Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  A crucial element in Kurita’s calculation would be the identity of his adversary. His lookouts, Commander Otani, and Kurita himself had seen aircraft carriers. Kurita assumed these were fleet carriers with thirty-three knots speed, not the thin-skinned jeeps, which could not make more than twenty if you fueled them with nitroglycerin. From top admiral to ordinary seaman, no Japanese surface ship crew had ever fought a battle against a jeep carrier. The Imperial Navy’s surface fleet had no notion of the habits of the CVEs, their vulnerabilities, or their tactics.

  A criticism often leveled at Kurita is that he did not wait to form a battle line. But the gripe is appropriate only if the Japanese knew they faced jeep carriers. Here, if the Second Fleet commander stopped to maneuver into line ahead, and the enemy were fleet carriers capable of thirty-three knots, there would have been no battle. The initial sightings were already at maximum range. Kurita’s big battlewagons could not match that speed, and a battle line would have held back his cruisers. The Americans would simply have disappeared over the horizon. Koyanagi again: “In a pursuit the only essential is to close the gap as rapidly as possible and concentrate fire upon the enemy.” The one solution that worked no matter the identity of the adversary was a general chase in which Kurita’s cruiser divisions could profit from their speed. General chase was no error.

  Another criticism needs mention because of things that happened later. Referring to Kurita, Morison contends that “complete surprise seems to have deprived the Admiral of all power of decision, and the result was a helter-skelter battle.” The discussion here demonstrates, in my view, that Admiral Kurita did consider his decision at the outset of combat. There would be many reasons why this action became helter-skelter, but an alleged refusal of Kurita to decide is not one of them. We will presently see two real errors the Japanese made—both attributable to Kurita Takeo’s decisions, not the lack of them.

  The last element that seems to have confused battleship leader Ugaki would be Kurita’s instruction for destroyer formations to bring up the rear. The pair of flotillas accompanying the fleet amounted to more than a dozen ships. They, too, were much faster than the battleships. If the enemy amounted to nearly twenty vessels, evading wildly, and there were going to be another half dozen Japanese heavy cruisers obstructing the range between Kurita’s battleships and the enemy, holding back the destroyer flotillas had merit in terms of preventing confusion among his gunners. Throwing another dozen warships into the battle zone would impede tracking the quarry. In addition, Koyanagi notes, maneuvers had shown that fast battleships in a daytime action could easily escape torpedo attack because they would see the launch and then go to full speed to avoid it. The destroyers—and this illustrates how Imperial Navy leaders had begun thinking—would simply be burning that much more oil. Here again the misidentification of Taffy 3 as a fast-carrier unit exerted an influence on Japanese tactics.

  Professionalism lies precisely in officers’ sense for leaders, developed from service together, which permits abbreviated messages. Ugaki had just had two months of focused training under Kurita and had been under his command for half a year. Before that, he had watched Kurita’s performance from an exalted height at Combined Fleet. Ugaki ought to have had a feeling for Kurita’s instincts. He did not. This lack of perspective, plus Ugaki’s carping about the Sho mission of destroying transports (where the subordinate writes as if Kurita rejected his views when the latter completely agreed), and his claiming not to understand a fine point of destroyer tactics the fleet had apparently learned from maneuvers, all indicate that Ugaki indulged his resentment, let resentment blind him to his superior’s moods, and failed to apply his professional judgment.

  In any case, this Japanese officer had quite limited exposure to the front lines of this fierce war. Ugaki had led Battleship Division 1 for just eight months. It was his only wartime command. He had participated in just one battle—two if you count the hapless attempt to express reinforcements into Biak on the eve of the Philippine Sea battle—and his leadership had not been especially stellar. Most of the admiral’s time had been spent as an instructor, as a naval attaché, or on staffs.

  Admiral Ugaki told his diary that he protested to chief of staff Koyanagi because “I feared the spirit of all-out attack at short range was lacking.” But, in fact, there could be no all-out attack at short range except if Kurita ordered a general chase. Ugaki’s diary here smacks of cynical rationalization, compiled to lambast his commanding officer. But because his is an authentic voice, many historians have simply repeated Ugaki’s take on these matters.

  At 6:58 a.m., four minutes after the Nagato broke out her battle flag, the Yamato opened fire. After ordering maximum battle speed, at 7:03 Kurita sent: “CRUISER DIVISIONS, ATTACK!”

  ON THE ROPES

  Ziggy Sprague paced the deck of his flagship, the Fanshaw Bay. He needed to submit an operations schedule that would inform the air support commander what missions, strikes, and patrols Taffy 3 would carry out. Rear Admiral Sprague had come to flag plot early that day to work on the schedule. The aircraft commander, Captain Richard Whitehead on Kinkaid’s flagship, Wasatch, monitored all of Task Group 77.4, which was under Rear Admiral Thomas L. Sprague, whom Ziggy knew as a stickler for detail. The two Spragues had known each other since they were midshipmen at Annapolis, from which Tom graduated in the top tenth of the class of 1918, with Ziggy just behind at the quarter mark. The Taffy 3 leader knew the operations schedule would be more than humans could accomplish, with sailors pushing into the night, so getting the priorities right seemed important. Ziggy was also new at this. Until the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, he had skippered the fleet carrier Wasp. Sprague’s first op with the little CVEs had been the Morotai landings, where he had figured in the loss of destroyer escort Shelton and submarine Seawolf. That rankled.

  Suddenly a message tore Cliff Sprague away from his preparations. One of the Avengers on antisub patrol described an enemy fleet, the Kurita fleet. The plane was one of the radar-equipped Avengers used for night missions. From the Kadashan Bay of Taffy 2, Ensign Hans L. Jensen had been startled when his radarman told him of a big mass of blips to the north, and he went to investigate, even though the location lay outside their patrol zone. He sent his report to Natoma Bay, the flagship of Rear Admiral Stump’s Taffy 2. Then Ensign William C. Brooks of the jeep carrier St. Lo saw the enemy too. Jensen’s initial report had been garbled in transmission; Brooks supplied full details.

  Ziggy thought the pilot had screwed up and was reporting units of Halsey’s fast battleship force. Admiral Sprague quotes himself, talking into the squawk box, “Air Plot, tell him to check his identification.”

  “Identification of enemy force confirmed,” Brooks replied. “Ships have pagoda masts.”

  Confirmations piled up rapidly. Japanese voice transmissions were heard on the radio net; sailors reported seeing bursts of exploding antiaircraft shells against the horizon. At 6:45 a.m. radar on Rear Admiral Sprague’s flagship registered the same targets. Shortly thereafter, lookouts reported seeing pagoda masts too.

  Ziggy Sprague had been in tight places before. At Pearl Harbor, he had had to thread his way through the wreckage of the Japanese attack to get his oiler, the Tangier, out of the base. Target ship Utah, moored right next to Tangier, would be blasted by the attackers. Right after, the Tangier spent harrowing weeks accompanying clumsy U.S. attempts to succor Wake Island, when it very much seemed like the relief efforts would lead to the first-ever clash at sea between aircraft carriers. Sprague had then taken the Tangier to the South Pacific, where she served as mother ship for PBY Catalina patrol planes right through the Coral Sea action, which was the very first aero-naval battle. But those episodes paled next to Ziggy’s predicament off Samar.

  Admiral Sprague details the thoughts rushing through his head: The Japanese would continue to parallel the Samar coast down to Leyte Gulf and send some cruisers to finish off Taffy 3. He didn’t think his thin-sk
inned CVEs could last more than fifteen minutes against this heavily armed and armored enemy. But if Taffy 3 could get the Japanese to home on it, Sprague reasoned, their arrival at Leyte might be delayed long enough for help to arrive.

  As had Kurita, Sprague made crucial decisions in the very first moments. At 6:50 a.m., he ordered a turn from a northerly course to one directly east, toward rainsqualls in the distance. He increased speed to sixteen knots, then to the maximum eighteen. Minutes later he ordered all carriers to launch available planes against the Japanese. Ziggy also asked for planes that had gone off on missions to be returned so they could join in. Worried ship identifications might be mistaken—probably a result of the Morotai tragedy—Admiral Sprague cautioned his crews to verify targets before dropping weapons. At 6:57, hoping to confuse enemy gunners, he ordered CVEs to make smoke. Moments later Admiral Sprague extended that order to all vessels. The first warships reached the shelter of the rain just about twenty minutes after spotting the Japanese.

  All were within the squall by 7:15 a.m. At that point the Taffy 3 commander ordered his escorts to attack. He also altered course to the southeast. Ziggy wanted to draw Kurita farther away from the San Bernardino Strait, the presumed Japanese escape hatch.

  The other Taffies of Tom Sprague’s task group acted to support the embattled force. Felix Stump’s Taffy 2 launched its own air strikes. The night before, in the expectation of mounting air attacks to finish off the Nishimura unit and Shima fleet, Admiral Kinkaid had instructed Task Group 77.4 to load the Grummans with torpedoes rather than bombs. Tom Sprague’s Taffy 1 had already sent a strike group after those remnants, but Stump had not, and now his planes could quickly be rearmed. The action this fateful morning was all catch-as-catch-can, planes taking off in ones, twos, or more, whenever they could, and returning to rearm and go out again.

  Desperation focused the crews. One officer aboard the jeep White Plains had gone to the ship’s store the previous day and bought a whole case of gum, intending to share it with his friends and the sailors of his division. With the battle he began to chew gum furiously, one stick after another. By nightfall he had gone through the entire case—and he’d not shared any of it.

  William Kunstler (no relation to the famed lawyer) was a machinist’s mate with the torpedo squadron aboard the Kitkun Bay. He awoke that morning to misty storm and overcast gray sky. He’d just been relieved and was headed for breakfast when his CVE called “battle stations.” The mate reached his post, where flashes could be seen on the horizon. At the next set of gun flashes he asked a friend who had a watch to give him a mark and he started counting. Kunstler got to seven and had just decided the shot had to be over (beyond the CVE) when there was a huge explosion right next to the ship. Geysers from exploding shells were everywhere. They had colors, too. A seaman on the White Plains cried out, “They’re shooting at us in Technicolor!”

  • • •

  GENERAL CHASE ORDERS put much of the onus on the Japanese cruiser commanders. The most important unit here was Vice Admiral Shiraishi Kazutaka’s Cruiser Division 7. His ships took off pell-mell after Taffy 3, dashing to match Sprague’s turn to the east. In thirty minutes they would cut the range by half. Shiraishi was determined to succeed. He knew that Koyanagi Tomiji, an Etajima classmate, watched closely from Kurita’s nearby flagship.

  Admiral Shiraishi obtained his initial sighting data from Mayuzumi’s Tone at 6:47 a.m., followed almost immediately by news that the Americans were changing course. Shiraishi clearly anticipated the decision Kurita would make. His actions did not at all conform to Ugaki Matome’s complaint that units were slow to act due to uncertainty about what the command would order. Shiraishi did not stand around complaining that the orders were obscure, unexplained, or slow. Rather, at 6:52, before Kurita’s decision (when Tone reported the enemy moving to escape), the admiral ordered a course of due south and an increase to number four battle speed (thirty-one knots). A minute later Shiraishi instructed his cruisers to prepare for gun action to port. At 6:57, he ordered full speed. Two minutes later he changed that to maximum battle speed (thirty-five knots). It was then that Kurita came on line with formal attack orders.

  Visit http://bit.ly/1sayCBW for a larger version of this map.

  Shiraishi Kazutaka had a lot to do with Cruiser Division 7’s fighting spirit. He had held the command for nearly half a year, so the Lingga training with Kurita was his time to become familiar with the men and the ships. The fifty-two-year-old admiral had trained as a torpedoman, but Shiraishi had spent most of the decade before Pearl Harbor in staff jobs—in China, with the NGS, at Combined Fleet. Only for one year did he command a cruiser. When war came, Shiraishi had been chief of staff to Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake, who then held Kurita’s job as leader of the Second Fleet. Shiraishi had been at several naval actions, most notably at Midway, during the Guadalcanal campaign, and in Japan’s invasion of Indonesia. But he had never held a position of command during those campaigns.

  He was desperate to get into the action, but duty had called Shiraishi away. In 1943, the Navy had used his staff experience, making Shiraishi the chief of research at the War College. Finally, he had obtained a seagoing command, Cruiser Division 7. The responsibility weighed heavily, and he felt lucky to be backed by fine warships and good sailors.

  The fight began well. This cruiser force entered the lists with determination. Shiraishi’s heavy cruisers were formidable warships, every one of them capable of slaughtering a CVE. Suzuya opened fire first, at destroyers, at 7:00 a.m. Five minutes later Shiraishi’s flagship Kumano signaled the rest of the division that they were closing the distance to the enemy. The admiral radioed, “INTEND ENGAGE TO STARBOARD.” Five minutes later he ordered his cruisers to open fire. Captain Mayuzumi first used Tone’s main battery to starboard at 7:13.

  Almost simultaneously American planes appeared and fought using whatever they had. Avengers of Taffy 3 were armed with either bombs (if they had been intending to head for air support over Leyte) or depth charges (if on antisub flights). Only Admiral Stump’s Taffy 2, at first, seemed able to get many torpedo-armed planes up. Fighters strafed with their machine guns. Those armed with light bombs and rockets for ground support expended them against warships instead. Unlike Halsey’s big carriers, the CVEs were equipped largely with older-model Wildcats, but they did their best. Like gnats or mosquitoes, the planes became a constant distraction for Japanese in the chase, at first by one plane or two, later by fours, and, as the morning wore on, in real attack groups of twenty, thirty, or more warplanes.

  The experience of Lieutenant (Junior Grade) L. E. Waldrop of the St. Lo illustrates how distracting the planes could be. Waldrop had launched for a ground-support mission with eight 100-pound bombs and two rockets on his Wildcat. He made for the scene of the action and, with Taffy 3 hidden inside the squall, went for a group of four Japanese heavy cruisers, the Shiraishi unit. Waldrop’s bombs were not big—at that weight they would barely scratch a cruiser—so he was very careful with them. On two attack runs, the pilot released no munitions at all. Then he dropped half his bombs on each run, then combined rockets and machine guns in his passes, and finally made a pair of strafing runs. When Waldrop landed he found a three-foot gash carved out of his wing. Squadron mate Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Fields dropped depth charges ahead of a heavy cruiser and watched her run over them, but the ship showed no sign of damage. Lieutenant (Junior Grade) J. H. Gore, also of the St. Lo, dropped his little bombs over a heavy cruiser too. He thought five of them made a pattern along her deck. Then the ship sped past him.

  Admiral Shiraishi led the cruiser column in the Kumano. Second ship was Captain Teraoka Masao’s Suzuya. Teraoka made an odd fit. A submariner until that summer, he had joined the ship only at the beginning of September. Teraoka had to depend on the expertise of his chief gunner, Commander Tachikawa Hideo. A smoke screen grew around Taffy 3. At about 7:10 a.m., a U.S. destroyer charged out of it. Tachikawa fired Suzuya’
s 8-inch guns when the range dropped below 11,000 yards. Suzuya was looking for her first hit when the destroyer shot back.

  Neither Teraoka nor Tachikawa knew it, but they were facing a three-quarter Cherokee/Creek Indian. Commander Ernest Evans, skipper of the destroyer Johnston, had been born in Muskegee, Oklahoma. His mom still lived in Tulsa. Evans believed the purpose of escorts—to interpose themselves between their charges and the enemy—justified the torpedo attack he intended. That initiative reflected well on Commander Evans, who had fought every step of the way to get where he was. Enlisting in the National Guard right out of high school, he joined the Navy from there, applying to Annapolis as an enlisted sailor. In the stiff and quietly prejudiced U.S. Navy of the late twenties and thirties, Evans’s open ambition and clear determination earned him a nickname, “the Chief.” That did not prevent the Navy from relegating the Cherokee to a post at the helm of a tugboat, but in 1941, he’d been sent to the China Station just ahead of the coming war, and the Chief ended up as the executive officer of the USS Alden, the Asiatic Fleet veteran of the Battle of the Java Sea. Succeeding to command of that ship, Ernest Evans had achieved his métier, and he took the Alden to the Gulf of Mexico, where he met Ziggy Sprague, then staff chief of the naval district. Now Commander Evans had a new Fletcher-class destroyer, and with his Johnston, he was determined to defend Sprague’s jeeps. Junior officers viewed Evans as a bull-voiced firebrand who spouted orders, his mastery and skill sparking the crew to fight like demons. Once the destroyer got within a distance of 9,000 or 10,000 yards, Commander Evans launched torpedoes, anxious to get them off before the Japanese crippled him. The ten fish were set for maximum range and a slow speed with a narrow spread.