09 May, 1945

Out of a clear evening sky Japanese Kamikazes swooped for the second time in five days on heavy units of the British Pacific Fleet...The first two to penetrate the fighter and flak screen made for the same ship, an aircraft carrier. Both hit the flight deck and both by some lucky chance plunged from there into the sea, blazing wrecks.

A Kamikaze attack is unlike anything one has known in the Western war. At the back of one's mind continually is the thought of the pilots, fanatical, cold-blooded, whose last ambition is that death might also be glory. They wear, we are told, some kind of ceremonial uniform.

Of the death dive of a third Kamikaze I had a breath-taking view from the Admiral's bridges...The Zeke was flying low....It seemed to bear a charmed life, cutting unscathed through the murderous hail of flak. Less than a mile from us we saw it turn aft of another carrier. It was approaching its kill...

The Jap climbed suddenly and dived. It was all a matter of seconds. He came up the centre of the flight deck, accurate as a homing plane, and abruptly all was lost in a confusion of smoke and flame. The whole superstructure of the ship vanished behind billows of jet-black smoke shot through by flames as the tanks of aircraft ranged on the deck exploded.

It seemed at the time that the ship was doomed, that nothing could survive that inferno. But within half a hour the flames were extinguished and the smoke had drifted and dispersed in the sunlight.

Through glasses we could see the armour-plated deck of the carrier swarming with activity. The island was blackened and a hole gaped at its base, but the damage seemed negligible for all that chaos of smoke and flame. When a few weeks ago this carrier was hit by a Kamikaze, planes were taking off again within seven minutes.