Sound and Fury Over Sibuyan Sea

Despite facing no fighter opposition and primarily short-ranged antiaircraft fire, the planes from Task Force 38 attacking Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Center Force of battleships and cruisers inflicted only moderate damage over the course of seven attacks on 24 October 1944. In a naval war in which even capital ships on the high seas were imperiled by aircraft, the latest planes in the U.S. inventory, armed with upgraded torpedoes and even rockets, struck only a glancing blow on the Japanese battle force, as Task Group 77.4.3’s (Taffy 3’s) sailors and aviators discovered off Samar the following morning.¹

With such advantages, how could carrier aviation, honed to a fine edge at this stage of the war, come up so short?

No land-based air support: A contributing factor was Third Fleet commander Admiral William F. Halsey’s adopted suggestion to accelerate the advance into the western Pacific by invading Leyte Gulf in October 1944—jumping the Philippine campaign schedule by two months. While the Leyte leap certainly maintained the Allied momentum, it placed the target area beyond the reach of land-based tactical air cover. However, a similar move to secure Hollandia in New Guinea the previous April likewise had required the employment of carrier aviation to protect the landings until air facilities ashore could be established.² The scheme had worked well there, and given the apparent Japanese weakness in the Visayans when Halsey’s fliers struck the Philippines, the pattern promised to work again.

Aircrew fatigue: But Leyte was some 540 miles from the nearest U.S. airbases on Morotai, and the Philippines were much closer to Japanese air bastions, such as the Home Islands, Formosa, and the mainland of Southeast Asia. Once U.S. forces showed their hand with the Leyte landings, Japanese air power, though mediocre in quality, became persistent in its quantity. Airfield complexes on Luzon and other islands demanded frequent suppression strikes, which required drawing carrier task groups well away from the invasion area and helped induce aircrew fatigue. Considering that Halsey’s fliers had been on the go since August, this additional increase in operating tempo began to wear down aircrews.³

In fact, on 1 October, Halsey promulgated a rest rotation to Ulithi Atoll for half of his task groups at a time, to take effect just days after the Leyte campaign began.⁴ Accordingly, on 22 October—the same day Kurita’s task force weighed anchor for action in Leyte Gulf—Halsey detached Vice Admiral John McCain’s Task Group 38.1, followed by Rear Admiral Ralph Davison’s Task Group 38.4, plus the carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) the next day. These departures left only two task groups and just under 40 percent of the Third Fleet’s aircraft strength on hand to cover the approaches to Leyte and to keep pressure on Japanese air power around the archipelago.⁵

Diversion of resources: Another drawback of the long reach to Leyte was the added burden of aerial reconnaissance. Submarine sightings of major Japanese naval movements north and south of the Philippines prompted a recall of Davison’s task group.⁶ However, puzzlement over Japanese intentions led to a wide dispersal of Halsey’s task groups for air searches over a vast region. By 24 October, Rear Admiral Ted Sherman’s Task Group 38.3 was off central Luzon, with Davison’s Task Group 38.4 off Samar, while Rear Admiral Gerald Bogan’s Task Group 38.2 stood off the San Bernardino Strait. While optimal for providing coverage for searches, this deployment militated against concentration for attack. Furthermore, even though the return of Davison increased the number of aircraft on hand, Halsey diverted nearly 100 fighters and 58 dive bombers to tactical searches on the day of battle.⁷

The battle over the Sibuyan Sea began with an aerial radar detection from an SB2C Helldiver off the USS Intrepid (CV-11), picking up Kurita’s ships off Mindoro at 0820 on 24 October.⁸ Shaken by a devastating submarine ambush the morning before, and wearied by frequent false periscope sightings since, Kurita and his men braced for a day of air attacks. Enjoying no fighter cover, his five battleships, nine cruisers, and 13 destroyers instead featured 127-mm high-angle guns, but most of the antiaircraft defense actually came from short-ranged 25-mm automatic weapons. Survival would come down to evasive maneuvering and luck.

Lack of mass: Because of the Third Fleet’s dispersal, each task group was obliged to strike separately at different times. Although each task group contained fleet and light carriers, the light carrier aircraft were retained for protective fighter and submarine patrols overhead. Two exceptions to this were with Bogan’s Task Group 38.2, where the fleet carrier Intrepid was accompanied by the light carriers Cowpens (CVL-25) and Independence (CVL-22). Out of sheer necessity, the Intrepid’s Air Group 18 was augmented by the Cowpens’ Air Group 29 in the day’s combat. So, despite the Third Fleet’s nominal power, only five fleet carriers, plus the little Cowpens, would face Kurita. An additional consequence of the U.S. carrier dispersal was the lack of an overall strike coordinator over the target for the day. The leader of each of the seven ensuing raids was free to choose his group’s target.

Big Battleships Make Big Targets

Because of ongoing air attacks from Luzon on Sherman’s carriers, and with Davison’s fliers attending to another force of Japanese battleships far to the south, only Bogan’s bantam task group could produce any strikes against Kurita that morning. Commander William Ellis of Air Group 18 planned for two formations of planes from the Intrepid and Cowpens (CVL-28) to strike, with a reprise from the first raid’s aircraft to make a third sortie by mid-afternoon.

Since the mysterious Yamato-class battleships were reportedly with the Center Force, Ellis singled them out for targeting priority.⁹

Raid One: At 1025 Ellis led his men over Kurita’s ships in the day’s first raid. Spotting the Yamato and her sister the Musashi, he directed his dive and torpedo bombers to concentrate on the Japanese behemoths that were in the same defensive formation. Ideally, the SB2C Helldivers and TBM Avengers would attack simultaneously to divide the antiaircraft fire, but throughout the day, the dive bombers consistently completed their attacks before the torpedo planes could start their runs. At any rate, Ellis’ men succeeded in buffeting the Musashi with damaging near misses, one bomb, and one torpedo hit. In addition, a torpedo hit on the heavy cruiser Myoko required her withdrawal.¹⁰ 

Raid Two: As Ellis led his formation back to their ships, he passed the next inbound Intrepid strike and radioed orders to focus on the large battleship they had just struck.¹¹ The Musashi bore up well to the damage from the first strike, so it is likely her exposed station on the edge of the circular formation around her sister ship Yamato encouraged the exclusive attentions from the second Intrepid raid, which added more punishing near misses as well as two more bomb hits and three torpedo strikes. So far, one reinforced air group had deflected a cruiser and made the Musashi a limping liability.¹²

As mentioned, Sherman’s Task Group 38.3 was beset by sporadic air attacks from Luzon, both large and small. Indeed, a lone bomber got through and dropped a bomb on the light carrier Princeton (CVL-23), which set off a series of fires and explosions that doomed the ship. When the attacks trailed off later that morning, Kurita’s ships became Sherman’s next task, but bombers from the USS Lexington (CV-16) were spotted below, still armed with bombs for airfield suppression in the Manila area.¹³ Having emerged from the Japanese raids, and with the example of the Princeton burning in the distance, the Lexington’s air officer and captain refused to open the magazines to rearm the planes for capital ships. A chagrined Commander Hugh Winters, the leader of the combined strike by the Lexington and accompanying Essex (CV-9), led his men out “on a bear hunt loaded for quail.”¹⁴ Fortunately, the Essex aircraft were appropriately armed.

Raid Three: Bad luck dogged Sherman’s men on their long flight over the tail of Luzon, with bad weather splitting the formations and reducing Winter’s Lexington band to just eight F6F Hellcats, five Helldivers, and 11 Avengers still heading for the Sibuyan Sea.¹⁵ The combined strike pushed over at 1217. The struggling Musashi forced a reduction of Kurita’s speed as both the intact Essex strike and the ragged Lexington team spread their attention over several ships. However, this yielded only one bomb hit on the Yamato and additional misery for the Musashi in near misses and another torpedo hit.¹⁶

Raid Four: A following strike from the Essex composed of eight bomb-toting Hellcats and a dozen Helldivers struggled with the same weather front that had bedeviled their shipmates from the morning strike and arrived to find the Musashi wallowing in a separate small formation away from the remainder of Kurita’s force. The Essex fliers dove on the Yamato and other ships but only registered a single hit on Kurita’s flagship.¹⁷ As they drew away to the northeast, Air Group 20 off the USS Enterprise (CV-6) appeared from the south.

Raid Five: Commander Daniel Smith’s 14 rocket-armed Hellcats, nine Helldivers sporting two 1,000-pound bombs apiece, and eight Avengers skirted antiaircraft fire as they cruised to westward of Kurita’s ships. As the Japanese began their evasive turns, Smith noticed a battleship had separated to form a small formation of her own and directed his men against what turned out to be the Musashi.¹⁸ The accumulated damage on the battleship had devastated her antiaircraft crews, and no Enterprise fliers were lost as they scored four more bomb hits and a like number of torpedo strikes on the wallowing giant.¹⁹

Raid Six: Minutes later, Air Group 13 off the USS Franklin (CV-13) arrived, and Commander Richard Kibbe spread his force—including eight rocket-armed Hellcats, 12 twin-bombed Helldivers, and ten Avengers—over Kurita’s other ships as well as the staggering Musashi.²⁰ The Nagato sustained damage to her secondary gun battery and her communications center, and the cruiser Tone picked up two bomb hits. Four bombs impacted on the stricken Musashi.²¹  Even as the last of Kibbe’s men attacked, Ellis of the Intrepid arrived in his second sortie of the day at the head of 12 Helldivers and a trio of Avengers from the Intrepid and Cabot.

Raid Seven: From the Japanese perspective, this third Intrepid-led attack blended with the concluding Franklin strike, so tallying hits between them was impossible, but the Musashi ended her day of battle with four additional bomb hits and a combined 11 confirmed torpedo hits in this final raid.²² As the Franklin and Intrepid/Cabot planes withdrew, their crews discerned that the Japanese ships were turning westward—away from Leyte Gulf.²³

Aftermath: By 1716 the strike groups were back on board their respective carriers, and tired but elated aircrews related what they had seen and done over Kurita’s ships. Certainly a great deal of ordnance had been expended, and remarkable scenes of towering splashes, explosions, and even ships being driven under the water were witnessed.²⁴ Even accounting for heat-of-the-moment overclaiming by the pilots, the reported results were gratifying, especially since a new target had been detected late that afternoon: the Japanese carrier force.

Bombs Galore, But an Enemy Still in the Fight

In a remarkable display of confirmation bias, the tabulated interpretation of the day’s results suggested widespread damage had been inflicted on Kurita’s force, even though no Japanese ship had actually foundered yet that afternoon.

Though Kurita was seen performing a retrograde movement as the attacks ended, subsequent radar tracking after sunset from Independence aircraft confirmed a return to a heading for the San Bernardino Strait. But Halsey determined that the accumulated damage among the Japanese ships presumably had impaired their fighting efficiency sufficiently for the Seventh Fleet units guarding Leyte Gulf to repulse them.²⁵ Just hours after the Musashi succumbed to her damage at 1935, Halsey recalled the Independence shadowers, even after they reported Kurita’s surviving ships making passage through the San Bernardino Strait.²⁶ Halsey retained his own battleships and took all of his ships northward that night to engage the Japanese carriers.

The next day saw furious clashes at Surigao Strait, off Cape Engaño, and off Samar, where in a stunning reversal, an exhausted Kurita was on the verge of annihilating the Taffy 3 escort carrier group. In a desperate defensive action, Taffy 3’s small escorts and frenzied air attacks by all of the available escort carrier planes managed to inflict more damage on Kurita than the previous day-long efforts of the Third Fleet had: three heavy cruisers sunk and additional damage inflicted on two battleships and three other heavy cruisers.

Wanted: Strike Coordinator

Unwarranted surprise at the scale of the Japanese naval reaction caught the Third Fleet dispersed and unable to concentrate for truly massive attacks on Kurita’s force after he was sighted. Instead, six carriers from three locations were obliged to dispatch their strikes piecemeal, and mostly without coordination between air groups. This meant that individual strike leaders were forced to call out their targets, and in all but one raid, this meant continued attention against the leviathan Musashi. Accessibility was the key: The Musashi’s exposed position on the rim of her circular formation at the outset of the battle, as well as her subsequent isolation as she slowed later that day, consistently invited attacks.

In addition, the Musashi was able to hide her agony from aerial observers through much of the day, appearing as formidable as ever to each newcomer strike. The lack of a single overall strike coordinator that day, and the absence of a policy to degrade as many ships as possible—perhaps even a Fabian tactic to sink cruisers at the expense of trying to cripple battleships—might have made up for the absence of McCain’s carriers. But the Task Force 38 of 24 October was not strong enough to defeat Kurita outright. A surface action involving Task Force 34’s battleships was the only guarantor of repulsing Kurita without endangering shipping near Leyte. The calculated risk of reaching for Leyte was a strategic triumph, but it yielded tough tactical results. 

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Halsey’s Hotfoot

Did a now-forgotten Pentagon assignment tip Halsey’s decision to abandon the San Bernardino Strait?

A disadvantage with military history is the necessary focus on matters that came to pass—a focus usually at the expense of other contemporaneous issues that still exerted influence at the moment but were subsequently canceled or overtaken by events. A prime example of this is Admiral Halsey’s portion of Operation Hotfoot, a carrier attack on Tokyo as a preliminary to the inaugural Marianas-based B-29 raid over Japan. Halsey and his staff were alerted to this plan—tentatively scheduled for 10 November 1944—on 7 October, in the midst of their complex western Pacific operations.¹

The development of the B-29 Superfortress was a costly and stressful trial for General Henry “Hap” Arnold of the Army Air Forces, and with President Franklin Roosevelt anxiously expecting B-29 missions over Japan, Hap was motivated to carry off a spectacular debut over Tokyo. China-based B-29 missions were disappointing, so Arnold looked forward to a fresh bombing campaign from the new bases built in the Marianas.

To redeem the Superfortress’s reputation, Army Air Forces planners devised a scheme dubbed San Antonio I to deliver a mass B-29 raid over Tokyo.² Since Japan had not been heavily bombed yet, there was concern that the so far unengaged Japanese air defenses would be formidable over their capital. With the Marianas being much too far away to provide long-range fighter escort, substituting Navy carrier-based fighters to engage Japanese fighters while covering their own raids on Tokyo and its environs shortly beforehand seemed the only solution.³

In the 7 October secret message, Admiral Nimitz advised Halsey:

After [replenishment] of carrier forces conduct carrier strikes against JAPANESE HOMELAND in order to (1) Destroy and contain enemy forces. (2) Destroy aircraft facilities and manufacturing installations in the TOKYO Area and (3) Determine the effectiveness of enemy air forces in JAPAN. . . . Joint Staff Study is being forwarded to you for your assistance in planning this operation.⁴

Halsey was no stranger to Washington-originated orders sending him toward Tokyo, as witnessed by the surprise unveiling of the Doolittle Raid plan in April 1942.⁵ At any rate, the Third Fleet staff turned to with this new tasking, even as major active operations were progressing around them.

On 12 October, just as a major air battle developed over Formosa, Halsey sent a lengthy missive to Nimitz foreseeing a need to reinforce the number of large carriers on hand in case the existing light carriers in his force could not handle the rough seas off the Japanese mainland. He also suggested that any additional fleet carriers sent his way should embark all-fighter complements.⁶

As late as 23 October, just as the Battle of Leyte Gulf was beginning, Halsey sent Admiral John Towers, Commander, Naval Air Forces Pacific, additional requirements anticipated for the Operation Hotfoot deployment scheduled for the next month.⁷ This upcoming operation likely played a role in Halsey’s rest-rotation scheme for half of his task groups even as the Leyte landings commenced.

Of course, the unfolding Battle of Leyte Gulf altered the schedule, with Halsey being surprised at the size of the Japanese naval reaction to the Leyte landings, having his carrier groups poorly placed to counter the new threat. Eventually, operational difficulties during and after the great battle required an extension of the Third Fleet’s presence in the Southwest Pacific past the projected Hotfoot commencement date. In fact, only the supplemental submarine portion of Hotfoot went off on schedule as an independent deployment.⁸

Instead, San Antonio I embarked separately on 24 November to mixed results over Tokyo.⁹ Japanese defenses in the end were found wanting, and, eventually, P-51 Mustang escorts were available early in 1945.

But did the still-pending Hotfoot redeployment to Japanese waters factor into Halsey’s calculus about abandoning any interest in Vice Admiral Kurita’s oncoming ships in favor of annihilating Vice Admiral Ozawa’s carrier force? (Certainly Nimitz’s Op Plan 8-44 directive, and Halsey’s enthusiastic endorsement to make destroying major Japanese naval units a priority, played a role as well.) Would the elimination of Japan’s presumably still potent carriers off Luzon, instead of on his flank off Honshu weeks later, have been the proverbial camel’s straw? Intriguingly, Halsey himself wrote in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in 1952:

[N]ot only was the Northern Force [Ozawa] fresh and undamaged . . . its carriers gave it a scope several hundred miles wider than the others. Moreover, if we destroyed those carriers, future operations need fear no major threat from the sea [emphasis added].¹⁰

Thanks to the historical propensity to explore matters that transpired, and not examine the influence of situations that were rendered moot, Hotfoot’s ramifications slipped into obscurity. No one has definitively explained Halsey’s rationale for his controversial decision, least of all Halsey himself, but one should consider all the factors in play at the time he made his choices—even the ones that did not survive the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

1. Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 5, The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953), 141.

2. Charles Griffith, The Quest: Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing In World War II (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1999), 173.

3. Haywood S. Hansell Jr., The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan: A Memoir (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1986), 179.

4. ADM Chester Nimitz, USN, “Running Estimate and Summary,” 7 October 1944, Gray Book (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 2013), vol. 5, 2377.

5. E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 66.

6. Nimitz, “Running Estimate and Summary,” 12 October 1944, Gray Book,  2381; message from Halsey to Nimitz, DTG 120127 October 44.

7. Richard Bates et al., The Battle for Leyte Gulf, October 1944: Strategical and Tactical Analysis, vol. 5, Battle of Surigao Strait, October 24th–25th (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 1958), 44; Halsey message to Towers, DTG 230425 October 44.

8. Theodore Roscoe, U.S. Submarine Operations in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1949), 426.

9. Craven and Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, 559.

10. ADM William F. Halsey Jr., “The Battle for Leyte Gulf,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 78, no. 5 (May 1952): 490.