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The USS St. Lo after being hit by a kamikaze attack, 1944
On 25 October 1944, kamikaze sank an American ship for the first time, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
A group of 5 kamikaze and 4 escort planes approached the small task force Taffy 3, flying low to the water to escape detection. They began to attack four carriers: the White Plains, Kalinin Bay, Kitkun Bay, and St. Lo. The White Plains and Kitkun Bay weren’t damaged much, while the Kalinin Bay received heavy damage to the flight deck and one of the port stacks. But the fate of the St. Lo was much worse.
One of the two planes slated to attack the White Plains was hit by gunfire from the ship before it could reach it’s target and veered away from the White Plains toward the St. Lo. It was being flown by squad leader Yukio Seki, a 23-year-old newlywed. Seki dove his damaged plane onto the St. Lo’s flight deck, where it crashed, exploded, and rolled off into the sea.
At first it didn’t seem like the plane had done too much damage besides set some fires, but it turned out that the plane had released a bomb that made its way below decks, where it exploded a few minutes later. This explosion set off a series of increasingly sizeable other explosions. The captain gave the abandon ship order, and as the men were swimming away, the ship’s magazines went up in a massive explosion. The St. Lo sank soon after, within about half an hour of the kamikaze attack. Of the 889 men aboard, 113 were killed or missing, and about 30 later died of their wounds.
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Account of the kamikaze attack, from the St. Lo’s damage report
The Japanese would continue to use kamikaze tactics for the remainder of the war, and the suicidal missions of about 2,800 Japanese pilots resulted in the deaths of almost 5,000 Allied sailors, the destruction of 47 ships, and the damage of about 370 more.
Read the St. Lo’s damage report in Fold3’s WWII War Diaries.
