Eastern shore of the Makassar Strait, 1037 January 2, 1943
VF-8 from USS Constellation was the first strike element to find the enemy. The stubby fighters were 5,000 yards ahead and 3,000 feet above the Avengers of the carrier’s torpedo squadron. Eight Wildcats started to chase six Zeroes. Four more Grummans stayed high looking for the flankers that they would have been if the roles were reversed.
The Mitsubishi's from Hiryu attempted an aerial ballet. The Grummans declined the dance and began an athletic tango instead, up down and then around before going up down and along again. The fighters flashed their machine guns and cannons inconclusively, a damaged Grumman and a demolished Zero were the losses in the first minute. Behind them, the Avengers kept on descending even as thirty one Dauntless streamed overhead. The last four Wildcats broke left and dove head on into another trio of Zeroes that were lining up for a beam attack on the left hand Avenger element. The Wildcats were late. Two torpedo bombers were on fire and four parachutes were filling the skies before twenty four heavy machine guns started to fire. Tracers and steel ripped apart a Zero as his two companions broke left and were chased away by the rear gunners and the angry escort pilots.
The torpedo squadron commander made his decision. The battleship in the middle of his view was the best target that he saw. He saw no carriers and a brief conversation with the dive bomber leader confirmed that he too saw no carriers. The Dauntless would all dive on the nearest battleship. As this discussion was concluding, the first heavy anti-aircraft shells started to burst. The Avengers split; six went straight in, four curled around for a bow shot.
Cannon fire from the escorting destroyers and the wildly weaving heavy cruisers claimed one and then a second avenger of the hammer leg. The longer approach of the anvil section was somewhat safer as there were fewer guns pointing over the bows of the warships instead of over their broadside. As the Avengers entered their final approach, the first Dauntlesses tipped over. VS-8’s commander was the first to drop. He missed Haruna by fifty yards. The Avengers pressed in; every 100 yards closer, another dive bomber dropped. Large water spouts were hiding the angry smoke covered ship. An dull orange glow and then a flash fire signaled the first hit; a thousand pounder punched through a secondary battery. Another torpedo bomber tumbled into the water with no survivors. Another bomb hit and then seven torpedoes were in the water.
The six functioning torpedoes only had to go four or five hundred yards. Two of the belly turret gunners strafed the crowded deck of the target as the bombers attempted to escape. Three torpedoes were tightly running to the bow of the ship, and two were running hot straight and true to the bow. The nimble fast battlecruiser attempted to thread its bulk between danger and as her rudder turned, another bomb opened up the superfiring forward turret. She dodged four of the five torpedoes; a 30 foot hole opened up near her forward port anchor engines. She slowed.
VS-8 was done, sixteen bombers had dropped for four hits and two near misses. Fourteen bombers were fleeing at military power on the surface. VB-8 now started to tip over. The lead flight had not corrected enough for the slowing ship. All three bombs were close misses off the starboard bow. More leaks and crumpled plates let more water into the already flooding bow. The next section adjusted their aim point so they were hunting a sixteen knot ship instead of a twenty eight knot serpent. All four bombs struck. Three started large fires and cut power to the engines. The last bomb should have been fatal. It had penetrated the forward magazine. The fuse failed and it sat near the flashless powder bags as a steel omen of doom. The magazine’s commander decided to flood the space as quickly as possible.
Two more flights scored one more hit. Haruna was out.
Even as she was heaving, Indomitable's escorted torpedo bombers arrived. Eighteen Avengers split into six sections of three. Three sections went around the battle group and three bore straight in against the other battleship. Fifteen dropped from less than a third of a mile. Four torpedoes ripped open the side of the Vickers designed battlecruiser. She had been modernized repeatedly but underwater protection had always been lacking from ships in that generation. Kirishima would have sunk without another attack but VS-6 from the Enterprise wasted their attack on the elegant battlecruiser. Four bombs exploding in the innards of the already lamed beast. They only heightened the below deck horrors and hastened the sinking.
Wildcats from Enterprise and Yorktown tangled with a relief flight of Zeros from the northwest. Three Grummans were lost for two Mitsubishis but the Japanese pilots were unable to attack any bombers over the next fifteen minutes. It was an execution as the Enterprise bomber squadron and torpedo bombers conducted a textbook coordinated attack on the heavy cruiser Atago, Ark Royal would claim the Haguro and Yorktown’s pilots shouted repeatedly that they sank a pair of battleships while intercepts would support a firm claim on Kumano. Furious’s pilots had no joy; they put a single torpedo into another heavy cruiser and wasted half a dozen torpedoes on slithering destroyers.