The Week America Sank Japan's Last Battleships in Their Own Harbor

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ July 24, 1945. What is left of the Imperial Japanese Navy lies moored in the shallows around Kure, almost out of fuel, painted green and hung with nets and potted trees to pass for shoreline. Admiral McCain calls the ships a minor threat and wants his aircraft used elsewhere. Halsey overrules him: Nimitz has ordered the fleet destroyed, and a surrendered Japan must have nothing left to bargain with. His chief of staff keeps the British carriers away from Kure so Britain can't claim a share of the final blow. Over two days, more than thirteen hundred and then sixteen hundred sorties come down on the anchorages. Hyūga settles on the bottom. Ise rolls fifteen degrees and sinks with her decks awash. Amagi capsizes with her flight deck sliding into the sea. Haruna, thirty years old and a survivor of Midway, Guadalcanal and Leyte Gulf, goes down beside a pier. The Army's B-24s miss almost everything, and the flak over Haruna brings down the Lonesome Lady. Her pilot is sent to Tokyo for questioning. The rest of her captured crew are held in Hiroshima. Nine days after she went down, the bomb falls half a mile away.