Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  Commander Hirayama Shigeo, chief gunner on Shiraishi’s flagship, the Kumano, had been dozing again when the action began. As he went to his battle station, in the main gun director high in the conning tower, Hirayama could see carrier-based torpedo planes. He wondered where they had come from. He remembered the weather as clear, with few clouds and little wind. Once he could use his gun director, he could actually see the planes taking off from the Taffy 3 jeeps. Captain Hitomi Soichiro had ordered Hirayama to shoot at the CVEs. His flak guns barked at the planes. They could see destroyers, but no one paid them any mind. But in fact the Johnston was launching her torpedoes.

  Japanese gunners shot at the jeep carriers. The flagship designated the target at 7:10 a.m. Fire commenced right away. By 7:16 a.m., lookouts were reporting one of the jeeps on fire. A couple of minutes later Shiraishi ordered fire shifted to a different CVE.

  Kumano may have ignored the destroyers, but other ships did not. Light cruiser Noshiro, leading Destroyer Flotilla 2 to take station behind the Japanese battleships, opened fire at an enemy “cruiser” at 7:14 a.m. Moments later, she estimated the range at 20,500 yards. Battleship Nagato contributed a 16-inch salvo. The Johnston suffered several 14-inch hits around this time, which must have come from battleship Kongo since the Haruna checked fire at 7:13. Captain Sugiura Kaju’s heavy cruiser Haguro saw a destroyer begin shooting at that instant. Sugiura thought she was aiming at him. (On the Johnston, Commander Evans had told his gunners to focus on the lead Japanese cruiser, the Kumano.) So Haguro rigged for starboard gun action and loosed a broadside at 7:15. The Yamato would not be heard from until 7:21, and then only with her 6-inch secondary armament.

  Commander Evans’s warship would be among the first that morning to benefit from the weaknesses in Japanese gunnery. One shortcoming is directly attributable to mistaken identification of Taffy 3 as fleet carriers, battleships, and cruisers—the Japanese used armor-piercing shells. These were optimal against battleships, but very wrong to use against small destroyers and even smaller destroyer-escorts. Compiling lessons learned in the battle, Tom Sprague noted that he could not find a single record of the detonation of a Japanese armor-piercing shell. The 14-inch shells that fell on the Johnston thus caused minimal damage. Compounding that error would be the extremely tight pattern of shell fall. Americans made estimates of 200 to 300 yards, even down to 50 yards, for salvo dispersion. This made it harder to aim. A wider dispersion pattern meant greater chances to straddle, hence quicker zeroing in.

  Despite the hurricane of enemy shells, the Johnston stayed afloat. Lieutenant Robert C. Hagen, her gunnery officer, estimated they made as many as forty 5-inch shell hits on the Kumano. The shells were too small to inflict critical damage, but they killed Japanese sailors caught in the open and interfered with Commander Hirayama’s own gunfire. Johnston’s torpedoes accounted for the crippling damage. About 7:24 a.m., Kumano lookouts spotted several torpedo wakes to starboard. One tin fish hit Hitomi’s cruiser and blew off her bow forward of frame 10. At first, the crew thought they had been struck by planes; then they realized the Cherokee destroyer had gotten them. Hirayama decided those American destroyers were very daring.

  Johnston’s torpedo put Vice Admiral Shiraishi out of business. Captain Hitomi needed to assess the wounds. Executive officer Sanada Yuji led counterflooding to stabilize the ship. The chief engineer, Commander Moriyama Sakae, decided the cruiser would still be able to make twelve knots. That relieved Captain Hitomi, but Admiral Shiraishi needed a vessel able to race after Taffy 3. He called for a cutter to transfer his flag and for the Suzuya to come alongside and take aboard himself and half his staff. Shiraishi designated his flagship at 7:41 a.m. But nearly a dozen Grummans peppered Suzuya with bombs. A near miss to port aft and she lost a propeller. Teraoka’s cruiser suddenly found her maximum speed cut to twenty-three knots. Still the ship stopped smartly. Captain Teraoka might have been a submariner, but he was a good ship driver. Shiraishi had only just completed his transfer at about 8:00 a.m. and already he was trapped again.

  Admiral Shiraishi’s energetic pursuit degenerated. First, he ordered the Kumano to follow the column; then his new flagship was crippled too. In a bid to minimize damage, Captain Teraoka cut Suzuya’s speed more, to fourteen knots. Cruiser Division 5 still chased the Americans with two ships. Shiraishi could have attached Tone and Chikuma, his last two cruisers, to Division 5, but he did not. Instead, at 7:32, Shiraishi ordered Captain Norimitsu Saiji of the Chikuma to assume command and continue the chase. The Tone wore out four 8-inch gun sleeves, expending 419 rounds. Kumano now received orders to retire from the battle zone.

  Much later the anxious vice admiral would succeed in moving his flag again, to heavy cruiser Tone. That was just as well, because Norimitsu’s Chikuma never came back. Planes from Admiral McCain’s Task Group 38.1, finally appearing in the Samar battle, caught her. As it turned out, Captain Mayuzumi’s Tone would be the only one of Shiraishi’s heavy ships to return. The Suzuya would be finished off by Taffy planes. Captain Hitomi’s Kumano moved off toward safety, recrossing the Sibuyan Sea to Coron Bay, and would endure a lengthy ordeal. Halsey’s warplanes would hit her, leaving the cruiser badly damaged. She made temporary repairs at Manila. The Kumano survived three sub attacks on her withdrawal to Taiwan but succumbed to a fourth, new damage, and had to be towed back to a bay on Luzon’s west coast. Planes from the Halsey fleet sank her there on November 25.

  The Leyte experience seared the proud Shiraishi Kazutaka. His powerful cruiser division was blasted to practically nothing; thousands of sailors perished in his first wartime command. The Tone would not survive the rest of the war either. Nor would Shiraishi’s hometown—he was a native of Nagasaki.

  After Leyte, the Imperial Navy put Shiraishi in charge of the care and feeding of merchant marine sailors, an ignominious end to a fighting sailor’s career. Small wonder that Allied intelligence interrogators found Shiraishi “a broken and sad old man” who “continually gazed into space and seemed unable to concentrate.”

  • • •

  WHILE THE THREAT from Japanese cruisers might be diminishing, that could not be apparent to Ziggy Sprague. The admiral swore expletives at Bull Halsey, who had failed to block the San Bernardino. But Sprague quickly appreciated his situation, had sound judgment, and took practical measures.

  Coming out of the squall, he saw the Japanese had followed outside him on the arc of a circle rather than just punching forward to cut him off. But since they were so much faster, their warships were closing the range anyway—with “depressing rapidity,” to 25,000, then 20,000, then 15,000 yards. The volume and accuracy of the Kurita fleet’s fire sharpened until Sprague again thought his jeeps could not endure another five minutes.

  Rear Admiral Sprague had already mobilized his airplanes for ad hoc air attacks. The smoke screen had been an inspired idea, and the CVEs had benefited from the cover, combined with the squall. Now Sprague warned his plucky little CVEs—each of them had a single pip-squeak 5-inch gun—to prepare for surface engagement. He took the example of Cherokee Evans and ordered his destroyers to hit the Japanese with torpedoes. Evans had initiated, and now Sprague directed—it was a veritable “Charge of the Light Brigade.”

  By 7:30 a.m. the Taffy 3 jeeps had launched ninety-five fresh planes. Some left with no bombs at all, intent on buzzing the enemy for effect.

  • • •

  ABOARD SEVENTH FLEET flagship Wasatch, Admiral Kinkaid read a detective novel and awaited reports he anticipated from Task Group 77.4 and a cruiser-destroyer force he’d sent to mop up Nishimura’s and Shima’s cripples. The news of the new fight raced up Kinkaid’s chain of command. The morning of joyously following the demise of Surigao’s remnants went forgotten amid the emergency of the battle against Kurita.

  Kinkaid discovered that the big Japanese fleet—Americans had been calling it the “Center Force”—was back, and it was a bigger surface unit than anything Allied s
ailors had ever encountered. The initial airplane sighting made that quite clear. By 7:07 a.m., Admiral Kinkaid was so alarmed he sent Halsey another dispatch, not even encoded: “ENEMY [BATTLESHIPS] AND CRUISER REPORTED FIRING ON TU 77.4.3 FROM 15 MILES ASTERN.” The Seventh Fleet commander needed to get Halsey’s attention. Unbeknownst to Kinkaid, it was now, at this moment of disaster for Taffy 3, that Halsey received Seventh Fleet’s triumphant report of engaging the Japanese at Surigao Strait. At the moment Kinkaid’s message went out, Halsey understood him to be happy, not desperate.

  Rear Admiral Sprague also sent a message in plaintext—not encoded. The White House Map Room noted the transmission’s garbled radio call sign. But two features indicate it came from Ziggy Sprague: a notation that the Japanese warships had divided into two formations, generally accurate but visible only to someone on the scene, and the identification of Japanese strength as four battleships and eight cruisers. The latter figure corresponded to Kurita’s six heavy plus two light cruisers and differed slightly from what pilots Jensen and Brooks had reported. That, too, was visible only to someone on the scene. Despite the garbled call sign, FDR’s Map Room correctly attributed the message to Taffy 3.

  This period featured heroics from Ziggy Sprague’s warships, desperation aboard Kinkaid’s flagship, and nonchalance on board Halsey’s. At 7:25 a.m., Admiral Kinkaid put Sprague’s position into another message, repeating his appeal, “REQUEST IMMEDIATE AIR STRIKE. ALSO REQUEST SUPPORT BY HEAVY SHIPS.” In this message Kinkaid inaccurately “revealed” for the first time that his heavy ships were low on ammo. Just two minutes later, Kinkaid put Sprague’s latest information into yet another dispatch to Halsey, repeating his appeal for air strikes and heavy ships.

  In this ten-minute period, the Seventh Fleet commander bid for help he had to know could not be forthcoming. The situation would be rendered far worse by U.S. communications foul-ups—news of the ammunition “crisis” on Kinkaid’s battleships did not reach Halsey until 9:22, and that regarding Kurita’s attack strength came only a little sooner, at 9:03. But Kinkaid certainly got Chester Nimitz’s attention, if not Halsey’s. The CINCPAC sent out the famous message that led Bull Halsey to stomp on his hat (and send the battleships). Equally significant, Nimitz sent a message to U.S. Navy commander Admiral Ernest J. King reporting that radio intercepts indicated a surface naval battle in progress at Taffy 3’s position and with the Japanese in Kurita’s strength.

  Fortunately for all the Allies, by that time, the real situation would have morphed once more.

  • • •

  COMMANDER WILLIAM D. THOMAS, leader of the screen, sailed on the Hoel. Her skipper, Commander Leon Kintberger, at first focused on laying smoke. Sailors groused it made them a target, but the enemy seemed more intent on the carriers. They could see gun flashes from the big Japanese ships and hear the shells pass overhead, sounding like boxcars, on their trajectory toward the jeeps.

  Then Commander Thomas received the order for a torpedo attack. Commander Amos T. Hathaway needed to take his Heermann across the Taffy formation to reach attack position. In the rain and smoke, Heermann nearly collided with destroyer-escort Samuel B. Roberts. The destroyers turned toward Kurita’s fleet and began their runs.

  On the TBS, Thomas passed the attack order to the four destroyer-escorts, which made up the rest of his screen. He called them “little fellows.” Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland of the Roberts was not sure if the term referred to all of the ships or whether they should be attacking separately or in tandem. Commander Thomas told him the “big fellows” would go first, then the destroyer-escorts. The Roberts followed Heermann anyway.

  Hoel led the Heermann on another audacious attack. The Johnston, hit three more times by 6-inch shells (variously attributed to Kongo, Yamato, or a light cruiser), had been gravely damaged but left untouched long enough that Commander Evans could jury-rig means to steer the ship, power for seventeen knots, and maintain gunnery control for three of her five guns. Evans operated in support of Commander Thomas’s other vessels.

  The Hoel went after the nearest enemy battleship, Kongo, and launched on her at about 7:27 a.m. Rear Admiral Shimazaki Toshio, Kongo’s captain, had been preoccupied with marauding aircraft. Moments before, they had disabled the ship’s main range finder. The battleship went into the squall and ceased fire just before Hoel’s torpedo launch. Shimazaki had skippered his battlewagon for more than a year, including the Philippine Sea slugfest, and though he’d spent half the war as a naval district staff chief, he had also led destroyer units and commanded cruisers. He knew how to steer a ship. When crewmen saw torpedoes in the water a little after 7:30, Shimazaki evaded immediately to the southeast.

  The Hoel became the bull’s-eye for a host of Japanese forces, causing her to soon after lose guns, fire control director, and the port engine, and get her rudder jammed in a hard starboard turn. Before long, the number of heavy-caliber hits on this tin can approached a staggering two dozen. But, like Shimazaki’s Kongo, she soon returned to the fray. Commander Kintberger powered his ship up again and went after heavy cruiser Haguro, against which she launched her last five torpedoes at about 7:53 a.m. Hoel had been shot up so badly that torpedomen had to aim manually, with no bridge communications. Also, contributing three deadly torpedoes were destroyer-escorts Raymond and Dennis.

  Meanwhile, the Heermann moved up for her own torpedo strike—and had to put her engines into emergency back full speed to avoid a collision with the Hoel. Just a few minutes before observing Hoel’s torpedo launch, Heermann commenced her own. On her bridge, Amos Hathaway turned to Heermann’s officer of the deck, Lieutenant Robert F. “Buck” Newsome, and said, “Buck, what we need is a bugler to sound the charge!”

  Commander Hathaway also targeted the Haguro. Captain Sugiura Kaju’s cruiser had been firing at escort carriers, the Johnston, and the Hoel, and she picked out the oncoming destroyer plus the small boys now beginning to appear too. The skipper’s sangfroid had become legendary—perhaps a Japanese Cherokee Evans. Sugiura had been one of the “miracle captains” running Tokyo Express missions out of Rabaul, with destroyers shot out from under him, but who came back for more. He stood with the Navy’s premier torpedomen.

  Instantly aware of three torpedo tracks when they appeared to starboard, Sugiura evaded them handily. That was a boon for Vice Admiral Hashimoto Shintaro, who had the flag of his Cruiser Division 5 in Haguro, and who thus avoided the need to find a new flagship, which had bedeviled his comrade Shiraishi as well as fleet commander Kurita. He was about to face that threat again.

  TORPEDOES IN THE WATER

  The incessant hovering of the airplanes and the escorts accounted for much of the disorganization of the Japanese pursuit—more so than any decisions made by Kurita Takeo. Admiral Shiraishi’s story shows that nicely.

  But there is always an exception. Seeking the full cooperation of battleship commander Ugaki Matome, and from abundant goodwill, Admiral Kurita permitted Vice Admiral Ugaki extraordinary liberties. In the Japanese fleet, unit commanders often supplanted ship captains on their own vessels, making the skipper a sort of supernumerary, while the senior officer issued direct orders. Admiral Kurita not only led the Second Fleet; he had also directly commanded a cruiser division (wiped out en route to Leyte by the Allied sub attacks) and therefore had been in charge of the helm of his then flagship Atago. Now he was entitled to lead the Yamato, which in practice meant giving free rein to chief of staff Koyanagi.

  Submarine ambush had put Kurita on the bridge of the Yamato, Vice Admiral Ugaki’s flagship of Battleship Division 1. Ugaki could supplant the behemoth’s skipper, Rear Admiral Morishita Nobuei. But Kurita’s appearance on the scene trumped that. Suddenly it was Ugaki who was the supernumerary. That did not sit well with the battleship driver, a dour sort of fellow. Lookout Koitabashi Kosaku said of Ugaki, “Men loved him or hated him. He was seen as arrogant.” Sometimes arrogance is just smarts. Here it’s hard to dec
ide which.

  After just a salvo or two from Yamato, Admiral Ugaki complained. The fleet chief of staff, he asserted, knew little about gunnery. Ugaki had taught that subject in service schools and demanded he be given back the tactical command of his two ships. Like others of Ugaki’s claims, this one amounts to less than advertised. Yes, Ugaki was a gunner and Koyanagi a torpedoman, but the comparison ended right there. In truth, Koyanagi had far more practical experience both in battle and at sea. Ugaki Matome had not commanded a warship since 1938—and even then, it had only been the vintage battleship Hyuga. At that time, Koyanagi skippered an old ship too, the cruiser Iwate, but he had gone on to lead a destroyer division and captained the heavy cruiser Atago, the battleship Kongo, and two different destroyer flotillas. At the helm of the Kongo off Guadalcanal—with Kurita in charge—Koyanagi had conducted the single most devastating Japanese battleship bombardment of the war. He had also participated in the Japanese evacuation of Guadalcanal. To say Koyanagi was not familiar with gunnery was absurd. In addition, Kurita Takeo had been with Koyanagi off Guadalcanal. Indeed, Koyanagi had been his flag captain, and the two had sunk the Hornet together. They were intimately familiar. Koyanagi had been Kurita’s chief of staff for more than a year.

  Conversely, here was Ugaki, the man who scribbled in his diary that deployment of the destroyer flotillas forward—which would have confused the gun layers—would have been a proper combat tactic. No expert gunner would have agreed. For weeks at Lingga, Ugaki had been an irritant. Tellingly, Kurita had seen fit to employ someone else—the Musashi’s Captain Inoguchi—as his special adviser on gunnery. Now Ugaki’s complaint made it Kurita’s call. Should he vest command in Koyanagi or Ugaki?