Скачать или смотреть How One Destroyer Crew's "Unauthorised" Smoke Screen Confused an Entire Japanese Convoy

How One Destroyer Crew's "Unauthorised" Smoke Screen Confused an Entire Japanese Convoy


The first salvo of colored shells erupted around the escort carriers like a deadly fireworks display. Pink, green, yellow, and blood-red geysers of seawater climbing toward the Philippine sky as armor-piercing rounds from the largest battleships ever built crashed into the ocean. In the wheelhouse of the destroyer USS Johnston, Commander Ernest Edwin Evans watched the silhouettes of Japanese pagoda masts closing fast on the horizon. Four battleships. Six heavy cruisers. Two light cruisers. Eleven destroyers. The heaviest surface fleet Japan had assembled since Midway was bearing down on six tiny escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts. And at that moment, without waiting for orders, without asking permission, Commander Evans did something that would change the course of the entire engagement. He grabbed his microphone and issued a command that no superior officer had authorized. "All ahead flank. Course zero-zero-zero. Make smoke."