Soon after dawn on 27 March 1945, five days before the invasion of Okinawa, Japanese kamikazes damaged several U.S. Navy ships that were gathered off the island. They were the latest Allied vessels to encounter this desperate tactic the Japanese had first used in the Philippines in late October 1944.
One of these ships was the USS Dorsey (DMS-1), a Wickes-class destroyer commissioned in September 1918 as DD-117 and then converted into a destroyer-minesweeper and reclassified on 19 November 1940. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the Dorsey escorted convoys and conducted patrols and minesweeping operations in areas that included the South Pacific, Solomon Islands, and Central Pacific.
The ship also screened invasion convoys to Bougainville’s Cape Torokina in early November 1944 and took part in preinvasion minesweeping for the invasions of Luzon in the Philippines and Iwo Jima in January and February 1945. Off Luzon, she first encountered some of the effects of kamikazes, when her crew rescued survivors from the stricken landing craft LCI(G)-70 on 5 January. The following day, the Dorsey’s crew witnessed kamikaze attacks on the USS Long (DMS-12) and fast transport USS Brooks (APD-10).
Off Okinawa
The Dorsey set sail from the Pacific Fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands for Okinawa on 21 March 1945 as part of Task Force 54 under Rear Admiral Morton L. Deyo. On the morning of the 25th, the force arrived off Okinawa, where the Dorsey became part of Task Unit (TU) 53.3.2 together with the USS Forrest (DMS-24), Gwin (DM-33), Hobson (DMS-26), and Macomb (DMS-23). The ships conducted minesweeping operations for the rest of the day and on the 26th.
According to the Dorsey’s war diary, general quarters was sounded at 0527 on 27 March following the detection of enemy aircraft in the area. At 0616, as TU 53.3.2 was proceeding to the anchorage off the nearby Kerama Retto island group for resupply, the Dorsey observed an aircraft shot down by other ships approximately five miles away. This could have been one of the three planes that attacked the USS Callaghan (DD-792). The destroyer shot down each of them but not before the final crashing plane’s landing gear carried away the ship’s port radio antennae.
Two minutes later, lookouts on board the Dorsey sighted a trio of enemy aircraft approaching the ship’s starboard bow, bearing 200 degrees true at a distance of four miles. Her gunners immediately took the planes under fire, with the approaching Japanese responding by splitting up, with two passing across the Dorsey’s bow from starboard to port without threatening the ship.
The third, however, flew down the ship’s starboard side at an estimated 1,500 yards distance, passed the stern, and made a 180-degree turn to the right for a suicide run from directly astern starting from an 800-foot altitude. The Dorsey’s commanding officer, Lieutenant John Michael Hayes, immediately ordered right full rudder and engines all
ahead flank. Meanwhile, the ship’s gunners continued firing on the attacker with every weapon that could be brought to bear.
Her automatic weapons—a Bofors 40-mm twin mount and a pair of single Oerlikon 20-mm guns mounted on the rear deckhouse—registered several hits on the diving plane, shooting off what was thought to be a bomb or fuel tank and setting the aircraft on fire. However, in a scene that was repeated throughout the kamikaze campaign, the fusillade proved insufficient to put the Japanese pilot off his chosen course, and at 0620, the diving plane slammed into the portside main deck of the Dorsey, just aft of her galley deckhouse.
Fortunately for the ship’s company, the damage was slight. The hull was dented and ruptured above the waterline between frames 87 and 93, the No. 3 stack was perforated, and the ship’s icebox and vegetable locker were demolished. Other topside equipment was damaged by shrapnel and strafing fire. A small fire broke out when the ship was hit, but it was quickly extinguished, and the Dorsey was soon under way again.
Eight men were swept overboard during the attack. The nearby Forrest and Macomb soon recovered five, leaving Gunner’s Mate First Class Michael Mellish, Fire Controlman First Class William George Manthey, and Machinist’s Mate Second Class Vernon Argus Hughes unaccounted for. Two other men were wounded seriously enough to warrant transfer to the hospital ship USS Solace (AH-5); one of them, Machinist’s Mate Third Class Keith Vernon Ellsworth, succumbed to his injuries on 5 April.
The Familiar Val
The Dorsey was one of several ships attacked by kamikazes in quick succession and in the same vicinity that morning. Along with the Callaghan, the battleship USS Nevada (BB-36), light cruiser Biloxi (CL-80), destroyer O’Brien (DD-725), and destroyer escort Foreman (DE-633) were all damaged to varying degrees by suicide planes between 0622 and 0624 in the waters off southwestern Okinawa. At around the same time, the heavy cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35) shot down another attacker in the same area.
Almost all the ships reported their attackers as “Vals,” which was the Allied code name for the Aichi D3A dive bomber, known to the Japanese as the Navy Type 99 Carrier Bomber Model 11. The exceptions were the Indianapolis, which identified her attacker simply as a fighter, and the Nevada, which reported being attacked by a “Nate” (Nakajima Ki-27, or Army Type 97 Fighter).
The Val stemmed from a 1936 Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) requirement for a new dive bomber to operate from the service’s aircraft carriers. The resulting winning design from Aichi featured low, thick, elliptical wings sporting a fixed spatted main undercarriage, which provided additional drag to slow the plane while dive bombing. The aircraft’s primary weapon was a single 250-kg (551-pound) bomb on the centerline station, along with the ability to carry a smaller 60-kg (132-pound) bomb under each wing.
For the U.S. Navy, Vals were familiar opponents. Flying from the decks of IJN aircraft carriers, they bombed ships and shore installations at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and were instrumental weapons as the Japanese rampaged across the Pacific in the opening months of the war. Vals participated in actions that resulted in the 1942 sinkings of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) and Hornet (CV-8), but by the late stages of the war, the type was obsolete and relegated to shore-based operations and antisubmarine patrols.
The kamikaze campaign saw Vals gain a new, grim lease on life, being used extensively off the Philippines and Okinawa and scoring several successful suicide strikes. They included sinking the USS Abner Read (DD-526) off the Philippines and severely damaging the record-breaking submarine killer England (DE-635) off Okinawa.
The Less Familiar Sonia
During the course of researching kamikaze attacks, I found that several suicide attacks attributed to Vals were actually conducted by other similar-looking aircraft, with U.S. sailors, in the heat of battle, frequently misidentifying those planes as Vals, possibly because of institutional familiarity with D3As.
This appeared to be the case on the morning of 27 March, for Japanese records indicate that there were no Vals (or Nates, for that matter) in the air that day. Instead, the only type engaged in kamikaze attacks off Okinawa in the predawn hours that morning was an aircraft that bore enough of a resemblance to Vals and Nates that Allied servicemen frequently misidentified it.
This was the Mitsubishi Ki-51, Allied code name “Sonia.” Known to the Japanese as the Army Type 99 Assault Plane, the Sonia was a two-seat, close-air support/army cooperation aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF). With the Japanese having lost air superiority by 1944, there was little opportunity for the type to be used in its primary role. Instead, it was employed in second-line roles such as antisubmarine patrols before being widely used as a kamikaze beginning in November 1944.
Flying close-support missions, the Sonia typically carried small bombs on multiple wing stations, but for the kamikaze role, Japanese depots modified the aircraft to carry a single 250-kg bomb on a centerline station, like the Val. Both types also had an elongated canopy for two crew members and a fixed spatted main undercarriage.
The Sonias in the air off Okinawa that morning belonged to two separate kamikaze units: the 32nd Sei Hikotai, also known as the Bukoku-tai (Warrior Unit), and the 49th Dokuritsu Chutai’s Sekishin-tai (Sincerity Unit). The former was raised in February as a dedicated kamikaze unit to operate from Formosa (present-day Taiwan) in anticipation of the invasion of Okinawa, drawing its 15 pilots and aircraft from a Manchurian-based IJAAF unit. Led by First Lieutenant Tatsuo Hiromori, the Bukoku-tai moved to Matsumoto Airfield in Japan for conversion to kamikaze aircraft starting on 20 February 1945.
In the middle of March, following the completion of work on the aircraft, the unit started its move southward to Hattoku on Formosa. Its planned route was via Nyutabaru and Chiran in Japan, Okinawa, and Ishigaki Island. Six of the Sonias left Matsumoto on the 18th, with the others following two days later.
Nine of the Sonias, led by Lieutenant Hiromori’s plane, left Chiran bound for Okinawa’s Naka Airfield on 25 March and arrived that afternoon, the same day the Dorsey started minesweeping operations off Okinawa. The other eight aircraft were piloted by Second Lieutenants Kazuma Hayashi and Takami Kiyomune; Sergeants Osamu Imanishi, Katsuro Konno, and Kanzuo Shimada; and Corporals Ekichi Ideto, Takashi Ifuku, and Sadao Oohira.
Plans to fly on to Formosa were thrown into disarray, for the preinvasion bombardment of Okinawa began soon after dawn the next morning. That afternoon, with shells raining down on their positions and anticipating an imminent invasion, Japanese commanders decided the Bukoku-tai aircraft already on Okinawa would carry out suicide attacks against the U.S. fleet immediately instead of proceeding to Formosa.
Hiromori received the new orders from Lieutenant Colonel Tadamichi Kami, a staff officer of the IJA’s 6th Air Army, who tasked the unit with attacking the ships off the Kerama Retto islands southwest of Okinawa, where they were supporting amphibious landings there as a prelude to the Okinawa operation.
The nine Bukoku-tai planes would be accompanied by two more Sonias from the Sekishin-tai. The 11 Sonias departed Naka on their final mission at 0530 on 27 March, with Sergeant Hiroshi Tanigawa and Corporal Oshi Mitake at the controls of the pair from the Sekishin-tai. About 45 minutes later, their attacks on U.S. warships commenced.
This number of kamikaze aircraft sent aloft from Naka that morning tallied with the number of aircraft seen by targeted ships, with the Callaghan reporting three attackers that dove on the ship, the O’Brien a further two, five other ships recording a single attacker each, and one more shot down early in the engagement before it could start its final dive.
More Corroboration
Sometime in July 2020, some six months after the publication of my book Desperate Sunset: Japan’s Kamikazes against Allied Ships, 1944–45, I was contacted by Ben Arnold of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Ben, whose grandfather Water Tender First Class (later Chief Water Tender) Homer Ross Arnold served on board the Dorsey, has a keen interest in the ship’s history and currently runs a Facebook page dedicated to the vessel. He shared photographs of some of the artifacts from the kamikaze that crashed into the ship.
These include the tip of a propeller and skin fragments from the aircraft. However, a part of the kamikaze plane’s spinner (the fairing that fit over the propeller’s hub) and a data plate were the most helpful in assisting in identifying the attacking aircraft, or at least eliminating the possibility of a Val being the Dorsey’s attacker.
The spinner, which originally was recovered by Chief Machinist’s Mate John Irwin Whiting and now is at the Iowa Gold Star Museum on the grounds of Camp Dodge in Johnston, Iowa, has an attachment for a Hucks starter. This was an auxiliary power unit, usually a truck, equipped with a shaft that would be coupled to the spinner attachment. The Hucks starter, which used the truck’s engine to spin the propeller and start the aircraft engine, was an improvement over hand cranking the propeller and in widespread use until the advent of integral starters.
The early Model 11 Vals that participated in the Pearl Harbor attack and the Coral Sea and Midway battles eschewed spinners altogether; while the later Model 22 Vals did have spinners, the Hucks attachment is not visible in period photographs of the aircraft. However, several Army types, including the Sonia, were fitted with the attachments, and trucks with the distinctive Hucks starter equipment were a relatively common sight in photos of Japanese Army airfields.
Meanwhile, the data plate Ben’s grandfather handed down to him is for an unknown electronic component
designated KM-2 and manufactured by Mitsubishi in August 1941. While the Aichi-built Val did use components from other manufacturers (for example the Mitsubishi Kinsei engine), the recovered data plate bears a star embossed on its top right corner, which, according to aviation historian Ronnie Olsthoorn, indicates it belonged to an IJA aircraft; IJN aircraft components typically had an embossed anchor.
Taken together, the evidence appears to be conclusive that the kamikazes attacking ships off southwest Okinawa on the morning of 27 March were Japanese Army aircraft, not IJN Vals. Given the similar appearances of the Val, Nate, and Sonia with their fixed undercarriage configurations, the poor light at the time (the sun had not fully risen at the time of the attacks), and the heat of battle, it is understandable that witnesses on board the targeted ships mixed up the identity of the attackers.
As for the Dorsey, the ship continued her mission despite the damage, conducting further minesweeping and screening duties off Okinawa until 4 April, when she left for Pearl Harbor and repairs. Returning to Okinawa in early July, the ship swept for mines off Japan before and after the Japanese surrender. The Dorsey was one of several hundred ships and other craft a typhoon caught in Okinawa’s Buckner Bay (Nakagusuku Wan) on 9 October, resulting in her grounding. The battered ship was decommissioned on 8 December and destroyed on New Year’s Day 1946.
Model Art No. 451, Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Special Attack Units, Model Art, 1995.
“The IJA’s Makoto 32nd Hikotai ‘Bukoku-tai,’” evnara.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-32.html?.
USS Biloxi, Report of AA Action off the Ryukyu Islands, 27 March 1945, RG 38, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter NARA).
USS Callaghan, Report of Capture of Okinawa Gunto, Phases 1 and 2, RG 38, NARA.
USS Callaghan, War Diary for the month of March 1945, RG 38, NARA.
USS Dorsey, Action Report 25 March 1945–4 April 1945, RG 38, NARA.
USS Dorsey, War Diary for the month of March 1945, RG 38, NARA.
USS Foreman, Report of AA Action 27 March 1945, RG 38, NARA.
USS Indianapolis, War Diary for the month of March 1945, RG 38, NARA.
USS Nevada, Report of AA Action 27 March 1945, RG 38, NARA.