The wreck of a US warship sunk in a World War II battle dubbed one of the bravest ever stands by a US Navy vessel has been found in the depths of the Pacific, US and Australian officials announced Monday. <\/p>\n
Known as the \u201cdancing mouse\u201d due to its slippery movements in that final, fatal fight with the Imperial Japanese Navy, the destroyer USS Edsall went down off the coast of Australia in 1942, under the command of Lt. Joshua Nix. <\/p>\n
\u201cJoshua Nix and his crew fought valiantly, evading 1,400 shells from Japanese battleships and cruisers before being attacked by 26 carrier dive bombers, taking only one fatal hit,\u201d US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy said Monday in announcing the find of the Edsall\u2019s wreck. <\/p>\n
Speaking alongside Kennedy, Australia\u2019s chief of navy, Vice Adm. Mark Hammond, said the wreck was found with the help of advanced hydrographic survey capabilities aboard naval support ship MV Stoker. <\/p>\n
Hammond also praised the Edsall crew for fighting a string of battles to help protect Australia during the early days of World War II before the vessel sunk on March 1, 1942. <\/p>\n
On that day, a Japanese carrier-based plane spotted the US destroyer around 200 miles south-southeast of Christmas Island, according to an account of the Edsall\u2019s final battle on the website of the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC). <\/p>\n
Japanese Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo was reportedly \u201cincensed\u201d that the US warship was spotted within 16 miles of his forces and ordered them immediately to intercept, according to the NHHC account by director Samuel Cox. <\/p>\n
The old US destroyer \u2013 Edsall was commissioned in 1920 \u2013 and its 4-inch guns would prove to be no match for the newer Japanese fleet with bigger guns and dozens of aircraft carrying 500-pound bombs. <\/p>\n
\u201cNix\u2019s position was hopeless from the moment Edsall<\/em> was sighted,\u201d Cox wrote. <\/p>\n But the captain of the US destroyer didn\u2019t give up. <\/p>\n \u201cAs a last gesture of defiance, like the famous cartoon of the little mouse flipping the bird at a huge screaming eagle, Lieutenant Nix chose to make a fight of it,\u201d Cox wrote. <\/p>\n He had the destroyer lay a smokescreen, execute course changes and change speeds to evade the Japanese shells while launching torpedoes that narrowly missed one Japanese warship. <\/p>\n After seeing Edsall evade more than a thousand 14-inch and 8-inch shells, Japanese commanders ordered dozens of dive bombers from their three aircraft carriers to strike, according to Cox\u2019s account, which he wrote was derived from Japanese sources. <\/p>\n At least one hit Edsall, and the ship began to lose its ability to maneuver. <\/p>\n \u201cWith fires raging and the ship settling and losing way, Lieutenant Nix pointed the bow of Edsall<\/em> at the Japanese surface ships in his last act of defiance\u201d and ordered ship abandoned, Cox wrote. <\/p>\n The Japanese warships then turned their big guns on the disabled destroyer, finally sinking it. <\/p>\n But Nix\u2019s maneuvers drew the respect of Japanese witnesses, Cox wrote. <\/p>\n \u201cAccording to a Japanese observer, Edsall<\/em> performed like a \u2018Japanese dancing mouse\u2019 (a popular domesticated pet in Japan, also known as \u2018waltzing mice\u2019 or \u2018whirler\u2019 for its manic and bizarre movements),\u201d the US naval historian wrote. <\/p>\n Following the announcement of the wreck\u2019s discovery, officials were effusive in their praise of Nix. <\/p>\n \u201cThe commanding officer of Edsall lived up to the U.S. Navy tenet, \u2018Don\u2019t give up the ship,\u2019 even when faced with overwhelming odds,\u201d the US chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said in a statement Monday. <\/p>\n \u201cThe wreck of this ship is a hallowed site, serving as a marker for the 185 U.S. Navy personnel and 31 U.S. Army Air Force pilots aboard at the time, almost all of whom were lost when Edsall succumbed to her battle damage.\u201d <\/p>\n While most of those aboard the Edsall died at sea that day, some were rescued from the water by the Japanese and taken prisoner. <\/p>\n After the war\u2019s end, six decapitated bodies found in graves on Celebes Island (now Sulawesi, Indonesia) were identified as those of Edsall crew members. Five more bodies found in the graves were not identified but were believed to be those of US pilots who had been aboard the ship, according to Cox\u2019s account. <\/p>\n He called the story of the Edsall \u201cone of the most gallant and valorous actions in the history of the U.S. Navy.\u201d <\/p>\n Historian and author Trent Hone cited Edsall\u2019s ultimate battle as \u201cthe most courageous independent action by a US Navy surface ship in combat,\u201d in a 2020 survey by the US Naval Institute\u2019s Proceedings magazine. <\/p>\n Franchetti said Monday that the story of the Edsall, both in its defense of Australia in 1942 and in the cooperation shown by the two allies in finding the wreck this year, shows the strength of that trans-Pacific alliance. <\/p>\n The discovery highlighted the current AUKUS partnership, between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cA key component of AUKUS is the development of the most cutting-edge underwater technologies of the type that enabled the discovery of Edsall in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, something not possible just a few years ago,\u201d Franchetti said. <\/p>\n That ability helps \u201censure our collective capability to preserve the peace, respond in crisis, and win decisively in war, if called,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wreck of a US warship sunk in a World War II battle dubbed one of the bravest ever stands by a US Navy vessel has been found in the depths of the Pacific, US and Australian officials announced Monday. Known as the \u201cdancing mouse\u201d due to its slippery movements in that final, fatal fight <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018Don\u2019t give up the ship\u2019<\/h2>\n