May 28, 1945
...Shortly before breakfast, there was an alert lasting several hours. Another Japanese was caught over the anchorage. He suffered the same fate as the first. Out at picket station 15 destroyer Drexler was hit by a Frances. The ship rolled over and sank in less than a minute. Casualties were heavy. Out of the clouds this morning came a bomb that landed a hundred yards from Yolo. The plane was not visible and the pilot dropped the bomb on a hit or miss proposition. As we later learned, the attacks of May 27-29 were known by the Japanese as Kikusui VIII. During these three days the Japanese sent 120 kamikazes into the fight.
USS Drexler DD-741
From
Destroyer.org, "Tin Can Sailors"
28 May 1945
"At 0700 Lt. Cdr. Wilson, the DREXLER’s captain, sighted a second enemy plane, “sharp on the starboard bow,” elevation about 2,000 feet, range about seven miles. The twin-engine “Nick” was a type of bomber known for the speed of its dives and the punishment it could absorb. “He was already in his low, shallow glide, circling toward the head of our column,” recalled the late Commander Wilson. The DREXLER came left and with the LOWRY opened fire. The diving bomber appeared to be aiming at the LOWRY but, instead, the pilot pulled his plane up, passed over the destroyer, and continued on as if to splash between the two ships. Instead, he attempted to recover and, at 0702, plowed into the DREXLER “between the main deck and the waterline,” Wilson reported, “just a little forward of the starboard quadruple 40-mm mount at frame 114. This plane sprayed us with gasoline as he hit, which started fires, and it broke steam lines in the after fire room and in both engine rooms. The after engineering plant was put out of commission entirely,” and “all electrical power aft was lost.” The exploding plane also damaged the plot room, the lower handling rooms, the magazines, and mount 3.
With one exception, none of the men at these stations escaped. The exception was the mount captain who was blown out of the hatch atop mount 3 and somehow ended up in the water where he was rescued. Damage control parties quickly extinguished the gasoline fires. Because of the rapid loss of steam, Wilson ordered the DREXLER to be slowed from 25 knots to two-thirds speed to conserve what steam remained, but she couldn’t even maintain that and quickly came to a halt.
Thirty seconds after the first plane hit, a second bomber dove on the LOWRY, which was off the DREXLER’s starboard beam. The DREXLER’s guns hit the incoming plane repeatedly causing it to crash astern of the LOWRY. At this point, the ship lost all power in her forward section, just as another bomber appeared some 10,000 yards off the DREXLER’s starboard bow, circling to come in from dead ahead. Two F4U Corsairs of the combat air patrol followed close behind, ignoring the deadly hail of the DREXLER’s antiaircraft fire, which hit one of the American fighters. He didn’t crash but had to give up the chase and was seen trailing smoke as he peeled away. The Japanese pilot seemed to be aiming for the bridge, but was thrown off course by the heavy fire from the remaining Corsair and the destroyer’s 40- and 20-mm guns that riddled his plane. As a result, he ran down the port bow, passing directly over the ship just aft of the No. 2 stack, and it looked certain his smoking plane would crash. But it didn’t. The pilot was able to level off and circle around, diving on the ship again from ahead and again with the Corsair close behind. Again, the kamikaze missed the DREXLER’s bridge, but at 0704 he clipped the signal halyards and mast and crashed into the superstructure deck at the amidships passageway.
The bomber’s load, an estimated 2,000 pounds, caused a tremendous explosion that rocked the ship and knocked people off their feet. The blast “threw parts of the ship hundreds of feet in all directions,” Wilson recalled, “and started a large oil fire that shot several hundred feet up into the air.”
The DREXLER, which was already listing from the previous hit, rolled rapidly onto her starboard side in a sea of burning oil and sank stern first. She was gone in just 49 seconds after the plane struck. Because of the damage from explosion and fires and the speed with which she sank, many men were trapped below and casualties were heavy; 150 enlisted men and eight officers were killed or missing and fifty-four were wounded. The DREXLER’s skipper was among the wounded. The LCS 114 was closest when the destroyer went down and picked up 120 survivors, making her way through fiery, debris-strewn waters to rescue the men of the DREXLER. Among them was Lt. Cdr. R.G. Bidwell, the DREXLER’s executive officer, who remembered that the men she picked up “were given old clothes and shoes and a bit of alcoholic beverages to warm them up.” The rest of the 199 survivors were rescued by LCS 55 and LCS 56. "
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from:
Who Sank the Destroyer Drexler?
Note: Reporting at the time indicated a "Frances" bomber struck and sank USS Drexler. Post war research determined that both kamikazes were Imperial Japanese Army Ki-45 Nick fighters from the 45th Shinbu Squadron.
45th Shinbu Squadron
2nd Lt. Kunihiko Suzuki in front of his Type 2 Toryu Fighter (Nick)
They want another 93 degree day here tomorrow! 
