When a Tiny Boat Sank Japan’s Biggest Destroyer — Wood vs Steel
Wood Against Steel: How a 77-Foot PT Boat Sank Japan’s Most Advanced Destroyer
Off Guadalcanal — December 11, 1942.
At 10:47 p.m., under a moonless sky in the Solomon Islands, Lieutenant Lester Gamble eased his small wooden boat through black water and watched eleven Japanese destroyers slide south in disciplined formation. Gamble was 28 years old, five months into combat, and had yet to sink a single enemy ship. Ahead of him was Teruzuki, a 440-foot Akizuki-class destroyer—one of the most advanced warships in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The disparity was overwhelming. Teruzuki displaced nearly 4,000 tons, carried eight rapid-fire dual-purpose guns, and was equipped with Japan’s newest night-fighting fire-control system. Gamble’s vessel, PT-37, was 77 feet long, built of plywood and mahogany, and weighed just 40 tons fully loaded. It carried four Mark 8 torpedoes and twin .50-caliber machine guns.
By every conventional measure, this was not a fight the Americans were supposed to win.
The Mosquitoes of the Solomons
PT boats had earned a grim reputation in the Solomon Islands. Fast and hard-hitting but fragile, they were nicknamed “mosquitoes” by the Japanese—annoying, but easy to swat. For American crews, attacking destroyers in wooden boats was often described with a single word: suicide.
Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 had already lost four boats in two months. Eighteen men were dead, twenty-three wounded. One accurate destroyer salvo could turn a PT boat into burning splinters.
Yet the Japanese “Tokyo Express” kept coming. Under Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka, destroyers ran nighttime supply missions to keep Japanese troops alive on Guadalcanal long after the island should have fallen. Tanaka was widely regarded as the Imperial Navy’s best night commander—methodical, aggressive, and frustratingly successful.
On the night of December 11, Tanaka was making his fourth supply run of the month. His destroyers carried watertight drums filled with rice and ammunition, to be dropped offshore and floated toward starving troops. Teruzuki led the formation as Tanaka’s flagship.
Closing the Distance
Gamble’s force consisted of three boats: PT-37, PT-40, and PT-48—twelve torpedoes in total against eleven destroyers. The boats drifted silently as Tanaka’s lookouts scanned for phosphorescent wakes. At high speed, PT boats glowed in tropical waters. At idle, they vanished.
The range closed: 2,300 yards. Then 1,500.
The Mark 8 torpedoes Gamble carried were notoriously unreliable, with a documented 60 percent failure rate. Some ran too deep and passed harmlessly beneath targets. Others broached the surface, leaving glowing wakes that doomed attacking boats.
Gamble knew he needed to fire inside 1,000 yards—well within the effective range of every gun on Teruzuki.
He pushed the throttles forward.
PT-37 accelerated to 18 knots, followed closely by the other boats. The destroyers remained unaware. At 1,000 yards, Gamble turned his boat 30 degrees to port, aligning the entire hull toward where Teruzuki would be in just over a minute.
At 10:58 p.m., he fired.
Four torpedoes left PT-37 in quick succession, each weighing nearly 3,000 pounds and carrying over 500 pounds of Torpex explosive. Gamble did not wait to see the results. He spun the wheel hard, slammed the throttles to full, and ran east at more than 40 knots.
Behind him, twelve torpedoes raced silently toward the Japanese formation.
The Hit That Changed the Night
For nearly a minute, nothing happened.
Then the sea exploded.
A massive column of water rose behind Teruzuki’s main mast as a torpedo detonated beneath the aft engine room. Flames engulfed the stern. Fuel tanks ruptured and ignited, turning the ocean into a lake of fire. The destroyer’s fire-control system was knocked offline; its guns fired blindly into empty darkness.
Tanaka was on Teruzuki’s bridge when the explosion threw him unconscious to the deck, blood streaming from a head wound. The ship was dead in the water—no propulsion, no steering, and rapidly spreading fires.
Japanese searchlights swept the sea, missing PT-37 by less than 50 yards. Gamble’s boat escaped eastward, engines screaming, while Japanese destroyers circled their burning flagship.
For the moment, Teruzuki was crippled—but not yet sunk.
The Second Strike
Minutes later, two more PT boats—PT-44 and PT-110—raced in from the north. Their commanders knew the doctrine: the first attack created chaos; the second exploited it.
They aimed not at the dying Teruzuki, but at Naganami, the destroyer now carrying the injured Tanaka. Four torpedoes were launched.
All four missed.
Japanese guns roared back, searchlights locking onto the fleeing PT boats. Shells fell close enough to rattle hulls and shower crews with splinters. But once again, the Americans escaped.
Though the second attack failed to score a hit, it bought something crucial: time. Damage control aboard Teruzuki fell behind. Fires spread toward the aft magazines. Flooding overwhelmed pumps.
A Command Decision
At 11:59 p.m., Teruzuki’s captain, Commander Orita, faced an impossible choice. The aft engine room was flooded. Propeller shafts had torn through the hull. Ammunition was cooking off. Seventy-two depth charges sat aboard the stern, each carrying 300 pounds of explosive.
If the fire reached them, the ship would disintegrate.
Orita ordered the scuttling valves opened.
Crewmen evacuated in darkness—some transferred to other destroyers, others rowed toward Guadalcanal. By midnight, Teruzuki was abandoned, settling stern-first into Ironbottom Sound.
At 4:40 a.m., the inevitable happened.
The fire reached the depth charges. All 72 detonated simultaneously in a colossal explosion visible from Henderson Field, 20 miles away. The stern vanished in a fireball. Seventeen seconds later, the bow rolled and slipped beneath the sea.
Japan’s most advanced destroyer was gone.
Strategic Shockwaves
Teruzuki was the largest warship ever sunk by a PT boat. The loss stunned the Imperial Japanese Navy. Akizuki-class destroyers were rare, expensive, and difficult to replace. Losing one—and losing Tanaka’s flagship—to wooden boats was unacceptable.
Tanaka was reassigned to land duty in Burma. His career at sea was effectively over.
For the Americans, the victory changed everything. Until that night, PT boats were considered harassment weapons. December 11 proved they could sink major warships. Admiral Chester Nimitz personally congratulated Squadron 3.
PT boats received more support, more crews, and better equipment. Japanese destroyer commanders, now aware of the threat, altered their behavior—running faster, staying farther offshore, delivering fewer supplies.
By February 1943, Japanese forces evacuated Guadalcanal.
A Legacy in Wood and Courage
PT-37 would not survive the war. Seven weeks later, she was sunk by a Japanese destroyer at dawn. Gamble and his crew survived.
But on one dark night in December 1942, eleven men in a wooden boat attacked eleven steel warships—and won.
Not through superior technology. Not through numbers. But through timing, nerve, and just enough luck.
It was wood versus steel.
And wood prevailed.
