USS Guitarro’s Moonlit Victory: The Surface Gun Attack and Sinking of Nanshin Maru No. 27 off Cape Calavite, August 27, 1944

On August 27, 1944, the USS Guitarro found herself in the thick of Japan’s desperate effort to keep its supply lines open in the Philippines. By that stage of the war, large tankers and freighters were easy prey, so the Japanese turned to smaller intercoastal vessels, hoping their shallow drafts and coastal routes might spare them from American attack. That gamble ended when Commander Enrique D’Hamel Haskins brought Guitarro to the surface under a pale moon and engaged the Nanshin Maru No. 27.

The battle began with torpedoes that missed their mark, but Haskins and his crew refused to let the target slip away. They pressed the attack with deck guns, trading fire in a sharp night action that left the tanker burning and sinking. It was a small ship, but its loss was part of the larger Allied stranglehold that was cutting Japan off from its lifelines.