by John Prados
Out of options, at 2:40 p.m., the main body commander pulled his own version of forming the battleship task force. Ozawa directed Rear Admiral Matsuda Chiaki to separate, take most of the destroyers, and operate as an advance force to make a night torpedo attack. Matsuda complied. In the dusk, lookouts saw flashes against the horizon. Staff thought it could be from the pyrotechnics of JNAF attacks on the Halsey fleet. Admiral Matsuda thought the sky looked more like an electrical storm and felt that even more strongly as darkness gathered. Matsuda also had radar indications of aircraft, however. The occasional flashes persisted until about nine o’clock. Deciding to observe strict radio silence, Matsuda made no report. But he shaped a course toward the lights. Around 10:30 p.m., as Matsuda expected to close with the phantom fleet, Admiral Ozawa recalled the vanguard, planning an early-morning rendezvous.
Meanwhile, the main body turned due west toward Cape Engaño. This marked a departure from standard carrier tactics, in which the force launching a strike against an adversary heads away from the enemy to put maximum distance between the sides. Instead, Ozawa maneuvered so as to maintain a constant distance from Task Force 38.
But that did not last. Suddenly the Oyodo reported an American scout plane and its strafing attack. Admiral Ozawa turned the fleet due north. Elated, he dashed off a dispatch to Combined Fleet, Kurita, Mikawa, and everyone else that the Americans had found him and were tumbling for the lure. That transmission failed to go through. The Zuikaku’s communication problems cost the Imperial Navy dearly.
The Zuikaku overheard the message where Admiral Kurita reported his decision to withdraw temporarily in the Sibuyan Sea. This must have tried Ozawa’s stolidity when he learned of it at about eight o’clock. He had already sacrificed the carrier air groups, deliberately kept his fleet in harm’s way, detached his biggest surface ships as bait, all to enable the Kurita fleet’s penetration mission, and now they were turning away. Ozawa ordered a course change too, northeastward toward Empire waters.
With Admiral Matsuda’s advance force dangling, the main-body commander altered course again around midnight, coming around to the south-southeast to rendezvous with the vanguard unit. Admiral Matsuda had not been able to find the Allies in the dark, so his attack mission turned into a bust—probably just as well since his warships were no match for the escort of even one of Halsey’s task groups.
It was on Ozawa’s 140-degree heading that the night scout from Independence found him after two o’clock. There is no indication the Japanese were aware of this sighting, since Ozawa coolly maintained his course. Once the Matsuda vanguard unit rejoined, at about dawn, the admiral began evasive maneuvers for the first time. The fleet turned through many points of the compass to head, first northeast, then to the northwest, and the Zuikaku crew went to battle stations at 5:30 a.m.
A couple of hours after dawn, all doubt evaporated. At 7:13, lookouts saw American air scouts. Ozawa knew Halsey’s attack would begin shortly. The one bit of good news—a dispatch from Kurita showed he had gone through the San Bernardino after all and was engaging the Allies off Samar. At 7:45, Ozawa ordered his fleet to prepare for air attacks. The Gargoyle would need all his faculties.
THE SACRIFICE OF THE MOBILE FLEET
Airman John Yeager of the Essex would always remember October 25 as the day he and his comrades raised a lot of hell. That wouldn’t be obvious at first—Mick Carney later admitted to Bill Halsey, “I chewed my fingernails down to my elbows,” while awaiting news of the first wave. But the combat power of the Third Fleet had grown enormously, and after the happy hunting against Kurita the day before, the pilots were on a roll.
The lead attack that Dave McCampbell managed set the tone. The Japanese detected about eighty planes inbound at 8:17 a.m. Barely ten minutes later, the strike arrived overhead. Ozawa launched what fighters he had, but the powerful strike force simply brushed aside the dozen or more interceptors. Ozawa’s only defenses would be maneuver and flak. He ordered fire opened at 8:23 a.m.
In contrast to the Musashi earlier, the Ozawa fleet had no compunction about using the dangerous sanshikidan shells from the 14-inch guns of Ise and Hyuga. Flak began assailing the strike aircraft as far as ten miles away. Enterprise fliers found the fire surprisingly accurate, and far enough downrange that the Japanese could take more than one shot. The powerful explosions were unnerving but not especially effective. The huge shells destroyed no planes, and the same went for the rockets the Imperial Navy had installed so assiduously on its big ships. Their firing angles and slant ranges were so restrictive that they served primarily to disrupt attackers’ aim. The conventional medium and light flak was another matter. Enterprise crews observed intense fire and shell bursts in many colors. Avenger pilot Robert Barnes decided the flak was “the most intense I have ever seen.” As he went in, “all ships were firing everything they had . . . every ship you flew by was shooting at you.” TBM crewman John Underwood of the Lexington remembered the flak as “awesome.” Given the fierce opposition, it is fortunate that only eleven American warplanes were lost—Halsey’s assault had involved 527 sorties (cruiser Oyodo claimed twenty-seven planes were shot down).
Dave McCampbell would be only the first Task Force 38 strike manager. This offensive was different from the fight at Philippine Sea. Engaño was carried out at such short range that Admiral Mitscher could rotate coordinators and keep up a constant, well-directed assault. Here, McCampbell had the leisure to fly home to refuel and return to resume his coordination role. Commander Theodore H. Winters, the Lexington’s air group boss, estimates spending six to six and a half hours orbiting the Ozawa fleet that day. The Japanese were less than 100 miles away. Mitscher sent his planes at Ozawa in five waves starting with this early-morning attack. McCampbell’s strike pitched the Ozawa fleet immediately into turmoil. First into Davy Jones’s locker would be Commander Yogata Tomoe’s destroyer Akitsuki. On that vessel Lieutenant Yamamoto Heiya was chief boilerman. He had a bad feeling about this sortie—third time, unlucky—as Akitsuki had survived a couple of tight scrapes already. In any case, there had been so many phony submarine and other alerts that he and the fifty-odd sailors in the boiler gang were exhausted. In addition, Ozawa had maneuvered so much throughout the day on the twenty-fourth that it had added to their burdens. Commander Yogata’s vessel sailed with Matsuda’s vanguard force. There had been no battle, but the chief engineer, maintaining eighteen knots, kept switching orders to prepare for twenty-four or not. The boilermen were constantly to-ing and fro-ing.
Suddenly Yamamoto heard the noise of flak, then sounds of battle. Moments later a bomb burst in the engine room. Before the battle, the boiler gang had neglected to close and seal the hatch between the compartments. More explosions followed; then steam and smoke poured in, causing real confusion. The space became unbearably hot, with fires above them too. When the fumes became noxious, Yamamoto and a few boilermen pushed their way up, despite how scalding the ladders were, and became the only survivors. The lieutenant reported to Commander Yogata, his ship otherwise undamaged, who wondered why Akitsuki had lost power. Yamamoto’s burn injuries stunned the skipper. Suddenly the destroyer lurched and listed. At 8:57 a.m. the Akitsuki rolled over and sank.
From the Oyodo sailors saw the destroyer emit innocent-looking white smoke, but the color changed to oily and black after just six minutes. Observers on the cruiser thought the Akitsuki had simply blown up. The entire episode took less than ten minutes.
Similar scenes played out elsewhere. Essex torpedo bombers went after the battleship Ise and claimed three hits. The Japanese recorded nothing more than near misses on her. Torpedo bombers from Task Force 38 carriers Belleau Wood and San Jacinto rolled into attacks on the light cruiser Tama. Captain Yamamoto Iwata’s (no relation to any of the others in our story) cruiser had been helping protect the Japanese light carrier Chitose. For her trouble she suffered a torpedo hit in a portside boiler room, which left the ship temporarily dead in the water.
The carrier’s executive officer, Commander Yano Kanji, plunged into efforts to save the ship. He managed to right half of the steep thirty-degree list, but he could not restore power lost from two flooded boiler rooms. Then the rudder failed, and the vessel had to steer by engines. When an engine failed too, Chitose’s speed, which had already dropped to fourteen knots, fell off even more. Before Yano could accomplish anything else, the Chitose’s list increased more, and just an hour after her initial wounds, the ship sank. Captain Kishi and more than 900 crewmen went down with her. Captain Matsuda Gengo’s Isuzu plus destroyer Shimotsuki teamed up to rescue another 600 sailors.
In the Japanese formation, Captain Sugiura Kuro’s Zuiho steamed on the port quarter of Ozawa’s flagship. Emmet Riera of the Enterprise led his Helldivers to bomb her. There were three misses off the stern and a 500-pound bomb hit aft, which jammed the rear elevator. The ship took a slight list, rudder control failed, and a fire started in the hangar deck. But Commander Eguchi Itozumi’s repair teams were so effective that by 8:55 a.m.—within twenty minutes—the list had been righted, the fires stopped, and the steering restored.
Fleet carrier Zuikaku’s purgatory would be more intense as Rear Admiral Kaizuka Takeo maneuvered the ship. (Ozawa had no use for superseding his ship captain.) Kaizuka went twenty-four knots, turning violently. Lookouts counted forty bombers plus ten torpedo planes. Someone spotted a torpedo on the starboard beam. Barely five minutes later, another track appeared up the ship’s throat—from port, astern. Just then one or several 500-pound bombs hit on the port side, amidships. Then a torpedo impacted amidships. Fires started on the hangar deck. The number four generator room flooded. That and consequent damage disabled the rudder, cut power to the helm, and shorted out the secondary switchboard controls. Soon one of the port engine rooms flooded and the ship acquired a marked list, her speed depending solely upon a single propeller.
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At first damage control worked effectively. By nine o’clock, when Admiral Kaizuka ordered a cease-fire, signaling the end of the air attack, helm control had been restored, the fires were out, counterflooding had corrected the port list from a dangerous twenty-nine and a half degrees to a mild six, and the vessel could make good speed again, albeit on only two shafts. On the other hand, the Zuikaku’s radio transmitters had ceased functioning altogether.
The latter seriously affected fleet commander Ozawa. Chief of staff Obayashi advised the admiral to transfer his flag. Ozawa refused. He expected the fleet to be destroyed, so he would go down with his flagship. Senior staff Ohmae appealed to his good sense, and Ozawa still resisted.
Seven Lexington torpedo planes had been too late for the first wave. Airman John Underwood was the belly gunner in one of those and had missed the launch because hangar crews had trouble slinging her torpedo properly. The planes finally got away, flying parallel to a small second wave from Enterprise. Big E Helldivers and Lexington Avengers went after Kaizuka’s carrier, which had just finished moving ammunition from the water-threatened aft magazines to the starboard side. Zuikaku mustered all her speed, and gunners poured out fire. Crewmen saw two torpedos off the stern. The carrier emerged unscathed, but the TBMs believed they had hit with three fish. Underwood and his crewmates received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Most of the second wave concentrated against light aircraft carrier Chiyoda. She was the vessel skippered by Captain Jyo Eichiro, one of the Navy’s kamikaze advocates and formerly aide-de-camp to Emperor Hirohito. The Helldivers were from Lexington and Franklin. They bored in from 10:10 a.m., slapping Jyo’s carrier with four bomb hits. Suddenly the Chiyoda lost power, like the others, but this time nothing that executive officer Kumon Shigenori tried seemed to work. The warship drifted. A few planes went after the Zuiho, and in one of the few instances where these proved effective for the Japanese, the carrier’s antiaircraft rockets were instrumental in driving them off.
With Imperial Navy warships being destroyed, and Zuikaku without radios, Admiral Ozawa finally listened to Captain Ohmae’s pleas. Thanks to swift repair work, Captain Yamamoto’s cruiser Tama had gotten under way again just as the second attack rolled in. Light cruiser Isuzu sailed with her. Rear Admiral Matsuda was trying to organize a tow for the crippled Chiyoda. What to do? The fleet still needed Ozawa’s leadership. When Captain Ohmae asked again if he would transfer—and said “Please!”—Gargoyle agreed. At 9:44 a.m. Zuikaku signaled Oyodo to come alongside, but they postponed the transfer minutes later as the gunners fired upon the new attack planes. Another transfer attempt failed at 10:14. A dozen minutes later, Captain Mudaguchi was actually able to stop and put a boat in the water. Admiral Ozawa and eleven staffers climbed down to the cutter, which also picked up a downed pilot. At 10:54, Ozawa raised his flag on board the cruiser Oyodo. He had come full circle.
The Zuikaku managed eighteen knots, but it was not enough for Rear Admiral Kaizuka to position his ship to recover CAP fighters. The nine remaining planes had to ditch. Ozawa instructed the Tama to head home independently and tried to regroup the remaining ships with him. A little after noon, the Zuikaku increased to twenty knots and an hour later to twenty-four. She seemed to be in good condition.
The Zuiho now held the port quarter position, with Rear Admiral Matsuda’s Ise completing a triangle. Battleship Hyuga now lay thirty miles to the rear, trying to protect the Chiyoda while Isuzu towed her. When Admiral Ozawa discovered a third attack wave headed his way, he reluctantly recalled those ships and left the light carrier to her fate.
This third mission, coordinated by Commander Ted Winters, put more than 200 aircraft up against the Mobile Fleet. Ozawa’s force, punier by the minute, was creamed. Winters set Lexington’s planes against the Zuikaku. Aircraft divided to hit from both sides at once. He thought the carrier smothered. Beginning at 1:15 p.m., pilots pressed home their attacks. Within the space of eight minutes, half a dozen torpedoes slammed into the hapless warship from both sides. The assault left the carrier powerless and settling in the sea. Rear Admiral Kaizuka ordered all hands on deck at 1:27, preparatory to abandoning ship. The captain addressed his crew, the Imperial Navy ensign was lowered, and a bugler played the “Kimigayo.” Crewmen began leaving just before 4:00 p.m. About a quarter of an hour later the Zuikaku slowly rolled over to port and sank, stern first. Destroyer Wakatsuki and escort Kuwa rescued a bit more than half the carrier’s crew. Some 842 sailors were lost, including Rear Admiral Kaizuka.
Zuiho’s cruise also ended in a nightmare. Captain Sugiura could hardly maneuver. Strike coordinator Winters directed the attack planes from the Enterprise, San Jacinto, and Franklin at her. At 1:17 p.m., Enterprise planes hit the carrier with a torpedo right under the bridge. Sugiura would be wounded. A bomb struck the after elevator. A little more than ten minutes later, the really massive strike washed over Sugiura’s weakened ship—a torpedo hit starboard, another bomb, and seven near misses, followed by dozens of claimed near misses from subsequent serials of aircraft. Lieutenant Wistar Janney of the Franklin’s VT-13 won the Navy Cross for putting the new torpedo into the Zuiho.
On the Japanese carrier, executive officer Eguchi Itozumi had little chance against the extensive damage. Speed dropped until the Zuiho drifted, only to be hit by Task Force 38’s fourth strike, with yet more near misses. Already by 2:10, every available sailor had been summoned to the pumps. Zuiho sank about an hour later, though Sugiura had time to save the emperor’s portrait and most of the crew—more than 750 men. It was Commander Eguchi, caught in the blasted bowels of Zuiho, who did not survive. He would be the se
niormost of 215 men lost.
For Task Force 38’s fifth-wave attack, Admiral Mitscher considered the Japanese defenses so beaten down that he ordered the fighters to fly in a strike role, armed with rockets or 1,000-pound bombs. That assault connected around 4:15 p.m., to be credited with two torpedo and six bomb hits on the battleships, plus sinking a destroyer. The claims seem to have been illusory.
What is interesting about the last three Task Force 38 strikes—the ones that finished off two of the four Japanese aircraft carriers—is that they were mounted by an incomplete and reduced U.S. striking force. Admiral William F. Halsey no longer sailed alongside. The Bull had left—taking Jerry Bogan’s Task Group 38.2 and Ching Lee’s Task Force 34 with him. Halsey’s absence reflected the gravest emergency for the Allies at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
BULL’S RUN
When Admiral Halsey decided on his run north he had some confidence the Japanese strength represented by the Kurita fleet had been countered. They had been seen to turn away. The dilemma lay in whether that much was enough. If Kurita continued to flee, unquestionably it was. If not, the situation could become dicey. Admiral Halsey held to his decision to head north with all three groups, including the vessels that would have formed Lee’s fast battleship armada.
Admiral Halsey arranged his chase from midafternoon on October 24, with the Kurita fleet under fire. Halsey’s misinformation regarding enemy losses, though not so immense as Japanese delusions in the Taiwan battle, were enough to hold a mistaken impression of Kurita’s true strength. That led the Third Fleet commander into error. Halsey understood his aviators had sunk a Yamato-class battleship, three cruisers, and a destroyer, while damaging all the other battleships and reducing their fighting power. From this, he deduced that the Kurita fleet would be hampered if it turned east again.