On Veterans Day, U.S. Navy Announces Discovery of Lost WWII Destroyer
Marking Veterans' Day, the U.S. Navy and the Royal Australian Navy have announced the discovery of the WWII destroyer USS Edsall, which faced down a powerful Japanese force and survived for more than an hour before she was hit and sunk.
Edsall was a light Clemson-class destroyer built in 1920. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, she was deployed in the Western Pacific, and she was quickly tasked with convoy escort duties as the U.S. and its allies rushed to resist the Japanese advance through the Dutch East Indies.
On February 26, 1942, Edsall departed Tjilatjap on the south coast of Java and headed out to rendezvous with the seaplane tender USS Langley, which had been badly damaged by a Japanese bomber attack. Edsall and sister ship USS Whipple took on all the survivors from Langley, and on February 28, they rendezvoused with the tanker USS Pecos near Christmas Island. The next day, after transferring most of her passengers to Pecos, Edsall turned back to head for Tjilatjap.
A few hours later, patrol aircraft from the Japanese Navy's 1st Air Fleet spotted USS Pecos. The tanker was alone and undefended, and a Japanese air attack inflicted heavy damage. Pecos sent out distress calls for hours until about 1545, when she slipped below.
Accounts from the Japanese fleet suggest that Edsall may have attempted to come to Pecos' aid. Instead, the small destroyer encountered the Japanese battleships Hiei and Kirishima and the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma. These four full-size warships pounded at Edsall for more than an hour, expending more than 1,300 shells without landing a hit. Edsall wove and dodged, and her crew nearly hit Tone with a salvo of torpedoes; however, a strike force of Japanese dive bombers finally disabled the destroyer, and Edsall sank at about 1900. A small number of survivors were rescued by Chikuma's crew, but they were executed at the port of Kendari later that month. None survived the war (nor did Hiei, Kirishima, Tone or Chikuma).
Edsall was lost to history until the summer of 2023, when the Royal Australian Navy submarine rescue ship Stoker chanced upon the wreck site. The RAN investigated the wreck with sonar and ROV dives, then passed the data on to U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, which determined that the identity of the wreck was that of Edsall.
"Finding the Edsall further cements the strong alliance that has existed between the United States and Australia since World War II . . . further reinforced by the current Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership," said U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro. "A 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."