OVER the years, it has been occasionally stated online that the fight to sink the Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser Haguro on May 16, 1945 - also known as the Battle of the Malacca Strait - was led by a captain of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy named Manley Power. Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you; the fight that sank the cruiser Haguro and damaged the destroyer Kamikaze was in fact led by then Captain, later Admiral, Manley Power, who was leading the 26th Destroyer Flotilla as captain of the Royal Navy ship HMS Saumarez.
The other four ships in the flotilla were HMS Verulam, Venus, Vigilant, and Virago.
The five destroyers led by Captain Power were able to intercept the Haguro and Kamikaze in the early hours of May 16, 1945 at a point in the Straits of Melaka approximately 73km south of Penang, ambushing the Japanese ships as they were heading back to Singapore from Port Blair in the Andaman Islands having picked up the Japanese garrison there.
In the ambush, Captain Power had set up all five ships in a crescent formation to trap both Haguro and Kamikaze - a trap that became a total victory for the Royal Navy as it was able to score five torpedo hits on the Haguro as well as keep up a steady stream of gunfire in the fight that raged on from approximately 1.05am to 2.06am.
However, the Kamikaze was able to escape the ambush despite sustaining damage by heading towards Penang and returning the next day to rescue approximately 300 survivors of the battle.
The butcher's bill for the battle was two British sailors killed and three injured from a hit from Haguro rupturing a steam line on one of the boilers of Saumarez while the Japanese lost 927 men, including Admirals Hashimoto Shintaro and Sugiura Kaju.
SOURCES:
http://www.navweaps.com/index_oob/OOB_WWII_Pacific/OOB_WWII_Loss_Haguro.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20070710182442/http://www.stanhough.com/Vigilant.htm
