by Herman Wouk
At half past twelve, Admiral Kurita, having regrouped his force, decided on his own not to enter Leyte Gulf, Asking no permission from Tokyo, notifying nobody, he turned north to head home through San Bernardino Strait.
The signal flags for reversing course ran up on the New Jersey halyards about a quarter past eleven.
TURN ONE-EIGHT
According to Pug’s chart, the crippled carriers were only forty-five miles away, dodging and burning under the air strikes. Leyte Gulf was three hundred miles to the south. Now, less than an hour’s steaming from the force he had run northward all night and half the day to destroy, Halsey was turning back.
The captain of the Iowa burst into flag plot. Could the admiral tell him what was happening? There was great hunting directly ahead. Why were they turning away?
“Looks like a bigger fight making up back at Leyte Gulf, Skipper.”
“We can’t get there until sunup tomorrow, Admiral. At best.”
“I know,” Pug said in a dry tone that guillotined the conversation, and the captain left.
Pug could not trust himself to talk to the captain. He was in the emotional turmoil of a mutinous ensign. Could Halsey really be throwing away one of the major battles of all time, covering the United States Navy with ignominy, endangering the Leyte landing force, fumbling the winning of the war? Or was he himself — deprived of the big chance of his life to fight a battle-line engagement — too upset to think straight?
Yet he could not stop his mind from working. Even on this turnaround, he judged Halsey was making serious mistakes. Why was he taking six battleships? Two could still press ahead to the Northern Force; surface fire was the right way to sink cripples. And why was he dragging along a mass of destroyers? They would all have to be fueled first.
Pug recalled how Churchill, coming to meet Roosevelt at Argentia aboard the Prince of Wales, had left the destroyer screen behind to speed through a gale faster than they could go. That was a man! Here was the redeeming moment, the very last chance to rush back and gun down the Central Force. Halsey had lost six hours by not turning back at Kinkaid’s first bellow. Only desperate measures would answer now. The Central Force must be a weary battered outfit, perhaps with empty torpedo tubes, low fuel bunkers, possibly even low magazines. Surely it was a moment to pitch all on one throw; to forgo destroyer protection and destroyer torpedoes, and roar down there with the big guns.
But it was not to be. The “rescue run” became an exasperating leisurely saunter at ten knots in the hot humid afternoon. One by one, hour after hour, the destroyers pulled up alongside the battleships to fuel. The carriers went by the other way, at full speed in pursuit of the Northern Force. It was a bitter sight; bitter to be becalmed in this great Battle Line in the midst of vast engagements, not yet having fired a shot.
Bitterer yet was the stench of oil. Pug was observing the refueling from the flag bridge. It was a skillfully done business: each small ship nosing up alongside the giant Iowa, its young skipper on his bridge, far below Pug, matching speeds until relative movement was zero; then the touch-and-go passing of the swaying oil lines over the splashing blue swells between the ships, and the parallel steaming until the little nursing vessel dropped away sated. Pug was used to the sight, yet, like carrier flight operations, he usually enjoyed watching it.
But today, in his overwrought state, the smell of black oil brought back the night of the Northampton’s sinking. That remembrance twisted the knife of his present impotence. Division commander of two battleships, he was being robbed of vengeance for the men who had died in the Northampton, by the bellicose blundering of Bill Halsey.
A despairing vision came over Pug Henry as these dragging hours passed. It struck him that the whole war had been generated by this damned viscous black fluid. Hitler’s tanks and planes, the Jap carriers that had hit Pearl Harbor, all the war machinery hurtling and clashing all over the earth, ran on this same stinking gunk. The Japs had gone to war to grab a supply of it. Not fifty years had passed since the first Texas oil field had come in, and the stuff had caused this world inferno. At Oak Ridge they were cooking up something even more potent than petroleum, racing to isolate it and use it for slaughter.
Pug felt on this October twenty-fifth, during this endless, nerve-wracking, refueling crawl toward Leyte Gulf at ten knots, that he belonged to a doomed species. God had weighed modern man in the balance with three gifts of buried treasure — coal, oil, uranium — and found him wanting. Coal had fueled Jutland and the German trains in the Great War, petroleum had turned loose air war and tank war, and the Oak Ridge stuff would probably end the whole horrible business. God had promised not to send another deluge; He had said nothing about preventing men from setting fire to their planet and themselves.
Pug’s mood had reached this depth of dismalness when Captain Bradford came running out on the flying bridge. ComBatDiv Seven was being summoned on the TBS by “Blackjack.”
“It’s not a communicator, Admiral,” said Bradford with some agitation, “it’s Halsey.”
Pug’s apocalyptic vision vanished. He darted into flag plot and seized the TBS receiver.
“Blackjack, this is Buckeye Seven, over.”
“Say, Pug,” came Halsey’s familiar voice, grainy and buoyant, using the informal style privileged to high flag officers, “we’re about through refueling here, and time’s a-wasting. Our division can sustain a long flank speed run. What say we mosey on ahead down there, and try to catch those monkeys? The others will follow. Bogan will back us up with his carriers.”
The proposal knocked Pug’s breath out. At that rate the New Jersey and the Iowa could reach San Bernardino Strait about one in the morning, Leyte Gulf at three or four. If they did encounter the enemy, it would mean a night action. The Japs were old hands at that, and BatDiv Seven had no night fighting experience at all. Two battleships would be fighting at least four battleships, including one with eighteen-inch guns.
But, by God, here was Form Battle Line, at long last; wrong, rash, tardy, but the thing itself! And Halsey would be right there. Pug could not keep out of his voice a flash of reluctant regard for the crazy old fighting son of a bitch.
“I’m for it.”
“I thought you would be. Form Task Group Thirty-four point five, Pug. Designate Biloxi, Vincennes, Miami, and eight DDs for the screen. You’ve got tactical command. Let’s get the hell down to Leyte Gulf.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
* * *
Japan’s Last Gasp
(from World Holocaust by Armin von Roon)
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:When World Holocaust first appeared in German, a translation of this controversial chapter was published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. As a BatDiv commander at Leyte, I was invited to write a rejoinder. It is appended here. — V.H.
Our Ardennes offensive in late 1944, the so-called Battle of the Bulge, and the Battle for Leyte Gulf were parallel operations. In each case a nation close to defeat staked all on one last throw of the dice. Hitler wanted to panic the Western allies into a settlement that would give him a breather to hold off the Russians; he even harbored grandiose delusions of getting the Anglo-Americans to fight on his side. The Japanese wanted to make the Americans sick of the distant war, and willing to negotiate a peace.
Our Ardennes offensive, discussed in my next section, gave Roosevelt and Churchill anxious weeks. The two aging warmongers thought Germany was done for, but we split their front in France and made good progress for a while, though Hitler’s overambitious battle plan and tactical meddling, plus Allied air power, probably doomed us from the start.
The Japanese, however, almost brought off a world-shaking success. The chance for this success was created by the imbecility of the American fleet commander, Halsey. It was thrown away by the greater imbecility of the Japanese fleet commander, Kurita. The Battle for Leyte Gulf is a study in military folly on the vastest scale. Its lessons should be pondered by the armed forces of all countries.
Poli
tics and War
War is politics implemented by the use of force. A military undertaking seldom rises above its political genesis; if that is unsound the guns will speak and the blood flow in vain. These Clausewitzian commonplaces will shed light on the grotesque fiasco at Leyte Gulf.
The political situation in the Pacific in late 1944 was this. On the one hand, the Japanese nation, in its gallant try for hegemony in its own geographical area, had already been ruthlessly beaten by the American imperialists; but its leaders wanted to fight on. Unconditional surrender was unthinkable to these Samurai idealists. Yet Franklin Roosevelt had laid down those terms to suit the mentality of his countrymen, on whose soil not one bomb had yet fallen, and who were fighting a Hollywood war.
This being the political deadlock in the Pacific—for on military grounds the Japanese should have been suing for peace once Tojo fell — a military shock was needed to break the stalemate. In long wars, peace parties develop: in democratic systems openly, in dictatorships within the ruling cadre. A shock strengthens the peace party of the shocked side. The Japanese planned to lie back until the Americans struck the Empire’s inner perimeter, and then smash them. At the end of extended supply lines, near Japanese air and naval bases, the Yanks would be at a transient disadvantage, and might be shocked by a bloody setback into a reasonable peace.
The American concept behind the invasion of the Philippines was a mere empty gratification of General MacArthur’s vanity, which would also palliate some home-front grumbling. It brought major Japanese land forces in the Philippines unnecessarily into action. These were already stymied by the horrible unrestricted U-boat warfare of the Americans, and should have been left to wither on the vine. But Douglas MacArthur wanted to return to the Philippines, and Roosevelt wanted such a theatrical reconquest right before the election.
The ostensible reason for taking Leyte, a large central island of the archipelago, was to establish supply depots and a large air base for the attack on Luzon. But Leyte is mountainous, and its one important flat valley is a mass of soggy rice paddies. MacArthur’s own engineers protested at choosing Leyte for such purposes. The generalissimo, in his hunger for his great Return, ignored them. Leyte after its capture never became a significant operational base. The world’s most massive sea battle was fought for a trivial and useless prize.
Following the Nimitz strategy of a Central Pacific drive, Admirals King and Spruance had offered better plans for ending the war. Both proposed to bypass the Philippines. King wanted to take Formosa. Spruance — who has an undeserved reputation for caution — suggested the audacious project of landing on Okinawa. Such a landing, virtually in Japan’s home waters, might well have been the shock to topple the war cabinet and bring peace. The atomic bomb was then still more than half a year from becoming a reality. The barbaric deed of Hiroshima might never have been necessary. But nine months later when the Americans did take Okinawa, the Japanese were hardened in last-ditch resistance, and only nuclear slaughter could jolt them out of the war.
In short, the overweening ego of Generalissimo MacArthur and the cold-blooded politicking of Franklin Roosevelt gave the Japanese their chance. They seized it, and they should have won. The Americans stumbled, fumbled, and flopped into a sorry “victory,” thanks to one Japanese admiral’s unbelievable folly.
My operational analysis gives the Japanese Sho plan in detail, with daily charts of the four main engagements. This sketch will be limited to the outstanding Leyte controversies.
A pincer attack on MacArthur’s landing force through Surigao Strait and San Bernardino Strait was a sound idea. The use of Ozawa’s impotent carriers as a decoy force was brilliant. Unless Halsey’s Third Fleet could be lured from the scene, the pincer attack could not succeed. The chief controversies center around the battle decisions of Halsey and Kurita.
Halsey
The American commander who botched the battle, William F. Halsey, rushed into print after the war to cover his tracks with a book that ran serially in a popular magazine while the nations were still burying their dead. The book opens with these words, purportedly written by his collaborator, a staff officer: Fleet Admiral Halsey was attending a reception in 1946 when a woman broke through the crowd around him, grasped his hand, and cried, “I feel as if I were touching the hand of God!”
This first sentence in Admiral Halsey’s Story characterizes the man. He was a seagoing George Patton, a blustering war lover with a gift for publicity; but one finds in his combat record nothing to match Patton’s advance in Sicily, his flank march during “the Bulge” to relieve Bastogne, or his dashing drive across Germany.
The critique of Halsey’s actions at Leyte goes to these questions:
a. Did he make the correct decision in pursuing Ozawa’s carriers, even if the force was a decoy?
b. Why did he leave San Bernardino Strait unguarded?
c. Who was to blame for the surprise of Sprague’s “jeep” carriers off Samar?
Admiral Halsey wrote a defensive dispatch to Nimitz on these very points the evening after the battle, when he and his staff were still gloomy at the fearful mess they had made, and had not yet worked up their alibi. By the time he wrote his book, Halsey’s defense had hardened into an explicit position.
a. He was right to go after the carriers. They were the main threat of the Pacific war. Had he not attacked them, they might have “shuttle-bombed” his fleet, the planes hopping from the carrier decks to fields in the Philippines and back again. As to Ozawa’s being a decoy, Halsey suggested he lied under interrogation. “The Japs had continuously lied during the war.… Why believe them implicitly as soon as the war ends?”
b. Staying at San Bernardino Strait was a bad idea, since the Japanese might also “shuttle-bomb” the Third Fleet there. Leaving the Battle Line to guard the strait was also a bad idea. “Shuttle-bombing” would be even more effective against divided forces. He took all his ships north to “preserve his fleet’s integrity and keep the initiative.”
c. Kinkaid was to blame for the surprise off Samar. He had been notified that Halsey was abandoning the strait. Protecting the MacArthur landing and his own jeep carriers was Kinkaid’s job. He was derelict in not sending air searches north that would have spotted Kurita’s approach.
This flimsy apologia may do for magazine readers, but not for military historians.
As for “shuttle-bombing,” Halsey himself had successfully urged the Joint Chiefs to advance the date of the Leyte invasion, because of the weak air resistance he had encountered from Philippine bases. He had himself crushed most of Japan’s residual air strength in the Formosa operation. He had himself observed the pitiful calibre of the raw Japanese pilots still flying. He had himself struck the Luzon airfields almost with impunity. His own admirals did not think Ozawa’s carriers could be strongly manned. The strategist Lee warned him in so many words that they were a decoy force. The “shuttle-bombing” story is a weak attempt to make the facts fit Halsey’s fatuous action in swallowing the Japanese bait.
His reason for taking all ships north and abandoning the strait — “to preserve his fleet’s integrity” — is bombast. He did not need sixty-four warships to fight seventeen, or ten carriers to fight four. Common sense required leaving a force to guard the strait. All the high commanders thought he had done that. Only his sloppy communications failed to undeceive them in time.
In blaming Kinkaid for the surprise off Samar, Halsey sinks to his nadir. Guarding San Bernardino Strait was Halsey’s responsibility, and he was the senior naval officer present. If he really was shifting such a heavy responsibility to Kinkaid’s shoulders, he should have done so in clear terms by dispatch, preferably after consulting Nimitz, for which there was plenty of time.
At Leyte Halsey made the essential mistake of Napoleon at Waterloo. He faced two forces, and dealt one a hard but not a decisive blow; then, in his obsessive desire to strike the second force, he chose to believe that the first force was done for, and closed his ears and his min
d to all evidence to the contrary. Kurita’s advance after his retreat in the Sibuyan Sea parallels Blücher’s advance after his retreat at Ligny. (The reader may wish to glance at my Waterloo: A Modern Analysis, published in Hamburg in 1937.)
Halsey was obsessed with the carrier force because he wanted to outdo Spruance. The sickness that had taken him out of the Battle of Midway had been the disappointment of his life. He was wild for a great carrier victory. He intended to be there in person, and in command, when it happened. Since he was riding a battleship, he disposed his forces so that the battleships could have a glorious time sinking cripples, and he went steaming north with the lot of them.
Roosevelt’s straddling between the MacArthur and the Nimitz strategies for defeating Japan — between the naval drive across the central Pacific, and the long plod of armies up the South Pacific archipelagoes — came to catastrophe at Leyte. Halsey was Nimitz’s man. Kinkaid by his orders was MacArthur’s man. The Leyte invasion was the triumph of the MacArthur strategy. Halsey with his simple-minded dash after the carriers thought he was implementing the Nimitz strategy. In swallowing the Japanese bait, he forgot what he was at Leyte for; that is, if he had ever understood it.
Halsey never admitted making any mistake at Leyte Gulf except turning back to help Kinkaid. That, he asserted, was an error made in anger, and due to a misunderstanding. Nimitz’s inquiry at ten in the morning, WHERE IS TASK FORCE 34, was astounding, so Halsey insisted, since he had notified everybody that the Battle Line was going north with him. But the next phrase, THE WORLD WONDERS, seemed a deliberate insult, and threw him into a rage. Only much later did he learn that it was padding added by a coding officer.