Talk:Hatsuzuki/@comment-170.75.162.19-20160317142022/@comment-26111194-20160520064146

(50.43.37.167 = I would like to see a reliable source for the fight lasting for 2 hours)

"Admiral DuBose continued pursuit northward. The cruisers, coached in by two night-fighter planes from Essex, encountered Hatsuzuki and two smaller destroyers at 1840, almost at the end evening twilight. Mobile opened fire from a range of nearly 14 miles at 1853. Hatsuzuki returned fire and worked up speed to escape. The cruisers pursued, but the big destroyer twice placed herself (as the radar screen showed) in a position to deliver a torpedo attack, upon which DuBose, schooled by experience, caused his cruisers to execute radical evasive maneuvers to keep out of torpedo water. Resuming stern chase at 28 knots, DuBose gradually overhauled this group, and at 1915 sent destroyers Clarence L. Bronson, Cotten and Patterson ahead to make a torpedo attack. This was successful in slowing up Hatsuzuki. The cruisers then closed to 6000 yards, illuminated with star shell, slowly and deliberately brought the destroyer under gunfire, and saw her explode and sink at 2059.

A destroyer which had been about to finish her off with a torpedo signaled: "He has gone down, we were cheated!" to which Admiral DuBose replied, "It breaks our hearts!"

Not one hit was received by his ships during these engagements, although Santa Fe was several times straddled by Hatsuzuki. That Japanese destroyer received a good deal of posthumous admiration for the long, tough fight she put up and the number of hits she absorbed before going down. One of the American cruiser captains insisted that she must have been a heavy cruiser - the same compliment that Kurita's officers accorded to Admiral Sprague's destroyers."

Samuel Eliot Morrison (1958) History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: Leyte, June 1944-January 1945. pg 331-332