Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  But the Japanese were about to reshuffle their entire air operation. At Mabalacat, part of the Clark Field complex around Manila, the senior staff officer of the First Air Fleet, Captain Inoguchi Rikihei, was meeting with Commander Tamai Asaichi on the evening of October 19 when a Packard limousine with the hood pendant of a three-star admiral drew up. Vice Admiral Onishi Takijiro stepped out of the car. Onishi watched airfield activity for a time, then asked to speak to the two of them at 201st Air Group headquarters. Located in one of the few Western-style houses in the town, “headquarters” was a glorified name for a building where thirty or more JNAF pilots lived, with the homeowner and his own family in two back rooms. When Tamai and Inoguchi arrived, they summoned a couple of squadron leaders, and a staff officer of the 26th Air Flotilla, who sat around a table in a room on the second floor that overlooked the yard. Onishi began to speak.

  “As you know, the war situation is grave,” he explained. “The fate of the empire depends upon the outcome of the Sho Operation, which Imperial General Headquarters has activated to hurl back the enemy assault. . . . Our surface forces are already in motion. . . . The mission of the First Air Fleet is to provide land-based air cover for Admiral Kurita’s advance and make sure that enemy air attacks do not prevent him from reaching Leyte Gulf. To do this we must hit the enemy carriers and keep them neutralized for at least one week.”

  Captain Inoguchi understood the difficulty. The American aircraft carriers were plentiful and powerful. The JNAF had barely been able to scratch them, and now the high command wanted the aviators to hold the enemy at bay for a week. Inoguchi, whose brother sailed with Kurita as captain of the superbattleship Musashi, had a personal stake here. Yet, he recalled, “it seemed idle even to hope that we might succeed.”

  The odds were slim. Onishi looked hard at his younger cohorts. “In my opinion, there is only one way of assuring that our meager strength will be effective,” the admiral went on. “That is to organize suicide attack units composed of Zero fighters armed with 250-kilogram bombs, with each plane to crash-dive into an enemy carrier.”

  Coming from Onishi, this pronouncement could only be seen as a main-line calculation. The vice admiral had long been one of the Imperial Navy’s apostles of airpower. His stature was equal to that of such wizards as Genda Minoru, and his technical knowledge far beyond that of famed officers like Nagumo Chuichi. Admiral Onishi had been a behind-the-scenes adviser to the planners of the Pearl Harbor attack, had run the staff of the air fleet that trapped Douglas MacArthur’s heavy bombers on the ground in December 1941 and sank the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. A carrier advocate too, Onishi had been instrumental in making the JNAF an element of naval power. He came to the Philippines from the Navy Ministry, where the admiral had been in charge of ordnance and production, pushing the new-generation aircraft out of the factories.

  But for each officer who considered him a visionary, a skilled innovator in a novel field, another thought Onishi a bully whose actions sullied the Navy’s reputation. After Pearl Harbor and the British battleships, Onishi had joked that the Navy should trade its anchor symbol for a propeller and become an air force. He’d been publicly critical of the Tojo cabinet and the government planning boards. The Navy minister and others were idiots. The Yamato-class ships Onishi derided as buggies in an age of automobiles.

  Once, under an assumed name, Onishi had entered a national mah-jongg tournament and won it. He’d been criticized in the mid-1930s, as a captain and executive officer of the Yokosuka Air Corps, when seen pulling a rickshaw with a geisha in it. Some had trouble deciding whether pulling the cart or Onishi’s open consorting with a lady of the night had been the greater offense. An even more notorious incident—when he slapped a geisha in the face for not sufficiently entertaining his men—resulted in official sanction. Yamamoto Isoroku, another officer with an eye for the geisha, had not been able to protect him. Onishi and Teraoka Kimpei, the admiral he replaced in the Philippines, had been classmates and buddies at Etajima and planned to take the entrance exams for the War College together. Teraoka got in; Onishi did not—and probably not because of his test answers.

  In any case, Vice Admiral Onishi Takijiro offered not only a sounding board for anyone with a novel idea but also a willingness to embrace new thinking and a voice for ideas he believed in. Such was the case with “body-crashing” (tai-atari) tactics—the notion of using the aircraft itself as a weapon. JNAF pilots had long since come to the idea of perishing in crash-dives when they were wounded or their planes so damaged that survival seemed impossible. The new wrinkle was to make tai-atari the normal, standard tactic, and to create whole units—a “special attack” (or kamikaze) force—to carry them out. These ideas were in the wind within the Imperial Navy. It had developed miniature submarines for special attack even before the war, and by this time, it had begun experimenting with explosive boats and special attack divers. The JNAF lagged behind. But there were outspoken advocates for special attack—and all of them went to Onishi.

  Captain Jyo Eichiro, former aide-de-camp to the emperor, who skippered light carrier Chiyoda, had discussed body-crashing tactics with both Onishi and Ozawa as early as 1943. And after the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Jyo had sent Onishi a cable arguing that they had just witnessed the failure of the last chance of hurting the U.S. carriers by conventional means. Because of Jyo’s close relationship with the emperor, Hirohito had also seen that dispatch. At the helm of the Chiyoda, Jyo was now headed into battle at Ozawa’s side. In addition to Jyo, there was also Captain Okamura Motoharu, the leader of the 341st Air Group. He, too, pressed body-crashing tactics on both Onishi and Vice Admiral Fukudome. Okamura went so far as to assert that with 300 special attack planes he could turn the tide of the war.

  Admiral Onishi had started by thinking it too much to ask crews to fly deliberately to their deaths, but the reality of current events wore Onishi down. He himself had written a paper toward the end of 1943 arguing that commanding the sea without controlling the air was no longer conceivable. But if control by means of conventional tactics had become impossible, what else was there? On his way to the Philippines, Onishi stopped on Taiwan and conferred with C-in-C Toyoda, who also supported the kamikaze idea. Onishi thus learned that the NGS had reached the final stage in creating a special attack corps.

  All of which brings us back to Mabalacat on October 19, 1944. Admiral Onishi discussed the practical feasibility of damaging carriers with a 550-pound bomb strapped to a Zero. The admiral then proposed that the 201st Air Group should organize the first special attack unit. Commander Tamai responded that he would have to consult the group commander, Captain Yamamoto Sakae. As it happened, the boss and his air staff officer, Commander Nakajima Tadashi—were returning to Mabalacat from Manila, where they had fruitlessly gone to see Onishi while he was off visiting them. Nakajima piloted their Zero. Its engine had not sounded right. The commander ordered a change of spark plugs, but once they were airborne the landing gear refused to retract, and the engine died—perfectly encapsulating the state of JNAF maintenance. They crash-landed in a rice paddy, with Captain Yamamoto breaking his ankle. By telephone from Manila, Yamamoto gave Tamai leave to respond to Onishi’s proposals.

  Commander Tamai selected Lieutenant Seki Yukio to lead the special attack unit and by the next day had two dozen pilots for the suicide mission. They had breakfast and were saluted. Vice Admiral Onishi addressed them: “The salvation of our country is now beyond the power of the ministers of state, the General Staff, and lowly commanders like myself. It can come only from spirited young men such as you. . . . You are already gods.” Onishi promised their deeds would be reported to the emperor. When Admiral Onishi went back to Manila on October 20, he relieved his old friend Teraoka at the head of the First Air Fleet.

  The situation was in shambles. The Manila headquarters, which had been set on fire by Allied aerial attackers just as Onishi took over, offered little welcome. Many s
atellite airfields were in disrepair or mired in bottomless mud. The main bases were holed, smashed by repeated attacks from Halsey’s carriers. Area fleet boss Mikawa recorded First Air Fleet strength on the day of the invasion as 24 Zero fighters, 11 Jill attack planes, 2 Betty and 2 “Ginga” bombers, and 1 scout plane. Thus, even though the JNAF had created its special attack force, it could not manage a mission for days. Tominaga of the 4th Air Army did a little better. He possessed 25 fighters, 10 attack planes, 30 twin-engine bombers, and 5 or 6 scout planes.

  Japanese aerial response the day of the invasion was minimal. Onishi rushed to prepare his special attack. Commander Nakajima Tadashi went to Cebu with eight of the precious Zero airplanes. Several were to be kamikazes, others escorts, but Nakajima also had orders to recruit fliers at Cebu for the special attack corps. At the base command post, echoing Onishi at Mabalacat, Nakajima spoke of the desperation of the situation, the importance of Sho, and the impossibility of success with orthodox tactics. Except for men in the infirmary, every pilot volunteered. Some even went to Nakajima complaining that they had been excluded earlier.

  It did not take long to find suitable targets. A sighting of American carriers on October 20, which were too far away, merely whetted the appetite. The morning of the twenty-first, Lieutenant Seki led the first kamikaze mission out of Mabalacat. They found nothing, and returned.

  That afternoon, Cebu received word of another Allied fleet and prepared another mission. American fighters appeared over the field with the planes ready to launch. The special attack machines were shot up. Commander Nakajima managed to come up with a few flyable aircraft and they flew off late in the afternoon. They, too, found nothing, and one of the planes failed to return.

  For the next several days, Halsey’s carriers went undetected. On October 21, Leyte Gulf became the target for General Tominaga’s Army aircraft, and the HMAS Australia was wounded when one crash-dived her bridge, killing twenty sailors, including the captain, with another fifty-four wounded, including Commodore John A. Collins, the senior Australian commander in the Leyte invasion. The damaged Australia and Honolulu soon left for Manus and temporary repairs.

  Admiral Fukudome began funneling his surviving squadrons from Taiwan into the Philippines. On the day of the invasion, there were almost 400 planes with the Second Air Fleet on Taiwan. Nearly half were not flyable. The large bulk—about three-quarters of the overall number—were fighters. By October 23, Fukudome had sent about as many aircraft as he could afford: 126 fighters (mostly Zeros but also 21 “Shiden” interceptors), 35 dive-bombers (mostly “Vals” but also ten “Suiseis”), 25 twin-engine bombers (mostly Bettys but also five Gingas), and 10 Jill torpedo bombers. Vice Admiral Onishi would hurl these planes at the Allies. If he could keep Halsey and the other Allied carrier commanders busy, the Japanese surface fleet might be able to approach unscathed.

  Assembling the force was the easy part, though. JNAF leaders were pained at how many planes kept malfunctioning. The cost of the Taiwan air battle now became evident: The combined JNAF forces possessed fewer than 100 bombers. Even including the Japanese Army air forces, there were barely 125 strike aircraft. Halsey’s Third Fleet could put up more planes at once than all the Japanese air forces combined. To make matters worse, the heavy losses had weakened Japanese search capabilities.

  As a result of this fumbling, when Halsey’s carriers were sighted once more on October 24, their power remained undiminished. Instead of a Japanese aerial assault that would force Task Force 38 to hunker down in defense, the sides traded strikes, and the American ones would be far more powerful far.

  Despite the discrepancy in power, the Imperial Navy did get in some good licks. Three (of seven) of the available JNAF scout planes were big, radar-equipped patrol bombers of the 901st Air Group. With the JNAF forces now concentrated, the Japanese used their big seaplanes for a night mission. Twenty minutes past midnight on the twenty-fourth, one of the 901st’s bombers acquired a contact due east of Manila, about 250 miles distant. Admiral Onishi decided on a full attack. The JNAF’s main force, 63 strike aircraft and 126 fighters, began flying from Clark Field at about 5:30 a.m. Ten Suisei dive-bombers followed. Suddenly, between eight and nine o’clock the sightings came fast—three different groups with different numbers of aircraft carriers. Task Force 38. The JNAF strike groups converged on the first sighting. It had been reported with four “regular” aircraft carriers and two escort carriers. The Sea Eagles claimed a solid hit to a fleet carrier and to have set fire to a cruiser and a battleship.

  The Japanese target was Rear Admiral Ted Sherman’s Task Group 38.3. For Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Paul Drury, it would be the longest day of his life. Drury was one of eight Fighting 27 pilots selected the evening before for morning CAP. Before Drury settled down to sleep, he knew that Japanese night “snoopers” were everywhere, trying to track them. The patrol pilots were awakened at 4:00 a.m.; they took off before dawn. Drury flew as wingman for the ship’s biggest ace, Lieutenant James A. “Red” Shirley, who had seven and a half planes to his credit. This was not Drury’s regular division or his usual flight, but at this point, all hands went where they were needed. Controllers sent Red Shirley’s division after a snooper they’d seen on radar. The interceptors switched off, chasing scouts until controllers sent everyone after a big formation.

  As had become routine, radars picked up the enemy approach and intercept officers vectored fighters to them. Shirley’s division had the height advantage and saw the Japanese first. “TALLY HO,” he radioed. “EIGHTY JAPANESE PLANES. BETTER SEND HELP.”

  Commander David McCampbell led seven Hellcats from the Essex and engaged the JNAF at 8:33 a.m. The Japanese bombers escaped into cloud cover. McCampbell and the other F-6Fs picked at the Japanese fighters. Another dozen planes from light carrier Princeton joined the fracas. Drury’s Fighting 27 and McCampbell’s Essex interceptors showered themselves with glory. Shirley added five planes to his score, Drury became an ace that day, and two other Princeton pilots got five each. Dave McCampbell, smoking a cigarette as he worked (it was a different era then), flamed nine. Many Sea Eagles did not return. The Japanese admitted to losing sixty-seven aircraft in the morning attack alone.

  Lieutenant Drury made for his carrier to rearm. The defenders were sixty or seventy miles from home and out of ammunition.

  Just as the U.S. fighters began landing, a single Suisei dive-bomber took aim at the Princeton. Captain William H. Buracker, her skipper, had been scheduled for rotation, and his replacement, Captain J. H. Hoskins, was manning the bridge too as a “makee-learnee” understudy. The ship had turned into the wind and moved some loaded Avenger torpedo planes to the hangar deck. The JNAF dive-bomber, sighted and reported, would become lost among the confusion. Suddenly, at 9:38 a.m., the Judy reappeared on the port bow already in her attack run. Captain Buracker ordered, “Hard left rudder,” but it was too late. The 550-pound bomb ignited fires on the hangar deck, in the ship’s bakery, and in the scullery. The Avengers on the hangar had open bomb bay doors and, inside, torpedoes slung. The flames threatened to cook off the explosives in their warheads.

  Among the last Princeton pilots to land, Lieutenant Drury had just walked into the ready room when the compartment shook. A blast of black smoke blew into the room through the ventilator. The public address system announced that the carrier had been struck by a bomb. He awaited instructions. There would be no more flying for Fighting 27.

  What had first seemed routine suddenly loomed as disaster. Ted Sherman sensed the danger immediately. Just fifteen minutes after the bomb hit, Sherman ordered several destroyers to stand by the carrier. Ten minutes later the light cruiser Birmingham closed in and used her hoses to fight the fires on the stricken vessel. At 10:10 a.m., Captain Buracker ordered a partial evacuation, followed by a more complete one. Less than an hour after the Judy dived on the Princeton, her crew had been removed save for firefighters.

  Lieutenant Drury, who had been
a member of the swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania, went over the side and down a rope to swim to destroyer Irwin. But Drury, who was exhausted by that time, barely made it. Irwin sailors slung a cargo net, then came down it to help survivors climb to safety. Drury was grateful. Reaching the deck, he promptly fell asleep.

  That marked just a waypoint in a tragic day. The destroyer Morrison, alongside, got parts of her superstructure wedged between two of the carrier’s air intakes and was stuck there when an explosion dislodged an airplane tractor and a jeep from Princeton’s flight deck. They fell on the lower ship’s bridge and bounced to hit the main deck. With help from the destroyers, the Birmingham, and light cruiser Reno, Buracker’s crew made progress containing the fires. Then the Sea Eagles returned—this time a strike Ozawa had launched. The JNAF aircraft were driven off without further damage, but as Birmingham prepared to take the crippled carrier under tow, the fire reached a torpedo storage room, triggering a devastating explosion.

  The noise of general quarters alarm bells startled Paul Drury awake. The disoriented pilot first thought he had slept through the next night, then realized only one hour had passed. The JNAF rolled in, followed by the eruption from the Princeton. The explosion destroyed the after flight deck and most of the stern, causing grievous casualties aboard the Birmingham too (241 dead and 412 wounded, more than half her crew). On the carrier, the supernumerary captain, Hoskins, had his foot blown off. The ship, still afloat after all this, demanded more effort and attention than admirals Sherman or Halsey could afford. That evening American vessels torpedoed the Princeton to scuttle her.

  Amid this tragedy, luck befell some American radio spies. Mobile radio detachments placed on warships provided instant readouts on enemy activity, and it had become a feature of Allied tactical practice. FRUMEL (the Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne), the radio spies who worked for Captain McCollum, had formed two detachments to support the invasion. One had been slated for the Princeton and left Brisbane for Kossol to pick up the ship. But when they arrived, they discovered she had already sailed. Radioman James B. Capron Jr., a card-carrying member of the On the Roof Gang, was disappointed his team missed the Princeton and felt left out when relegated to command ship Wasatch. But on the Princeton, they might have all wound up dead.