What I’m Reading: The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors – James D. Hornfischer

It was a last stand for more than one side in World War II. On one side of the equation was the last of the Imperial Japanese Navy. But what a group of lasts. It included the mightiest battleship in the world, the Yamamoto, several other battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Their mission, to catch transports loaded with supplies and troops and sink them, and then to blast the beachhead the American Marines had in the Philippines. Through brilliant tactics and deception, they lured away the American aircraft carriers and heavy warships so that when their task force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers arrived, only a few small ships stood between them and the transports and Marines.

On the other side of the equation, a handful of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and escort carriers. They called these small ships “Tin Cans” since they had minimal armor, and small guns. They were ships that were never built with the idea of going up against battleships. Horribly outgunned, outnumbered, and with no prospect except death, this handful of men and machines began a fight they couldn’t win, and fought it to the death.

Based upon interviews, and official records, Hornfischer paints a picture of courage under fire. Of men somehow snatching victory from defeat, and those same victors spending two hellish days in the water clinging to hope and survival in a situation where there is no hope except death.

This is easily one of my favorite books, and I recall vividly the first time I read it. I had a friend at Denver Seminary who was a history buff. I told her about it, and she looks at me with wide eyes, and says, “My father was on the USS Johnston.”  The Johnston was one of the destroyers at that fight, and she it was at the center of it. Her father never spoke of the battle, she said, but now that he was gone, she might learn something about what he went through.

All I could do was put out my hand and say, “It’s a pleasure to shake the hand of the daughter of one of those men.”

A perfectly awesome book for the history buff, filled cover to cover with humanity at it’s very best.