The Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano should have sunk many times before she finally did. During the Battle off Samar in October 1944, a torpedo from the much smaller USS Johnston tore away her bow and forced her out of the fight, beginning an extraordinary month-long struggle for survival.
Barely able to move, Kumano was attacked the following morning by American carrier aircraft, whose bombs knocked out seven of her eight boilers, yet her engineers somehow restored enough power to crawl back toward safety.
After receiving emergency repairs in Manila, she escaped the harbor only hours before a massive American raid devastated the ships left behind. Then came another nightmare: a wolfpack of American submarines surrounded her, firing torpedo after torpedo as malfunctioning weapons, desperate evasive maneuvers, and even a coral reef repeatedly seemed to save her—until two torpedoes finally struck and left her helpless once again.
Even a typhoon and another air raid failed to finish the crippled cruiser. But on November 25, American aircraft arrived with explicit orders to “destroy, repeat, destroy” Kumano, coordinating dive bombers and torpedo planes in a final overwhelming attack.
Five torpedoes ripped into her side, and within three minutes the cruiser rolled over as Captain Soichiro Hitomi remained aboard while his men abandoned ship. Roughly 600 of her 1,000 crew survived. After enduring torpedoes, bombs, submarines, a typhoon, and repeated air attacks for almost exactly one month, the ship that seemed to have nine lives had finally run out of them.
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Source: Dark Seas
