At 2300 hours on December 11th, 1944, Corporal James McKenzie crouched behind a shattered concrete wall on the Ormock waterfront, watching three dark shapes move across the black water of the bay.
32 years old, 2 months in combat, zero experience fighting warships.
The Japanese Imperial Navy had sent at least five vessels into Ormach Bay that night, carrying an estimated 750 troops to reinforce their collapsing defensive line.
McKenzie was not supposed to be watching for ships.
Nobody in the 77th Infantry Division was supposed to be fighting the Japanese Navy.
But the 77th had stopped following the rule book the moment they landed on Guam 6 months earlier.
They were the oldest infantry division in the United States Army.
Average age 32.
The other divisions called them the old bastards.
The Japanese called them something that translated roughly to demons who take no prisoners.
The statistics supported both names.
Across the entire Pacific War, American forces killed approximately 2,200,000 enemy troops and captured 50,000 prisoners, a capture rate of 2.2%.
The 77th Infantry Division had killed 43,385 Japanese soldiers and taken 358 prisoners, a capture rate of 0.8%.
one-third the rate of every other American unit in the Pacific.
On Ley alone, the division had killed 19,456 enemy soldiers in 6 weeks.
They had taken 124 prisoners, a killto capture ratio of 157 to1.
Major General Andrew D.
Bruce commanded this division of accountants and taxi drivers and factory workers who had turned the western shore of Ley into a graveyard.
Bruce was 49 years old, a career artillery officer who believed in mathematics and firepower.
He had landed his division at Deposito on December 7th, 3 and 1/2 miles south of Ormach.
The Japanese had not expected an amphibious assault on the western coast.
They had expected the Americans to fight their way through the mountains.
Bruce gave them 72 hours to realize their mistake.
By December 10th, the 77th had fought through 23 mi of enemy positions and captured Ormach.
The town was rubble.
Camp Downs was ash.
The Antilow River ran red for 3 days, but the Japanese kept coming.
Every night, barges and landing craft and small transports tried to slip past American naval patrols and deliver reinforcements to the remaining Japanese forces in the mountains.
The Imperial Japanese Army needed those reinforcements.
General Tommoyuki Yamashita had committed to making Lee the decisive battle of the Philippines.
He could not hold the island without fresh troops.
The Americans needed to stop those reinforcements.
Stopping them was the Navy’s job.
Destroyers patrolled the approaches to Ormach Bay.
PT boats hunted in the shallow waters near the coast.
Army infantry divisions were not equipped to engage naval vessels.
The 77th Infantry Division had brought M10 tank destroyers with them to Lee.
The 3-in gun motor carriage M10 was designed to kill German tanks in Europe.
It carried a 3-in gun mounted in an open top turret on a modified Sherman chassis.
Maximum effective range against armor, 1,000 yard.
Maximum effective range against the ship, unknown.
Nobody had ever tried.
The M10s were positioned along the Ormach waterfront with the 307th Infantry Regiment.
Their primary mission was destroying Japanese fortified positions and machine gun nests.
Their secondary mission was direct fire support for infantry assaults.
Engaging enemy naval vessels was not in the manual.
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Back to McKenzie.
McKenzie watched the dark shapes grow larger.
The lead vessel was approximately the size of an LST, possibly a number 101 class landing ship.
It was moving slowly toward the beach northwest of Ormok, where Japanese troops still held defensive positions in the hills.
If that ship reached the shore and unloaded its troops, the Americans would face another week of fighting to clear them out.
The M10 crews had received their orders 20 minutes earlier.
Track the vessels.
Wait for illumination.
Fire on command.
Nobody knew if tank destroyer rounds would penetrate a ship’s hull.
Nobody knew if the Japanese vessels would return fire.
Nobody knew if this would work.
McKenzie checked his watch.
2355.
5 minutes to midnight.
The dark shapes were less than 1,000 yd from shore.
And the M10 crews were waiting for someone to light up the night.
The first flare went up at midnight exactly.
A 60 mm illumination round fired from an infantry mortar position 200 yd inland.
The shell climbed 300 ft and burst into white phosphorous light that turned Ormach Bay into a stage lit for execution.
The Japanese landing ship appeared in perfect silhouette.
Designation transport number 159.
Length approximately 200 feet.
Displacement 800 tons.
The vessel had already beed itself northwest of Ormach and was unloading troops down ramps at Bow and Stern.
Dark figures moved against the white sand.
Heavy equipment rolled off the deck.
The Japanese were bringing tanks.
The American gun crews had 30 seconds of illumination before the flare burned out.
30 seconds to acquire target, calculate range, load, and fire.
The M10 crews had trained for this moment without knowing it.
Every tank they had destroyed in practice.
Every fortified position they had demolished during the drive to Ormach.
Every hour spent calculating deflection and elevation for moving targets.
All of it applied to a ship the same way it applied to armor.
The lead M10 fired first.
3in armor-piercing round.
Muzzle velocity 2,600 ft pers.
Range to target 970 yards.
The gun’s recoil through the 17 ton chassis backwards 6 in.
The shell crossed Ormach Bay in 1.2 seconds.
Direct hit.
The round punched through the ship’s starboard side just above the water line.
The armor-piercing shell was designed to penetrate 3 in of steel armor at 1,000 yard.
The transport number 159 had hull plating less than 1 in thick.
The shell went through the hull, through the cargo hold, and detonated against the port bulkhead.
The explosion tore a hole the size of a truck in the ship’s side.
Water poured into the cargo hold at approximately 2,000 gallons per minute.
The vessel listed 7° to starboard immediately.
Japanese troops on the ramps stopped unloading.
Troops still inside the hold scrambled for the exits.
The ship’s crew attempted to assess damage while American artillery began ranging in on the beached vessel.
The second flare went up 40 seconds after the first.
Another 60 mm illumination round.
The bay lit up again.
Transport number 159 was deeper in the water now, settling into the sand.
The stern had dropped 3 ft.
Troops were abandoning the vessel, waiting through chest deep water toward the shore.
The Japanese defenders in the hills were firing mortars at the American positions on the Ormach waterfront.
The return fire was immediate and overwhelming.
The M10 that had scored the first hit fired again.
The crew had corrected for the ship’s changing position.
The second round hit below the water line aft, opening another breach in the hull.
The Japanese vessel was taking water from two separate holes.
Now the rate of flooding exceeded any capacity to pump it out.
The ship was doomed.
But four more vessels were still approaching Ormach from the north.
Three barges and one larger transport.
The Americans could see them clearly under the illumination.
The Japanese captains were watching transport number 159 sink.
They were calculating odds.
They had 700 troops to deliver.
They had orders from General Yamashida himself.
Retreat was not an acceptable option in the Imperial Japanese Army.
The Japanese vessels kept coming.
The M10 crews reloaded.
The mortar teams prepared more illumination rounds.
The 7 AAA anti-aircraft battalion moved their 40mm guns into position along the waterfront.
The 77th Infantry Division was about to engage in the only shipto-shore artillery duel of the Pacific War.
The third flare climbed into the sky.
The second Japanese vessel was 600 yd from shore.
The M10 crews tracked it through their sights.
Every gun along the Ormock waterfront had a target now.
General Bruce was watching from his command post 300 yards inland.
This was not in any tactical manual he had studied at Fort Sil, but the old bastards had stopped following the manual the day they landed on Guam.
The order came down at O15.
All guns, fire at will.
The Ormock waterfront erupted.
40mm anti-aircraft guns firing at surface targets.
50 caliber machine guns raking the Japanese barges, self-propelled howitzers from the 307th Infantry Regiment pumping high explosive shells into the approaching vessels, and three M10 tank destroyers firing 3-in armor-piercing rounds designed to kill Tigers and Panthers at ships designed to carry troops.
The mathematics favored the Americans overwhelmingly.
The Japanese vessels had no armor, no meaningful defensive weapons, no ability to maneuver in the shallow water of Ormach Bay.
They were cargo carriers trying to deliver troops while being engaged by concentrated artillery fire from prepared positions on shore.
The second Japanese transport took the first hit at O16 M10 round through the bow.
The shell penetrated the forward hold and detonated among troops packed for landing.
The explosion killed an estimated 40 soldiers instantly.
The vessel kept coming.
Japanese discipline held even under fire.
The captain maintained course toward shore.
The self-propelled howitzers fired next.
105 mm high explosive shells.
These rounds were not designed to penetrate.
They were designed to destroy everything in a 15yd radius through over pressure and fragmentation.
The first shell hit the transport superructure.
The second hit the deck.
The third hit the water line and opened the hull like a can opener.
The transport made it another 200 yd before the flooding became critical.
The captain ran it ground 400 yd from shore.
Too far for the troops to wade.
Too shallow for the vessel to float.
Japanese soldiers jumped into water over their heads.
Many drowned immediately.
The ones who could swim struck out for shore while American machine guns tracked them through the water.
Transport number 159 was completely submerged by OO20.
Only the superructure remained above water.
Approximately 150 Japanese troops had made it ashore before the ship sank.
Another 200 were in the water.
The rest went down with the vessel.
The Americans estimated 300 casualties from that ship alone.
The three barges were smaller and faster.
They drew less water and could operate closer to shore.
Each carried approximately 50 troops.
The Japanese captains scattered them, hoping to split American fire.
It was a reasonable tactical decision.
It failed completely.
The 7 AAA battalion had positioned six 40mm guns along the waterfront.
Each gun could fire 120 rounds per minute.
The effective range against surface targets was 2,000 yd.
The Japanese barges were well inside that range.
The 40 mm crews open fire at O22.
The first barge disintegrated.
40 mm rounds are explosive.
They detonate on impact.
When 50 explosive rounds hit a wooden barge in 12 seconds, the barge ceases to exist as a functional vessel.
It becomes floating wreckage and body parts.
The American gun crews watch the barge come apart like balsa wood under a hammer.
Survivors in the water numbered less than 10.
The second barge tried to turn away.
The helmsmen put the rudder hard over and attempted to retreat into deeper water.
The M10 crews tracked the movement.
The lead M10 fired at O24.
The round hit the barge amid ships and broke it in half.
Both sections sank in less than 30 seconds.
Japanese troops thrashed in the oil sllicked water.
Machine gun fire found them there.
The third barge made it closest to shore.
The captain drove it straight at the beach at maximum speed, ignoring the fire from American positions.
50 caliber rounds punched through the wooden hull.
Mortar shells detonated in the water around it.
The barge grounded in 3 ft of water 70 yard from shore.
Japanese troops poured over the sides and waited toward the beach.
They made it 15 yards before the machine guns cut them down.
The 77th Infantry Division had positioned interlocking fields of fire across every approach to the Ormock waterfront.
The Japanese troops waited into a killing zone with no cover and no supporting fire.
They died in the water, all 50 of them.
The engagement lasted 18 minutes.
Five Japanese vessels attacked.
Five Japanese vessels were destroyed.
Estimated enemy casualties.
750 troops.
American casualties, zero.
But the night was not over.
The radio intercept teams were reporting more vessels approaching from the north.
General Bruce received the afteraction report at O40.
Five enemy vessels destroyed.
estimated 750 enemy casualties.
Zero American losses.
One M10 tank destroyer had fired seven rounds.
Another had fired five.
The third had fired three.
15 3-in shells total.
The self-propelled howitzers had expended 42 rounds.
The 40mm guns had fired approximately 600 rounds combined.
The mathematics told Bruce everything he needed to know.
The Japanese could not reinforce Ormach by sea as long as the 77th held the waterfront.
Every vessel that attempted landing would face the same concentrated fire.
Every Japanese soldier who tried to wait ashore would die in the water.
The Imperial Japanese Navy had just lost an engagement to an infantry division that had no business fighting ships.
Bruce sent his report to 24th Corps headquarters at 0.
The message was characteristically brief.
Enemy attempted reinforcement or moach bay.
Five vessels destroyed.
Request air reconnaissance at first light to confirm kills.
The core commander read the report twice before he believed it.
The strategic implications were immediate.
Ormach was the last major port on the western coast of Lady, still accessible to Japanese reinforcement convoys.
General Yamashida had been running supplies and troops through Ormach Bay since late October despite devastating losses to American air and naval attacks.
Between November 9th and December 11th, the Japanese had attempted nine major convoy operations to Lady.
They had landed approximately 34,000 troops.
They had lost 20 transport vessels, six destroyers, one submarine, three escort vessels, and one patrol boat.
The Americans had lost three destroyers, one high-speed transport, and two LSMs.
In the same period, naval historians would later call the Battle of Ormach Bay one of the most brutal series of engagements in the Pacific War.
Admiral Hollyy committed Task Force 38.
The Fifth Air Force flew continuous interdiction missions.
PT boats hunted in the shallow waters every night.
And now the 77th Infantry Division had turned the Ormach waterfront into a killing zone that even the Imperial Japanese Navy could not penetrate.
The Japanese tried again on the night of December 12th.
Two barges approached from the north at 2200 hours.
American illumination rounds lit them up at 800 yd.
The M10 crews destroyed both barges before they came within 500 yd of shore.
Estimated casualties, 100 troops.
American losses, zero.
They tried again on December 13th.
One transport and three escort barges.
The transport was larger than number 159, possibly 900 tons displacement.
It carried an estimated 400 troops and heavy equipment.
The American guns sank it in 12 minutes.
The escort barges never made it within 1,000 yards of shore.
Estimated casualties, 550 troops.
American losses, zero.
General Yamashita stopped sending reinforcements to Ormach after December 13th.
The mathematics had become untenable.
He had lost approximately 1300 troops in three nights trying to reinforce positions that the 77th was systematically destroying during the day.
The Americans owned Ormach Valley.
The Japanese forces remaining in the mountains were cut off from resupply and reinforcement.
They would fight until they died, but they would not receive help.
The 77th Infantry Division pushed north from Ormach on December 14th.
The 307th Infantry Regiment took the lead.
Colonel Aubrey Newman commanded, 43 years old, career infantry officer, veteran of Guam.
He had watched his regiment destroy Japanese vessels from shore.
Now he was taking them into the mountains to destroy what remained of the Japanese 35th Army.
The division moved through Kogan on December 15th, through Valencia on December 21st.
The Japanese First Division tried to hold the Libonga road junction.
The 77th went around them through terrain the Japanese considered impassible.
The division made contact with the first cavalry division coming south on December 25th.
Christmas Day, Lee was secure.
The official campaign statistics told the story.
The 77th Infantry Division had killed 19,456 Japanese soldiers on Lee.
They had captured 124.
They had lost 543 men killed and 1,469 wounded.
The kill ratio was 36 to1.
But those numbers did not include the ships sunk on the night of December 11th.
The United States Army conducted an official investigation in January 1945.
The question was simple.
Had an infantry division actually sunk enemy naval vessels using tank destroyers? The answer required verification because nothing like this had ever happened in modern warfare.
Tanks had never engaged warships.
Tank destroyers had never fired at ships.
The M10 was designed to kill armor, not sink transports.
The investigation team examined the wrecks in Ormach Bay at low tide.
Transport number 159 was visible in 15 ft of water.
The hull showed two 3-in entry holes on the starboard side.
The investigators measured the holes.
Diameter 3.0 in consistent with M10 armor-piercing rounds.
The holes were below the water line.
The flooding pattern matched the timeline from the afteraction reports.
The second transport was in deeper water, but still accessible to Navy divers.
They found three penetrations in the hull, two from 3-in rounds, one from a 105mm howitzer shell.
The 3-in rounds had gone completely through the vessel, entry starboard side, exit port side.
The divers recovered shell fragments from the seafloor.
Metallurgy confirmed they were M10 armor-piercing rounds manufactured in 1944 at the Waterviet Arsenal in New York.
The investigation concluded that the 77th Infantry Division had indeed sunk multiple Japanese vessels using M10 tank destroyers firing from shore positions.
The report noted this was the only confirmed instance in World War II of armored fighting vehicles engaging and destroying enemy warships.
The only instance in the Pacific War.
The only instance in the European War.
The only instance in the entire global conflict.
The Germans had never done it.
The Soviets had never done it.
The British had never done it.
The Japanese had never done it.
Only the 77th Infantry Division had turned tank destroyers into coastal defense guns and use them to sink enemy ships attempting amphibious landings.
The tactical manual for the M10 was updated in March 1945.
A new section was added, employment against naval targets.
The section was three paragraphs long.
It noted that M10 rounds could penetrate unarmored vessels at ranges up to 1,000 yards.
It recommended using armor-piercing rounds against waterline targets to maximize flooding.
It cited the Ormach engagement as the reference case.
The update was mostly theoretical.
The opportunity to use tank destroyers against ships never arose again.
The Japanese stopped attempting major amphibious reinforcement operations after Ley.
The island hopping campaign moved to Ewuima and Okinawa, where the Japanese defenders were already in place before American forces arrived.
There were no more situations where enemy ships tried to beach themselves under American shore guns.
The M10 crews, who had fired on transport number 159, received no special recognition.
No medals were awarded for sinking ships.
The action was considered part of the normal defense of Ormach.
The crews went on to fight through the rest of the Ley campaign and then shipped out for the invasion of Okinawa.
General Bruce mentioned the engagement exactly once in his official memoirs.
He wrote that the 77th had demonstrated unusual flexibility in employing all available weapons against enemy forces, regardless of whether those weapons were designed for the task.
He considered this flexibility the defining characteristic of the division.
The old bastards did not care what the manual said.
They cared about killing the enemy as efficiently as possible.
The M10 tank destroyers remained with the 77th through the Okinawa campaign.
They destroyed Japanese fortifications.
They provided direct fire support for infantry assaults.
They knocked out enemy artillery positions.
They did everything tank destroyers were designed to do.
But they never sank another ship.
The opportunity never came again.
By the time the war ended, the night of December 11th had become a footnote in the division’s history.
The 77th had fought through three major campaigns, Guam, Lee, Okinawa.
They had killed more than 43,000 enemy soldiers.
They had lost more than 2,000 of their own men.
The sinking of five Japanese vessels in 18 minutes was just another engagement in a year of continuous combat.
But for the military historians who studied the Pacific War, the Ormock engagement remained unique.
No other tank had ever sunk a ship.
No other tank destroyer had ever engaged naval vessels.
It happened once on one night at one place and it never happened again.
The 77th Infantry Division was never supposed to be an elite unit.
When the division reactivated in March 1942, the War Department expected it to be a standard infantry formation.
Nothing special, no unique capabilities, just another division to feed into the Pacific meat grinder.
The men who filled the ranks were not elite soldiers.
They were civilians from New York and New Jersey.
Average age 32, too old for most infantry divisions.
The army called them reserveists.
Everyone else called them the old bastards.
They were accountants and taxi drivers and factory workers who had been drafted because America needed bodies.
They trained at Fort Jackson in South Carolina for 14 months.
standard infantry training, nothing exotic.
The division practiced amphibious landings.
They learned jungle warfare.
They qualified on their weapons.
They passed their physical fitness tests despite being a decade older than the soldiers in other divisions.
By June 1943, the 77th was ready for deployment.
General Bruce took command in May 1943.
He was 47 years old, an artillery officer with a reputation for aggressive tactics and minimal tolerance for incompetence.
He looked at his division of middle-aged civilians and saw potential, not physical potential.
These men would never outrun the younger soldiers in the First Marine Division.
But they had something the Marines did not have.
Life experience, patience, the ability to think before they acted.
Bruce trained them differently than other division commanders trained their troops.
He emphasized fire discipline over speed, maneuver over frontal assault, conservation of force over heroic charges.
The old bastards learned to let firepower do the work that young Marines did with bayonets.
They learned to go around enemy strong points instead of through them.
They learned to stay alive while killing the enemy efficiently.
The division deployed to Hawaii in March 1944.
They continued training in amphibious and jungle warfare.
The men were now averaging 33 years old.
Still the oldest infantry division in the United States Army.
Still the unit that other divisions looked at and wondered how they would perform under fire.
The 77th got their answer on Guam.
The division landed on July 21st, 1944 as part of Operation Forager.
The initial landings were relatively light.
The Japanese had concentrated their defenses elsewhere.
But as the 77th pushed inland, they hit the real resistance.
Fortified positions in the jungle, machine gun nests in caves, artillery observers hidden in the trees.
Bruce’s training paid off immediately.
The old bastards did not charge the Japanese positions.
They surrounded them, called in artillery, waited for the bombardment to finish, then moved in and cleared what remained.
The casualty ratio favored the Americans heavily.
The 77th killed enemy soldiers at a rate far exceeding their own losses.
By August 8th, Guam was secure.
The 77th had proven they could fight.
More importantly, they had proven they could win without taking unsustainable casualties.
The division’s afteraction report noted that fire discipline and tactical patience had been the key factors in success.
Translation: The old bastards thought before they shot and they maneuvered before they assaulted.
The division was supposed to go to New Calonia for rest and refitting.
They made it halfway there before the orders changed.
Lee was turning into a nightmare.
The Sixth Army needed reinforcements.
The 77th turned around and headed for the Philippines.
They landed on Lee on November 23rd, 1944, Thanksgiving Day.
No rest, no refit, just straight back into combat.
The division spent two weeks training and patrolling in the rear areas.
Then Bruce got the order for the Ormach operation.
Amphibious assault on the western coast, seized the port, cut off Japanese reinforcements.
The 77th loaded onto the ships on December 6th.
They hit the beaches at Deposito on December 7th.
They captured Ormach on December 10th and on the night of December 11th they sank five Japanese vessels trying to reinforce the garrison.
The engagement lasted 18 minutes.
It demonstrated everything Bruce had taught his division.
Use the right weapon for the target.
Overwhelm the enemy with concentrated fire.
Do not take unnecessary risks.
The M10 crews had never trained to fight ships, but they understood the principle.
put rounds on target until the target stops being a threat.
That principle carried the 77th through Ley, through Okinawa, and through 200 days of continuous combat.
The 77th Infantry Division finished the Lee campaign on February 5th, 1945.
Final statistics.
19,456 enemy killed, 124 captured, 543 American dead, 1,469 wounded.
The division had destroyed the Japanese 35th Army as an effective fighting force.
General Yamashita abandoned his plan to make Lee the decisive battle of the Philippines.
The Americans owned the island.
The old bastards had 60 days before their next assignment.
They used the time to absorb replacements and repair equipment.
The M10 tank destroyers received maintenance.
New barrels for the guns that had fired the most rounds.
Track replacement for vehicles that had covered hundreds of miles of jungle roads.
The crews trained the new men on the basics.
How to load, how to aim, how to fire without getting killed.
Nobody trained them on how to sink ships.
That lesson was already written in the division’s history.
The M10 crews who had engaged transport number 159 on December 11th were already thinking about the next campaign.
Okinawa was going to be worse than Lee.
Everyone knew it.
The Japanese were not going to surrender their home islands without extracting maximum American casualties.
The 77th landed at Kuramarto on March 26th, 1945.
The small islands west of Okinawa needed to be secured before the main invasion.
The division spent 5 days clearing Japanese defenders and destroying suicide boat bases.
American casualties 27 killed, 81 wounded.
Japanese casualties, over 650 dead or captured.
The mathematics remained consistent.
The main Okinawa operation began on April 1st.
The 77th was held in reserve initially.
They landed on Eima on April 16th.
The island had an airfield the Americans needed.
The Japanese had fortified every cave and rgeline.
The fighting was brutal.
Hand-to-h hand combat in tunnels, flamethrowers against bunkers, artillery bargages that turned hills into moonscapes.
Ernie Pile died on Eashima on April 18th.
The famous war correspondent had been with the 77th for weeks.
He liked the old bastards.
He wrote about them with respect.
A Japanese machine gunner shot him in the head while he was moving forward with the reconnaissance patrol.
The division erected a monument at the spot.
The inscription read, “On this spot, the 77th Division lost a buddy.
Yashima fell on April 21st.
The 77th moved to Okinawa proper on April 25th.
They relieved the 96th Division on the southern front.
The Japanese defensive line stretched across the island.
fortified caves, interlocking fields of fire, artillery positioned in reverse slope positions where American naval guns could not reach them.
The 77th attacked on April 28th.
The escarment became the division’s nightmare.
A near vertical ridge that required scaling ladders and cargo nets to assault.
The Japanese held the high ground with machine guns and mortars.
Every yard gained cost American lives.
The old bastards took the ridge through sustained artillery bombardment and methodical infantry assault.
No heroic charges, no desperate attacks, just firepower and patience.
The division drove to Shuri in conjunction with the first marine division.
They occupied the ruins on May 31st.
The Japanese had already withdrawn to their final defensive positions in the south.
The 77th continued attacking through June, sealing cave positions and clearing ridgeel lines.
The division moved to Sibu in the Philippines in July to prepare for the invasion of Japan.
The atomic bombs fell in August.
Japan surrendered on August 15th.
The 77th never invaded the home islands.
They occupied Hokkaido instead.
Peaceful occupation.
No combat.
The old bastards had fought their last battle on Okinawa.
The division was deactivated on March 15th, 1946 in Japan.
Final statistics for World War II.
Approximately 44,000 enemy killed, 488 prisoners captured, 2,140 men killed in action, 7,000 wounded, 200 days of sustained combat across three campaigns.
The capture rate remained 0.8%, the lowest in the Pacific War.
The 77th Infantry Division had lived up to their reputation.
They took no prisoners.
They gave no quarter.
They killed the enemy efficiently and went home.
Most of them went home.
2,140 did not.
Their names are on memorials across the Pacific.
Guam, Lee, Okinawa.
Men who were too old for infantry combat but fought anyway.
Men who turned tank destroyers into ship killers because the mission required it.
The night of December 11th remained in the history books as a footnote, but the men who were there remembered.
The last surviving crew member of the M10 that sank transport number 159 died in 2003.
His name was Robert Henderson.
He was 84 years old.
He had never spoken publicly about the night of December 11th.
When his family asked him about the war, he said he had done his job and come home.
That was all.
Henderson’s grandson found his service records after he died.
Bronze Star, Purple Heart, campaign ribbons for Guam, Lee, and Okinawa, a citation for exceptional performance during the defense of Ormach.
The citation mentioned engaging enemy naval vessels with tank destroyer fire.
The grandson had never heard that story.
Henderson had never told it.
Most of the old bastards never told their stories.
They came home in 1946.
They went back to driving taxis in Manhattan.
Back to keeping books in Brooklyn, back to working factory lines in Jersey City.
They had families.
They had jobs.
They had lives to rebuild.
The war was something they had survived, not something they wanted to relive.
The Division reunions happened every year in New York.
The Old Basters Club met at their headquarters on East 39th Street.
They talked about Guam and Lee and Okinawa in language their families never heard.
They remembered names that had not been spoken in decades.
They raised glasses to the 2,140 who never came home.
But even at the reunions, nobody talked much about sinking ships.
It was just another engagement in a year of continuous combat.
Just another night when they had used the weapons available to kill the enemy threatening their position.
The M10 crews had fired 15 rounds and sunk five vessels.
Then they had moved on to the next mission.
The historical significance took decades to emerge.
Military historians studying the Pacific War eventually noticed the Ormach engagement.
They realized it was unique.
They confirmed it was the only time in World War II that armored fighting vehicles had engaged and destroyed enemy warships from shore positions.
They wrote papers about it.
They included it in analyses of combined arms warfare.
They noted it as an example of tactical flexibility under fire.
But the papers and analyses never captured what it meant to the men who were there.
The cold mathematics of 15 rounds destroying five ships.
The illumination flares turning night into day.
The Japanese soldiers dying in the water while the old bastards fired from prepared positions on shore.
the absolute certainty that this was the job and they were going to do it regardless of what the manual said.
That certainty defined the 77th Infantry Division.
They were too old.
They were too slow.
They were not supposed to be elite soldiers.
But they killed 44,000 enemy troops and took fewer than 500 prisoners because they understood one fundamental principle.
Use every weapon available.
Maximize firepower.
Minimize risk.
complete the mission.
The M10 tank destroyer was designed to kill German armor in France.
The 77th used it to sink Japanese ships in the Philippines.
Nobody had trained them for that mission.
Nobody had written the manual for that engagement.
But when transport number 159 tried to land troops at Ormach, the M10 crews put rounds through the hole and sent it to the bottom because that was the job.
80 years later, that job is almost forgotten.
The men who did it are gone.
The M10s were scrapped decades ago.
Transport number 159 is still on the bottom of Ormach Bay, invisible under 15 ft of water and 80 years of silt.
The night of December 11th, 1944 exists only in afteraction reports and declassified documents that almost nobody reads, but it happened.
American tank destroyers sank Japanese warships once on one night in one place.
It never happened before.
It never happened again.
It was the only time in history.
And now you know the story.
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We’re rescuing forgotten stories from dusty archives every single day.
Stories about soldiers who turned tank destroyers into ship killers.
Stories about the old bastards who did impossible things because the mission required it.
Real people, real heroism.
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Thank you for watching and thank you for making sure the 77th Infantry Division doesn’t disappear into silence.
These men deserve to be remembered, and you’re helping make that
