| Original caption: “USS Intrepid (CV-11) after being hit by a Japanese plane in a suicide dive in the Pacific. Taken from USS New Jersey (BB-62). Smoke coming from USS Intrepid (CV-11) gunners at forty millimeter guns on board USS New Jersey (BB-62) in foreground.” At the fantail of USS New Jersey (BB-62), Bofors L/60 40 millimeter (1.57 inch) Automatic Gun crews watch, stunned, as USS Intrepid burns from 2 kamikaze hits in 3 minutes. Note the crane for lifting New Jersey’s Vought OS2U Kingfishers out of the water. Task Force 38 continued to strike targets around Luzon as it suppressed Japanese elements that could disrupt the landings at Leyte Gulf. On November 25, 1944, the fast carriers were still looking for stragglers from the Battle of Leyte Gulf a month earlier. Intelligence had located the heavy cruiser Kumano, whose bow was blown off during the battle. Struck by bombs and torpedoes in subsequent attacks, she was never seaworthy enough for the trip to Japan for complete major repairs. While docked and camouflaged with local vegetation in Santa Cruz, Zambales, undergoing repairs, Kumano was struck by 5 torpedoes and 1,000-pound (226 kilogram) bombs. 497 of her crew were killed and 636 were rescued. While that attack was underway, the escort Yasoshima, converted from a Chinese light cruiser, and 2 landing ships, Transports Number 6 and Number 10, were sunk out of Port Balanacan, Marinduque, Central Philippines. Destroyer Take and Transport Number 9 are damaged, but escape. Imperial Japanese Navy Tank Landing Ships (LSTs) T.111, T.141, and T.160 were sunk the day before. Subchaser Ch-46 rescued survivors and headed for Manila, but was sunk en route on November 25. But the Japanese were not impotent. The idea of kamikaze attacks was driving the crews of American ships to distraction, making every unidentified bogie and every Japanese flight worse. The constant calls to general quarters, the tension, were wearing down not only the gunnery crews but all the men on the warships of 3rd Fleet. As for the Special Attack Corps, they were inflicting more damage on the Americans than the rest of the Imperial Japanese Navy combined. On November 25, a 125 aircraft took off from Malabacat Airfield on Luzon to target the big Essex-class carriers of 3rd Fleet. They targeted Intrepid’s Task Group 38.2, also with fleet carrier USS Hancock (CV-19), and light carriers USS Independence (CVL-22) and USS Cabot (CVL-28). As Intrepid’s CAG-16 waited to launch another strike, the pilots heard the 5-inch guns open fire and craned their necks skyward. They could just wait in their aircraft as the battle unfolded. The 1st Mitsubishi A6M 0 was hit by a 40 millimeter (1.57 inch) shell and disintegrated. The 2nd bobbed and weaved, confusing the American gunners, and then was hit and broke up over USS Hancock. Only the pilot, Flying Petty Officer 1st Class Isamu Kamitake (1923 – November 25, 1944), died. Others were shot down over the Task Group. Then Senior Flight Sergeant Suehiro Ikeda (1923 – November 25, 1944) from Kagoshima, pulled up into a steep dive and struck Intrepid’s flight deck at 1256 Hours. The wrecked 0 penetrated the flight deck. The bomb exploded in the hangar deck below. 32 radarmen died in the gallery deck instantly. United States Navy Lieutenant Donald D. “Dom” DiMarzo (May 24, 1903 – November 25, 1944), a fireman from Los Angeles before the war, was head of Intrepid’s damage control party. He told Captain Joseph F. Bolger Senior (May 25, 1898 – January 21, 1985) that the damage was extensive but manageable. DiMarzo didn’t know that he had minutes to live. Senior Flight Sergeant Kohichi Nunoda (1920 – November 25, 1944) from Miyagi struck Intrepid at 1259 Hours. He took no chances – he released his bomb and fired his 20 millimeter cannon to do maximum damage. Nunoda’s guns were still firing when his 0 crashed into the ship. The devastation was immediate and spectacular. The bomb drilled straight through Intrepid’s wooden flight deck. It ricocheted off the hangar deck’s armored base, then hurtled forward to explode where the firefighters were still battling the blaze from the 1st kamikaze. Lieutenant DiMarzo and his firefighters were blown away like chaff. Nearly every airplane on the hangar deck burst into flame. Secondary explosions from airplane ordnance turned the cavernous hangar bay into a maelstrom of fire and shrapnel. The worst killer was the smoke. It gushed into passageways and filled compartments, trapping men on the shattered gallery deck with no route of escape. The smoke billowed into the sky through the open holes in the flight deck. Firefighting crews manned hoses on the open deck, trying to keep the flames from spreading to more airplanes and ammunition stores. The debris of the wrecked 0—the 2nd kamikaze—still smoldered on the forward deck. In the wreckage, someone discovered the mostly intact body of the pilot, Kohichi Nunoda. His remains were given an unceremonious burial at sea. The 2nd kamikaze strike jammed the ship’s sky-search radar. Sailors were drafted as lookouts, their eyeballs serving as Intrepid’s primary warning system. The towering column of smoke was a beacon for more kamikazes. “For God’s sake,” said a gunnery officer, “are we the only ship in the ocean?” They weren’t. The massed wave of tokko aircraft had fanned out to other targets. At 1254, another pair of Zeroes dove on the light carrier Cabot. The 1st crashed into the forward flight deck among a pack of launching airplanes. Less than a minute later, a 2nd 0 attacked from nearly straight ahead. At the last 2nd, the gunners put enough rounds into the plane that the 0 veered off course and crashed into the port side at the waterline. Still, the intense shower of flame and debris wiped out the gun crews on Cabot’s exposed port rail. By the time the flames were extinguished, the toll of Cabot’s dead and missing, mostly men of the gun crews, had swelled to 35, with another 17 seriously injured. While Intrepid and Cabot were fighting their fires, yet another carrier in the same Task Force, USS Essex (CV-9), was under siege. At 1256 Hours, an Asahi D4Y “Judy” dive bomber, the sleeker replacement for the fixed-gear Aichi D3A “Val” dive bomber, flown by Yoshinori Yamaguchi (1924 – November 25, 1944) from Saga, came slanting out of the sky toward Essex. Trailing a dense stream of smoke from its burning left wing, the kamikaze dove straight and true into Essex’s port deck edge. A geyser of fire and smoke leaped into the sky and enveloped the carrier’s flight deck. His kamikaze killed 16 men, including 8 African Americans manning the guns for the 1st time. Racist Essex officers speculated whether they would run when presented with the chance of death. They didn’t – they died at their guns, and their charred bodies had to be scraped out of the tubs. Later, it was determined that Yamaguchi’s plane carried no bomb. Intelligence officers searched for an explanation. Was he not a kamikaze? Had he already dropped his bomb, then spotted Essex and decided to crash into it? The mystery only added to the aura that was growing around the kamikazes. What sort of people would turn themselves into human bombs? In less than half an hour, 4 carriers had been struck. Cabot, Hancock, and Essex could be patched and returned to duty, but Intrepid’s wounds were more serious. The hangar deck was a scene of horror. Decks and bulkheads were warped from the intense fires. Bodies and body parts were still being recovered. 69 men had perished in the attacks, and a 150 were wounded. Many of the dead had simply vanished, blown overboard, or their bodies were never found. The next day, Intrepid buried her dead at sea. Dom DiMarzo and the other men of the damage control party are memorialized on the tablets of the missing, and in a multimedia presentation on the spot where they died at the Intrepid Sea•Air•Space Museum. United States Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Fenno Jacobs (December 14, 1904 – June 27, 1974) was recruited by United States Navy Commander Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) to join his Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, 1 of the original 6 photographers to join him. Fenno Jacobs, renowned for his offbeat sense of humor, excelled at portraying soldiers’ bodies as comparable to the steel weapons they served. When the war ended, the Steichen 6 marched into Fortune Magazine in uniform and suggested they be hired and given an area of the world to photograph. Jacobs received Europe as his photographic domain. He went on to present 3 exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art postwar. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1632.jpg |
| Image Size | 1,008.35 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2412 x 2466 |
| Photographer | Charles Fenno Jacobs |
| Photographer Title | United States Navy |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | November 25, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | |
| State or Province | Luzon |
| Country | Philippines |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-80-G-470268 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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