Fate
In May 1945, Haguro was the target of the British "Operation Dukedom" and was ambushed. The 26th Destroyer Flotilla found her with the destroyer Kamikaze just after midnight on May 16, 1945, and began the attack. During the battle, the Kamikaze was lightly damaged, but Haguro was hit by gunfire and three Mark IX Torpedoes. The Haguro soon began to slow down and took a 30-degrees list to port.
At 2:32 AM the Haguro began to go down stern first in the Malacca Strait, 55 miles (89 km) off Penang; Kamikaze rescued 320 survivors, but nine hundred men– including Vice Admiral Hashimoto and Rear Admiral Sugiura–perished with her. Rear Admiral Sugiura was later promoted to Vice Admiral posthumously on May 16. The battle was the last gun action ever fought between surface ships.
Haguro was stricken from the navy list on June 20, 1945.
The wreck was discovered in 2003, showing significant superstructure damage from her last and earlier battles.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Cruiser Haguro
Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls,—the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot- box once a year, but on what kind of a man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thought enables us to see Fate coming.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)