The Royal Navy at Okinawa

5 British carriers were hit by kamikaze starting with Indefatigable 75 years ago today, and some more than once. Read all about it here
Armoured Aircraft Carriers

There are other pages for each carrier hit. Just follow the links.

 

Meanwhile over in the Indian Ocean the East Indies Fleet also came under kamikaze attack on 26 July 1945. The escort carrier Ameer was near missed but the Algerine class minesweeper Vestal was hit and so badly damaged that she was scuttled.

In the same engagement HMS Sussex sustained some minor damage above the waterline when the remains of a kamikaze that had been shot down ricocheted off the water into her side, producing an interesting mark on her hull. Pacific Wrecks

The photo is supposed to genuine but various “enhanced” versions, some colourised, appear on the net.

 

Just found an obituary of then Sub. Lt. Owen Lawrence-Jones, who was aboard HMS Indefatigable on 1/4/1945 when it was struck by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft. There are two remarkable passages:

Has anyone come across such use of the captured, intact ammunition from the guns at Singapore (a mix of 9.2" and 15")?

His wartime memoirs have not been published.

Alas the obituary is behind a paywall: Owen Lawrence-Jones, naval officer who kept a vivid record of experiencing a kamikaze attack in the Pacific in 1945 – obituary

A short film clip of the attack:

 

Somewhere down the line this story has become embellished. There was no 15" shell. Here is a transcription of the official report filed by the Captain of the Indefatigable about the incident.
Report:
Armoured Aircraft Carriers

The kamikaze aircraft that hit Indefatigable on 1 April 1945 was positively identified as a Japanese Zeke i.e. a Type 0 carrier fighter better known today as the Zero. The bomb it carried was estimated to be a 250kg (550lb) GP bomb, from the fragments it left behind.

The problem is that a 15" shell for the guns at Singapore weighed 1,938lb (879kg) which was well beyond the carrying capacity of the Zero, not to mention the physical size of the thing!
15-inch (38.1 cm) Mark I - NavWeaps

Add to that a 15" shell in its HE version only had about half the explosive content of a 250kg GP bomb. Add to that, when Singapore fell, in all probabliity most if not all the 15" ammunition captured would have been of the armour piercing type with an even smaller explosive charge, but it might actually have penetrated the Indefatigable's armoured deck. One of the problems the 15" gunners had at Singapore was that very few HE rounds were available, when the guns could be brought to bear on the Japanese forces attacking from the landward side. The armour piercing rounds could do little damage in those circumstances, being designed to penetrate the decks of warships. More HE shells had been ordered for Singapore but had still to be delivered by the time it fell.

 

There is a longer YouTube on the attack and summarised as:

Link from Armoured Carriers to