Sailors raced to jettison the depth charges and launch the torpedoes before they cooked off. A witness on the destroyer Claxton, patrolling near the stricken ship, watched in astonishment as a nameless torpedoman charged directly into the flames to reach the torpedo tubes. “The power apparently was knocked out; so, with his whole body engulfed in flames, he manually cranked the tube mount out to starboard and, with a hammer, manually fired all five of the torpedoes.”33 That saved the ship from its own torpedoes, but the fires soon spread to the ammunition lockers and magazines, setting off a
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