Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  But then something happened. While some of Halsey’s airmen were away pummeling the Japanese fleet, Task Force 38—more specifically the Princeton—engaged a second wave of JNAF attackers that had come from a direction that indicated they were carrier planes.

  All along Bull Halsey had been wrestling with the question of where the Japanese carriers were, while Marc Mitscher and others tried to answer it. The location and activities of Imperial Navy carriers remained an item on the menu at every skull session of Halsey’s “Dirty Tricks” staff. In flag plot on the New Jersey, the instant demand was: Find the Jap carriers!

  Of course, Admiral Ozawa wanted to be found. The admiral decided to confirm a JNAF sighting of American carriers with a search plane of his own. It did—but the reported position turned out to be 80 miles off, so Ozawa’s precaution proved fortunate. American sailors—both ship interceptor directors and air officers—often tracked back Japanese search planes to discover what forces had sent them. This time they did not. Ozawa gave up radio silence and broadcast a welter of messages from Zuikaku. That ought to have been a dead giveaway. Indeed, OP-20-G reported from Washington that radio direction finding and analysis placed the C-in-C of the Mobile Fleet within 250 miles of a point east of Luzon on the twenty-fourth. But radio snafus (the same ones that bedeviled Ozawa with Kurita and others) precluded Third Fleet from intercepting his messages. Gil Slonim’s monitors, hearing nothing from the carriers, focused their all on the Kurita fleet and Nishimura force. That night, Ozawa would put his two hermaphrodite battleship-carriers into an advance force under Rear Admiral Matsuda Chiaki and send it ahead of his fleet. They reached within 100 miles of Halsey’s nearest ships before being detected. Ozawa’s force maneuvered east and north of the point on Luzon known as Cape Engaño.

  At 4:40 p.m., Japanese efforts were rewarded. Ted Sherman of Task Group 38.3 had sent a fresh set of scouts off to the north a couple of hours before, and now a Lexington search plane found the Ozawa force 190 miles away, northeast of Cape Engaño. Task Force 38 commander Marc Mitscher stood on a bridge wing watching the agony of the Princeton through binoculars. His chief of staff, Commodore Burke, suddenly burst out of flag plot, running a copy of the sighting report to the boss. Mitscher, like Halsey, had been following the plight of the stricken carrier and trying to make sense of the confusing pilot claims. The sudden appearance of Japanese aircraft carriers crystallized all the questions that had for so long been purely hypothetical.

  The fleet might have been full of citizen soldiers, but the men who made the decisions were professionals all the way—and remarkably, they were afflicted with a sense of purpose that was the mirror image of that of the Imperial Navy admirals, with their obsession with enemy fleets as opposed to invasion convoys. Admiral Mitscher had suffered an immense disappointment at the last great naval battle—Philippine Sea. He had sent out his attack groups, only for them to find the Japanese carriers as the sun set, at the limit of their range. The enemy had escaped then. Mitscher wanted them now.

  As Third Fleet commander, Bull Halsey would make the ultimate decision; the ball was in his court. Halsey’s entire experience led him to value the aircraft carrier as the ultimate weapon of this war. He had been able to operate after Pearl Harbor because he’d been in a carrier. In the South Pacific, Halsey had saved Guadalcanal on the strength of the single carrier flight deck left to him after the Japanese won their last aero-naval victory. A year later, Halsey had turned the tables and inflicted a Pearl Harbor on the Japanese—on Kurita Takeo as a matter of fact. William Halsey was conditioned to gravitate toward taking out carriers.

  Admiral Chester Nimitz, Halsey’s direct superior, had been perfectly aware of the Bull’s proclivities. He employed Halsey precisely because of his aggressiveness. And Nimitz, too, had a bit of the carrier fixation in him. His orders governing Third Fleet’s role in MacArthur’s invasion contained an escape clause—the support mission could be set aside to destroy major Japanese naval forces. The text read: “In case opportunity for destruction of major portion of the enemy fleet is offered or can be created, such destruction becomes the primary task.” The key word was “major.” Halsey parroted that text in his own operations order. It could be foreseen that Bill Halsey would view an Imperial Navy carrier flotilla as a major force. The sequence of events that followed showed Halsey’s sensibilities perfectly.

  None of this was a bolt from the blue. Halsey’s hair trigger is demonstrated by constant skull sessions among staff on how to deal with Japanese aircraft carriers. Americans did war gaming too, and the Dirty Tricksters had repeatedly gamed engagements with enemy carriers on a play area created on a deck in New Jersey’s admiral’s country. And since the beginning of Halsey’s rampage, the issue of his predilections had already arisen—when the Combined Fleet had briefly sent out Shima’s unit to dispose of supposed Allied cripples. Admiral Halsey had readied Third Fleet for a big aero-naval battle.

  While making preparations, on October 24 at 3:12 p.m., the Third Fleet commander sent a message he considered to be a contingency alert. It specified which ships (six fast battleships, two heavy and three light cruisers, and thirteen destroyers) would make up Task Force 34 if he ordered its activation. CINCPAC received an information copy of this dispatch, which Halsey thought of as internal housekeeping. The arrangements should have worked well. He provided a contingency plan for Leyte—preparations to form Task Force 34, his surface attack force led by Vice Admiral Willis Augustus “Ching” Lee. The fast battleships plus Bogan’s carriers could be left, if necessary, to defend the San Bernardino Strait, while the rest of the fleet went in search of the enemy carriers. In his mind, Kurita’s fleet had been badly wounded, and now Halsey wanted to take on the Japanese carriers.

  General MacArthur’s command arrangements helped create the eventual problem. They permitted no direct channel for communication between Halsey and his opposite number in the Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid. That put a premium on listening in to the other fleet’s circuits. Halsey thought himself speaking only to his own Third Fleet in warning for the contingency just mentioned. But Kinkaid’s radiomen copied the Halsey messages, and the Seventh Fleet commander decided these moves had actually been made, not that Admiral Halsey had been sending warning messages. The outsiders were not even supposed to know about that message, much less reach conclusions based on it. But Nimitz and MacArthur’s commands both took the signal as Halsey’s affirmative instruction to Admiral Lee to form up the battleships.

  Equally significant, it was not a given that had Halsey detached his battleships they would block the San Bernardino. The controversy over “Bull’s Run” begins with this alleged failure. What Halsey could have done on the afternoon of October 24 was force a fleet-to-fleet engagement—after Kurita’s naval assault off Samar, and certainly before the Japanese retraced their steps and escaped; or about when Kurita re-transited the San Bernardino with a much reduced force.

  A lot of officers thought as did Kinkaid—that Bogan and Lee (and Halsey, since his flagship belonged to Lee’s task force) would be staying to guard the San Bernardino Strait. Up until the time they went to bed, that remained the impression of both operations chief General Riley and mobile radio detachment boss Gilven Slonim. But they discounted the developments that Admiral Halsey put at center stage, those discoveries that Lexington’s spotters induced him to reconsider.

  Flagship New Jersey received word of Kurita’s battle turnaway only minutes ahead of the news that another enemy stood off Cape Engaño. Not only that, but the Ozawa sighting contained news that the Imperial Navy force contained carriers and two battleships. From Halsey’s perspective, that sighting put things in a different light. Though the enemy possessed but four carriers—just one of them a big fleet carrier (against the Americans, with a dozen of assorted sizes)—they had battleships. This certainly comprised a “major” force.

  As he saw it, Admiral Halsey had three options. He could stay and g
uard the San Bernardino with his entire force, but that seemed to concede freedom of action to Japanese air forces, both sea and land based. It would also have breached his core instruction to seek battle with a major Japanese fleet. Alternatively, Halsey could detach the battleships of Task Force 34 to guard San Bernardino and head north with his carriers. The admiral viewed that as a half measure and a dilution of his force. And because the flak defenses of his carrier groups would be greatly weakened, Japanese aircraft might achieve much more than if the Third Fleet stayed together. The third option was to go after Ozawa with all three carrier groups in hand.

  Halsey’s reasoning is worth quoting: “It preserved my fleet’s integrity, it left the initiative with me, and it promised the greatest possibility of surprise. Even if the [Kurita fleet] meanwhile penetrated San Bernardino and headed for Leyte Gulf, it could only hope to harry the landing operation.” Elsewhere the fleet commander argues, “We had long since decided the carriers were potentially the most dangerous ships the Japs had. . . . We named them our primary targets.” And as for the Japanese in the Sibuyan Sea, “We knew Kurita’s ships had suffered damage from our attacks, particularly to their upper works and probably to their fire control instruments.” The admiral stormed into flag plot, stabbed at Ozawa’s position marked on a chart, and declared to chief of staff Robert Carney, “Here’s where we’re going. Mick, start them north.”

  There is the sense here that many tried to keep Halsey from “Bull’s Run”—as the wags were soon calling it—but that he persevered. First up was the Bull’s own staff, or at least his junior fleet intelligence officer Lieutenant Harris Cox. Carl Solberg, Harris’s cabinmate and colleague, gave us a detailed account of how Cox looked at captured documents—those Japanese Z Plan translations—ruminating over them for days, finally concluding they portended a whole new enemy strategy: to go for the transports. Lieutenant Cox made the argument to fleet intelligence officer Captain Mike Cheek. The purpose of the Japanese carrier force just discovered must be to facilitate attacks on the invasion force. It had to be a decoy, in this case to open the way for the Kurita fleet. Cheek had already had a run-in that evening with the staff duty officer. “They’re coming through, I know,” Cheek declared, referring to Kurita through San Bernardino Strait. “I’ve played poker with them in Tokyo.”

  When Captain Cheek came back to make an argument based on the Z Plan documents, that went over no better. Cheek disappeared into admiral’s country, where Halsey and Carney had their sea cabins, and spoke to the chief of staff. Carney remained adamant but, recognizing the serious nature of Cheek’s deduction, gave him leave to awaken Halsey if he dared. But “the Mick” warned the intelligence officer that their boss was unlikely to be swayed. Taking Carney’s point, Captain Cheek desisted.

  Ironically, this is one of those moments when one could be right for the wrong reasons. The Z Plan translations are clear: Allied convoys were to be targeted, but only after elimination of the enemy “task forces”—in Japanese usage, the carrier fleet. Transports were the contingent target, fleets the primary one. But there were other indicators too, some receiving better attention from Art McCollum at SEFIC.

  Just a couple of weeks earlier, SEFIC’s Seventh Fleet Bulletin publication had carried an article drawn from another captured document called “Striking Force Tactics.” That had advocated using empty aircraft carriers as a diversion. A Japanese sailor captured from the sinking light cruiser Nagara that summer had attributed the same role to the Imperial Navy’s battleship-carriers. One of those vessels appeared in the first sighting of Ozawa. Both of them were, in fact, there. Bottom line: There were intelligence indications pointing to a proper interpretation of Ozawa’s part; they were just not the ones Lieutenant Cox singled out.

  Shortly before 8:00 p.m., Halsey had his chief of staff draft messages to array the force and inform counterparts. Mick Carney’s message for Kinkaid was: “CENTRAL FORCE HEAVILY DAMAGED ACCORDING TO STRIKE REPORTS. AM PROCEEDING NORTH WITH 3 GROUPS TO ATTACK CARRIER FORCE AT DAWN.”

  The assumptions continued. Admiral Kinkaid—and apparently Nimitz also—decided Halsey had meant he was pursuing Ozawa with three groups less the fast battleships. They further inferred that, if Ching Lee’s battleships were detached, their mission would be to block the San Bernardino.

  Mike Cheek and Harris Cox were not the only men to divine the true Japanese scheme. Also on that list were the admiral’s chief subordinates, Marc A. Mitscher; his chief of staff, Arleigh Burke; and Ching Lee, the battleship driver. Mitscher had brainstormed a way to hit Ozawa and double back—detach Task Force 34, send Admiral Lee north on a high-speed dash after the Mobile Fleet, then launch him at Leyte. Ching Lee should be able to catch Kurita either before or just after the Japanese reached the gulf. Task Force 38 carriers could finish off anyone who was left. Commodore Burke proposed a variant: to use only the two fast battleships with Ted Sherman’s group. Admiral Mitscher went so far as a preparatory order to make the detachment after nightfall. Staff urged Mitscher to sell the plan to Halsey.

  Chief of Staff Burke also thought more deeply on Ozawa’s role. He was convinced the enemy carrier force was so weak it must be a decoy. “I think you’re right,” Mitscher replied, “but I don’t know you’re right. . . . I don’t think we should bother Admiral Halsey. He’s busy enough. He’s got a lot of things on his mind.”

  In some versions of this story, Pete Mitscher had suffered a heart attack during these weeks of campaigning, shielded by Halsey, desperate to get Slew McCain up to speed. Regardless of the veracity of that, Mitscher was slowing down and doing less. When he received the fleet commander’s “three groups north” order, Mitscher concluded Halsey had assumed tactical control and at that point had withdrawn. He went to bed.

  Then there was Vice Admiral Lee. He, too, worried about the disposition of the Third Fleet. Prepared to pull together the elements of Task Force 34 that afternoon, Ching Lee became alarmed when no “execute” order followed. When the night search reported Kurita back on a course for San Bernardino Strait, Admiral Lee went on the TBS, the short-range radio system that linked Allied vessels, and asked the New Jersey if the fleet commander knew what was happening. “ROGER,” came the answer.

  The issue sharpened. Light carrier Independence had been armed with a night-capable air group completely composed of radar-equipped planes. Admiral Mitscher ordered out a night patrol. One scout saw the Kurita fleet and shadowed it. The Japanese were headed for the San Bernardino Strait after all. American fliers kept watch until Kurita entered the strait. Their final report was timed at 11:05 p.m. The lighthouse there had been fired up. The last pilot on the mission, Lieutenant Bill Phelps, told colleagues Imperial Navy warships had turned on their navigation lights and were using searchlights to bathe the shore in illumination as they nosed into the strait. Kurita debouched into the Philippine Sea soon after midnight. Receiving the night shadow reports, Ching Lee communicated with the flagship anew. Were they aware? “ROGER.” Sarcasm almost dripped from the sparse reply.

  The final report of Kurita, now inside the San Bernardino Strait, also went to Commodore Burke. Once he received confirmation, Burke took air officer James Flatley and woke up the task force leader, renewing the recommendation to detach Ching Lee with Task Force 34 and aim him at the strait. Mitscher asked if Halsey had the same report. Assured that he did, Mitscher turned over and went back to sleep.

  Rear Admiral Bogan, who commanded the task group that actually contained the Independence, discussed the scout reports with her skipper, Captain Edward C. Ewen. When he learned the San Bernardino lighthouse had been lit, the admiral was convinced Halsey was making a mistake, and he began a message to the fleet commander noting the lighthouse information. He intended to recommend that Task Force 34 be detached and that a couple of carriers go with it to furnish air cover. New Jersey replied laconically over the TBS that staff already knew about the light, and Admiral Bogan was so put off at the sanguin
e response, he never made his recommendation.

  Admiral Halsey finally took a hand again after midnight. The Third Fleet continued Bull’s Run. In fact, at 1:00 a.m., Mick Carney passed instructions to Arleigh Burke for another night search, this one to the north. The noise of the searchplanes launching from the Independence woke up Pete Mitscher, who joined Rear Admiral Carney in the flag plot. Sightings of the Ozawa fleet started after about an hour. Some were less than 100 miles away. Halsey reverted control of the task force to Mitscher with orders to form Task Force 34 after all. Ching Lee would have his day with the fast battleships, but they were being sent after the Japanese decoys, not Kurita’s fleet. Bull’s Run might as well have been in Pamplona. Meanwhile, as the Americans were floundering about, the Japanese remained purposeful.

  At 12:08 a.m., the Southwest Area Fleet radioed Combined Fleet headquarters: “TONIGHT EVERY EFFORT WILL BE MADE TO CARRY OUT REPEATED NIGHT ATTACKS, FOLLOWING WHICH THE MAIN ENEMY TASK FORCES WILL BE DESTROYED TOMORROW.”

  DIVERSION ATTACKS

  Mikawa Gunichi would have a tough time making good on this promise to Admiral Toyoda. His best weapon that night bent steam to speed up the Surigao Strait at that very moment. “Weapons” is probably a better term, for there were two distinct Imperial Navy formations plying these waters. Americans labeled them the “southern force” and never really understood why the Japanese, in the face of Allied naval superiority, would operate an inferior force divided rather than united. One, the smaller flotilla, Allied intelligence had been tracking for days. This was Vice Admiral Shima Kiyohide’s Fifth Fleet, variously known as the northern fleet, the Northeast Area Fleet, or the 2nd Diversion Attack Force.