I never got a chance to meet Edward Smith Gilfillen. He died in 1979, and I have a suspicion I know what it was that got him. I have no pictures of him, nor of his family, nor even his rank. I suspect he was a Lieutenant Commander, tall and dark, of Welsh decent.

I like to think he was probably a reservist with long wartime service as a Deck Officer. He probably was an engineer by training, since he was assigned to the Naval Technical Evaluation Team- Japan that was dispatched to look at the technologies that the vanquished Empire had developed.

That was how Ed came to be the XO for the ex-IJN Nagato’s last cruise. I am going to let him tell you how that came to be…..

It was one of those nights in the rack that are more than just sleep: a retreat, a partial death, a cushioned slide into the past. From the cozy bunk of a Ship’s cabin I had slipped back to the coast of Ceylon, living against in the wild beauty of the tropics. But there was something wrong: the nodding palms did not focus and on the horizon was a baleful yellow glow. With infinite labor, I climbed back into reality to see what had happened. It was a seaman squirting the light of a dim flashlight in my eyes. It seemed a long time before he spoke.

“Sir, there’s salt water blowing on the starboard generator.” His eyes popped a little. “It’s coming right through the fan, Sir.”

It took me a little time to adjust to this news. “Is the Chief down there?” I asked.

“Yessir.”

I stretched inn the luxurious manner of one who does not have to get up. My two cent’s worth would be quoted at something less than that amid the mysteries of the engine room With a bored “Very well,” I turned over and went to sleep again, but that did not serve to get me back to Ceylon or anywhere else. I resented the next intervention by the flashlight.

“Sir,” came the report. “It’s all right now. The guy on the deck above had a leak in the bulkhead and he drained down a rat hole. He never looked to see where it went, but actually it went into an airshaft that filled up in time, as it would, naturally, and the water spilled over into the fan. It is all squared away now, we drained the duct.”

All this was, of course, extremely interesting in the midst of a vague speculation as to where the water would appear next, I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

That night is a fair sample of life in the Nagato. I was the XO to CAPT W.J. Whipple with a crew of 178 chiefs and sailors. We were an American crew trying to run a Japanese battleship. It was high adventure when we weren’t too tired. We were to take the big ship to the Marshall Island for the Atomic Bomb test.

My first sight of Nagato came at the end of a seaplane ride to what I thought was Tokyo. At the terminal ship I was pushed with my gear into an open boat. Then began under a sullen sky a three-hour boat ride down into the lower Sagami Wan with sleet and spray stinging in over the bow of the utility boat. In spite of what I could do in the way of rigging tarpaulins, salt water worked its way through all my possessions.

Drenched and shivering, I had to shake saltwater .to make out the end of the breakwater ahead. The suggestion of shelter stimulated me to look around; there were ships at anchor in a harbor fringed by low born hills. The scene was dominated by the sheer size of a red-rusted hulk with a pagoda-like superstructure forward. Below that loomed the black outlines of great guns, The Jack forward and the Stars and Stripes aft did not disguise the bulk of a Japanese Battleship. With a mental note to board her sometime I relapsed into the apathy of suffering.

When the Nagato was complete in 1920, she was without about the powerful warship of the time. Only the passenger ship Leviathan was large. Her 41CM guns were a little bigger than any mounted in ships of the U.S. Navy, even to this day. With a turbo drive and high degree of electrification, she was in advance of her time. Through the twenties and thirties, she and her sister ship Mutsu were the core of the expanding Imperial Japanese Navy.

Even at the outbreak of the war, she was regarded as a first line ship, and the Japanese Commander-in-Chief Isoroku Yamamoto used her a flagship until just before the battle fo Midway.

When hostilities began, she was in the Inland Sea. Sortieing several times in the early going, she was present at Midway, but did not sight any USN combatants. After that, she went with the rest of the IJN fleet to be based at the bastion atoll of Truk, and while in that operating area made calls in the Marshall Islands.

After the invasion of the Gilberts, she had to retire to Lingga Gulf near Singapore. As further invasions became imminent, she came out to Brunei Bay on the coast of Borneo to be ready to shield Palau, the Philippines, or the Marianas, whichever might be attacks.

In defense of Saipan, she came out through the San Bernardino Straits, where she was attacked by a submarine but not hit. No other American forces were sighted and she retired to Brunei Bay when the battle for he Marianas became hopeless.

When Leyte was invaded, she joined the task force which sortied through the San Bernardino Strait and got hit by two small bombs from a P-38 Lightning, which did some damage between tower and stack. She sighted the Jeep Carriers of Task Group Taffy-3, and hit one of them with her main battery.

From there she returned to Japan and thence to Manila as a supply ship. From the P.I. she was dispatched to Yokosuka for a navy yard overhaul. By the time she arrived, a major decision had been made from Fleet Command: there would never again be enough fuel available in Japan to take her back to sea! The full significance of this was not to strike us until later.

Mounting a dozen twelve centimeter guns- the best antiaircraft weapon the Japanese possessed- she was used in the defense of Tokyo Bay. But now she was going to go to sea once more, and we were going to take her.

There was one more mission for Nagato to perform- and given the fact that she was the last capital ship of the Imperial Fleet, there was no way she could survive to become a token of old glory. So, we were ordered to take her to the Marshall Islands for a special test.

More on that tomorrow.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303