After an uneventful strike against Kikai-Shima airfields [at] Kikai-Shima, near Amami-O-Shima, two days later, we got another call, on April 7, to go out after the “Jap fleet.” This time it was reported to be the new battleship Yamato Yamato and a group of escorting cruisers and destroyers, and the report was correct. Though the group was supposed to be on a suicide mission against our ships, we found them not very far off the southwest coast of Kyushu. The weather was absolutely foul, but the radar finally picked them up, and shortly after that we could get glimpses of the ships. Radio communication was very poor, and after we had made about one wide circle and heard no order to attack, our attack the Skipper decided to lead us in. We didn’t get very far before we went right into a cloud, and when we came out, I found myself quite alone except for Ives in the rear cockpit. There was our target to the left, perhaps two or three miles away, and there didn’t seem to be anything to do but to go after it willy nilly. All the ships had, of course been aware of our presence for some time and were shooting like mad. By keeping more in the clouds than out we sneaked right into the middle of the group and more or less over the battleship. Not wasting any time when I caught a glimpse of it all of a sudden, I pushed over into a steep glide from somewhere around five thousand feet, which the weather had already forced us down to, and prayed for the best. We didn’t get through the clouds until it was time to pull out—around 2500 feet, and I saw that we were headed not for the battleship, which was off to our right and going away, but for a destroyer or something. “dive” on Yamato Still determined to have a crack at the big boy I tried to whip the plane around in time to make a pass at it before getting too low, but that allowed for no real chance to aim and an almost level attack from perhaps 1500 feet without dive flaps. It might have been considerably less. I let the bombs go, set for not quite simultaneous release, and pulled sharply away, all the time expecting that these were my last seconds of life. It was disheartening to look back and see a big splash* well off the port quarter of the ship, but we were so anxious to get away that we didn’t worry too much at the time. Strangely enough I was aware of terrific anti-aircraft fire all the time, but I remember no close bursts at all. A destroyer kept firing at us until we were out of range, but never even came close. We joined first with some Helldivers from another ship and then with our own Avengers. I had an awful feeling all the way back that many of our Helldivers had been shot down, but it turned out that they all got back except for one, which came so nearly all the way back that pilot and aircrewman were picked up in no time by a destroyer. One of our planes landed with a hole in one wing large enough for several men to stand up in and not a small one in the other wing. Altogether over three hundred planes had gone out. Bombers got several hits on both the battleship and the smaller ones, but the torpedo planes really accounted for the several ships, including the Yamato, that were definitely sunk.