HIJNS Chokai
On 25 October 1944 The Japanese center force attacked Task Force 77.4.3(also known as Taffy 3) off the coast of Samar island in the Philippines. The vulnerable CVE's of the task force had only six screening ships, along with aircraft from the carriers, to fend off a huge Japanese naval force they where never intended or trained to fight. One of the ships the Japanese had during the battle (other than the biggest battleship the world has ever seen) was the heavy cruiser Chokai. Chokai was the flagship of CruDiv4. Two days prior the force was ambushed coming out of the Palawan Passage where the USS Darter and USS Dace torpedoed and sunk two cruisers and Damaged another forcing it to turn back. The Chokai was the only undamaged ship in CruDiv4. She is transferred to CruDiv5 for the events off Samar island. After the Attack began the small escort carriers of Taffy 3 found themselves being surrounded and the CVE’s where ordered to open up with there five inch guns. At approx. 0850 Chokai is hit on the starboard side amidships by either the DE Samuel B. Roberts or the CVEKalininBay. Regardless five minuets later the ship is rocked by a secondary explosion, most likely caused by the armed torpedoes on deck. The explosion knocks out the rudder and engine rooms and Chokai falls out of formation. An easy target she is soon hit by a 500 lb. bomb in the forward machinery room. Ablaze and dead in the water, the destroyer Fujinami takes aboard the survivors and scuttles the ship with a torpedo. In a cruel twist of fate, two days latter the Fujinami is attacked and sunk by planes from the USS Essex. All hands are lost including the survivors of Chokai.
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"When war does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." -General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
"The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."-Karl von Clausewitz
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