Charged in 1938, the Brooklyn-class light cruiser Nashville (CL 43) was a pillar of Seventh
Armada operations in World War II. Indeed, even before sending with Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid's armada
in right on time in 1943, Nashville joined Hornet (CV 8) in the renowned Halsey-Doolittle plane assault on Tokyo
what's more, later shelled Japanese powers on Kiska Island in the Aleutians. The warship, with General Douglas
MacArthur every now and again set out, participated in the Seventh Fleet's major land and/or water capable operations in the
Solomons, New Guinea, the Admiralties, and the Philippines. A while after the essential Battle of
Leyte Gulf, a Japanese kamikaze plane hit the cruiser, slaughtering 133 Sailors, injuring another 190, and
extremely harming the ship. After stateside repairs, she was back in the battle in 1945 for operations in
the Netherlands East Indies and the South China Sea.
After the Japanese surrender, Nashville upheld operations on China's Yangtze River as part
of Task Force 73 under Rear Admiral C. Turner Joy and secured land and/or water capable boats transporting U.S.
Marines to northern China. The light cruiser then partook in Operation Magic Carpet that returned
a large number of U.S. servicemen and ladies home. The Navy decommissioned Nashville in June 1946,
set her in "mothballs" until 1951, and after that sold the cruiser to Chile. The pleased Seventh Fleet
veteran served in the Chilean Navy until the mid 1980s.
General Douglas MacArthur, third from right, and different officers watch the arrival at Leyte in the Philippines from
the scaffold of light cruiser Nashville (CL 43), October 1944.
U.S. Armed force C-259
boats to escape the territory. Cut off via air and ocean, the
Japanese powers shorewards were bound to vanquish.
MacArthur next focused the intensely strengthened
island of Biak, around 325 miles northwest of
Hollandia. The Imperial Japanese Navy sent ship
Fuso, two cruisers, and five destroyers stacked
with troop fortifications to bolster the island's
resistance. More than 200 foe planes secured the
maritime flotilla. Because of revelation by Seventh Fleet
submarines and watch airplane, be that as it may, the foe
compel turned around course and pulled back. Then again,
covering the Allied arriving at Biak were Australian
substantial cruisers Australia and Shropshire and U.S. light
cruisers Phoenix, Nashville (CL 43), and Boise (CL
47), in addition to a few Australian and American destroyer
divisions. This joined gathering baffled a moment
Japanese endeavor to strengthen the shields of Biak.
This maritime bolster demonstrated crucial, for once U.S. Armed force
troops landed, they required a month to overcome the
delved in adversary battalion.
As different U.S. Naval force powers conveyed Allied
divisions aground at Normandy in France and the
Mariana Islands in the Central Pacific amid the
summer of 1944, MacArthur's U.S.- Australian
summon, including the Seventh Fleet, wrapped up
wresting control from the Japanese of the 1,000-
mile northern shoreline of New Guinea.
These operations were endlessly helped
by the work of the Seventh Fleet's submarine
constrain under Rear Admiral Ralph W. Christie. His
pontoons, profiting from an unfaltering stream of "Ultra"
radio insight assembled by MacArthur's
code-breakers in Australia, sent many completely stacked
foe dealer boats to the base, secured
the land and/or water capable teams from surface assault, and
provided guerrilla groups in the Netherlands East
Independents and southern Philippines.
Toward the north, the Philippines now called
MacArthur. The officer of American and
Filipino strengths crushed there ahead of schedule in the war, the
general had since a long time ago communicated his assurance to
delete the memory of that disastrous misfortune. At the point when
he vowed, "I should return," in discussing the
Philippines, Allied pioneers had little uncertainty about
MacArthur's vital inclinations. Persuaded by the
general's contention that liberating the Philippines from
the severe Japanese occupation was a good and
military objective, President Roosevelt gave the
proceed for the intrusion. Authorities arranged
their powers for a 20 October 1944 land and/or water capable
strike on the Philippine island of Leyte.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf would test the Seventh
Armada as no other World War II battle, for the Japanese
were resolved to save neither boats nor planes
nor men in their frantic push to stop the Allied
Pacific hostile. As the armada drew nearer the
Philippines, Imperial Japanese Navy authorities
propelled a since quite a while ago arranged operation to demolish
the American attack armada's troop transports,
land and/or water capable boats, landing create, and any warships that
acted as a burden. Bad habit Admiral Takeo Kurita's Central
Drive of Yamato and Musashi and 3 different warships,
12 cruisers, and 15 destroyers headed through San
Bernardino Strait on an easterly heading, plan on
assaulting the Leyte attack site. After bearer planes
sank Musashi, U.S. maritime pioneers thought this and
different misfortunes would propel the Central Force to
turn around course and resign, yet the Americans were
mixed up.
In the interim the Southern Force of two warships
what's more, 15 different warships, drove by Vice Admirals Shoji
Nishimura and Kiyohide Shima, moved toward Leyte
Inlet through Surigao Strait. Conveyed there to
meet them over the northern mouth of the strait
were Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf's ships
Mississippi (BB 41), California (BB 44), Maryland
(BB 46), Pennsylvania (BB 38), Tennessee (BB 43),
also, West Virginia (BB 48) (the last five were Pearl
Harbor veterans) and in addition 8 cruisers, 26 destroyers,
also, 39 engine torpedo water crafts.
Holding up in the shadows of the mountains that
disregarded Surigao Strait, soon after 0300 on the dark
night of 25 October 1944, were the nine destroyers
of Captain Roland Smoot's Destroyer Squadron 56.
High on the superstructure of the Fletcher-class
destroyer Bennion (DD 662) sat Lieutenant (j.g.)
James L. Holloway III, accountable for the ship's Mark
37 Gun Director, peering through his binoculars.
Flashes of gunfire lit up the night out there as
American PT water crafts conflicted with the Japanese armada.