Another kamikaze hit the merchant ship William Ahearne on the bridge, setting it on fire. The ship was towed back to Leyte. Loss of this ship was a sad blow to the forces ashore at Mindoro, for included in her cargo was a large stock of beer.
Friendly air cover arrived and ran off that particular flight of planes, but the convoy was under almost constant attack that night. In the moonlight, about 7 P.M., a torpedo bomber put a fatal fish into LST 750.
Three LCIs each shot down a plane. Sailors on the LCI flagship had the harrowing experience of hearing a torpedo scrape along the ship’s flat bottom from stem to stem without exploding. Some of the LCIs had surgical units aboard, and many of the wounded were run over to these handy, impromptu hospital ships.
Air attack was incessant, in daylight and dark, and too monotonously similar to recount in detail unless there was scoring.
During the morning of December 30th, three planes were shot down, one by a PT that knocked down its victim as the kamikaze was diving on an escorting destroyer.
The last attack of the morning came just as the convoy was entering the harbor at San Jose. The landing-craft flagship shot down a kamikaze with a short burst of 40 mm.
Inside Mangarin Bay the ships hurried with the stevedoring, because the sailors were eager to leave this unfriendly land. No planes appeared until almost 4 P.M.
Five Japanese dive-bombers pierced the friendly fighter cover and whistled down from 14,000 feet in their suicide dives. One hit the destroyer Pringle and did only light damage. Another hit the aviation gasoline tanker Porcupine with such an impact that its engine went clear through the decks and out the bottom, tearing a large hole in the hull. Seven men were killed and eight wounded. The stern burst into flames, a dangerous development on a ship carrying a tankful of aviation gasoline forward.
The fourth plane dove on the destroyer Gansevoort and crashed it amidships. The main deck was peeled back like the lid of an empty sardine can. The impact cut power lines and set fires, but caused surprisingly light casualties.
The destroyer Wilson came alongside and exercised the fire-fighting crew by putting them aboard the Gansevoort to fight the flames.