One of the hot naval history books of the year is James D. Hornfischer’s The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (New York: Bantam Books). In it he describes the David-versus-Goliath action off the island of Samar as U.S. destroyers and jeep carriers fought a superior force of Japanese battleships and cruisers. The action took place 60 years ago, on 25 October 1944, as part of the wide-ranging Battle of Leyte Gulf. That the crews of the U.S. warships performed so heroically against a superior foe came as no surprise. The big surprise to both sides was that these combatants faced each other at all.
The intended opponents for Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s heavy ships were the U.S. fast battleships commanded by Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr. on board the USS Washington (BB-56). Lee had been the victor in a night battleship action near Guadalcanal in November 1942, and his expertise was in surface tactics, especially in combining accurate gunfire with radar plotting and fire control. Because of his skills he was retained in command of the battle line from 1942 onward, with the idea that his ships would be ready when the Japanese Navy committed its battleships to combat.
During the Leyte campaign, Admiral Kurita’s force posed an imminent danger to the U.S. transports unloading on the Philippine beaches. As the Japanese steamed eastward on 24 October, they were headed for San Bernardino Strait. Admiral William Halsey, Commander Third Fleet, drew up plans for Lee to command Task Force 34, comprised of battleships, and cruisers, and destroyers to engage Kurita’s ships. But, as has been recounted many times, he changed his mind and did not activate the plan, because he concluded it was more important to attack a Japanese carrier force far to the north instead.
Halsey was an aggressive commander, and his focus had long been on sinking the Japanese carriers. Now that the opportunity seemed at hand, he decided to steam north with his carriers and to take along the battleships for antiaircraft protection. What we now know, with the benefit of hindsight, is that Halsey could have had his cake and eaten it, too. He could have activated Task Force 34 with some of Lee’s battleships and taken others north with him. Lee, who took a much more deliberate approach than did Halsey, believed the safe course of action was to leave battleships behind. As the Japanese emerged through San Bernardino Strait, the U.S. battleships could have crossed the T, giving the Americans the tactical advantage.
On the afternoon of 24 October, Lee concluded that the carriers were a decoy intended as bait and that Kurita constituted the real threat. He sent a visual signal to that effect to Halsey’s flagship, the New Jersey (BB-62). As Lieutenant Gil Aertsen, Lee’s aide, observed, a signalman on board the New Jersey rogered for the message, but Halsey made no substantive reply. That night a search plane from the carrier Independence (CVL-22) reported that Kurita’s force, which for a time had turned westward, away from San Bernardino, had reversed course and headed east. Lieutenant Commander Edward Mathews was an intelligence officer on Lee’s staff. Afterward, when he had a chance to collect his thoughts about Leyte, Mathews recalled the scene on the flag bridge of the Washington. Lee characteristically dozed in his chair on the bridge and had a facility familiar to captains and admirals for many years. Even in that condition, as Mathews put it, Lee “remained alert to every change of course and speed and to any alteration in tempo or pitch that suggested a possible emergency.”
Lee was indeed alerted by the dispatch about the search plane’s discovery. He sent a voice radio message to the New Jersey to call attention to the sighting report. But he pushed the issue no further. That was a reflection of Lee’s personality. He was a loyal subordinate who viewed it as his duty to keep the boss informed but not to tell him what to do. In his observations, Mathews pondered what might have been if Lee had altered his wording just slightly and added the suggestion that Task Force 34 remain behind until the situation was clarified. Mathews wrote, “I imagine that Lee must have been wondering whether the report had actually come to Halsey’s attention, whether he had additional information which accounted for his seeming disregard of it, or whether it had been misinterpreted or misunderstood.”
Instead, Lee and all his fast battleships dutifully went north with the carrier task force, then turned around and steamed the other direction when pleas for help from the small boys off Samar—coupled with a message from Admiral Chester Nimitz— belatedly caused Halsey to head toward San Bernardino Strait. Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid was Commander Seventh Fleet at the time. Forty years earlier, he and Lee had been classmates at the U.S. Naval Academy. He wrote of the battle that he could imagine his classmate’s frustration at having steamed 300 miles north and then 300 miles south without the opportunity to fire a shot. It was the battle that Lee had been preparing to fight since 1942. It would have pitted the ultimate U.S. battleships, those of the Iowa class, against their Japanese counterpart, the huge Yamato. Ever since, the possible outcome of that hypothetical clash of the titans has been something about which “the world wonders.”