Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  Admiral Shima’s seagoing experience was another matter, quite the opposite of Nishimura’s. He had seen no shipboard assignments for a decade after 1923, a period during which technological advances transformed the Imperial Navy. By then a captain, Shima commanded light cruiser Oi. A year there, more shoreside billets, and then he took charge of Minesweeper Division 19 as a rear admiral in November 1940. Shima’s most noteworthy wartime experience had come during the Battle of the Coral Sea, when he had led the invasion force that occupied the Solomon island of Tulagi. A couple of months later came command of a cruiser division. The three years from 1940 to 1943 were his longest stint of sea service. This put the radio maven on the sea during the period of Japanese supremacy, at the moment of balance, and then into the beginning of the Navy’s decline. At Leyte, Shima Kiyohide enjoyed a reputation as a relatively young admiral (at fifty-four) attuned to technological developments. When Admiral Shima told historian John Toland that his radars had been lousy, he knew what he was talking about.

  Toyoda had left the admiral to decide his own role. Shima’s radiomen overheard Combined Fleet concede Kurita’s fuel problem and change X-Day to October 25. Toyoda’s departure orders for the Ozawa decoy mission on October 20 also reached Fifth Fleet. At Mako, Shima realized it was not too late to join Ozawa, and he took advantage of being in port to ask Combined Fleet for a determination. Shima claims Hiyoshi never replied. Instead the Fifth Fleet commander got information copies of a message in which Mikawa’s chief of staff recommended the Shima fleet be used in conjunction with either Kurita’s or Ozawa’s outfit.

  For Shima, these were the most nervous hours of the entire operation. He recounts that a staff officer advised him to go with Kurita, and Shima sent a dispatch to that admiral with ideas for their cooperation. Again, no answer, until October 22, when the Second Fleet commander (Kurita) sent a laconic reply merely describing his intended schedule. Kurita did not discuss how they might cooperate. The force commander seemed to assume Shima would proceed independently. Consulting with chief of staff Rear Admiral Matsumoto Takeshi, and looking at the messages between Kurita and Nishimura, Shima discovered his Etajima classmate had sailed for the Surigao Strait with a weak attack unit. He knew his own destroyers would need to refuel before the penetration operation. Coron Bay offered the logical place for that. Admiral Shima decided he would take the southern route and reinforce Nishimura. From the X-Day traffic, he knew when to time his arrival at Leyte.

  Commander Mori Kokichi, torpedo officer on Admiral Shima’s staff, hoped to find a tanker awaiting them at Coron Bay. He was disappointed. The admiral had to refuel his destroyers from the cruisers before setting out again in the early hours of the new day, October 24. That put him in the Sulu Sea, headed south, just when the Nishimura unit was discovered and the Kurita fleet assailed in the Sibuyan Sea.

  Rather than suffering attack itself, Admiral Shima’s detached destroyer division fell victim to the American scout bombers. Originally, Shima had wanted to recall Destroyer Division 21 from its detached mission before it got sucked into repeat Tokyo Express runs. Trying to preserve radio silence, Admiral Shima elected to send the order to Captain Ishii Hisashi via floatplane to Manila, where it could be put on broadcast radio. Instead the plane overturned in the water when landing and the dispatch never reached Captain Ishii. As a result, Shima’s destroyer division bypassed Coron, speeding southeastward off Panay Island, where it would be caught by the same Task Force 38 air search that discovered Nishimura. Ishii’s command ship, the Wakaba, would be bombed and sunk. Ishii himself and the ship’s skipper, Commander Ninotaka Kanefumi, were able to reach destroyer Hatsuharu. Ishii retired to Manila, but Admiral Shima never knew, and even upon entering battle, he continued hoping the destroyers might join him.

  By midmorning, Admiral Shima’s fleet had set a fast pace. He learned American long-range bombers were over Mindanao and headed his way. The grandly titled 2nd Diversion Attack Force kept awaiting discovery and attack. Shima adopted a ring formation with Captain Miura Hiyao’s light cruiser Abukuma in the lead, the outer ring of four destroyers on the quarters, flagship Nachi in the center, and heavy cruiser Ashigara following. They never saw the planes.

  Just before noon, with Shima off Panay, a U.S. B-24 saw and accurately reported his force. The fleet commander suffered no ill consequences from the sighting. Admiral Shima advanced his timetable and increased speed to twenty knots. At 5:45 p.m., he circulated his battle plan by flag signal: The fleet would penetrate Leyte Gulf at 3:00 a.m. on October 25, making twenty-eight knots. The force would increase speed and change formation at designated times on its approach. Commander Mori of the staff reported later that Shima had wanted to go even faster but fuel consumption had made that impossible.

  Vice Admiral Shima worried about Allied submarines. He had warned his ships that morning and again as they entered the Mindanao Sea near sunset. He updated the fleet by blinker signal, supplementing the bare-bones battle plan with information on Allied forces they expected to encounter. The data was an underestimate. Commander Mori, standing on the bridge of the Nachi, would be startled at about 10:00 p.m. when lookouts began reporting PT boats shadowing them. It was not subs, but torpedo boats that were the real threat. Admiral Nishimura confirmed that directly a couple of hours later in the message where he reported PT boat attacks.

  After more than 2,000 miles, many scares, and much to-ing and fro-ing about missions, now the “stepchild” Shima fleet pressed into narrowing waters only about an hour behind the Nishimura unit, which was fighting for its life not far ahead.

  The 2nd Diversion Attack Force steamed at twenty-four knots. At 11:55 p.m. Vice Admiral Shima ordered the fleet to be ready to make twenty-eight knots immediately, and full battle speed on fifteen minutes’ notice. After midnight, the vessels entered a hard rainsquall. Only about forty miles separated the two forces around 1:00 a.m. when Commander Mori and others began to see the horizon lit by gun flashes. Battle was near.

  • • •

  WHATEVER RELATIONSHIP EXISTED between the two Etajima classmates Shima and Nishimura, in the darkness of Surigao Strait that night, Shima Kiyohide had become Admiral Nishimura’s lifeline.

  But many of the Japanese sailors in Shima’s fleet had real reason to fight—for friends right ahead of them in the strait to comrades fallen in the nobility of failure. Shima’s screen commander, Rear Admiral Kimura Masatome, had skippered a heavy cruiser under Nishimura in the Solomons. The flag captain, Rear Admiral Kanoka Empei, was a classmate of Hirata Tsutomu, an executive officer on the Fuso right ahead of them. The Nachi’s skipper had the same relationship with Kuno Shuzo, chief of the T Air Attack Force, and Inoguchi Rikihei, the First Air Fleet staffer.

  In addition, many of their mates were driving other ships in Sho right now, including battleships Yamato and Nagato, cruisers Atago and light cruiser Yahagi, and aircraft carrier Zuiho. Destroyer leader Kimura, renowned for his successful evacuation of the Japanese defenders of Kiska Island in the Aleutians, surely also wanted revenge for the spring 1943 Battle of the Bismarck Sea, in which the Allies had massacred the troop convoy he escorted to New Guinea. Many hopes and fears came together in the Surigao Strait that night.

  By 2:45 a.m., the Shima fleet neared the entrance. The ships had been making twenty-two knots. Entering by dead reckoning, the heading changed to north-northeast at 3:11. They were early, actually, blinded by a rainsquall, and made the turn too soon. Destroyer Ushio nearly ran aground as a result. A few minutes earlier Admiral Shima had asked Nishimura by TBS for an update. His silence was ominous. Meanwhile Shima ordered a speed increase and a turn to starboard to make a proper entrance into Surigao.

  The turn marked the beginning of the Fifth Fleet’s nightmare. Commander Leeson’s PT section guarded the waters at the strait’s mouth. Two Martinis had used up their torpedoes by now. The other was Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Isadore M. “Mike” Kovar’s PT-137. The 137 had been incapacitate
d by an auxiliary generator malfunction, which had disabled both her radio and her radar, so she almost missed the party. Kovar had used only one torpedo when Nishimura sped by, shooting uselessly from behind at destroyers that had already passed. Now, at about 3:24 a.m., he glimpsed what he thought was a destroyer coming back down the strait; it was probably Asagumo. Mike Kovar took his PT to 900 yards from the enemy and launched one torpedo. The Japanese saw PT-137 too, illuminated her, and opened fire.

  Kovar felt devastated when his tin fish sped underneath the vessel. But destroyer leader Kimura’s flagship, the light cruiser Abukuma, had the third place in Shima’s formation, and it was passing on the far side of Kovar’s fight. Captain Hanaka Takuo, Abukuma’s skipper, suddenly spotted a torpedo wake to port just 500 yards away. Hanaka ordered an emergency turn, but it was already too late. The torpedo slammed into the ship under the bridge, killing thirty sailors and cutting speed to just ten knots. Unable to keep up, Captain Hanaka dropped out of Shima’s formation and turned his cruiser to head for safety. A couple of Kimura’s destroyers had to take evasive action to avoid collision with the wounded Abukuma. Both Hanaka’s ship and the destroyer Shiranuhi saw PT-137 and took Kovar’s boat under fire.

  Admiral Shima responded by increasing fleet speed to twenty-eight knots. His vessels really had bones in their teeth now. Once he cleared the entrance, Shima ordered his force into battle formation. Their course was directly into the strait, then northeast. The four destroyers took station behind Shima’s heavy cruisers. Captain Inoue Yoshio of Destroyer Division 18 in the Shiranuhi assumed command of the screen in the absence of Rear Admiral Kimura, stuck on the Abukuma.

  At 3:44 a.m., a Fifth Fleet staff officer got on the TBS to inform Nishimura that they were in the strait and that help was on the way. It is not clear if the battleship commander heard their news. By now, sailors on Shima’s warships could see and hear gunfire and could see that vessels ahead of them were in flames. The voice radio crackled with the survivors’ battle transmissions.

  The gunfire Shima could see came from two sources. Nishimura’s remnants were one, with Yamashiro opening up at 3:52, soon turning to port to open her broadside, and Mogami doing the same to starboard. But the answering fire, far more deadly, came from Kinkaid’s battleships and cruisers. Against a dozen Japanese 14-inch and half that number of 8-inch guns, the Allies ranged sixty-four cannon of 16 and 14 inches, thirty-five 8-inch guns, and fifty-four 6-inch guns. Shock and awe would be a fair description of that cannonade.

  Sailors on the Allied cruisers and battlewagons were increasingly anxious through the midwatch, as the battle seemed to unfold to the south without them taking part. Admiral Oldendorf led the fleet into battle formation at 1:52 a.m. So far there were Martini reports but nothing more substantial. Fifteen minutes later, the battleship West Virginia saw gun flashes. Oldendorf, in the heavy cruiser Louisville, did not yet see the fighting, but there would clearly be a battle. West Virginia went to general quarters at 2:32. Within minutes, most everyone could see gunfire, and destroyers reported their first surface contact at 2:41. The enemy were visible on radar at 3:04. Six minutes later the West Virginia’s gunnery radar had the target, which it never lost, and gunnery had the firing solution by 3:33—as Nishimura struggled desperately against the destroyers. Despite the confusion of many Allied destroyers and some Imperial Navy warships cutting through almost the same water, at least on the West Virginia, the Combat Information Center and gunnery control agreed the Allied ships were clear.

  At 3:51 the Allied cruisers opened fire. Australian Navy Captain C. A. G. Nichols saw nothing of the fall of shot for the first salvos. But starting with the third, the bell that rang on the bridge of his heavy cruiser Shropshire at the moment when her shells should be impacting coincided with a flash on the radar screen. Australian Shropshire began straddling the target on that salvo. Overall, the heavy cruisers shot more than a thousand 8-inch shells. The light cruisers contributed their usual incredible volume of fire (Columbia, for example, pumped out 1,147 rounds within eighteen minutes, which works out to a twelve-gun 6-inch salvo every twelve seconds).

  The battleships opened fire a minute later. Nishimura’s ships must have endured a hurricane. On the battle communication phones of West Virginia, gunnery officer Commander C. M. Hardison could be heard chuckling. He reported a hit on the first salvo.

  For all that American know-how, the Pennsylvania could not find a target and never used her main battery. The Mississippi was flagship for the battle line, led by Rear Admiral G. L. Weyler. It proved embarrassing that her Mark-3 fire control radar had trouble. Chief gunner Commander Richard Lane finally got a bead on the Japanese and the battleship fired a broadside, but at that moment Admiral Weyler ordered cease-fire. Battleship Maryland set her guns by observing the splashes of shells fired by the West Virginia and got off half a dozen salvos totaling forty-eight 16-inch shells. The West Virginia, California, and Tennessee were all equipped with the late-model Mark-8 radars and had firing solutions long before Weyler gave them the okay. The range started at 22,800 yards. California and Tennessee got off sixty-three and sixty-nine rounds, respectively. The latter had orders to hold fire until the flagship, ahead of her, opened it; but when West Virginia commenced fire from just behind her, the Tennessee took that reference point instead and began shooting. West Virginia would be the champ, loosing ninety-three rounds. The Allies halted their fire when the Yamashiro was seen to capsize and sink, about 4:19 a.m.

  On the Japanese side, the Mogami launched torpedoes at 4:01 a.m. Captains Toma and Hashimoto had both been killed. The cruiser’s top gunner now commanded the ship and guns both. Yamashiro shot with all her turrets. Besides destroyer Grant, no Allied ship suffered any damage. Nishimura’s flagship, on fire from stem to stern, turned to port at about 4:10 and headed south. Afire herself, the Mogami turned to starboard and started down the strait too.

  Into this maelstrom steamed Admiral Shima. The visibility remained poor, with periodic squalls. Ahead he could see blue flares. He assumed they were American since Japanese star shells usually burst in yellow. Allied destroyers had laid a smoke screen. Their heavy ships and Nishimura’s remnants were on the other side of it. A single battleship of the Fuso class lay there, illuminated by the flare. She was afire and there were explosions. To raise morale in the Nishimura unit, Shima took to the voice radio and announced his fleet had reached the battle zone. Again, no reply. He increased speed to twenty-eight knots, then to thirty—the maximum practical for a formation. About 4:00 a.m., the fleet passed what Shima took to be a pair of Fuso-type battleships. One had to be that vessel in her death throes, but the Yamashiro, now far ahead with Mogami nearby, was engaging the Allied forces. The other warship was a chimera or her identity was mistaken—the damaged Asagumo was somewhere around there.*

  The 2nd Diversion Attack Force came upon a destroyer, dead in the water. She blinkered, “I AM DESTROYER SHIGURE. RUDDER IS DAMAGED AND UNDER REPAIR.”

  Shima’s radars showed the Allies ahead of them. Close in, to starboard, was another ship in flames, seemingly a hulk. Vice Admiral Shima ordered his fleet to attack, and he turned to starboard to bring his ship’s torpedo tubes to bear. That was when someone noticed the “hulk” was actually under way—it was Mogami. Commander Mori, the torpedo staff officer, recalled that everyone on the bridge was too focused on their impending torpedo attack. Only after the tin fish were away did they realize Mogami had power. Captain Kanoka ordered the rudder hard over and the engines into reverse but far too late. Nachi sliced into Mogami, holing her starboard bow and flooding the anchor windlass compartment. The last-minute actions at least prevented the collision from being even worse. Shima’s flagship headed south for some minutes to review the ship’s condition, establishing that speed now had to be held to twenty knots, not so good in a battle.

  Mori advised Shima that the Nishimura force had been almost totally destroyed. “Up ahead the enemy must be waiting for us with
open arms,” Mori argued. “It is obvious that the Second Striking Force will fall into a trap.”

  This marked the end of madness. The Japanese southern wing had been overwhelmed by superior force. Vice Admiral Shima recoiled down the strait and out to sea. Shima reported to Mikawa and for the information of others: “THIS FORCE HAS CONCLUDED ITS ATTACK AND IS RETIRING FROM THE BATTLE AREA TO PLAN SUBSEQUENT ACTION.” That information from Admiral Shima was oddly misleading—“concluding” the attack under the Sho plan suggested a successful mission. The high command could have been left thinking Shima had actually mounted an attack inside Leyte Gulf. A communications specialist ought not to have sent such an ambiguous dispatch. A later message detailing the extent of the damage to himself and the Nishimura unit perhaps clarified his meaning.

  Allied cruisers and destroyers pursued them down the strait. Destroyer Asagumo sank. On the way out, the Japanese had to run the gauntlet of the PT boats once more. Torpedo boats attacked the Shigure and the Mogami, and with dawn came the airplanes. They finished off Mogami, and, a day later, Army Air Force planes would sink the hapless Abukuma. Admiral Shima regrouped at Coron Bay. This time a tanker awaited him. Shima believed he had been saved by a trick. With planes of the Seventh Fleet’s escort carriers in sight, a young communications lieutenant who had been born in Hawaii had gotten on a U.S. Navy air radio frequency and broadcast an emergency recall—supposedly JNAF carrier planes were assailing their base ships. Shima recalls watching the Grummans as they turned and flew away.