All the torpedo tubes of the section were not empty, however, for Lieut. (jg) I. M. Kovar, in 137, at 3:55 A.M., picked up an enemy formation at the southern end of the strait and attacked. He had no way of knowing it, but this was Admiral Shima’s second section, coming up to the relief of Admiral Nishimura’s van that had already entered the strait, and indeed had at that very moment been shattered by a vicious American destroyer-torpedo attack. Lieut. Kovar crept up on a Japanese destroyer, maneuvering to take station at the rear of the enemy column. He let fly at the can and had the incredible good luck to miss his target entirely and smack a light cruiser he hadn’t even seen. Aboard the cruiser _Abukuma_, the explosion killed thirty sailors, destroyed the radio shack and slowed the cruiser to ten knots, forcing it to fall out of formation. The crippled _Abukuma_ was caught and polished off by Army bombers the next day. It was the only victim of Army aviation in this battle and the only positively verified victim of PT torpedoes, though there is some evidence that a PT may have made one of the hits claimed by American destroyers. The rest of Admiral Shima’s formation sailed majestically up the strait, fired a spread of torpedoes at two small islands it mistook for American warships, and managed somehow to collide with the fiercely burning cruiser _Mogami_, only survivor—except for the destroyer _Shigure_—of the vanguard’s slaughter by the torpedoes and guns of the Seventh Fleet. Gathering in the two surviving ships, Admiral Shima led a retreat down the strait. At the moment _Shigure_ joined the formation, Lieut. C. T. Gleason’s section attacked, and the Japanese destroyer, which was doing some remarkably able shooting, hit Ensign L. E. Thomas’ 321. Most sorely hit of the torpedo boats, however, was Lieut. (jg) R. W. Brown’s 493, which had had John F. Kennedy aboard, as an instructor, for a month in Miami. The crew had named the boat the _Carole Baby_ after the skipper’s daughter, who, incidentally, was celebrating her first birthday the night of the Battle of Surigao Strait. Lieut. Brown tells the _Carole Baby’s_ story: “I was assigned a division of boats to take position directly down the middle of the strait between Panaon and Dinegat. “While we were under way to take station, the moon was out but heavy overcast on the horizon threatened to bring complete darkness later. We spotted an occasional light on the beach and we passed an occasional native sailing craft, so the crew’s light mood changed to tension, because they thought we were being spied on. “When we were on station, strung out across the channel so that the Japs couldn’t get by without our seeing them, I stretched out on the dayroom deck for a little relaxation, but the radio crackled the report that the first PT patrols had made contact. “‘All hands to General Quarters,’ I ordered. ‘Take echelon formation and prepare to attack.’