordered to run exactly the same route again with the same Force, strength and timings to Hara.
This seemed to risk disaster. It would surely be foolish to expect the Americans to fail to guard the V Gulf for a third time. He questioned the wisdom of the orders, But ultimately deed to the more senior Captain’s instructions. The four destroyers left reel at 3:00 a.m.
On August 6th and started their journey to the southeast, Hara remained uneasy telling the captain of Shur this operation at Best is unreasonable. Now I simply pray that luck will be with us at 2 p.m. they spotted a hostile plane, circling them and intercepted a transmission sent from it. That began with the word urgent. Clearly they had been detected, but gura kept the same course for the next 5 hours, regardless before swinging around to the southeast. At 7:00, p.
M. for the run into the Gulf, the Japanese Commander had ordered a speed of 30 knots for this approach, but chigur being an older Destroyer, struggled to keep this speed and began to slip back from the three in front of it. In response to the Japanese movements that day, six US destroyers were deployed into the Val Gulf to intercept them, they were under the direction of Commander Fred mooseburger, who led his own Destroyer division 12, as well as Destroyer division 15 under Commander Roger Simpson, moose Brugger LED His ships into the Gulf as night set in at 9:33 p.m.
Radar on the leading US Destroyer picked up contacts ahead at a range of 19,000 yards. The American Commander continued northwards determined to press home a different sort of attack to previous engagements, rather than opening up at longer range with radar, assisted Gunnery, as had been done before. With the light Cruisers moose Brer plans to get much closer into the effective range of his own ships, Torpedoes banking, that the Japanese lacking radar would be unable to see his ships until it was too late to the north.
At 9:40, Captain Hara on board Shur was lagging now about 1500 M behind the third ship in the Japanese line, kawakas Aarashi and Seira’s Flagship haka Kazi were further to the southeast East Harrow ordered his ship torpedo, tubes and guns trained to the port side. Fearful of us torpedo boats suddenly appearing from the open ocean.
By this stage, though, the American destroyers were almost alongside the lead, Japanese ship and at 9:41, Commander moose bug decided that they were close enough and gave the order for his division to make its attack 22. Torpedoes surged out of their tubes and stre towards the Japanese line, which was still oblivious to the presence of their Enemy. At the same time, mooseburger ordered Simpson to swing his division to the west, to cut across the front of the Japanese line and opened fire with guns after the Torpedoes had impacted as the American ships maneuvered the seconds ticked down until at 9:45, Lookouts on the Japanese Ship suddenly spotted Torpedoes in the water, but far far too late for their captains to do anything about it.
The flagship Haaz was the first to be hit by two Torpedoes, one of which disabled the ship’s engine room behind her Aarashi was struck by two more and Kaazi by a single torpedo which went through the Destroyer magazine and caused a huge fire to break out on Board Shur had more time to react because she had been trailing further behind and Captain Hara quickly swung his Destroyer into a hard starboard turn and ordered eight Torpedoes fired in the direction of the American destroyers.
That should now be discerned as black shapes a few thousand yards away, but even with more warning, Shakura only very narrowly escaped the fate of its three companions: three Torpedoes missed narrowly to the south of the ship four to the north and one actually passed straight through Shagg’s red, without exploding, once the Destroyer had settled onto a Northerly course, Hara was able to assess the situation to his South. The sea was lit by two Japanese destroyers, a blaze while a third was taking on water and all of all of them were now Under Fire by US, destroyers from both the east and south at 10:10 p.m.
Aarashi’s magazine ignited, causing a huge explosion and the immediate loss of the ship.
Soon afterwards, the gunfire ceased and Shuri was unable to raise any of the other ships on the radio reluctantly, Harrow decided to head back to rabal, mindful of his ship’s damaged Rudder and the 250 troops that were on board his ship as passengers. He signaled to announce his intentions and asked the Japanese base at Via to attempt to rescue survivors from the other ships. It had been a costly defeat for the Japanese Navy of 700 crew and 820 troops on board these ships only 310 survived us casualties were nil. Captain Hara called it one of the most astounding torpedo successes in history.
Val golf was the first night battle between destroyers won decisively by the US of the entire Pacific War. So far, though, Japan had begun with Superior Torpedoes tactics, Optics and Doctrine. These advantages have been steadily eroded away by the Americans, fixing their defective Torpedoes and expanding the use of radar on its ships. Much quicker than the Japanese. Now moose bugler had shown how effective US destroyers could be when let loose against their Japanese counterparts, something that would prove very useful in future engagements. Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next video hi everyone.
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