Blueback & Lamprey In Surface Gunnery Action

MON 28 MAY 1945
Pacific
Off Okinawa, kamikazes sink destroyer Drexler (DD-741), 27°06'N, 127°38'E, and damage attack transport Sandoval (APA-194), 26°15'N, 127°51'E, and large support landing craft LCS(L)-119. A suicider crashes and damages U.S. freighter Mary A. Livermore in Buckner Bay, 26°12'N, 127°46'E; the 27 Armed Guards and 75 Construction Battalion sailors on board contribute men to firefighting efforts (four Armed Guard sailors, as well as seven merchant seamen, die in the explosion and fires). Another kamikaze crashes and damages U.S. freighter Brown Victory off Ie Shima; two of the 27 Armed Guards are killed instantly, and 18 injured (one merchant sailor and an Armed Guard sailor die of their wounds later). Still another suicider crashes U.S. freighter Josiah Snelling off Okinawa; Armed Guard gunfire manages to deflect the Japanese plane from its suicidal course toward the amidships deckhouse and into a less vulnerable part, saving the ship from worse damage. There are no fatalities on board.

Submarines Blueback (SS-326) and Lamprey (SS-372) battle Japanese submarine chaser Ch.1 in a surface gunnery action off Japara, N.E.I., 06°28'S, 110°37'E, and damage the enemy escort vessel.

Submarine Ray (SS-271) sinks Japanese merchant cargo ship Biko Maru northwest of Changshan, 38°21'N, 123°58'E.

Commander, Kodiak Sector, Alaskan Sea Frontier, dispatches four PBYs (three from FAW 1 and one from NAS Kodiak) to Fairbanks, via Anchorage, Alaska, to provide assistance in evacuating citizens threatened by rising Yukon River floodwaters (see 31 May).

USAAF B-29-laid mines sink Japanese transport Akitsu Maru south of Kure, and damage Coast Defense Vessel No.29 off Kyushu, 33°07'N, 129°44'E, merchant cargo ships Mishimasan Maru three kilometers off Tateishikzaki and Annette Fritzen Go at 33°53'N, 130°05'E; and fishing boat No.3 Genei Maru outside Sasebo Bay.