Atrocity At Sea

SUN 29 OCT 1944
Pacific
Naval Operating Base, Leyte, and Naval Air Station, Samar, are established.

TG 38.2 (Rear Admiral Gerald F. Bogan) attacks Japanese airfields in the Manila area and shipping in Manila Bay, damaging heavy cruiser Nachi. During Japanese air attacks on the fast carriers operating off Leyte, a kamikaze crashes into Intrepid (CV-11), 15°07'N, 124°01'E.

Japanese guardboat No.3 Kyoei Maru is also lost on this date off Luzon; although the agent of her demise is unspecified, it is most likely Navy carrier-based aircraft, given the level of U.S. naval aviation activity in that area.

PB4Y (VPB 115) sinks Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru off Brunei Bay, 05°04'N, 119°47'E. Destroyer Shigure rescues survivors.

Japanese army tanker Kokko Maru is sunk by RAAF mine off Balikpapan, Borneo, 01°17'S, 116°48'E.

U.S. aircraft sink Japanese guardboat No.16 Kiku Maru at Rabaul.

U.S. freighter John A. Johnson is torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-12 1,000 miles northeast of Oahu, 29°36'30"N, 141°43'W, and is abandoned when she breaks in two. I-12 surfaces, shells the wreck, setting both halves ablaze, before bearing down on the lifeboats and rafts and firing on them with machine guns and pistols. These brutal actions result in the death of 4 of the 41 merchant sailors, the Army security officer and 4 of the 28-man Armed Guard (see 30 October and 13 November 1944).