by John Prados
Then came the acquisition of targets by electronic means. Radar furnished both Allies and Japanese their first sightings of the most important enemy forces throughout the battle. Technological devices—radar again—won the Battle of Surigao Strait for the Allies by means of controlling the aiming of guns. The Japanese themselves made their first use of (a less sophisticated form of) this technique at Leyte Gulf. Meanwhile another electronic entity, the radio, permitted a measure of close coordination among disparate forces that were widely separated in time and space. The combination of radar and radio for fleet air defense attained new heights of effectiveness in these battles, starting with the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. In short, technological means endowed military forces with even greater powers.
That being said, technology did not eliminate the human factor. At least three major traumas of Leyte Gulf took place because of radio. The Combined Fleet command would be thrown into complete disarray because, in the case of Kurita’s turnaway in the Sibuyan Sea, a field commander sought to inform headquarters of his actions without being able to provide sufficient context. Less than twenty-four hours later the same field commander, faced with a ghost message, made a decision that let his enemy off the ropes. Meanwhile, to reprise Halsey, the sequence of messages surrounding his decisions made about fast battleships had everything to do with the electronic medium but resulted in these vital weapons making very little contribution to monumental events taking place all around them.
While we are on this subject, a word is in order about Thomas C. Kinkaid. Beginning days before Leyte Gulf—indeed, while the Third Fleet still fought off Taiwan—Admiral Kinkaid showed a predilection for prejudgment and some prevarication. At a certain point, Halsey thought the Japanese fleet was reacting to the Taiwan battle and expressed an intention to fight it. Kinkaid immediately resorted to higher authority to force Halsey to abandon that idea. The Seventh Fleet commander did that again when he decided Halsey was not sufficiently dedicated to preinvasion attacks. That was before the Leyte battle had even started.
Kinkaid would be extremely methodical in the way he prepared and conducted the Surigao Strait battle. But when Kurita appeared opposite the Taffies, the radio stream resumed. The sequence of Kinkaid’s messages reported an emergency to be sure, but they did so in a way that ignored the boundaries of what practical help Halsey could give him, again invoked higher authorities, brought aid and comfort to the enemy, misled colleagues regarding the ammunition status of his own battleships, and continued to sound the alarm after Kurita had left the scene. Messages sent in the clear not only indicated a state of emergency, but also aimed to mobilize higher commanders (Nimitz, MacArthur) to intervene. At the same time, those dispatches revealed Kinkaid’s anxiety to the Japanese. They also suggested Kurita was still attacking after he had sailed away, demanding urgency from Halsey when the need for action was gone and the Third Fleet could do nothing more than it already was. All this can be interpreted as Kinkaid panicking, but that is not a very likely scenario. The sequence of Kinkaid’s messages can also be seen as methodical, as were his actions at Surigao Strait, but the object was to use technology to shape the actions of another commander.
Dissonance among colleagues can be damaging, but it was much more tolerable on the Allied side, which enjoyed a marked superiority of force. But problems that had the effect of reducing the capability of an already inferior force are especially crippling. The obvious case on the Japanese side is the question of cooperation between Admirals Nishimura and Shima. The former’s death in the battle eliminates any possibility of a definitive analysis of their differences. On the other hand, the small combat value of both the Nishimura and Shima forces raises the issue of whether Japanese possibilities would have been any greater with the fleets united. In view of the onrush of the Kurita fleet from the other end of Leyte Gulf, the much greater value of the one-two surge of the Japanese in Surigao Strait lay in their requiring Vice Admiral Kinkaid to delay before he could begin moving his battleships to confront a potential Kurita break-in from the north. The value of that delay cancels the impact of any dissonance that may have existed between the two admirals.
The dissonance that was damaging affected the Kurita fleet. The evidence here is quite asymmetrical. Kurita Takeo survived the war but left no record. Ugaki Matome made a record but did not survive the war. Given Vice Admiral Kurita’s general attitudes toward subordinates and sailors, it is doubtful that he held any kind of antipathy for Ugaki. The battleship commander, on the other hand, puts so many backhand criticisms, snide remarks, and even omissions about Admiral Kurita in his diary that it is difficult to suppose that Ugaki had anything other than opprobrium for his commander.
The most important post in the Imperial Navy on the morning of the climax at Leyte Gulf was on the bridge of the Yamato when both Ugaki and Kurita were there, and the fact that the Japanese lost combat capability was because of Ugaki’s resentment for his boss. Whether or not the inference deduced here (that Ugaki actually ordered Yamato’s disastrous torpedo evasion) is correct, Ugaki’s demand of his superior to be accorded control of gunnery represented an explicit statement alluding to his resentment. That expression of simmering anger can only have upset Kurita, adding to his anxieties at the very moment the Second Fleet commander needed all his wits about him. A tense atmosphere on Yamato’s bridge added up to a diminution of Japanese battle ability in that moment. If it is true that Ugaki ordered the portside turn, then he directly holds an even larger share of the blame for Japanese failure at Leyte. Either way, some of the burden is his.
However, Admiral Ugaki might have felt more comfort and less resentful had he had not suffered losses of his own, specifically superbattleship Musashi. Ugaki had lived in that ship for more than a year while it housed Combined Fleet headquarters and recorded that he felt its loss as if losing a part of himself. The principal culprit for this is Ugaki’s successor as Combined Fleet chief of staff, Kusaka Ryunosuke. Imperial Navy planning for Sho had specifically recognized JNAF weakness and provided for husbanding strength until the key moment. The Japanese had even war-gamed the specific scenario of an attack on Taiwan, concluding that withholding the air units was the proper strategy. Kusaka’s haste to commit the air forces to an air-only Sho blunted the very instrument Kurita and Ugaki counted on to get themselves across the dangerous waters they needed to traverse. On the other hand, Admiral Kusaka gains some merit for his suggestion to send a secondary decoy force along the Surigao Strait route, which substantially complicated timing factors in the Allied defense of Leyte.
Presiding over it all had been Toyoda Soemu, the commander in chief. There is a question of whether Toyoda had been too passive—certainly his absence on Taiwan is what opened the door to Kusaka’s throwing away the air arm in the precursor battle. Toyoda’s reluctance to micromanage subordinates had often served him well and freed him to focus on the overall aspects of strategy, but one of the Imperial Navy’s greatest mistakes was to change the nature of the decisive battle doctrine without selling the new objective to the officer corps. That task had been Toyoda’s.
Despite all the mistakes, all the responsibility, all the squandering of forces, the Imperial Navy succeeded in reversing the basic strategic balance. For a moment on the morning of October 25, 1944, the unthinkable happened. In the face of every Allied advantage in intelligence, air and naval forces, technology, and raw combat power, a Japanese surface fleet of great intrinsic strength put American aircraft carriers under its guns. The development was so alarming that Admiral Chester Nimitz risked the Ultra secret to warn his frontline commanders of the enemy’s feat. Courageous sailors in a handful of destroyers, escorts, and expendable aircraft carriers were the ones who turned back the Japanese armada. That was huge. The biggest naval battle in history came down to a few storm-beaten ships on whom the sun never set. Their story will be told forever.
All photos courtesy of the National Archives except where noted.
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p; Pearl Harbor, July 26, 1944. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sits for a portrait photograph, flanked by General Douglas A. MacArthur on the left and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz on the right. They are aboard the heavy cruiser Baltimore, which traveled 2,285 miles to bring the president to meet his key commanders.
The Pearl Harbor conference, morning, July 28. General Douglas MacArthur presents his plan to invade the Philippines as the next stage of the Allies’ Pacific campaign. MacArthur has his pointer aimed directly at Manila.
During his Hawaiian visit, President Roosevelt made use of a very unusual automobile. Here the presidential motorcade arrives for one of the many morale-boosting stops on FDR’s itinerary. Note the president’s Secret Service protection. Presidential detail chief Michael F. Reilly is on the running board at the left, with an unidentified agent on the driver’s side and a truckful of Secret Service agents following. Reilly’s body obscures General MacArthur and President Roosevelt behind him. Admiral Chester Nimitz is just visible behind the waving flag.
Admiral Bill Halsey’s fleet became the nemesis of the Japanese. Here American striking power is manifest, at rest, anchored at Ulithi atoll. The five fleet aircraft carriers in the center are the most evident, but another big carrier and two light carriers are in the left rear. Carriers lined up at the center include the Wasp, the Yorktown, the Hornet, the Hancock, and the Ticonderoga.
Japan’s war effort depended upon the output of oil rigs in Indonesia. This facility in the Netherlands East Indies lay not far from the port Brunei, where the Kurita fleet would stop to fill its bunkers on the way to battle.
The intelligence nerve center of the Pacific War lay behind security fences on Makalapa Hill alongside Pearl Harbor. The nearest of the two wood-frame buildings in the enclosure is the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA). The one behind that is the Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC), den of the code breakers.
Naval Historical Center
First moves. The fateful campaign began with Halsey’s Third Fleet attacking Okinawa and Taiwan. Dive-bomber pilot Lieutenant Rupert Weber, of Air Group 13 on the Franklin, stands next to his damaged plane, looking unhappy. Two days later, on October 14, Weber would not come back from the Halsey fleet’s attack on Taiwan.
The target. MacArthur’s transport force inside Leyte Gulf on A-Day, the moment of the invasion. Japan’s sudden switch to making transports the main target of its operations stunned and disturbed Imperial Navy officers, who were accustomed to thinking of warships as the objects of decisive battle.
Filipinos in outrigger canoes paddle alongside U.S. Navy Patrol Torpedo (PT) boats. The PTs would play an important role in the Battle of the Surigao Strait. The outriggers would move U.S. troops around islands at the mouth of Leyte Gulf.
October 20, 1944. General MacArthur debarks from a landing craft on the beach on the island of Leyte. At the left, in military uniform but tropical helmet, is Philippines president Sergio Osmeña. MacArthur would be sensitive about the letter he wrote to President Roosevelt once ashore.
MacArthur in the original. On page two of his letter to Franklin Roosevelt the general drops the phrase—seen here on line five—that promises his operation will sever the Japanese from their great spoils in the South Seas. In his memoirs MacArthur suppresses that passage.
Author’s collection
Logistics. By this time in the war, Allied forces were expert in landing large quantities of troops and supplies very quickly. Here, road-grading equipment has been used to bulldoze berms of sand on the beach at Tacloban to serve as temporary docks to unload the Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) you see in the picture. Many vehicles can be seen, both waiting on the LSTs and in a truck park ashore.
Ready for anything. The Australian cruisers Australia (middle left) and Shropshire, with a U.S. heavy cruiser (center, distance) in Leyte Gulf. They are seen through the gunsight of a flak piece on the U.S. cruiser Phoenix. The warships would fend off Japanese attackers. Australia would be damaged by a kamikaze strike. The Shropshire would participate in the hurricane bombardment at Surigao Strait.
Death in the night. The Nishimura unit is destroyed by Allied naval forces inside Surigao Strait during the predawn hours of October 25. This was the cannonade that marked the crescendo of the action.
The Ozawa fleet maneuvers off Cape Engaño on October 24. In the foreground steams one of the Imperial Navy’s hybrid battleship-carriers, in the middle distance a light aircraft carrier. The carrier is trailing smoke from fires on board. Near misses of rockets and bombs can be seen both next to the ship and farther away. The many disturbances on the surface of the sea are the impacts of machine guns fired by aircraft or the fall of spent flak shells.
Light aircraft carrier Zuiho settles by the bow before sinking. Attacked at Cape Engaño by planes from the USS Franklin, the Japanese ship had little chance.
Another view of the action. Ozawa’s aircraft carrier Zuikaku, by now the only one left in the formation, is at the center and surrounded by bomb splashes.
Planes from the Franklin also took this photograph on October 24. It is identified as a Nachi-type heavy cruiser in the Cape Engaño action. The ship does look like that type, but Ozawa had none of those ships. In the Ozawa fleet, light cruiser Oyodo bears the closest resemblance. The Nachi, actually Admiral Shima’s flagship, was sighted that day but not attacked.
Japan strikes back. The light carrier Princeton suffers grievous damage from Imperial Navy bombers. Here the cruiser Birmingham closes alongside to help with its water hoses. Later the Birmingham would be badly damaged from an explosion aboard the stricken carrier.
The ready room of aircraft carrier Franklin, with pilots and crew of Torpedo Squadron 13 being briefed for attacks they will make in the Sibuyan Sea on October 24.
Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, October 24. In this photo taken by airmen of the USS Enterprise, Japanese superbattleship Musashi is in extremis. Dark smoke from raging fires alternates with white smoke of detonating bombs. Beside the ship there are circular ripples from near misses. Beyond the Musashi the water spouts of other bombs are visible on both sides of an escorting destroyer.
Battle of the Sibuyan Sea. U.S. Navy planes attack the Kurita fleet. American pilots believed the warship in the foreground to be a light cruiser, likely the Yahagi. If so, the battleship Kongo would be the vessel at middle left and the one commencing a turn at the right would be heavy cruiser Chikuma.
Battleship Nagato bracketed by a pair of bombs hitting the water. The Japanese ship is firing special antiaircraft shells from her main battery.
The Imperial Navy’s superbattleship Yamato. The first good overhead photograph of the Japanese warship would be taken only the day following the battle off Samar.
Battle of Samar, early morning, October 25. Battleship Yamato is in the foreground, with an Imperial Navy heavy cruiser, probably the Haguro, at center, top. They are in hot pursuit of Taffy 3. While not certain from the grainy photograph, it appears that several American planes are going at the Yamato from different angles off the ship’s bow. The picture was taken by a plane from the escort carrier Petrof Bay.
Slowly but surely the Japanese gain on the little American escort carriers with their thin protective screens. Here Taffy 3 vessels desperately make smoke, hoping the screens will hide them from the Japanese.
Kurita loses control. At the height of the battle, the Japanese admiral’s most powerful battleships turn to evade torpedoes and take themselves away from the action. The Japanese leader would never regain the commanding position he had been on the brink of achieving. This picture looks very much like it was taken at that very moment, near eight a.m. That was the only instant in the battle when Kurita’s flagship, Yamato, held to a course diverging from other Japanese vessels, such as the heavy cruiser in the distance to the left. In the center an American plane is pulling up after an attack run on the Yamato.
A Japanese heavy cruiser of the Tone class under weigh at speed during the Samar battle.
The smudge at the center of the Japanese heavy cruiser in this photo, combined with the light patch just ahead of it, indicates the warship has just been struck by a bomb. Splashes in the water to the right of the ship are likely expended antiaircraft shells falling into the sea. An off-color stretch of sea surrounding the ship indicates leaking oil.
Taken by a plane from the escort carrier Natoma Bay, this picture shows the same Imperial Navy warship as in the previous shot. Judging from the oil slick, the silhouette of the heavy cruiser, and the Japanese destroyer standing by in the lower right, American aircrews are witnessing the final moments of the Japanese cruiser Chikuma.
The Japanese find a weapon. Later that day, jeep carrier Santee is struck by a kamikaze suicide bomber. This picture records the instant of the strike, with debris of the airplane flying through the air and American sailors crouching for shelter.
Santee crewmen fight fires resulting from the kamikaze strike and try to keep the planes spotted on the afterdeck from becoming involved in the conflagration. The kamikaze weapon introduces a new factor into the Pacific war.
