The Last Gun Fight

By May of 1945, the war was going very badly for the Japanese Empire. With Germany’s surrender, Japan was now left on their own to face an enemy that was already strangling the nation.

The Mission and Departure

Knowing that they would need as many troops as they could to push back the advancing allies, Japan began to withdraw troops from areas that were no longer worth defending. On May 9th, the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro and Destroyer Kamikaze left occupied Singapore to evacuate Japanese troops on the Andaman in the Indian Ocean. Due to a lack of fuel and ships, only these two vessels would be sent, a mission that was more suicidal than anything.

With the War in Europe over, the Indian Ocean was now being flooded with Royal Navy and other allied vessels. Unfortunately for the two Japanese warships, the allies knew about their mission and were already en route to intercept.

The Allied Response

Force 61, based out of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), was alerted and despatched the 26th Destroyer Flotilla. This consisted of 5 destroyers and one escort carrier, with the HMS Saumarez as the flagship. But they were not the only vessels that were alerted. The Battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, Heavy Cruiser HMS Cumberland and the recently arrived French Battleship Richelieu were also alerted and if the 26th could not find the Japanese Ships, they most certainly would.

Now Haguro was a Myoko-class heavy cruiser, a powerful ship in its own right. But no way in Hell it would survive an encounter with the French/Royal Navy fleet now looking for it and its escort. So they went back to Singapore. They did leave port again on the 14th and a day later, the two ships were attacked by aircraft from the 26th Flotilla. Despite not suffering any major damage, the two ships turned around to return to Singapore but their fate was more or less sealed.

The Encounter

The 26th destroyer flotilla was able to intercept Haguro and Kamikaze. Attacking from multiple angles, the British force was able to surround the Japanese force and while the Kamikaze was able to escape, the Haguro was not so lucky. Although she was able to force the Saumarez to withdraw from the battle, the remaining four destroyers were able to cripple the heavy cruiser with a combination of 5 inch rounds and torpedo hits. At 1:12 am on May 16, Saumarez and the destroyer Verulam fired a volley of torpedoes at the Haguro, three of which found their target. Some minutes later, three more torpedoes from the destroyers Venus and Virago struck the cruiser, killing its engines and making it dead in the water.

But the battle would continue for another hour before the guns of the Haguro finally went silent. One final torpedo from Destroyer Vigilant finally ended the heavy cruiser, as the Myoko-class vessel would slip under the waves at 2:06 am, taking 927 of her 1200+ crew with her. By comparison, only 2 sailors on board the Saumarez were killed during the battle.

The Final Loss

Now while the Japanese Imperial Navy would lose more vessels as the war came to an end, the Haguro was the last ship lost in a naval gunfight against other surface ships in WW2.

~NC