The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

by James D. Hornfischer

WITH THEIR SINKING OF the Musashi, Halsey’s Third Fleet carrier pilots had dealt the most concentrated and crushing aerial assault on a warship in recorded history. The battleship had absorbed seventeen bomb hits and nineteen torpedo hits before going under. At Pearl Harbor a single bomb had caused the catastrophic magazine explosion that destroyed the Arizona; two torpedo hits had capsized the Oklahoma. The Musashi’s torturous end showed how far naval aviation had come. The sinking of the Musashi was the first time a Japanese battleship had been sunk solely by air attack. That the ship had been the largest one afloat only underscored the point.

  But the Musashi was not a carrier, and so Halsey was not satisfied. All his career he had dreamed of bringing an enemy carrier force within range of his planes. His every instinct told him that they were nearby, moving toward some objective that could only as yet be guessed at. His gut told him that the Japanese would not commit their fleet to battle without carriers to support them.

  Intelligence reports brought him tantalizing hints of their whereabouts, yet for days the imperial flattops eluded him. He dreaded the thought that the enemy carriers might sit out this campaign altogether, as they had done during the Gilberts and Marshalls campaigns in 1943. Worse, he worried that the Navy might repeat its timid performance in the Marianas, letting Japanese carriers slip away in the night. If the Japanese would not come to him, he resolved, he would go to them.

  He had more than enough strength to make a complete rout of it, if he could find them. Among the ninety-four combatant vessels of the Third Fleet were six powerful battleships—the fast new breed, with sixteen-inch guns and the very latest fire-control systems, ably commanded by Vice Adm. Willis “Ching” Lee, an expert in every gun from a. 45-caliber to a sixteen-inch, a member of the 1920 U.S. Olympic rifle team, and the hero of the naval battle for Guadalcanal, where his flagship Washington had sunk the battleship Kirishima. But carriers were the Third Fleet’s centerpiece. Halsey had sixteen of them, eight heavy and eight light, packed with planes and divided into four task groups commanded by the best aviation minds the Navy had yet produced. Admiral Mitscher, the most aggressive carrier commander of the war next to Halsey, flew his flag aboard the Lexington in command of the Third Fleet’s carrier element, named Task Force 38. Under Mitscher were Vice Adm. John S. McCain aboard the Wasp, Rear Adm. Frederick C. Sherman aboard the Essex, Rear Adm. Gerald F. Bogan aboard the Intrepid, and Rear Adm. Ralph E. Davison aboard the Franklin. Between them they had nearly twelve hundred aircraft, with battle-hardened fighter pilots—twenty-nine of them aces—flying the marvelous new F6F Hellcat, as well as torpedo-bomber and dive-bomber pilots flying Avengers and Helldivers. Six heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers, and no fewer than fifty-seven destroyers rounded out Halsey’s force.

  He would crush the Japanese—if only he could get out of babysitting MacArthur. The general and his Army planners expected the Third Fleet to guard their northern flank, protecting the troop transports and the beachhead at Leyte. Nimitz and the Navy, on the other hand, felt pressure to let Halsey go hunting. In the Leyte battle plan, these two prerogatives collided in a way that allowed the second to defeat the first. On one hand, the Third Fleet was charged to “COVER AND SUPPORT FORCES OF THE [SEVENTH FLEET] IN ORDER TO ASSIST IN THE SEIZURE AND OCCUPATION IN THE CENTRAL PHILIPPINES.” It was to “DESTROY ENEMY NAVAL AND AIR FORCES IN OR THREATENING THE PHILIPPINE AREA.” So far so good: Halsey would attack only if a Japanese fleet threatened the Philippines. But at the final hour Nimitz had given Halsey the wiggle room the aggressive commander craved, permitting his standing orders to be modified by means of Operations Plan 8–44. It read: IN CASE OPPORTUNITY FOR DESTRUCTION OF A MAJOR PORTION OF THE ENEMY FLEET IS OFFERED OR CAN BE CREATED, SUCH DESTRUCTION BECOMES THE PRIMARY TASK.

  This new mandate was broad enough to erase Halsey’s duty to MacArthur and Kinkaid. He was free to abandon guard duty. He had the discretion to chase the Japanese Navy regardless of the Seventh Fleet’s needs or expectations. Indeed, Halsey now enjoyed not only the liberty to pursue an enemy fleet, his “primary task,” but the operational flexibility to “create” such an opportunity in the first place. If his degree of creative license was open to interpretation, Halsey, whose ears were tuned to hear what they wanted to hear, could be counted upon to make the most of it. Suddenly offensive operations sounded like Halsey’s primary objective, whether the beachhead was safeguarded or not. As for protecting MacArthur, Halsey figured, wasn’t that what the Seventh Fleet was for?

  At 3:12 on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, Halsey had sent to his commanders a contingency plan providing for the formation of Task Force 34, to be composed of four fast battleships, the Iowa, New Jersey, Washington, and Alabama, five cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. Under Willis Lee’s command, they would stand ready to guard San Bernardino Strait against a possible about-face by the Japanese Center Force. Admiral Kinkaid overheard the message and assumed his Seventh Fleet’s northern flank was protected. Monitoring the radio traffic from his headquarters at Pearl Harbor, Nimitz too believed that Task Force 34 had been detached to stand watch over a possible reversal of course by Kurita’s wounded but still-dangerous Center Force.

  At 3:40 P.M., less than thirty minutes after Halsey circulated his battle plan, Third Fleet fliers spotted one of Ozawa’s task groups. Halsey’s moment had arrived: he had found enemy carriers. Confronted with two enemy fleets—a mysterious carrier force lurking to his north and a ravaged and retreating Center Force several hundred miles to his west—and thinking it “childish” to stand idle sentry over San Bernardino Strait when such plentiful game had been flushed, Halsey planned to attack the carriers at dawn’s first light. At 8:22 P.M. on October 24 Halsey ordered Admirals Bogan, Davison, Sherman, and Lee to sail north after Ozawa’s force. As Samuel Eliot Morison memorably observed, “Halsey was no man to watch a rathole from which the rat might never emerge.” Halsey retired early, leaving it to his chief of staff, Rear Adm. Robert B. “Mick” Carney, to put his orders into effect during the night.

  Halsey’s subordinate admirals had doubts about his decision. Bogan, having reviewed pilot reports saying that Kurita’s Center Force had turned around and resumed its course toward San Bernardino Strait, drafted a message to Halsey, then called his fleet admiral over the TBS radio and read it to Halsey’s staff himself. “Yes, yes, we have that information,” replied the staffer. The abruptness of the response deterred Bogan from explicitly recommending that Willis Lee’s battle line, together with Bogan’s carriers Intrepid, Cabot, and Independence and the other ships of Task Group 38.2, turn south and cover the strait.

  Willis Lee was similarly put off. The battleship admiral notified Halsey via signal flags that the Japanese carriers dangling to the north were a decoy and that Kurita’s retreat had been temporary. In response Lee received only a pro forma “Roger.” Lee later called via the TBS radio to make the same point again. He was sure, he said, that Kurita was headed for the strait. No further reply came. He let the matter rest.

  Shortly after Halsey’s second in command, Admiral Mitscher, went to sleep for the night, Mitscher’s chief of staff, Cdre. Arleigh Burke, received the sighting report from the night fliers from the Independence and confirmed its essential facts at 11:05. Kurita was in San Bernardino Strait. Burke and another officer woke Mitscher and told him they considered it urgent to send Lee south. Mitscher asked them whether Halsey had gotten the report. They said yes—to which the vice admiral replied, “If he wants my advice, he’ll ask for it.” With that Mitscher went back to sleep.

  * * *

  ONCE THIRD FLEET SEARCH planes had discovered Ozawa’s Northern Force on the afternoon of October 24, the Americans at last had a full picture of the Japanese naval presence around the Philippines: Nishimura’s Southern Force was marching toward destruction in Surigao Strait to the south; Kurita’s big Center Force, hit hard by Halsey’s aviators that afternoon, had lost the superbattleship Musashi and the heavy cruiser Myoko and was in the Sibuyan Sea; and now came Ozawa
, tantalizingly on the edge of the search perimeter to the north.

  Without the benefit of hindsight, who in October 1944 could have known for sure exactly what Ozawa had? An intelligence report received by Willis Lee suggested that two new fleet carriers, the Amagi and Katsuragi, had recently joined the Combined Fleet. If the two new ships sailed with the veteran Zuikaku, such a carrier force could pose a powerful threat to Halsey and MacArthur both, assuming it had enough planes and pilots. The day before, a lucky Japanese bomb had sunk the Third Fleet light carrier Princeton, with a secondary explosion that inflicted even heavier loss of life aboard the light cruiser Birmingham, alongside to assist her. Halsey incorrectly surmised that Ozawa’s planes had been responsible for the attack. And like every other graduate of the Naval War College, he had been schooled never to divide his strength in a combat zone.

  Among the Third Fleet’s operational brain trust, everyone except Halsey himself seemed to know what was coming. As far as he was concerned, he was right where he belonged: patrolling Poseidon’s Pacific precincts, running down enemy aircraft carriers wherever he might find them. Other considerations had seldom waylaid him from that pursuit. As commander of the Enterprise carrier task group on December 7, Halsey had cursed his luck for missing the chance to intercept the Japanese Pearl Harbor strike force. (In reality, he would not likely have survived the encounter.) Reportedly his first words upon seeing the destruction at Pearl were “Before we’re through with ’em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!” That fighting spirit animated his every move. The public had embraced his feisty public persona. They didn’t call him the Bull because he sat around babysitting troop transports when larger quarry was just over the horizon.

  He hated the nickname. “Bull” was the creation of a press corps eager to give the public a larger-than-life figure in whom to place their hopes against an implacable enemy. He disdained it as artifice, a fictitious character whose phony, flamboyant persona was one of the petty humiliations a man suffers when swallowed by fame.

  But if Halsey had not already been known as the Bull, the papers would have had little choice but to so name him now, if only for the snorting manner in which he lowered his horns and took the entire Third Fleet—carriers, battleships, everything—in pursuit of Admiral Ozawa, the matador of Cape Engaño, and his dangling red cape.

  Meanwhile, Kurita’s powerful squadron raced through San Bernardino Strait by night, fighting a treacherous eight-knot current but aided by the glow of navigation lights arrayed on either side of the channel. The fact that the lights had been switched on had been duly noted by Third Fleet fliers. Night reconnaissance pilots from the light carrier Independence had spotted the beacons and reported the illuminated channel as a suspicious sign, even as Halsey was steaming north in preparation for a morning strike on Ozawa. The night fliers’ inconvenient report was not enough to pull the Bull away from his northward course. He would not divide his force in the face of the enemy. Nor would he stand idly by while an enemy carrier force—white whale to his Ahab—taunted him to his north.

  * * *

  AT THREE A.M. ON Wednesday, October 25, Takeo Kurita led his Center Force out of San Bernardino Strait north of Samar, heartened, delighted, and above all surprised by the absence of an American welcoming committee. Kurita had expected American battleships to greet him. If dreadnoughts were not waiting, then surely he would tangle again with submarines. The trauma of the ambush in the Palawan Passage was fresh in his mind. But there were no submarines; at least there were no torpedo wakes. Since it was dark, there were no new swarms of planes like the ones that had struck down the Musashi the afternoon before.

  At 5:30 A.M., in preparation for daylight, Kurita ordered his fleet out of its multicolumned night-search disposition and into a circular antiaircraft formation. Owing to the wide, thirteen-mile front that his squadron spanned, the reorientation would take more than an hour to complete. When morning dawned, they would take their chances against whatever the U.S. Navy might hit them with, then steam south and do their emperor’s bidding with MacArthur’s invasion force in Leyte Gulf.

  Thirteen

  It was 5:45 A.M. on October 25, a half hour before dawn, when a TBM Avenger piloted by Bill Brooks, with Joe Downs squeezed into the gun turret and Ray Travers at the radio set below, slingshotted from the deck of the USS St. Lo and climbed toward the dark eastern horizon. At the same time, Oldendorf was leading his cruisers in pursuit of the remnants of the late Admiral Nishimura’s Southern Force, planes from Halsey’s Third Fleet were taking wing to strike Ozawa’s carriers. For Brooks and the other pilots flying from Taffy 3’s CVEs, it was time to hunt submarines.

  The previous afternoon Brooks and his squadronmates had returned from patrol to hear reports that a great victory had been won by the better-publicized harpoonists flying from the big carriers of Halsey’s Third Fleet. When word came down that Halsey’s planes had struck Kurita’s Center Force—had actually sunk the Musashi, the sister of the Yamato, the world’s biggest battleship, and forced the rest of the task force into retreat—it appeared there was little possibility of getting into the thick of the action.

  Aboard the Fanshaw Bay, Rear Adm. Clifton Sprague had been keeping close tabs on Taffy 3’s air activities, monitoring their radio reports and, when necessary, directing their movements. The night before, Admiral Kinkaid had ordered the commander of all three Taffies, Rear Adm. Thomas Sprague, to prepare for a busy morning. One group would fly down into the Sulu Sea to help Oldendorf track down any stragglers from the night action at Surigao Strait. The Seventh Fleet commander also instructed Sprague to send a dawn patrol to the north, over San Bernardino Strait.

  Every morning the thirteen ships of Taffy 3 were abustle with activity long before sunup. Aboard the six CVEs, crews were busy in the hangar deck and on the flight deck readying planes for the morning launch. From the bridge of the Fanshaw Bay, turned eastward into the wind, Ziggy Sprague watched his planes take flight. A dozen Wildcat fighters went up to fly patrol over Leyte Island, protecting troops there from Japanese air attacks. It had taken just eight minutes for the plane spotters and catapult team on the Gambier Bay to put eight Wildcats aloft. The St. Lo launched four more. Fifteen minutes later another group of Wildcats went up to cover Taffy 3. They were followed by a mixed group of Wildcats and Avengers armed to strike at Japanese ground positions on Leyte.

  The antisubmarine patrol from the St. Lo, consisting of four Avengers and two Wildcats, were the last Taffy 3 planes to take off on routine morning missions. Bill Brooks, Tom Van Brunt, and two other Avenger pilots—Lt. (jg) George H. MacBride and Lt. (jg) Gerald E. Fields—fanned out to all four points of the compass centered on their task unit. With the planes aloft and morning general quarters over, the crews of the thirteen ships returned to their bunks or went to the mess to grab a little breakfast.

  Chewing an unlit cigar—smoking in the cockpit was forbidden—Brooks took his Avenger to four thousand feet, searching for a suitable aerie from which to monitor the waters below. Though sunrise was at 6:27 A.M., the cloudy morning meant full daylight would be late in coming. Wherever a rainsquall lay, the gray clouds fell to the sea like drapes. Brooks climbed their layers, seeking a higher ceiling where he might watch a wider stretch of ocean. The CVE pilots were not instrument rated. As a saying in the ready room went, “If the birds don’t fly, neither do we.” On the morning of October 25 the birds flew. They just didn’t see especially well.

  One never knew where a submarine might lurk. As for the rest of the Japanese fleet, it seemed that threat was well in hand. Overnight incomplete accounts of Oldendorf’s victory at Surigao Strait had reached the ships of Taffy 3. The TBS circuits burned with the news.

  Aboard the Samuel B. Roberts, Captain Copeland, giddy from his impromptu all-night eavesdropping session in the CIC, celebrated with his staff. The victory meant that Sprague’s group had little to fear from the Japanese. Certainly nothing could get at them from the south. And the idea of a threat
coming down from the north was less worrisome still. The Third Fleet was there, its striking power dwarfing even that of Oldendorf’s formidable group. An enemy fleet aiming to reach MacArthur on the beachhead at Leyte would have to get through Halsey first. His Third Fleet had already proven its mettle against the most powerful ships Japan could muster. The Japanese had nothing that could touch it.

  Seventh Fleet operations plans were explicit that “any major enemy naval force approaching from the north will be intercepted and attacked by Third Fleet covering force.” Admiral Kinkaid had been secure in the knowledge that Willis Lee’s Task Force 34 was blocking the strait with its four battleships. He knew the task force was likely to be short on air cover—not that there was any pressing need for it. Certainly he wasn’t expecting any surprises.

  Some twenty miles northwest of Taffy 3, Bill Brooks, at the stick of his Avenger, continued searching for openings in the layers of cumulus. The weather did not cooperate. As he finished an eastbound leg of his improvised search pattern and turned to the left heading north, another Avenger came into view. The pilot, probably Ens. Hans Jensen from the Taffy 2 carrier Kadashan Bay, who was investigating a strange blip on his radioman’s radar display, waved at him and went on his way. A few minutes later Brooks swung his plane clear of a big squall and found what he was looking for: a large hole in the floor of the clouds.

  Then Ensign Brooks found what he was not looking for: there, spanning the visible slice of ocean below, were ships, lots of them. Against the blue-black dawning sea, their darkened shapes appeared, a majestic assortment of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers trailing white wakes that betrayed their southeasterly course and considerable speed. Brooks flipped on the intercom and told Downs and Travers, “Hey, look at that. Halsey must have come down from the north.” It had to be Halsey, the heavy units of the Third Fleet, in all their armor-clad glory.