Louisville (CA 28) - Naval Cruise Book

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With the arrival of A-day the pre-invasion bombardment be- comes a withering barrage rid- dling the beach 'til it seems that no living thing could exist there. H-hour, and through the smoke and the haze all along the beaches of Leyte thousands of landing craft, Wave upon wave of every conceivable type, streak for the shore. 141

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.,. 142 X ' T . N L if 00,2 ,-4' -i '1i'5 'T' 4 f X y X our guns were the first to take him under fire. Then, as if in vengeance, the Jap pilot swerved from his course diving for a low sweep over the ship. Five-inch guns bombarded with streams of steel, but failed to stop the speeding plane. Then the 40-mmfs opened fire and later the 20-mmfs joined the fray. How- ever, fortune rode with the Nip flyer as he bored through the wall of tracers. As the plane zoomed above the ship the pilot dropped his two wing bombs and sped on over the beach. All hands topside stared hypnotized as the bombs arched gracefully away from the speeding plane. Their flight seemed endless. However, fortune rode with us, too, for our wither- ing barrage had spoiled the pilot's aim. The bombs whistled over the ship to explode harmlessly in the sea, not 300 yards away. A Before daylight on the morning of Oc- tober 20, huge gray shapes edged over the horizon. The transports with our troops were arriving. They wound their way carefully through mine fields to join the waiting men-on-war. The spectacular landing was not wit- nessed by our eyes alone. Hordes of Jap pilots saw the drama of rockets, gunfire, and blood, but few of them ever lived to relate what they had seen. As the landing progressed the ,lap air force increased its efforts. During the day skies were spotted with anti-aircraft bursts Machine guns poked patterns of fire into the black night to drive away marauders Most of the enemy planes were shot down however some of them got through our CAP to make direct attacks upon individual ships. The cruiser Honolulu was torpedoed in the early dawn of Octo ber 21 while lying not far from our ship The next day our senior aviator made a daring air-sea rescue of a pilot from the U S S Sangamon downed southeast of Cebu He landed in the dangerous waters after being advised to discontinue the search and return to the ship Fighter pilots co-operated by strafing the beach to keep Japs from manning their guns For his heroic action he was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross It was only a short time later that we had our Hrst encounter with the most dread weapon of air-sea warfare-the sui cide plane ' We had spent the afternoon fueling and were cruising singly in the mild chop of Leyte Gulf when a flight of eight enemy planes appeared from over the hills of Samar An attack in numbers wasnit new, but the tactics were The planes were the same, but their actions different They were piloted by members of the Special Attack Corpsv-kamikazes. Two planes broke from the group to start an unhurried circling of the ship, while others sped into the distance to attend to other mischief. The Jap pilots were waiting for the zero minute-that time of the evening when darkness filters into the eyes of nervous gunners. The pilots kept circling while working up their courage for the final plunge. 7 7 7 7 . I 0 I 7 ' 7 I