The Kalinin Bay took her first hits at 7:50, just as Blue Archer was firing his rockets at the heavy cruiser. Steaming on the windward side of the formation, exposed to view as the smoke screen was blown west, the carrier absorbed Japanese cruiser shells at the rate of about one a minute. Some skipped like rocks over her deck, gouging the wooden flight deck and showering splinters into the air. In total the fragile CVE took fifteen hits from the cruisers’ eight-inch main batteries.
