USS Edsall (DD-219)

On 25 November 1941, two days in advance of the "war warning" which predicted that hostile Japanese action in the Pacific was imminent, Admiral Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, dispatched Destroyer Division (DesDiv) 57 (USS Whipple, USS Alden, USS John D. Edwards and Edsall) with the destroyer tender USS Black Hawk, to Balikpapan, Borneo, to disperse the surface ships of his fleet from their vulnerable position in Manila Bay.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (local date 8 December 1941 due to the International Date Line), Edsall was en route to Batavia (Jakarta) with her sister ships when word of the start of hostilities was received. DesDiv 57 was ordered to Singapore to rendezvous with the Royal Navy Force Z. She embarked a British liaison officer and four men at Singapore from HMS Mauritius and was sent to search for survivors of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, sunk by Japanese aircraft off the east coast of Malaya on 10 December. Edsall intercepted a Japanese fishing trawler, Kofuku Maru (later renamed MV Krait and used extensively by Australian special forces) with four small boats in tow and escorted them into Singapore before turning them over to HMAS Goulburn.

Edsall and her division mates then joined the heavy cruiser USS Houston and other US units at Surabaya on 15 December 1941, then escorted shipping retiring to the relative safety of Darwin, Australia. During the first week of 1942 Edsall escorted the so-called Pensacola Convoy from Torres Strait back to Darwin.

After fueling operations in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Edsall and Alden were escorting the Darwin-bound oiler USS Trinity (AO-13) in the Beagle Gulf 40 nautical miles (74 km; 46 mi) west of Darwin, Australia, on the morning of 20 January 1942, when the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-123 sighted Trinity.[2] Misidentifying Trinity as a transport, I-123 fired four Type 89 torpedoes at Trinity at 12°05′30″S 130°05′36″E[2] shortly after 0630. The sound man aboard I-123 reported hearing one torpedo hit Trinity, but in fact all four torpedoes missed, although Trinity sighted three of them and reported the attack.[2] Alden then searched for I-123, made sound contact, and conducted a brief depth charge attack at 06:41 before losing contact on I-123 and abandoning the search. I-123 escaped unscathed.[2]

Later that day, Edsall became the first U.S. destroyer to participate in the sinking of a full-sized enemy submarine in World War II. With three Australian corvettes — (HMAS Deloraine, HMAS Lithgow, and HMAS Katoomba) — Edsall helped sink the Japanese submarine I-124 off Darwin. Contrary to rumor, this sunken submarine was never entered, nor were classified documents ever recovered from it.

Continuing to escort convoys in northern Australian waters, Edsall was damaged when one of her own depth charges exploded prematurely during an anti-submarine attack on 23 January 1942 in the shallow — 8-fathom (48 ft; 15 m) — Howard Channel.

On 3 February Edsall and other American units of ABDA moved up to Tjilatjap, Java in order to be closer to the combat theater and also to fuel stocks. She continued in her service as a patrol vessel off southern Java. On 23 February 1942 she and the old gunboat USS Asheville operated off Tjilatjap on antisubmarine patrols.

Edsall and USAT Willard A. Holbrook off Java, 15 February 1942

On 26 February she steamed from Tjilatjap with her sister ship USS Whipple to rendezvous with the converted seaplane tender USS Langley, which was bringing in P-40E fighters and U.S. Army Air Forces personnel for the defense of Java. On 27 February, the three ships were attacked by sixteen (16) Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service's Takao Kōkūtai, led by Lieutenant Jiro Adachi, flying out of Den Pasar airfield on Bali, and escorted by fifteen (15) Mitsubishi A6M Reisen (Zero) fighters. The attack damaged Langley so severely that she had to be scuttled. Edsall picked up 177 survivors; Whipple, 308.

On 28 February the two destroyers rendezvoused with the oiler USS Pecos off Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island some 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Tjilatjap. More Japanese bombers forced Edsall and the other ships to head for open sea. They headed directly south into the Indian Ocean for the rest of 28 February in high winds and heavy seas; in the early pre-dawn hours of 1 March all Langley crew were transferred to Pecos. This was completed between 0430 (USN/local time) and 0815 on 1 March. Whipple then set off for Cocos as protection for the tanker Belita sent to meet her there; Pecos, carrying about 700 survivors from Langley, Stewart and Houston, plus assorted stragglers, was ordered to Australia.

Edsall was directed to return to Tjilatjap, carrying U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) pilots and ground crew who had been passengers on Langley. The USAAF personnel were to assemble and fly 27 disassembled and crated P-40 fighters which had been delivered to Tjilatjap aboard the cargo ship Sea Witch. Following orders, at 0830 she headed back to the northeast for Java, and was never seen again by Allied forces.

Pecos was detected later that morning by air patrols from the carriers of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's Kido Butai (or KdB) and came under heavy air attack. For some time she sent out distress calls to any Allied ships in the area, as it was assumed the ship would probably be lost. Whipple, less than 100 miles (160 km) distant, copied some of these calls, but was too far away to return quickly. USS Mount Vernon, a troopship many hundreds of miles/kilometers away in the Indian Ocean also read some of the signals. At approximately 1548 hours Pecos sank after being attacked for several hours by four waves of IJN dive-bombers from Nagumo's KdB.

At 1550 hours (USN/local time) a single "light cruiser" was spotted about 16 miles (26 km) behind the Japanese task force, approximately 250 miles (400 km) SSE of Christmas Island; this was in fact Edsall. The destroyer was perhaps no more than 38–54 kilometres (24–34 mi) from the last reported position of Pecos and likely attempting to get to her stricken comrades. At about 1603 hours she was seen from the Japanese heavy cruiser Chikuma and within another five minutes the cruiser opened fire with her 8-inch (203 mm) guns. Fifteen minutes later the battleships of Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa's Sentai 3/1 (Hiei and Kirishima) opened fire with their main battery of 14-inch (356 mm) guns at extreme range (27,000 metres (30,000 yd)). All shots missed as the destroyer fled and conducted evasive maneuvers that ranged from flank speed – about 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph) for the hobbled ship – to full stop, with radical turns and intermittent smoke-screens.

USS Edsall sinking

Edsall also disrupted the Japanese with counter-attacks, firing her torpedoes – which narrowly missed Chikuma – and with 4-inch gunfire, even though outranged. Edsall signalled that she had been surprised by two enemy battleships; this was copied by the Dutch merchant ship Siantar more than 160 kilometres (99 mi) away.

The Japanese surface vessels (2 cruisers, 2 battleships) fired 1,335 shells at Edsall that afternoon with no more than one or two hits, which failed to stop the destroyer. Vice Admiral Nagumo ordered airstrikes: 26 Type 99 divebombers (Aichi D3A) (kanbaku) in three groups (chutai) took off from the carriers Kaga (8), Hiryū (9), and Sōryū (9). The dive bombers were led by Lieutenants Ogawa, Kobayashi, and Koite respectively. Their 250 kg (550 lb) bombs immobilised Edsall.

At 17:22 the Japanese ships resumed firing on the destroyer. A Japanese camera-man, probably on the cruiser Tone, filmed about 90 seconds of her destruction. (A single frame from this film was culled for use as a propaganda photo later, misidentified as "the British destroyer HMS Pope".) Finally, at 17:31 hrs (19:01 IJN/Tokyo time) Edsall rolled onto her side, "showing her red bottom" according to an officer aboard the Japanese battleship Hiei, and sank amid clouds of steam and smoke. Subsequent Japanese navy reports referred to the incident as "a fiasco".

Japanese Imperial Navy officers aboard the cruiser Chikuma many years later reported that a number of men may have survived the sinking of Edsall—they were found in the water on liferafts, cutters, clinging to debris, etc. However, due to a submarine alert, the nervous Japanese only stopped long enough to rescue a handful (the Japanese word is jakkan) before they received orders to steam off for home base, leaving the others to perish in the Indian Ocean.

On board Chikuma the survivors were interrogated by their captors, giving the name of their ship as "the old destroyer E-do-soo-ru". After a few days the details of these interrogations were shared with the other ships of Nagumo's Kido Butai during their return journey. There is some suggestion that the cruiser Tone may have picked up a survivor or two as well, but there is no confirming evidence of this. The Americans were held on Chikuma for the next ten days before returning to the Japanese force's advance base on 11 March 1942.

On 21 September 1946 several mass graves were opened in a remote locale in the East Indies, over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the point of Edsall's disappearance. In two graves, containing 34 decapitated bodies, were the remains of six Edsall crewmen and what are thought to be five more USAAF personnel from Langley, along with numerous Javanese, Chinese, and Dutch merchant sailors from the Dutch merchant-ship Modjokerto, sunk the same day as Edsall in the same area south of Christmas Island. The American bodies were reinterred in U.S. cemeteries between December 1949 and March 1950.

War crimes trials conducted in 1946–1948 concerning other murders that occurred in or near Kendari by IJN personnel contain fragmentary information about the killings of Edsall survivors but were not recognized as such by Allied investigators, and were not pursued.