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The Imperial Japanese Navy’s hopes of a miracle were disappointed.
In October 1944 the jaws of the Dual Advance clamped shut on the Philippines. For General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific forces, the landings that began on small islands in Leyte Gulf on the 17th fulfilled the vow he had made following his escape from the Philippines in March 1942, that “I shall return.” Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations, would have preferred the Navy’s Central Pacific offensive to culminate in an assault on Formosa, an operation the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved in March 1944; but early in September, the chiefs authorized the invasion of Leyte, which U.S. forces could use as a stepping stone either to Formosa or Luzon. The target date for the operation was 20 December.
In a matter of days, this schedule came into question. The neutralization of the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul had left Admiral W. F. Halsey without a job to do in the Southwest Pacific, and in August he was assigned to relieve Admiral Raymond A. Spruance as commander of the Fifth Fleet (thereupon redesignated the Third Fleet), initiating a command and staff rotation that continued for the rest of the war. While Spruance went ashore to plan future operations, Halsey began softening up Japanese bases in the Western Pacific in preparation for the forthcoming invasion. The feeble opposition his aircraft encountered over the Philippines convinced Halsey the islands were “a hollow shell,” and prompted him to recommend that the invasion of Leyte be rescheduled for the earliest possible date. Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific (CinCPac), and MacArthur concurred, the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed, and D-Day at Leyte was advanced to 20 October. Shortly thereafter, King reluctantly abandoned his advocacy of a landing on Formosa, and the course of subsequent operations was soon settled: from Leyte, MacArthur would continue the liberation of the Philippines by an invasion of Luzon; the “Big Blue Fleet,” back under Spruance, would seize Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Once, Japanese leaders had planned such offensives; but that day was long past. The prospects that, having lost its carrier air groups at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Imperial Navy would be able to effect a reversal of fortunes appeared extremely remote. Nevertheless, institutional as well as strategic imperatives dictated that it try. Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita expressed a thought that must
have been widespread when he exhorted his officers to remember that there are such things as miracles.
Following Philippine Sea, the Naval General Staff had prepared four Sho-Go (Operation Victory) plans to combat the next U.S. offensive. On 18 October, two days be- , fore the main landing on Leyte, Admiral Soemu Toyoda- ( Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, activated , Sho-1, the plan for the defense of the Philippines. The re- , suit was four distinct actions—Sibuyan Sea, Surigao Strait- Samar, and Cape Engano—collectively known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest naval engagement ever fought, involving nearly 190,000 men on board 216 U.S-
2 Australian, and 64 Japanese warships and encompassing an area in excess of 100,000 square miles.
Leyte was the first landing to involve two entire U.S- fleets. The invasion, delivered by Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet, would be screened and supported by Halsey’s Third Fleet. Most of Halsey’s amphibious assets had been loaned to Kinkaid, making the Third Fleet virtually identical to Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force (TF) 38—17 fast carriers organized in four task groups, including six fast battleships that could be detached to form a battle line under Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee. Leyte was also the first landing to be made without the benefit of a unified command, since Halsey was subordinate to Nimitz and Kinkaid to MacArthur. This , arrangement proved ill-starred.
Sho-1 aspired to repulse the invasion of the Philippines by bringing the Imperial Navy’s still-formidable surface action forces into contact with Kinkaid’s amphibious units in Leyte Gulf. To execute this agenda, the Japanese reverted to the complicated tactics Spruance had anticipated at Philippine Sea. During the ensuing battle, U.S. forces referred to Japanese formations according to their relative positions. Northern Force, commanded by Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, consisted of the heavy carrier Zuikaku,
3 light carriers, 2 hybrid battleship-carriers, 3 cruisers, and 8 destroyer types. Powerful as this force would appear from the air, it embarked only 116 planes. Its mission, expected to entail its annihilation, was to draw Halsey northward away from Leyte Gulf while two gunfire groups converged on Kinkaid. Center Force, the strongest Japanese formation, was commanded by Admiral Kurita. Composed of the superdreadnoughts Musashi and Yamato, 3 lesser battleships, 12 cruisers, and 15 destroyers, it would
'Vhile the battle of Leyte Gulf dealt the Japanese a serious blow, the victory came at great cost to U.S. forces, as well. Among casualties was the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), here under attack from the big guns of the Japanese Center Force. She was the second U.S. carrier to s‘nk in the war.
dtrust through San Bernardino Strait to enter Leyte Gulf from the north. Southern Force was to transit Surigao Strait to enter the gulf from the south. It advanced in two ech- £lons. The first, under Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura, included two battleships, a cruiser, and four destroyers; the S£cond, under Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima, three cruises and seven destroyers. Land-based naval aircraft in the Philippines were to support the operation.
Early on 23 October the submarines Dace (SS-247) and barter (SS-227) sighted and reported Center Force on lts way toward the Philippines. They also drew first blood, sinking two cruisers and sending a third limping back to Port. The next morning U.S. air searches located Center horce and Southern Force, but, ironically, not Northern horce. While Kinkaid began concentrating his fighting ships at Surigao Strait, for which Southern Force was Nearly bound, Halsey launched five strikes against Center Force as it pushed across the Sibuyan Sea. Although lo Japanese ships were sunk in these attacks, the mighty ^usashi sustained so many hits that she went down hours later, and at 1400 Halsey’s pilots reported that Center Porce had reversed course. In case it should double back, at 1512 Halsey issued a preparatory command detailing lhe composition of a battle line, Task Force 34, that, upon the order to execute, would be formed under Admiral Lee. Unfortunately, Admiral Kinkaid, whose communicators •ntercepted the signal, assumed that TF-34 had actually been called into being.
Throughout the day Halsey and the Third Fleet staff had puzzled over the apparent absence of carriers from the enemy order of battle. The mystery was solved around 1700, when they learned that aerial reconnaissance had discovered Northern Force off Cape Engano, the north- eastem tip of Luzon, approximately 400 miles from Leyte Gulf. In contrast to the orders given Spruance before the
invasion of the Marianas, which directed him only to “capture, occupy, and defend” specified islands, the operations plan issued to Halsey for Leyte included the stipulation that, “In case opportunity for destruction of major portion of the enemy fleet offer (sic) or can be created, such destruction becomes primary task.” At the moment, that opportunity seemed to beckon. For three hours Halsey and his staff considered their options. At 2000, convinced by aviators’ reports that Center Force had been hurt too badly to inconvenience anyone, Halsey decided to take his entire force to attack the enemy carriers. The wording of the message announcing that decision left Kinkaid under the impression that TF-34 was guarding San Bernardino Strait.
Almost exactly three hours before Halsey began to move north, Kurita swung his Center Force back toward the east. Several U.S. air searches reported the Japanese advance between 1935 and 2320. This intelligence inspired some of Halsey’s subordinates to conclude that Northern Force was indeed a decoy (a possibility his staff had weighed and rejected) and that part of TF-38 should remain behind to prevent Center Force from debouching through San Bernardino Strait. Rear Admiral Gerald F. Bogan, commanding Task Group (TG) 38.2, began to tell that to one of Halsey’s staff officers over voice radio but was deterred by the latter’s brusque response. Lee registered his reservations in two separate signals, and about 2300 Mitscher’s chief of staff, Commodore Arleigh Burke, awakened the admiral with a recommendation that he urge Halsey to detach TF-34 and a carrier group to cover the strait. Mitscher declared that if Halsey wanted his advice, he would ask for it. Thus, around midnight Center Force, uneasy at the absence of opposition, cleared San Bernardino Strait and shaped course for Leyte Gulf.
An hour earlier, Nishimura had led Southern Force into Surigao Strait. In the short time left him to live, an absence of opposition was not among his concerns. Inside the strait, Kinkaid had extended a gauntlet of 39 patrol torpedo (PT) boats and 28 destroyers, and across its eastern exit, in position to cross the T of an enemy approaching from the west, he placed Seventh Fleet’s six old, shore- bombardment battleships—all but one veterans of Pearl Harbor—in a line flanked by eight cruisers. The issue was never in doubt. Both Nishimura’s battleships and three of his destroyers were blown out of the water. Shima’s echelon, following 40 miles astern, prudently retired. By 0430 on 25 October, the southern arm of the Japanese pincers
had been eliminated by the mighty U.S. force.
The elation felt in Seventh Fleet over this victory was extinguished a little more than two hours later, when the pagoda masts of Center Force’s battleships appeared on the horizon north of Rear Admiral Clifton F. Sprague’s Taffy 3, one of three groups of escort carriers operating off Samar. One of the epic actions in naval history was about to unfold. While Sprague’s six little, 18-knot carriers made away at flank speed, chasing rain squalls and the towering, color-coded splashes of Japanese shells, aircraft arose from all three Taffies to harass the oncoming enemy, and the three destroyers and four destroyer escorts constituting Sprague’s screen advanced with utmost gallantry to engage Kurita’s battleships and cruisers. The small boys’ attack threw the Japanese formation into confusion and disabled at least one cruiser. The Taffies’
aircraft also scored, forcing three cruisers to drop out of the battle. Ultimately, however, it was inevitable that Center Force’s superior speed and bigger guns would tell. By 0910 the Gambler Bay (CVE-73) had become the second carrier in the war to succumb to gunfire, the destroyer Hoel (DD-533) had also been sunk, and the destroyer Johnston (DD-557) and destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) were sinking.
Throughout these desperate hours, Kinkaid bombarded Halsey with calls for help. Informing him of events in Surigao Strait in a message sent at 0412, Kinkaid had sought confirmation that TF-34 was covering San Bernardino Strait. Halsey, who had given the order to form TF-34 during his run north, did not receive this communication until 0648. Perplexed by Kinkaid’s query, Halsey replied that TF-34 was with his carriers, “now engaging enemy carriers,” against which Mitscher had begun launching an hour earlier. By the time his answer reached Kinkaid, Center Force was engaging Taffy 3. Halsey learned of the action under way off Samar from a signal received from Kinkaid at 0822 and followed eight minutes later by an urgent request for the fast battleships. To a vexed Halsey it seemed that Kinkaid’s 18 escort carriers and 6 old battleships should be able to cope with Center Force. Furthermore, whatever damage Center Force could do would have been done long before the fast battleships could reach the scene. Nevertheless, at 0848 he ordered TG-38.1, which had been trying to overtake the battle from an opening position 600 miles east of the Philippines, to make “best possible speed” to strike Center Force. Kinkaid was not assuaged, and about 1000 his appeals climaxed in an anguished, plain-language WHERE IS LEE X SEND LEE.
Within minutes, Halsey received an even more electrifying signal. Sent by Admiral Nimitz, with information copies to Kinkaid and King, it read: WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY-FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS. Stunned by Nimitz’s sarcasm, Halsey dashed his cap to the deck and, he wrote later, “shouted something that I am ashamed to remember.” In fact, Nimitz had not intended to insult him. THE WORLD WONDERS was padding that should have been discarded
There may be such things as miracles, but none came to the aid of the Imperial Japanese Navy at Leyte Gulf.
before the message reached Halsey; the WHERE IS rep' etition had been added by a yeoman, and the information addressees by a staff officer—but he would not learn any of this until after the battle. Still smoldering, at 105-1 Halsey ordered all six fast battleships and TG-38.2 to turn south. At that moment, only 42 miles separated Northern Force from TF-34’s big guns. Mitscher was left to press the action with two carrier groups and a surface action group of four cruisers and ten destroyers.
The terrible irony was that, although it would not be evident for hours, by then the crisis off Samar had passed At 0911 Kurita broke off the put' suit of Taffy 3, convinced that it was one of Halsey’s task groups. Apparently, he intended merely to reform his force, disordered by the Taffies’ counterattacks, but at 0945 a false report from naval headquarters if Manila inspired him to go looking for another U.S. carrier group supposedly located not far to the north. The phantom force eluded him, and, aftef a series of fruitless countermarches during which three heavily damaged cruisers went down, Kurita decided to withdraw. At 2140, Center Force reentered San Bernardino Strait. The van of TF-34 reached there at 0100, in time to sink a laggard destroyer.
Meanwhile, off Cape Engano, Mitscher had continued to pound Northern Force. Air strikes sank the Zuikaku, the light carriers Chitose and Zuiho, and destroyer Akitsuku and seriously damaged the cruiser Tama and light carrief Chiyoda. The former received the coup de grace from the submarine Jallao (SS-368); the latter, from Mitscher’s surface action group, which also gunned down a destroyer- Yet in the absence of battleships to close with the enemy- the battle of annihilation that Halsey had envisioned did not transpire. Ozawa’s two battleship-carriers, a cruiser, and five destroyers escaped.
The four ships Taffy 3 lost off Samar were the only vessels sunk by Japanese surface forces during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In addition, land-based aircraft accounted for the light carrier Princeton (CVL-23) and the escort carrier St. Lo (CVE-63), bringing U.S. losses to an aggregate of 33,118 tons (standard load). Including retiring vessels destroyed by air strikes on 26 and 27 October but exclud- j ing two sunk after a reinforcement run to Leyte, the Japanese fleet lost three battleships, four carriers, nine cruisers, and ten destroyers totaling 302,782 tons and any chance of ever again exerting a major influence upon the course of the war. There may be such things as miracles, but none came to the aid of the Imperial Japanese Navy at Leyte Gulf.
'Hie
For further reading: Thomas J. Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October 1944 (New York: HarperCollins, 1994); Samuel Eliot Morison. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol. XII: Leyte (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975); E. B. Potter, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985); John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Random House, 1970).
Dr. Sweetman is a military and naval historian.