Picture this.
It’s the dead of night on October 25th, 1944.
In the black waters of the Philippines, two Japanese battleships steam confidently through the Suriga Strait.
Their crews believing they’re about to deliver a crushing blow to American forces.
Their admiral, a veteran warrior named Shoji Nishimura, knows the odds are against him, but he has his orders, and Honor demands he follow them to the bitter end.
What neither he nor his sailors realize is that they’re sailing straight into the most perfectly executed naval ambush in American history.
Waiting for them in the darkness ahead are six American battleships.
Five of them risen like iron phoenixes from the mud of Pearl Harbor, hungry for revenge.
This is the story of the Battle of Surig Strait, the last time battleships would ever duel in open combat, and how America turned what should have been Japan’s moment of triumph into their most complete naval catastrophe.
In these next 16 minutes, you’ll witness how a brilliant American admiral named Jesse Oldenorf orchestrated a textbook naval trap that would be studied for generations and how the ghosts of Pearl Harbor finally got their revenge in one of the most lopsided battles in naval history.
To understand the magnitude of what was about to unfold in Suriga Strait, we need to step back 3 years to December 7th, 1941.
On that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, Japanese torpedo bombers and dive bombers had caught the American Pacific Fleet completely offguard.
The pride of the US Navy, seven massive battleships morowed along what was called Battleship Row, became sitting ducks in what the Japanese called a great victory.
The USS West Virginia took seven torpedoes and two bombs, settling into 40 ft of harbor mud while oil fires raged around her twisted hull.
The California was held by two torpedoes and slowly sank over several days.
Tennessee was trapped behind the sunken West Virginia.
Her superructure scorched by the explosion of the Arizona.
Maryland and Pennsylvania were damaged but remained afloat.
Oklahoma capsized completely and Arizona exploded in a massive fireball that became the enduring symbol of American defeat.
But here’s what the Japanese didn’t count on.
American industrial might and an unquenchable thirst for revenge.
Over the next 3 years, while Japan struggled to replace its losses, America performed what can only be described as mechanical miracles.
One by one, the dead battleships of Pearl Harbor were raised, rebuilt, and reborn.
The West Virginia emerged from 2 years of reconstruction, completely modernized, bristling with new radar systems and anti-aircraft guns.
California, Tennessee, Maryland, and Pennsylvania all underwent similar transformations.
By October 1944, these Pearl Harbor survivors had been relegated to what the Navy brass considered secondary duties, shore bombardment and fire support.
The new fast battleships like Iowa and New Jersey got the glamorous assignments with the carrier task forces.
But sometimes being underestimated is the greatest advantage of all.
Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura was no stranger to naval combat.
A graduate of the Japanese Naval War College in 1911, he had commanded destroyers during Japan’s lightning conquest of the Philippines and Dutch East Indies in 1941 and 1942.
His own son, a naval aviator, had died in those early campaigns, a personal loss that only deepened Nishimura’s commitment to duty and honor.
During the grueling battles for Guadal Canal, he had commanded cruisers with what his superiors called lionlike fury, displaying the kind of aggressive tactics that made Japanese naval officers feared throughout the Pacific.
But by late 1944, the strategic situation had changed dramatically.
Japan’s naval aviation had been gutted in the Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot, and the combined fleet was running desperately short of fuel, experienced pilots, and modern ships.
When General MacArthur’s forces landed on Lady Island in the Philippines, Japanese high command knew this was their last chance to inflict a decisive defeat on American forces before the war reached Japan’s home islands.
The plan they devised was called Shogo, meaning victory operation.
Though victory at this point was more hope than expectation.
It was essentially an elaborate shell game designed to lure American naval forces away from the late invasion beaches, then crush the exposed amphibious fleet with a coordinated attack from multiple directions.
Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa would take Japan’s remaining aircraft carriers north of the Philippines as a decoy force.
Carriers with almost no aircraft aboard, sacrificial lambs to draw away Admiral Holse’s powerful third fleet.
Meanwhile, two separate battleship forces would converge on Lady Gulf from the west.
The larger and more powerful center force under Vice Admiral Teo Kurita would thread through the San Bernardino Strait and attack from the north.
Nishimura’s smaller southern force would punch through the Surigo Strait and hit from the south like the hammer and anvil of ancient warfare.
It was a plan born of desperation, requiring perfect timing and coordination between forces that could barely communicate with each other.
But for it to work, someone had to be willing to sail into almost certain death to tie up American forces while the main blow fell elsewhere.
Nishimura accepted this role with the stoic fatalism of the samurai warrior class from which Japan’s naval officers drew their inspiration.
The battle of Suruga Strait represents the collision of two fundamentally different approaches to naval warfare and indeed to war itself.
On one side stood the Japanese concept of Yamato damashi.
the spirit of Japan that emphasized honor, sacrifice, and death before dishonor.
Nishimura and his men knew they were sailing into a trap, but their code demanded they follow orders regardless of personal survival.
This wasn’t recklessness.
It was a calculated acceptance of death in service to a greater cause.
A philosophy that made Japanese forces incredibly dangerous, but also ultimately predictable.
On the American side was a different philosophy entirely.
what Admiral Jesse Oldenorf himself called the American way of war.
This meant using overwhelming firepower, superior technology, and tactical intelligence to achieve maximum results with minimum casualties.
Where Japanese tactics emphasized spiritual strength and individual heroism, American doctrine focused on coordination, communication, and the efficient application of superior resources.
But there was something else at work in the waters of Suriga Strait that night.
something more personal than military doctrine.
Five of the six American battleships waiting in ambush were Pearl Harbor survivors.
Their crews including hundreds of men who had lived through that December morning 3 years earlier.
For them, this wasn’t just another naval engagement.
It was a settling of accounts, a chance to balance the ledger of American honor that had been bloodied at Pearl Harbor.
The tactical situation perfectly embodied these competing philosophies.
Nishimura approached in a single file formation, the traditional Japanese approach that maximized individual ship firepower, but left the force vulnerable to concentrated attack.
Oldenorf deployed his ships in what naval tacticians call crossing the tea, a maneuver that allowed his entire battle line to fire full broadsides at enemies who could only respond with their forward guns.
This wasn’t just about ships and guns.
It was about two cultures approaches to technology and warfare.
The Japanese battleships Yamashiro and Fusso were veterans of World War I.
Modernized but still fundamentally old-fashioned warships that relied on optical rangefinding and the skill of individual gunners.
The American ships, by contrast, bristled with radar systems that could track and target enemies in complete darkness with devastating accuracy.
Rear Admiral Jesse Oldenorf was the right man in the right place at precisely the right moment in history.
A stocky Californian known to his friends as Oolie, he was a 1909 graduate of the Naval Academy who had spent his career preparing for exactly this kind of engagement.
Unlike many American admirals who had risen through the submarine service or naval aviation, Oldenorf was a surface warfare specialist who understood the deadly ballet of battleship combat better than almost anyone alive.
When word came that Japanese forces were approaching through Suriga Strait, Oldenorf had at his disposal a force that represented the concentrated might of American industrial power.
Six battleships, eight cruisers, 28 destroyers, and 39 motor torpedo boats.
a total of 81 warships against Nishimura’s seven, but numbers alone don’t win battles, and the confined waters of Surria Strait would actually limit how many ships could engage effectively at any given time.
Oldenorf’s genius lay in how he orchestrated the coming battle, rather than simply forming a battle line and blazing away.
He created a layered defense that would strip away Nishimura’s forces piece by piece before the main engagement even began.
First, PT boats would spot the approaching Japanese and attack with torpedoes, reporting their position and composition.
Then, destroyers would make high-speed torpedo runs from both flanks, using their superior radar and speed to strike and disappear before the Japanese could respond effectively.
Only after these preliminary attacks had done their work would the battleships engage.
And when they did, they would be perfectly positioned in the classic crossing the tea formation that every naval officer studied, but few ever had the chance to execute in actual combat.
But Oldenorf faced one critical limitation that could have derailed his entire plan, ammunition.
His battleships had been conducting shore bombardment missions for days in support of MacArthur’s laty landings, and their magazines were loaded primarily with high explosive shells designed to destroy land targets.
Only about 23% of their ammunition consisted of armor-piercing shells capable of penetrating enemy battleship armor.
This meant the American ships would have to make every shot count.
There would be no prolonged slugging match.
The solution was elegant in its simplicity.
let the destroyers and PT boats do the bulk of the damage with torpedo attacks, then use the battleship’s overwhelming firepower advantage to finish off whatever remained.
It was surgical warfare, American style, precise, efficient, and devastating.
As Nishimura’s force entered the southern mouth of Suriga Strait just after midnight on October 25th, the Japanese admiral faced a terrible choice that illuminated the moral complexities of military command.
His reconnaissance had already reported the overwhelming strength of American forces waiting ahead.
Four battleships, two cruisers, four destroyers, 15 aircraft carriers, 14 PT boats, and 80 transports.
The numbers were staggering, and Nishimura knew with mathematical certainty that his small force stood almost no chance of survival, let alone victory.
Yet, he pressed on.
And the question that haunts military historians is whether this represented admirable devotion to duty or criminally wasteful sacrifice of his men’s lives.
From a Japanese perspective, Nishimura was upholding the highest traditions of the Imperial Navy, facing impossible odds without flinching, buying time for his comrades with his own blood.
But from a western viewpoint, his decision appears almost suicidal, a waste of good ships and brave sailors in service of a hopeless cause.
The moral weight of this decision becomes even heavier when we consider that Nishimura’s son had already died in the service of Japan’s war effort.
Did personal grief drive the admiral to seek his own glorious death, or did it strengthen his resolve to ensure that other sons would not die in vain? The historical record gives us no clear answer, only the stark fact that Nishimura chose to continue north into waters he knew were filled with enemies.
On the American side, Oldenorf faced his own moral calculations.
His force was so overwhelmingly superior that the coming battle would be less a fair fight than an execution.
“If my opponent is foolish enough to come at me with an inferior force,” he later said, “I’m certainly not going to give him an even break.” This was the practical wisdom of American military doctrine.
Use every advantage, waste no opportunities, preserve your own men by destroying the enemy as efficiently as possible.
But some of Oldenorf’s subordinates wondered whether they were crossing a line from military necessity into something approaching cruelty.
Captain Jesse Coward, who commanded one of the destroyer squadrons and had fought the Japanese in night actions off Guadal Canal, knew firsthand how deadly Japanese forces could be when given even a small advantage.
He had no intention of giving them that chance, but the sheer disparity in forces troubled some American officers.
The broader strategic question that haunts the battle of Suriga Strait is whether such overwhelming force was necessary at all.
By October 1944, Japan’s naval power was already broken, its fuel reserves depleted, its experienced pilots dead.
The outcome of the Pacific War was no longer in doubt, only its duration and cost.
In that context, was the complete annihilation of Nishimura’s force a military necessity or a demonstration of American power that crossed into vengeance? The slaughter began at 3:51 a.m.
when Oldenorf’s cruisers opened fire, their shells arcing through the darkness like falling stars.
2 minutes later, the battleships joined in and the narrow waters of Surigal Strait became hell on earth.
The USS West Virginia, raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor, fired 93 rounds of 16-in armor-piercing shells at targets she could track perfectly with radar, even in the pitch black night.
Tennessee and California, their own Pearl Harbor scars hidden beneath new steel, added their voices to the thunder.
For 17 minutes, American guns poured a concentrated storm of fire into what remained of Nishimura’s force.
The Japanese admiral, still alive on the bridge of his flagship Yamashiro, tried desperately to coordinate a response, but his fire control systems were primitive compared to American radar.
His shells flew wide while American rounds found their targets with mechanical precision.
At 4:11 a.m., the radar blip that was the battleship Yamashiro suddenly bloomed bright on American screens, then faded away.
The ship had exploded, taking Nishimura and most of his crew to the bottom of Suriga Strait.
The heavy cruiser Moami, torn apart by shellfire, tried to flee south, but collided with Admiral Shima’s approaching second striking force.
In the darkness and confusion, Shima, realizing that he was steaming into the same death trap that had consumed Nishimura, ordered an immediate withdrawal.
By dawn, the Japanese southern force had been completely annihilated.
Of Nishimura’s original seven ships, only the destroyer Shigura escaped, limping south with damage that would keep her out of action for months.
Two Japanese battleships, one heavy cruiser, and three destroyers lay on the bottom of Suriga Strait along with nearly 4,000 Japanese sailors.
American losses were almost negligible.
39 men killed, 114 wounded, and one PT boat sunk.
The disparity was so complete that it barely qualified as a battle.
It was more like a mechanical process.
American industrial might converting Japanese ships into scrap metal with ruthless efficiency.
But the battle of Suriga Strait was more than just a tactical victory.
It was the final settling of accounts that began 3 years earlier at Pearl Harbor.
The battleships that had been written off as destroyed in 1941 had returned from the grave to deliver the decisive blow.
The day of infamy had been answered with a night of retribution so complete that it would be remembered as the last time battleships would ever fight each other in open combat.
As the sun rose over the smoking wreckage in Suriga Strait, an era of naval warfare that stretched back centuries came to an end.
The age of the battleship was over.
Killed by aircraft carriers and submarines and the changing nature of warfare itself.
But before it died, the battle wagons of Pearl Harbor had one last moment of glory.
One final chance to prove that reports of their death had been greatly exaggerated.
The Japanese had entered Suriga Strait, confident in their mission and their honor.
They left it as monuments to American vengeance and as a warning to any nation that might think America would forget its defeats.
In the dark waters of the Philippines, the ghosts of Pearl Harbor had finally found their peace.
Picture this.
It’s the dead of night on October 25th, 1944.
In the black waters of the Philippines, two Japanese battleships steam confidently through the Suriga Strait.
Their crews believing they’re about to deliver a crushing blow to American forces.
Their admiral, a veteran warrior named Shoji Nishimura, knows the odds are against him, but he has his orders, and Honor demands he follow them to the bitter end.
What neither he nor his sailors realize is that they’re sailing straight into the most perfectly executed naval ambush in American history.
Waiting for them in the darkness ahead are six American battleships.
Five of them risen like iron phoenixes from the mud of Pearl Harbor, hungry for revenge.
This is the story of the Battle of Surig Strait, the last time battleships would ever duel in open combat, and how America turned what should have been Japan’s moment of triumph into their most complete naval catastrophe.
In these next 16 minutes, you’ll witness how a brilliant American admiral named Jesse Oldenorf orchestrated a textbook naval trap that would be studied for generations and how the ghosts of Pearl Harbor finally got their revenge in one of the most lopsided battles in naval history.
To understand the magnitude of what was about to unfold in Suriga Strait, we need to step back 3 years to December 7th, 1941.
On that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, Japanese torpedo bombers and dive bombers had caught the American Pacific Fleet completely offguard.
The pride of the US Navy, seven massive battleships morowed along what was called Battleship Row, became sitting ducks in what the Japanese called a great victory.
The USS West Virginia took seven torpedoes and two bombs, settling into 40 ft of harbor mud while oil fires raged around her twisted hull.
The California was held by two torpedoes and slowly sank over several days.
Tennessee was trapped behind the sunken West Virginia.
Her superructure scorched by the explosion of the Arizona.
Maryland and Pennsylvania were damaged but remained afloat.
Oklahoma capsized completely and Arizona exploded in a massive fireball that became the enduring symbol of American defeat.
But here’s what the Japanese didn’t count on.
American industrial might and an unquenchable thirst for revenge.
Over the next 3 years, while Japan struggled to replace its losses, America performed what can only be described as mechanical miracles.
One by one, the dead battleships of Pearl Harbor were raised, rebuilt, and reborn.
The West Virginia emerged from 2 years of reconstruction, completely modernized, bristling with new radar systems and anti-aircraft guns.
California, Tennessee, Maryland, and Pennsylvania all underwent similar transformations.
By October 1944, these Pearl Harbor survivors had been relegated to what the Navy brass considered secondary duties, shore bombardment and fire support.
The new fast battleships like Iowa and New Jersey got the glamorous assignments with the carrier task forces.
But sometimes being underestimated is the greatest advantage of all.
Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura was no stranger to naval combat.
A graduate of the Japanese Naval War College in 1911, he had commanded destroyers during Japan’s lightning conquest of the Philippines and Dutch East Indies in 1941 and 1942.
His own son, a naval aviator, had died in those early campaigns, a personal loss that only deepened Nishimura’s commitment to duty and honor.
During the grueling battles for Guadal Canal, he had commanded cruisers with what his superiors called lionlike fury, displaying the kind of aggressive tactics that made Japanese naval officers feared throughout the Pacific.
But by late 1944, the strategic situation had changed dramatically.
Japan’s naval aviation had been gutted in the Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot, and the combined fleet was running desperately short of fuel, experienced pilots, and modern ships.
When General MacArthur’s forces landed on Lady Island in the Philippines, Japanese high command knew this was their last chance to inflict a decisive defeat on American forces before the war reached Japan’s home islands.
The plan they devised was called Shogo, meaning victory operation.
Though victory at this point was more hope than expectation.
It was essentially an elaborate shell game designed to lure American naval forces away from the late invasion beaches, then crush the exposed amphibious fleet with a coordinated attack from multiple directions.
Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa would take Japan’s remaining aircraft carriers north of the Philippines as a decoy force.
Carriers with almost no aircraft aboard, sacrificial lambs to draw away Admiral Holse’s powerful third fleet.
Meanwhile, two separate battleship forces would converge on Lady Gulf from the west.
The larger and more powerful center force under Vice Admiral Teo Kurita would thread through the San Bernardino Strait and attack from the north.
Nishimura’s smaller southern force would punch through the Surigo Strait and hit from the south like the hammer and anvil of ancient warfare.
It was a plan born of desperation, requiring perfect timing and coordination between forces that could barely communicate with each other.
But for it to work, someone had to be willing to sail into almost certain death to tie up American forces while the main blow fell elsewhere.
Nishimura accepted this role with the stoic fatalism of the samurai warrior class from which Japan’s naval officers drew their inspiration.
The battle of Suruga Strait represents the collision of two fundamentally different approaches to naval warfare and indeed to war itself.
On one side stood the Japanese concept of Yamato damashi.
the spirit of Japan that emphasized honor, sacrifice, and death before dishonor.
Nishimura and his men knew they were sailing into a trap, but their code demanded they follow orders regardless of personal survival.
This wasn’t recklessness.
It was a calculated acceptance of death in service to a greater cause.
A philosophy that made Japanese forces incredibly dangerous, but also ultimately predictable.
On the American side was a different philosophy entirely.
what Admiral Jesse Oldenorf himself called the American way of war.
This meant using overwhelming firepower, superior technology, and tactical intelligence to achieve maximum results with minimum casualties.
Where Japanese tactics emphasized spiritual strength and individual heroism, American doctrine focused on coordination, communication, and the efficient application of superior resources.
But there was something else at work in the waters of Suriga Strait that night.
something more personal than military doctrine.
Five of the six American battleships waiting in ambush were Pearl Harbor survivors.
Their crews including hundreds of men who had lived through that December morning 3 years earlier.
For them, this wasn’t just another naval engagement.
It was a settling of accounts, a chance to balance the ledger of American honor that had been bloodied at Pearl Harbor.
The tactical situation perfectly embodied these competing philosophies.
Nishimura approached in a single file formation, the traditional Japanese approach that maximized individual ship firepower, but left the force vulnerable to concentrated attack.
Oldenorf deployed his ships in what naval tacticians call crossing the tea, a maneuver that allowed his entire battle line to fire full broadsides at enemies who could only respond with their forward guns.
This wasn’t just about ships and guns.
It was about two cultures approaches to technology and warfare.
The Japanese battleships Yamashiro and Fusso were veterans of World War I.
Modernized but still fundamentally old-fashioned warships that relied on optical rangefinding and the skill of individual gunners.
The American ships, by contrast, bristled with radar systems that could track and target enemies in complete darkness with devastating accuracy.
Rear Admiral Jesse Oldenorf was the right man in the right place at precisely the right moment in history.
A stocky Californian known to his friends as Oolie, he was a 1909 graduate of the Naval Academy who had spent his career preparing for exactly this kind of engagement.
Unlike many American admirals who had risen through the submarine service or naval aviation, Oldenorf was a surface warfare specialist who understood the deadly ballet of battleship combat better than almost anyone alive.
When word came that Japanese forces were approaching through Suriga Strait, Oldenorf had at his disposal a force that represented the concentrated might of American industrial power.
Six battleships, eight cruisers, 28 destroyers, and 39 motor torpedo boats.
a total of 81 warships against Nishimura’s seven, but numbers alone don’t win battles, and the confined waters of Surria Strait would actually limit how many ships could engage effectively at any given time.
Oldenorf’s genius lay in how he orchestrated the coming battle, rather than simply forming a battle line and blazing away.
He created a layered defense that would strip away Nishimura’s forces piece by piece before the main engagement even began.
First, PT boats would spot the approaching Japanese and attack with torpedoes, reporting their position and composition.
Then, destroyers would make high-speed torpedo runs from both flanks, using their superior radar and speed to strike and disappear before the Japanese could respond effectively.
Only after these preliminary attacks had done their work would the battleships engage.
And when they did, they would be perfectly positioned in the classic crossing the tea formation that every naval officer studied, but few ever had the chance to execute in actual combat.
But Oldenorf faced one critical limitation that could have derailed his entire plan, ammunition.
His battleships had been conducting shore bombardment missions for days in support of MacArthur’s laty landings, and their magazines were loaded primarily with high explosive shells designed to destroy land targets.
Only about 23% of their ammunition consisted of armor-piercing shells capable of penetrating enemy battleship armor.
This meant the American ships would have to make every shot count.
There would be no prolonged slugging match.
The solution was elegant in its simplicity.
let the destroyers and PT boats do the bulk of the damage with torpedo attacks, then use the battleship’s overwhelming firepower advantage to finish off whatever remained.
It was surgical warfare, American style, precise, efficient, and devastating.
As Nishimura’s force entered the southern mouth of Suriga Strait just after midnight on October 25th, the Japanese admiral faced a terrible choice that illuminated the moral complexities of military command.
His reconnaissance had already reported the overwhelming strength of American forces waiting ahead.
Four battleships, two cruisers, four destroyers, 15 aircraft carriers, 14 PT boats, and 80 transports.
The numbers were staggering, and Nishimura knew with mathematical certainty that his small force stood almost no chance of survival, let alone victory.
Yet, he pressed on.
And the question that haunts military historians is whether this represented admirable devotion to duty or criminally wasteful sacrifice of his men’s lives.
From a Japanese perspective, Nishimura was upholding the highest traditions of the Imperial Navy, facing impossible odds without flinching, buying time for his comrades with his own blood.
But from a western viewpoint, his decision appears almost suicidal, a waste of good ships and brave sailors in service of a hopeless cause.
The moral weight of this decision becomes even heavier when we consider that Nishimura’s son had already died in the service of Japan’s war effort.
Did personal grief drive the admiral to seek his own glorious death, or did it strengthen his resolve to ensure that other sons would not die in vain? The historical record gives us no clear answer, only the stark fact that Nishimura chose to continue north into waters he knew were filled with enemies.
On the American side, Oldenorf faced his own moral calculations.
His force was so overwhelmingly superior that the coming battle would be less a fair fight than an execution.
“If my opponent is foolish enough to come at me with an inferior force,” he later said, “I’m certainly not going to give him an even break.” This was the practical wisdom of American military doctrine.
Use every advantage, waste no opportunities, preserve your own men by destroying the enemy as efficiently as possible.
But some of Oldenorf’s subordinates wondered whether they were crossing a line from military necessity into something approaching cruelty.
Captain Jesse Coward, who commanded one of the destroyer squadrons and had fought the Japanese in night actions off Guadal Canal, knew firsthand how deadly Japanese forces could be when given even a small advantage.
He had no intention of giving them that chance, but the sheer disparity in forces troubled some American officers.
The broader strategic question that haunts the battle of Suriga Strait is whether such overwhelming force was necessary at all.
By October 1944, Japan’s naval power was already broken, its fuel reserves depleted, its experienced pilots dead.
The outcome of the Pacific War was no longer in doubt, only its duration and cost.
In that context, was the complete annihilation of Nishimura’s force a military necessity or a demonstration of American power that crossed into vengeance? The slaughter began at 3:51 a.m.
when Oldenorf’s cruisers opened fire, their shells arcing through the darkness like falling stars.
2 minutes later, the battleships joined in and the narrow waters of Surigal Strait became hell on earth.
The USS West Virginia, raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor, fired 93 rounds of 16-in armor-piercing shells at targets she could track perfectly with radar, even in the pitch black night.
Tennessee and California, their own Pearl Harbor scars hidden beneath new steel, added their voices to the thunder.
For 17 minutes, American guns poured a concentrated storm of fire into what remained of Nishimura’s force.
The Japanese admiral, still alive on the bridge of his flagship Yamashiro, tried desperately to coordinate a response, but his fire control systems were primitive compared to American radar.
His shells flew wide while American rounds found their targets with mechanical precision.
At 4:11 a.m., the radar blip that was the battleship Yamashiro suddenly bloomed bright on American screens, then faded away.
The ship had exploded, taking Nishimura and most of his crew to the bottom of Suriga Strait.
The heavy cruiser Moami, torn apart by shellfire, tried to flee south, but collided with Admiral Shima’s approaching second striking force.
In the darkness and confusion, Shima, realizing that he was steaming into the same death trap that had consumed Nishimura, ordered an immediate withdrawal.
By dawn, the Japanese southern force had been completely annihilated.
Of Nishimura’s original seven ships, only the destroyer Shigura escaped, limping south with damage that would keep her out of action for months.
Two Japanese battleships, one heavy cruiser, and three destroyers lay on the bottom of Suriga Strait along with nearly 4,000 Japanese sailors.
American losses were almost negligible.
39 men killed, 114 wounded, and one PT boat sunk.
The disparity was so complete that it barely qualified as a battle.
It was more like a mechanical process.
American industrial might converting Japanese ships into scrap metal with ruthless efficiency.
But the battle of Suriga Strait was more than just a tactical victory.
It was the final settling of accounts that began 3 years earlier at Pearl Harbor.
The battleships that had been written off as destroyed in 1941 had returned from the grave to deliver the decisive blow.
The day of infamy had been answered with a night of retribution so complete that it would be remembered as the last time battleships would ever fight each other in open combat.
As the sun rose over the smoking wreckage in Suriga Strait, an era of naval warfare that stretched back centuries came to an end.
The age of the battleship was over.
Killed by aircraft carriers and submarines and the changing nature of warfare itself.
But before it died, the battle wagons of Pearl Harbor had one last moment of glory.
One final chance to prove that reports of their death had been greatly exaggerated.
The Japanese had entered Suriga Strait, confident in their mission and their honor.
They left it as monuments to American vengeance and as a warning to any nation that might think America would forget its defeats.
In the dark waters of the Philippines, the ghosts of Pearl Harbor had finally found their peace.
