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Torpedo Hit
LST 808.
New info has come to us from various sources. I will reprint some of what we have learned for those who are interested. In memory of our shipmates. Dick Moore
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My dad was killed while serving on LST 808. His name was Neil Dyer, machinst mate. He was in the engine room when the torpedo hit. I would like to know why you have the LST 808 on your web site. Was Dick Moore, from the photo, a crew member? I'm just trying to find out more information on my dad's life. I've never seen a picture of the ship, so the one on the coral reef will be special. Thanks.
LaVada Hancock (vaader@aol.com)
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I saw your web page about the LST 808 Survivors' Reunion. Recently I
> have been in correspondence with a veteran of LCT 746 who witnessed the
> kamikaze crash into LST 808 on May 20, 1945. We together created the
> following web page:http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/stories/lct746/index.htm I would be
> interested if you or any of the survivors have any comments or
> corrections regarding the web page. Best regards,
> Bill Gordon
>
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Torpedo Attack
By D. A. Kitchen, USNR-retired
Author’s note: This is my second writing of this event. According to Morison’s “History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, LST 808 was sunk May 18, 1945, so that would be the date. I cannot find the original. So here it is again.
The night was dark, no clouds but no moon. Warships on the picket line had detected intruders, many of them, heading our way.
The radio crackled with warnings, calling all to general quarters. This would be another sleepless night or, at best, a night of interrupted sleep. Our gunners manned their weapons, the rest of us took assigned battle stations. Mine was on the bridge. From that vantage point the dim outlines of warships, amphibious craft and freighters surrounding us were visible.
We were anchored, bow and stern, in shallows south of an Ie Shima beach with little more than 10 feet of water under LCT 746's flat bottom. About 200 yards west and a little north of us the 340-foot length of LST 808 was silhouetted darkly against the starlit sky. To the south about 100 yards away, a Dutch freighter had anchored as close to the beach as possible and was prepared to discharge needed cargo to lighters that would transport items to our troops ashore. Farther to the south and west more than a hundred Allied ships lay at anchor. In daylight they often threw up an almost impregnable curtain of hot steel, foiling repeated Japanese air attacks. But on a black night, attackers were difficult to see and, unlike the British, we did not have radar control of our guns.
Our command’s tactic was to become invisible. In darkness tracers become a two-edged sword, marking your position for the enemy. So our ships would make smoke and no gunfire unless under direct attack. Usually that worked well, even though our gunners stood frustrated by silent guns. On this night, our ships made smoke, soon enveloping the anchorage in a dense, pungent cloud. Nearby ships vanished in the blackness, leaving us to listen to the drone of aircraft, and occasional explosions of bombs. None were close and our gunners held their fire. Overhead stars could be glimpsed but enemy planes were invisible in the night sky.
Then the sound of an airplane to the east, our starboard, grew loud. We peered into the darkness to no avail as the noise became ear-throbbing. Suddenly, a twin-engine airplane burst through the man-made fog, little more than 100 feet to our starboard and so low that I was sure it would clip our mast.
It didn’t. The plane passed directly over us in a split second, so fast that, even had we not been under orders to hold fire, it would not have been humanly possible to train a gun. The attacker vanished as abruptly as he had appeared, the high-pitched sound of rapidly approaching engines changing to a distinctly lower note and fading as the pilot climbed into the night sky.
There was a moment of near silence, followed by a flash of fire, then an ear-shattering explosion two hundred yards to our port. On LST 808 a eleven good sailors died and its torn hull sank quickly to the coral below.. For this had been a torpedo attack. The attacking pilot may have been able to see masts above the man-made fog, or perhaps he simply decided to drop his underwater missile, hoping that it would strike a worthwhile target among the many ships that he knew to be hiding under the smoke.
The torpedo struck the 808's engine room, directly under the superstructure aft, where officers and crew were concentrated. The damage was devastating, rendering the ship a useless wreck. Morning light would show it upright, resting on the coral, superstructure and main deck well above water. There it remained, probably until October typhoons swept the Okinawa coasts, replacing old wreckage with new.
For LCT 746 and crew this was a close call. Very close I believe. For if my analysis of the attack is correct, the pilot dropped his torpedo before passing over our little ship. If so, a hundred pounds of high explosive passed under us where only a few feet of water separated hull from the sea bottom below.
Had that torpedo touched our hull or the coral, few if any of us would have come home alive.
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