Battle
As they withdrew after landing their cargo, the two Japanese ships encountered Task Force 68 (TF 68), consisting of three light cruisers (USS Montpelier, Cleveland, and Denver) and three destroyers (USS Conway, Cony, and Waller) commanded by Rear Admiral Aaron S. Merrill, that had been bombarding Japanese positions at Vila.
In a short battle, both Japanese destroyers were sunk. Fifty-three survivors from Murasame and 122 survivors from Minegumo managed to reach Japanese lines. Two other survivors from Minegumo were later captured by U.S. forces.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Blackett Strait
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain’s tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“What a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array through the always hostile country! How many enemies there are to sane thinking! Every soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for those other battles.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)