On 22 October, 1944, she was part of the lightly armed Taffy 3 when they were jumped by the IJN’s Center Force. This included 4 battleships, one of them Yamato. Admiral Sprague issued his famous order “Small boys attack” and Johnston made her run in attempting to line up for a torpedo attack.
While blazing away at the Japanese ships with every torpedo and shell they had Johnston’s bridge was hit by 6” shells probably fired by Yamato and she also took four 14” shells. At the same time her torpedos went home into IJN Kumano and blew off her bow. The shell hits severed part of Captain Evan’s hand, but he made his way to the emergency steering position at the stern.
The 14” hits effectively killed the engines so Evans ordered abandon ship. The last time he was seen, he was still at the emergency steering position waving to his men with his one good hand.
It was said that as the Japanese heavy ships passed, they saluted the sinking Johnston, as they considered her worthy.
The ferocious fight put up by the light forces of Taffy 3 convinced the Japanese that they were running into much heavier units than anticipated so Center Force turned back. Johnston and the other ships in the force had done their job.
Of course Ernest E. Evans received the Medal of Honor posthumously. He was 36 years old.
“This is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go in harm’s way, and anyone who doesn’t want to go along had better get off right now.”
-Ernest E. Evans. Commissioning USS Johnston.
[…This short summary is written by speedbird…]
Above is updated (21/01/2021) photos of the model shot using a proper camera (Panasonic GX9 + 60mm macro lens) with proper lightbox, without any post editing. The color is much more accurate, with greater quality!
Below are original photos of the model shot using an iPhone XR.
Yukikaze’s new friend
Some details are pretty blurry, as you can see my phone camera is pretty much at it’s limit, i think it’s time to empty the wallet and upgrade to a proper camera…
Anyway, this is the first US warship model I’ve ever built, before that I only built IJN and Royal navy ships, which are somewhat similar.
What’s great about US ships is that there are a tone of reference materials, i had great control on the level of details i wish to model.
I’m aware the ship hull number decal is wrong, but it was a compromise i had to make as i couldn’t get a set of ww2 USN number decals. I found one shop on ebay was selling a sheet for $20 with shipping, i decide to settle with the one i had.
The most challenging part of the build was trying to make the model look more interesting after painting, it needed every bits of colour it can get. After this build I understand why there are not many good looking ships models painted in measure21 (navy blue), it’s just very difficult to bring out the details.
Overall i’m satisfied with the result, shes definitely a great looking ship!
this is an absolutely well done model, what color did you use for the deck as it seems so close to the tamiya hull color?
Thanks! Both the hull and deck is the tamiya XF-18 mixed with different amounts of black, but i made a mistake making the difference is too small to notice, the deck is suppose to be slightly darker.
[…] But this is will be the end of WIP, see here for the final result. […]