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 (now Jakarta) with her sister ships when word was received. DesDiv 57 was ordered to Singapore to rendezvous with 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 joined the heavy cruiser USS Houston and other US units at Surabaya on 15 December 1941 and escorted shipping retiring to the relative safety of Darwin, Australia. During the first week of 1942 Edsall escorted the 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. On the morning of 20 January 1942 the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-123 sighted Trinity,[2] and misidentifed her as a transport. I-123 fired four Type 89 torpedoes at 12°05′30″S 130°05′36″E[2] shortly after 0630. The sound man aboard I-123 reported hearing one torpedo hit, but all four torpedoes had missed; Trinity had sighted three of them and reported the attack.[2] Alden then searched for I-123, made a sound contact and conducted a brief depth charge attack at 06:41 before losing contact and abandoning the search.[2]

Later that day, Edsall and three Australian corvettes, HMAS Deloraine, HMAS Lithgow, and HMAS Katoomba, sank Japanese submarine I-124 off Darwin, the first sinking of a full-sized submarine with the involvement of a U.S. destroyer in World War II.

Continuing to escort convoys in northern Australian waters, Edsall was damaged when one of her own depth charges exploded 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 to replenish. She continued 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 (USAAF) personnel for the defense of Java. On 27 February, the three ships were attacked by sixteen 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, escorted by fifteen Mitsubishi A6M2 Reisen (Zero) fighters. The attack damaged Langley so severely that she had to be scuttled. Edsall picked up 177 survivors, and 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 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; between 0430 (USN/local time) and 0815 on 1 March all Langley's crew were transferred to Pecos. Whipple then set off for Cocos as protection for the tanker Belita. 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 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.

Pecos was detected later that morning by air patrols from the carriers of Japanese 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, received some of these calls, but was too far away to return quickly. USS Mount Vernon, a troopship many hundreds of miles 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) the Japanese task force spotted a single "light cruiser" about 16 miles (26 km) behind the 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 probablly attempting to get to her stricken comrades. At about 1603 hours she was seen from the Japanese heavy cruiser Chikuma, and within 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 conducted evasive maneuvers that ranged from flank speed, about 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph), to full stop, with radical turns and intermittent smoke-screens.

USS Edsall sinking

Edsall also disrupted the Japanese by counter-attacking with her torpedoes and 4-inch guns. She 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 dive-bombers (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 with one hit and one miss near enough to do damage.

At 17:22 the Japanese ships resumed firing on the destroyer. A Japanese cameraman, 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.

The Japanese report after action described the sinking of Edsall as a fiasco. The Japanese Navy revised rules of engagement for battleships and cruisers against destroyers.

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

Onboard Chikuma the survivors were interrogated by their captors; the name of their ship was recorded as "the old destroyer E-do-soo-ru". After a few days, the details of these interrogations were provided to 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 where Edsall had disappeared. Two graves contained 34 decapitated bodies, among which were the remains of six Edsall crewmen and what are thought to be five USAAF personnel from Langley, along with Javanese, Chinese, and Dutch merchant sailors from the Dutch merchant-ship Modjokerto, sunk on the same day and in the same general area as Edsall. 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 recorded fragmentary information about the killings of Edsall survivors, but were not recognized as such by Allied investigators, and were not pursued.