War Stories II

by Oliver L. North

  But the Americans weren’t the only ones who had learned lessons at Peleliu. The Japanese didn’t bother to return fire on the U.S. battleships and cruisers—they were too far out at sea. Instead, the surprised defenders hunkered down in their holes waiting for softer targets—the landing craft ferrying MacArthur’s troops from ship to shore.

  Despite a Philippine occupation force that numbered more than 270,000, the Japanese troops ashore, led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita, were woefully unprepared for MacArthur’s invasion. On Leyte, the 16,000 men of the Imperial Army’s 16th Division were short on supplies, ammunition, and fuel. American carrier aircraft had bombed their air force practically out of existence. And U.S. Navy submarines, operating from bases in New Guinea, New Britain, and the Marianas, were sinking Japanese merchant ships and crude oil carriers faster than they could be replaced.

  Early on the morning of 20 October, MacArthur and Kinkaid agreed that the landing beaches had been sufficiently “prepared.” When MacArthur was told that the headquarters of the 16th Division had likely been destroyed, he is said to have remarked, “Good, that’s the outfit that did the dirty work on Bataan.” Shortly before dawn on 20 October, Kinkaid gave the order: “Land the landing force.”

  The assault, led by the 96th and 24th Infantry Divisions, began after sunrise as the final fires from hundreds of heavy guns swept the beaches and more than 1,000 carrier aircraft crowded the skies. Well before noon, soldiers of the 96th Infantry Division had captured Hill 120, a key D-Day objective. On the other side of the waterfront town of Tanuan, the 24th Infantry Division moved smartly inland. Then, a little after noon, a Navy landing craft motored to within a few feet of the beach. It let down its ramp, and with bullets snapping through the air a few hundred meters away, General Douglas MacArthur strode through the shallow water to the shore. The old general had kept his promise: He had returned.

  Once ashore, MacArthur headed to the 24th Infantry Division’s command post. From there he broadcast a message to the Filipino people and to listeners in America: “This is the voice of freedom. People of the Philippines, I have returned.” After informing them that Filipino president Sergio Osmeña, Manuel Quezon’s successor, had returned with him, he concluded with “Let no heart be faint.”

  One of those who was there for this remarkable moment was twenty-two-year-old First Lieutenant Paul Austin from Ft. Worth, Texas, the commander of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 34th Infantry, 24th Infantry Division.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT PAUL AUSTIN,

  US ARMY

  F Co, 2nd Bt, 34th Inf, 24th Inf Div

  Northeast Coast of Leyte

  21 October 1944

  We were taken out to the transports, and more than 400 ships left New Guinea, headed for the Philippines. That last night aboard the ship, it was unusually quiet. There was some letter writing going on, some rifle cleaning. It was a serious time in our lives.

  It was about six o’clock that morning when they dropped anchor. And then there was a loud explosion. The ship just trembled. We all looked at each other, and felt maybe we had been torpedoed. But someone said, “No, that’s the beach bombardment beginning.” Our battleships were firing with sixteen-inch shells.

  About 9:15, we went over the side, down the cargo net, and into the boats. I was in the second wave. I could see Japanese artillery shells hitting the water, exploding, around the first wave, then around the second wave. I looked over to the left, and two LCIs had been hit and were on fire. I heard a loud explosion behind me, and I looked around. The boat that had been behind me wasn’t there. All I could see was three or four helmets floating upside down in the water. About thirty men in the boat were killed within a split second.

  Then I heard a loud voice to my left. He said, “Let’s get off this beach! Follow me!”

  General MacArthur came in the same area we did. He brought with him the president of the Philippines, Osmeña. When MacArthur waded ashore right behind our battalion, the word went just like wildfire. “MacArthur has landed!” kept going through the ranks. Everybody knew who he was, and it was uplifting.

  We had heard that phrase “I shall return” over and over. It was kind of a motto, something for us to look forward to.

  A tank came roaring up from the beach right after we got fifty yards inland. The tank rolled right on through F Company, up to K Company, and the battalion commander stepped over and started talking to the crew on the tank-infantry phone, giving the gunner the targets. Anything that looked like it could conceal an enemy soldier, he put a 75 mm shell in. He literally blasted his way through that jungle.

  When they quit firing that tank, he turned and said to our battalion, “All right, you can go through now.” When we got to a little town, we surrounded it and dug in. I went down the line out and told the men, “Dig’em deep. You will get hit tonight for sure.” And they did. At dark we got in those foxholes, and didn’t come out until daylight. If you did, you were fair game for the Japanese, and you’d get shot.

  About one o’clock that morning, a mortar shell exploded about twenty feet behind my foxhole. I felt like they used that one shell as a signal to begin their attack. Right after that, all hell broke loose. As it turned out, two of our platoons were caught in a banzai attack, and they hit G Company something awful. It was a full Jap battalion; two companies hit that roadblock, and they held it for two hours. The third Jap company swung out across this field in front of F Company and started coming toward us.

  They began to lay a murderous fire on us. They knew exactly where we were. After about fifteen minutes, the bullets were coming over our foxhole so thick and fast that I had the distinct fear that if I stuck a finger up, it would be cut off. There was just a constant popping as the bullets came whizzing by.

  After a bit, there was a steady roar of our M1s, a machine gun, and about four Browning automatic rifles.

  The toughest part, personally, was lying on the ground in a dark jungle, where you can’t see your hand before your face, and there was a man about six feet away from us who had been shot through the stomach. But we couldn’t do anything for him. We’re five or six miles from the road, it’s pitch black, and we had no chance in the world to get him out. We did have a medic with us, and he was doing all he could for him. But the man woke up about every hour and called for his mother. That’s hard.

  I had about 180 guys in my rifle company when we landed on Leyte. When we left, there were fifty-five men left. But I think of it this way. If we hadn’t done what we did, today it wouldn’t be the United States of America. We’d be speaking Japanese west of the Mississippi River, and across the river they’d be speaking German.

  That’s what could have happened, and would have happened, if millions of us hadn’t put on uniforms and decided it wasn’t going to happen.

  JAPANESE FIRST STRIKING FORCE

  IMPERIAL NAVAL BASE

  BRUNEI, BORNEO

  21 OCTOBER 1944

  The Japanese army may not have been prepared for MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, but the Imperial Navy was as ready as it could be given the shortages Japan was experiencing from the U.S. Navy’s round-the-clock submarine attacks. Word of the Leyte landings was passed quickly and from Tokyo, Admiral Soemu Toyoda quickly put his Sho One plan into effect. Sho is the Japanese word for victory, and Toyoda intended to be victorious.

  The Imperial Navy’s Sho One plan was a last-ditch effort to engage the U.S. Navy in a decisive battle. Within hours of learning about the landings on Leyte, most of the remaining ships in the First Striking Force were under way, steaming toward the Philippines from their base in Brunei, on the island of Borneo. Admiral Soemu Toyoda had a complicated plan—but one goal: to engage and destroy a U.S. fleet that outnumbered him almost three to one.

  Toyoda hoped to lure the American 3rd Fleet away from the invasion beaches and get it into a position where the Japanese could trap it and inflict mortal damage to the ships and men.

  Knowing he was outnumbered—particularly in aircraft—T
oyoda believed that his more experienced commanders could somehow prevail. His subordinates shared that belief in the Sho One plan, themselves, and their ships.

  Admiral Takeo Kurita, aboard the heavy cruiser Atago, commanded the Japanese First Attack Force, consisting of five battleships—the Kongo, Haruna, and the “super battleships” Nagato, Yamato, and Musashi—nine other heavy cruisers, and thirteen destroyers. The three “supers” were the largest battleships ever built and the Yamato boasted eighteen-inch guns.

  Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, who had been humiliated at the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” led the Northern Force of carriers. Though Ozawa’s primary mission was to act as a decoy for Halsey, he was placed in overall tactical command of the operation. A third Japanese naval task force called the Southern Force was split into two separate units, SF-1 and SF-2. Admiral Shoji Nishimura’s battleships, cruisers, and destroyers were designated SF-1, and Admiral Kiyohide Shima led a similar surface action force called SF-2. They, along with Kurita’s force, intended to enter the Leyte Gulf from opposite sides—Kurita from the north and Nishimura and Shima from the south—in an effort to box in the Americans. Admiral Toyoda calculated that if he could catch the Americans in this “pincer movement” he could trap, destroy, and sink the American ships.

  And, like so many other Japanese naval operations, Toyoda’s plan relied on deception. He hoped to use Ozawa’s task force as a decoy to get Halsey’s 3rd Fleet to leave the area around Leyte and go after Ozawa’s carriers. Toyoda and Ozawa gambled that, if tempted with nailing four Japanese aircraft carriers, Halsey would leave his station at the east entrance to the San Bernardino Strait and go after the really “big fish.”

  If all worked as planned, then Ozawa would engage the 3rd Fleet while the other Japanese task forces moved in and decimated the landing forces and the covering ships of the 7th Fleet. Then, in withdrawal, Kurita’s force could come to Ozawa’s assistance in a decisive battle to destroy or at least severely cripple the U.S. 3rd Fleet. At least, that was the plan.

  JAPANESE CENTER FORCE

  PALAWAN PASSAGE ENCOUNTER

  PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

  23 OCTOBER 1944

  Before dawn on 23 October, Toyoda’s battle plan was coming to fruition. Kurita’s First Attack Force, which sortied from Brunei, Borneo, was steaming parallel to Palawan Island toward the American invasion beaches. Nishimura’s SF-1, which left the same anchorage, was taking a more easterly route toward Leyte. Meanwhile, Shima’s battleships and cruisers were racing at flank speed south from Japan and Okinawa.

  Admiral Takeo Kurita

  At Leyte, the Americans, busy offloading supplies for MacArthur’s troops, were blissfully unaware of the pending battle. Then, at 0630 on 23 October, two American submarines, the USS Darter and USS Dace, observed Kurita’s First Attack Force racing north off the west coast of Palawan Island. The Darter was able to torpedo the Atago, which sank twenty minutes later. The Dace torpedoed the Maya, causing it to sink just moments after the Atago. The Dace also seriously damaged the Takao, but somehow she was able to withdraw and make her way back to Brunei for repairs. After his flagship sank, the destroyer Kishinami rescued Admiral Kurita, who transferred his flag to the Yamato and continued on course toward the now-alerted Americans at Leyte. Despite his losses, Kurita made it clear that he expected all remaining ships from his First Attack Force to press on to the San Bernardino Straits.

  BATTLE OF THE SIBUYAN SEA

  ABOARD 3RD FLEET FLAGSHIP

  VICINITY OF LUZON ISLAND

  24 OCTOBER 1944

  1740 HOURS LOCAL

  By dawn on the morning of 24 October, American recon planes, ignorant of Shima’s onrushing fleet, were searching without success for Kurita’s First Attack Force and Ozawa’s carriers.

  At about 0800, U.S. Navy scout planes located Kurita’s battleships in the Sibuyan Sea, heading for the San Bernardino Strait. The ever-aggressive Halsey wasted no time ordering his 3rd Fleet carriers—now designated as Task Force 38—to launch an air strike. Admiral Frederick Sherman was the first to respond, launching his carrier planes off the USS Princeton to engage Kurita’s battleships in the Sibuyan Sea. Meanwhile, his ships and carrier aircraft fended off Japanese bombers from Clark and Nichols Fields. The American carriers and their escorts threw up a furious anti-aircraft barrage. It wasn’t enough.

  At 0935, a single shore-based “Judy,” launched from Clark Field, managed to penetrate the Hellcats and anti-aircraft fire and drop one bomb on the flight deck of the Princeton. The bomb started fires that raged out of control, causing a huge explosion in the carrier’s torpedo storage deck. This explosion also damaged the cruiser Birmingham, which had come alongside to help fight fires and transfer wounded. Princeton went to the bottom less than an hour later.

  Meanwhile, Navy carrier pilots from Bogan’s, Davidson’s, and Halsey’s carriers were taking their revenge. Navy dive-bombers and torpedo planes put nineteen holes in the battleship Musashi, eventually sending her down—carrying more than 1,000 Japanese sailors to the bottom with her. With all of his battleships damaged by at least one bomb or torpedo hit, Kuirita broke away and headed west to get out of range of the American planes.

  Halsey’s 3rd Fleet aircraft had launched some 260 sorties against the Japanese ships, losing only eighteen planes that day, though casualties aboard the Princeton and Birmingham were heavy. Briefed by his pilots, Halsey believed that the entire Japanese fleet had suffered heavy casualties, and that Kurita was withdrawing to Brunei.

  USS NEW JERSEY

  OFF CAPE ENGAÑO, LUZON

  PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

  24 OCTOBER 1944

  2000 HOURS LOCAL

  Meanwhile, still hoping to get Halsey’s attention, Ozawa’s decoy force had launched all its planes to the south during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea to attack the 3rd Fleet, leaving no aircraft to cover the Northern Force carriers. Ozawa desperately wanted the decoy plan to work. Unless he could draw Halsey’s ships north, Kurita’s First Attack Force would be unable to get through the San Bernardino Strait in sufficient time to engage the Japanese Southern Force before it could wreak havoc on Leyte.

  Ozawa’s decoy mission was a disaster for his pilots. Before the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, Ozawa had 116 aircraft. By late afternoon of 24 October, when one of Halsey’s scout planes finally spotted black smoke spewing intentionally from Ozawa’s carriers, he had just twenty-nine remaining.

  Halsey jumped at the bait. He ordered his 3rd Fleet to give chase—with the goal of launching a dawn attack on the Japanese flattops. That’s when things began to unravel for the Americans.

  As he sped north, Halsey thought that the 7th Fleet transports and their escorts at Leyte faced no serious threats because he’d accepted the exaggerated reports of his returning pilots that Kurita’s force had been compelled to retire and head back to Brunei. This faulty information led him to presume that Kinkaid no longer needed the 3rd Fleet’s covering force. The hard-charging “Bull” was wrong.

  Kurita had turned toward Brunei, but then he reversed course and headed back east toward the San Bernardino Straits. At 2000 on 24 October, as he sped northward, Halsey was heading away, just as Ozawa and Kurita intended.

  Halsey radioed Admirals Nimitz and Kinkaid with the message: “I AM PROCEEDING NORTH WITH THREE TASK GROUPS TO ATTACK ENEMY CARRIER FORCE AT DAWN.”

  BATTLE OF SURIGAO STRAIT

  7TH FLEET FLAGSHIP COMMAND

  VICINITY OF LEYTE GULF

  24 OCTOBER 1944

  2020 HOURS LOCAL

  Earlier that day, Halsey had sent a message indicating that he was going to create a new task force group by pulling ships from the other groups. This new force, to be called Task Force 34, was to consist of four battleships, six cruisers, and fourteen destroyers. Halsey had said that it would be used “to engage the enemy decisively at long ranges.”

  Admirals Nimitz and Kinkaid had each received Halsey’s earlier radio message, but neither had any idea that creating Task Force
34 meant Halsey was not going to provide a covering force for the 7th Fleet’s amphibious force, which still had 110,000 troops and 250,000 tons of ammunition, fuel, rations, and other supplies still to be put ashore.

  When Nimitz and Kinkaid received Halsey’s message at 2000 about heading north with three groups, they each assumed that he would use Task Force 34 to guard the San Bernardino Strait against Kurita’s return and would be taking his only three carrier task groups to engage Ozawa’s fleet.

  As long as the 7th Fleet commanders were able to provide cover from their own ships in the south, and there was no interference from Kurita’s Center Force or Ozawa’s Northern Force, there was no need to worry. They could handle the Southern Force, and no one replied, questioning Halsey’s order.

  For his part, Halsey believed his intentions were clear. He said, “I am proceeding north,” and had earlier reported that he would be with Task Force 34. No one questioned the fact that he was going north, nor did they think to inquire who was left to guard the San Bernardino Strait.

  When the news came that afternoon about Kurita’s losses and apparent withdrawal, Halsey changed his mind about creating Task Force 34. He reasoned that with Kurita so weakened and in retreat, Kinkaid could handle any other problems the Japanese navy might pose. So Halsey steamed north, to engage Ozawa, leaving no U.S. force to guard the San Bernardino Strait or provide cover for Kinkaid’s 7th Fleet.