Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

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  BY NOW, THE Big Blue Fleet had the mechanics of carrier operations down to a routine. It could put 1,000 planes into the sky. The task force would start and head toward the battle zone fully stocked and primed for a fight. A specialized supply group existed just to replenish the fleet at sea. This included oilers to fuel thirsty warships, escort carriers with aircraft to replace plane losses, ammunition ships to restock expended ordnance, victual ships to supply food, and fleet tugs to assist damaged or distressed vessels. The logistics group had its own escort, so as not to be a drain on the combat fleet. The usual dance was for the fleet to sortie for action, refuel once before engaging, carry out a wave of attacks, withdraw to replenish, and then attack again. Only after this kind of extended sequence would a task group or fleet head back to base.

  Sailors needed to while away the hours before action. Aboard the Essex, flagship of Rear Admiral Frederick C. Sherman’s Task Group 38.3, special services showed the movie Follow the Band, a year-old picture featuring a farmer who goes to New York City and makes good as a singer. Lieutenant John Monserrat on the light carrier Langley had a regular poker game under way, his challenge to see how long he could avoid drawing on any of his Navy pay. Bridge and pinochle were popular too. On the Enterprise, in Task Group 38.4, the airmen had a card game called “Jacks or Better” that sailors had to pay to learn. Writing letters home always appealed. On all the aircraft carriers, during any kind of decent weather, airmen hung out on “Vulture’s Row,” a catwalk partway up the ship’s island structure, which afforded a panoramic view of the flight deck. By turns gossipy, hypercritical, superstitious, or urgent, aviators watched keenly as their comrades took off or landed.

  Every air group on a carrier had its own tempo and customs, for training and for operations. During the Third Fleet’s October cruise, Commander David McCampbell’s Air Group 15 on the Essex flew a total of 1,829 sorties. Of those, 138 were for search or liaison purposes, 16 figured in rescue missions, 539 were for defensive patrol over the task group, and the rest were for attack or cover during offensive strike missions. Aboard the Enterprise, the attack squadrons of Air Group 20 practiced attacks against major warships at least once a week. The routine practices soon paid big dividends.

  The men who flew the airplanes all had their reasons for taking on that dangerous job. Patriotic, romantic, dramatic, ambitious, vengeful, picayune, every kind of motive propelled the airmen. Take Lieutenant Frederick M. “Wistar” Janney, executive officer of Torpedo Squadron 13 (VT-13) aboard the Franklin. From a Main Line Philadelphia family, Janney had gone to Phillips Exeter and Princeton but went out for naval aviation after seeing the 1940 movie Flight Command, in which actor Robert Taylor starred as a young pilot in an elite Navy fighter squadron. The enlistment angered his investment banker father, but Wistar Janney reasoned he would be drafted anyway and preferred to chart his own course. Trained at Corpus Christie Naval Air Station, Janney had soon gravitated toward torpedo bombers. Now he flew a TBM Avenger on his second tour of duty in the Pacific.

  Carrier groups had a well-oiled operational template. War service pilots were now so practiced that air groups could exchange ships—and did so with some frequency. Air Group 8, on the Bunker Hill, had flown from the ill-fated Yorktown back at the Battle of Midway. The groups could form and head out quickly on missions, responding to changed circumstances in midflight. The air group commander from each ship actively managed his planes in formation. Every strike now had a “target coordinator”—an aerial field marshal and usually an air group or squadron leader—who controlled the unfolding mission. On a bigger scale, the target coordinator filled the same boots as the forward air controllers of later wars, like that in Vietnam.

  There were standard formations and details. A certain number of dive-bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters made a package, or “deck load strike.” The packages differed in size and composition for the big “fleet” or “fast” carriers, the light carriers, or the little “escort” carriers. One or a few strike planes, usually with twice that number of fighters, were typical for a scout detail. Each detail would cover a “vector,” or wedge-shaped slice of the sea to be searched for the enemy. The task group commander would assign search vectors to his carriers or designate which ships should put up strike packages and who should be the target coordinator.

  All the aircraft carriers put up groups of defensive fighters called “combat air patrols” (CAPs). At times one carrier functioned as a defense ship and operated all its aircraft in CAP or antisubmarine roles. Ships controlled their own CAPs, but one vessel—often the flagship—had the air defense command. Radar and radio were the keys. The inputs from the electronic scanners of radar, and the radio intercepts of the mobile communications intelligence teams, came together at the Combat Information Center (CIC), where yeomen crayoned the data on transparent plotting boards while officers directed the CAP fighters. The defensive controller, in turn, assigned major sectors or specific targets to the CICs of the other carriers. By this time in the war, the Big Blue Fleet had a cadre of specially trained fighter director officers to handle this function. The Battle of the Philippine Sea gives an idea of the fleet’s defensive proficiency.

  Allied defensive practices evolved with the threat. With CICs installed in ships down to the size of a destroyer, for more than a year already the U.S. Navy had been experimenting with using picket ships, vessels that would extend the diameter of a fleet’s active air defense envelope by pushing its radar horizon beyond that of the core vessels. As the Japanese moved to emphasize night air attacks, the Allies developed night fighters. By 1944, many carriers in Task Force 38 had at least a flight of interceptor aircraft equipped with their own radars for night combat. Some ships had a full squadron. Captain Edward C. Ewen’s light carrier Independence had an entire air group composed of night-fighting aircraft, both fighters and torpedo bombers. Commander Thomas F. Caldwell’s Night Air Group 41 had first gone into action in Halsey’s September carrier raids on the Philippines. After rapidly gaining experience, Caldwell’s fliers were now ready for action.

  On October 8, the task force joined up with a fuel group of nine oilers and spent the day replenishing. The Cowpens lost a fighter that crashed on landing and a scout bomber that had to ditch. The carrier Wasp had an accident when a torpedo plane crashed and burned in a night landing. At noon on the ninth, Halsey began a high-speed run toward the first targets in the Ryukyus. Poring over intelligence estimates of JNAF strength, Admiral Mitscher decided the first wave should be a fighter sweep. Ted Sherman’s Task Group 38.3 had Okinawa for its target and launched from about 125 miles southeast of the island, beginning at 5:43 a.m., half an hour before sunrise, on October 10. For a time, the fleet shut down its radars and radios to avoid tipping off the Japanese, but at 6:40, a Japanese scout made further control of electronic emissions worthless. Fighters from light carrier Cabot were sent to intercept a “bogey,” or unknown target.

  Admiral Sherman put up his first team. He approved Commander David McCampbell, the Essex air boss, as coordinator of the first strike. Thirty-two fighters from Essex and Lexington made up the sweep. Right behind them two attack waves combined fighters with bombers. All four carrier groups of the Halsey fleet participated in this aerial circus. They smashed Okinawa and the other islands with 1,396 sorties.

  On the Japanese side the commander of the Okinawa defense forces reported his airfields under attack at 6:40 a.m. A little after eight o’clock he added that he was engaging more than 100 enemy aircraft. Nearby islands in the chain confirmed they were under attack too. At 9:39, Okinawa reported the appearance of surface ships, which was a wild exaggeration.

  That afternoon the officer commanding the 22nd Torpedo Boat division admitted that a baker’s dozen of his PT-type fast torpedo boats plus two other watercraft had been sunk. There were other victims too. In the air, the only claims made for the JNAF were from Warrant Officer Ema Tomokazu of the 254th Air
Group, who was credited with one plane shot down and one probable. On the Japanese Army side, half a dozen “Tony” (Ki-61) fighters of Captain Kimura Makoto’s 23rd Interceptor Unit engaged the Americans. All were shot down.

  Japanese scout planes produced their first sighting report of Task Force 38 at a quarter past noon. After that they kept in fair touch. Captain H. W. Taylor’s light carrier Cowpens was providing the combat air patrol for Slew McCain’s task group that day, and she recorded sinking two Japanese patrol boats and downing a scout. The Essex records dealing with at least two “snooper” flights in the morning plus a host of bogeys and “raids” that night, and splashing a couple of Betty bombers.

  According to Samuel Eliot Morison, the Japanese losses were “more extensive” than pilots had claimed. Those claims included a submarine tender, 4 cargomen, a couple of midget submarines, and a dozen PT boats, in addition to 111 aircraft. Halsey’s losses were 21 planes, including five pilots and four aircrew, of whom half a dozen were rescued by the submarine Sterlet.

  But Morison’s figures were, in fact, cleaned up. Airman Jack Miller of the Essex flew with Bombing 15 in the lead attack, and he recalled sinking both a heavy cruiser and a light cruiser. Seaman John Yeager of the same ship noted sinking a cruiser and four destroyers. No such ships were present in the Ryukyus that day. Lieutenant Wistar Janney of the Franklin won the Distinguished Flying Cross for leading Torpedo 13 bombing raids.

  Essex officers were disappointed. The lack of aerial opposition startled them. Flak proved plentiful but badly aimed, leaving the aircrews with a feeling of anticlimax. What had begun as an adventurous foray seemed to have become a routine mission.

  They had no idea that shortly after the first reports of the attack arrived from Okinawa, the Combined Fleet headquarters had issued an alert to execute the Sho operation, or that it had followed up by activating and redeploying air units and carrier air groups.

  A battle royale would shortly take place.

  AIR-ONLY SHO

  The essential, basic directive for the Japanese dictated that they must annihilate the enemy. Admiral Toyoda had issued Combined Fleet Top Secret Operations Order No. 83 back in early August, and by now, the Imperial Navy had had some time to prepare. Decisive battle, discussed explicitly in the directive, remained the fleet’s instrument to attain its goal. But the battle orders fudged the objective by failing to clarify what “decisive battle” now meant. The central problem—beyond immutable disparities in strength—was that Imperial General Headquarters had ordained that the forces should target the Allied invasion transports, whereas the Navy had been designed and trained to sink an enemy battle fleet. Toyoda had faced that challenge when the Sho plans were first promulgated, and again at the Manila conference, where fleet commands critiqued the scheme. Both times he had failed to rise to the occasion. Observant and thoughtful, Toyoda knew that.

  Years after the war, the U.S. Naval War College would assemble a massive study of the Leyte Gulf battle, one so enormous it could never be completed, despite five years, five volumes, and thousands of pages of material. That study faults Toyoda for his absence from Combined Fleet Headquarters at the moment of the Taiwan air battle. The War College analysts observe that the Japanese had correctly surmised that the Allies would strike at the Philippines, and they had gotten the time frame generally correct, while appreciating the likelihood of an Allied carrier raid on Taiwan before the invasion. This was the time. How could Toyoda have absented himself at such a critical moment?

  The complaint joins those of some Imperial Navy line officers, among whom Toyoda Soemu was never universally admired or respected. Yamamoto had been like a god. Koga Mineichi had been the logical successor. Unlike chief of staff Kusaka, some thought Toyoda just a four-star retread. He looked more like a railroad conductor than a fighting admiral. Toyoda Soemu had taken up the reins at Combined Fleet from command of the Yokosuka Naval District, largely an administrative and technical post. Frontline sailors did not know him. Admiral Toyoda had no combat experience in the war.

  Aside from that his fleet experience was limited. Toyoda had led the Second Fleet and skippered battleship Hyuga, the light cruiser Yura, and a division of submarines. Most of his career had involved higher naval affairs. Toyoda had been with Yamamoto at the London Naval Conference in 1930 and then served as Combined Fleet chief of staff. He had been a language officer and naval attaché in London and Berlin, had worked at the Navy Ministry and on the staff of the emperor’s special inspector.

  Perhaps the key connection is the last one. The war had passed the point of decision. Fighting in the Pacific, from Japan’s point of view, now had the object of holding on long enough that the Allies would negotiate peace. Tokyo had already moved to install a cabinet amenable to putting out peace feelers. The Imperial Palace had need of Navy and Army officers who would keep their services in line when the conflict moved to a close. Toyoda Soemu had a reputation as an intensely patriotic man—likely to deflect the hardliners—plus he was able and technologically oriented. As Combined Fleet commander, he would prolong resistance as much as possible.

  Soon after the Koiso cabinet took office, Admiral Toyoda spent several days at IGHQ exploring issues with the NGS and checking NGS data on many things. He took the opportunity for a drop-by visit with Admiral Yonai, with whom he had worked closely in the mid-1930s when Toyoda headed the Naval Affairs Bureau at the ministry. Yonai immediately asked about the war situation. He wanted to know if the Navy could hold on through the end of the year. The Combined Fleet commander replied that it would be extremely difficult to do so.

  Behind the euphemisms, Admiral Toyoda understood Yonai to be talking about war termination. Toyoda was taken aback. The fleet commander refused to manifest defeatism, and for him to engage in a peace maneuver was out of the question. “I was hardly in a position,” Toyoda wrote, “to say outright that the situation was hopeless.”

  This brings us back to Toyoda’s absence from headquarters at the instant of the Taiwan air assault. He would later agree with the criticism of the U.S. Naval War College, reflecting that he had taken himself away from headquarters for too long at too critical a time. But the admiral did have a purpose for this trip. Toyoda regarded it as virtually certain that the Philippines were going to be the next Allied objective. He billed the foray as an inspection and tour of the front, but the truth was that travel to the Philippines might soon become impossible. This represented a last chance to fire up the sailors. More than that, Toyoda’s mission was political. He knew how the fleet salivated for decisive battle. The admiral also knew that this time IGHQ had deviated from doctrine by aiming at Allied shipping—the measure that was calculated as the one most likely to prolong the war. Admiral Toyoda’s duty was to be an apostle, seizing this opportunity to proselytize for the objective that was so disorienting to the fleet.

  Combined Fleet officers accompanying the admiral on his trip included deputy chief of staff Rear Admiral Takata and the air officer Captain Fuchida. Toyoda had reached the Philippines, visiting units and holding talks there. They arrived at Manila on October 7. The Combined Fleet C-in-C wanted to go on to Davao, Cebu, and Leyte. But the islands were under intermittent air attack and further travel would have meant diverting First Air Fleet fighters for his protection. Toyoda also felt out of sorts. He had caught a cold in Taiwan on the way down.

  So the admiral wrapped up his Manila sojourn on October 9 and flew to Taiwan, intending to head for fleet headquarters the next day. Instead, American carrier planes appeared out of nowhere and began to rain destruction upon Okinawa and nearby islands in the Ryukyu chain. A flight to Japan suddenly seemed too dangerous.

  Taiwan, of course, held many Japanese forces. It was a stronghold of the Second Air Fleet, which had begun moving in early in September, and Toyoda would be protected there. Vice Admiral Fukudome Shigeru of the air fleet, recovered from his ordeal of capture in the Philippines, could work in tandem with him. B
ut Toyoda found the radio gear at air fleet headquarters insufficient and his access to communications intelligence inadequate. The Combined Fleet commander could not develop an adequate picture of the overall situation, and beyond that, he could not even ascertain the disposition and posture of his own forces.

  In the heat of this crisis, a cable arrived from Toyoda’s chief of staff, Kusaka. The latter wanted to know if it would be all right to activate the Sho plan just for the air force. Out of touch, Admiral Toyoda concluded he could not make a proper decision. He asked Vice Admiral Kusaka to do so and issue appropriate orders after consulting the NGS and IGHQ. This matter of the “air-only Sho” is central to understanding what happened at Leyte Gulf.

  The Imperial Navy had spared no effort to reconstitute its air arm following the debacle at the Philippine Sea. The JNAF had mobilized large numbers of planes, but in a strategic context, its fuel supply and aircraft production were beginning to flag, its pilots’ skills were withering, and current losses were threatening force levels. The decline in the JNAF’s quality also meant its ability to cooperate with the surface fleet had all but disappeared. Execution of Sho, therefore, necessarily involved separate air and surface fleet sorties. It would be the fate of the air forces to fight first.