The Admirals

by Walter R. Borneman

  But far from being the main attack force, Ozawa’s command was charged with drawing Halsey and the Third Fleet away from the Leyte beachhead, something Ozawa had been unable to do against Spruance in the Marianas four months before. If successful, this would open the way for an attack on the beachhead but likely cost Japan these carriers. Two years before, such a sacrifice would have been unthinkable, but now the bulk of these carriers’ aircraft and pilots had either been lost in the Philippine Sea and off Formosa or sent to land-based fields, from which the less experienced pilots were presumed to stand a better chance of survival.

  The First Striking Force (called the Center Force by the Americans) under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita packed the most punch. Centered on three battleship divisions, the first of which included the 64,000-ton, 18-inch-gunned Yamato and Musashi, it was supported by eleven heavy cruisers and a bevy of light cruisers and destroyers. Kurita’s mission was to sail east from Brunei Bay on Borneo, traverse the Sulu Sea, and snake through the mid-Philippines via the Sibuyan Sea and San Bernardino Strait. Rounding Samar Island on the east, this massive firepower would then pounce on the transports and assorted supply ships off the Leyte beachhead and engage any units that might rush to their assistance.

  The Second Striking Force of three cruisers and seven destroyers also assembled in the Inland Sea under Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima. It was to rendezvous with the Third Section of Kurita’s Center Force under Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura and then transit Surigao Strait, to the south of the Leyte beachhead. Together, they would engage any elements protecting these southern approaches and distract attention from Kurita’s operations. Shima and Nishimura were each generally aware of the other’s participation, but true coordination was sorely lacking. The Americans would call these combined operations the Southern Force.

  But what of the Americans? Halsey’s Third Fleet was roaming far and wide, charged with destroying the Japanese fleet if an opportunity to do so presented itself. It was secondarily responsible for suppressing major offensive threats to the beachhead by its far-flung aerial strikes against both land bases on Luzon and any approaching sea targets. What the Third Fleet was not charged with doing, Halsey pointedly maintained, was protecting the Seventh Fleet. This was “MacArthur’s Navy,” under the command of Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid and responsible to MacArthur, whereas Halsey was answerable to Nimitz. Kinkaid’s orders were to protect the mass of assembled ships off the Leyte beachhead, which were also under his command, and—via smaller escort carriers—provide both close-in air support for operations ashore and combat air patrols over the ships off the beachhead.

  Compared to American forces at Pearl Harbor, both of these fleets were massive. Given its offensive role, the Third Fleet definitely boasted the cream of the crop. Its combatant ships, essentially the fast carriers with battleship and cruiser support, were concentrated in Task Force 38. This was divided into four task groups numbered Task Group 38.1 through Task Group 38.4. In all, there were the veteran carrier Enterprise, seven new Essex-class carriers, eight light carriers, the new battleships Iowa and New Jersey, four older battleships, six heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers, and fifty-eight destroyers.

  Given its largely defensive and supporting role, the Seventh Fleet was assigned older and slower ships, but that did not mean it lacked firepower. Kinkaid’s battle line was under the command of Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf and included six battleships (five of them Pearl Harbor survivors), three heavy cruisers, five light cruisers, twenty-six destroyers, and about forty hard-stinging PT boats. Additionally, Kinkaid’s forces included three groups of escort carriers (CVEs), totaling sixteen in all, with ten destroyers and eleven destroyer escorts.25

  On October 20, 1944, MacArthur’s forces landed on Leyte, and for a time all operations progressed smoothly. Then, early on October 22, two American submarines patrolling the western approaches to the Philippines, Darter and Dace, detected elements of Kurita’s Center Force and reported the first indications that a massive Japanese naval movement was afoot. The subs lost contact during the day but reestablished it again that night and worked into a firing position. Dace was credited with sinking the heavy cruiser Maya. Darter damaged the heavy cruiser Takao and sank the heavy cruiser Atago, which by luck happened to be Kurita’s flagship. Kurita transferred his flag to the battleship Yamato and pushed eastward, well aware that the Americans now knew he was coming and with at least some shock that he had already had one ship blown from beneath him.

  Reports of these attacks reached Halsey on the New Jersey shortly before dawn on the morning of October 23, and he ordered his task groups to refuel and prepare for extensive air operations against Kurita’s force as it entered the Sibuyan Sea in the heart of the Philippine archipelago. Given the hectic pace of the past two months, however, Halsey had begun to rotate his groups eastward to Ulithi for provisioning and rearming, and whatever brief recreation might be had on the atoll. This meant that even as Task Force 38 prepared to engage Kurita, Task Group 38.1, with more than a quarter of the task force’s strength, was sailing away from the battle.

  Task Group 38.1 was under the command of Vice Admiral John S. “Slew” McCain. While the four task groups were nominally of equal weight, McCain’s was certainly the strongest, having five of the sixteen carriers and six of the fifteen assorted cruisers, albeit no battleships. The next day, when the magnitude of the Japanese assault was apparent, Halsey ordered McCain and Task Group 38.1 to come about, refuel at sea, and return to Philippine waters, but such a maneuver would take precious time.

  Early on the morning of October 24, carrier planes from the remaining three task groups—Task Group 38.2 under Rear Admiral Gerald Bogan, Task Group 38.3 under Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman, and Task Group 38.4 under Rear Admiral Ralph Davison—searched for Kurita’s Center Force. Planes from Bogan’s group off San Bernardino Strait sighted it first, along with the immense Yamato. Aircraft from Davison’s group, operating to the south, also soon located Shima and Nishimura’s converging Southern Force.

  When Halsey learned of Kurita’s whereabouts, he urgently signaled all three task groups, “Strike—Repeat—Strike.” He ordered both Sherman’s group to the north and Davison’s group to the south to converge with Bogan’s middle group and hammer away at Kurita. Despite the appearance of the Japanese forces headed for Surigao Strait, Halsey elected, in the words of his battle report, “to shift target to the Center Force on the assumption that SEVENTH fleet forces could take care of the smaller Southern Force.”26

  Without air cover, Kurita’s ships were highly vulnerable. One wonders what the Japanese were thinking, what lessons of the new age in naval warfare they had overlooked. This was not Tsushima. Even if the Imperial Japanese Navy’s remaining carriers had been dispatched with the Northern Force as decoys, there was no reason why land-based aircraft on Luzon couldn’t have performed the covering role—none except for a decided lack of communication between the navy and the army controlling those planes and a rather dubious Japanese decision to use their remaining aircraft to target American ships rather than defend their own.

  When the day was over, the super-battleship Musashi had been sunk, with a loss of eleven hundred men—half its complement—and Kurita, particularly discouraged by the lack of air cover, had reversed course and was reported to be steaming away from Leyte. But Sherman’s Task Group 38.3, the northernmost of the three groups on station, had also taken some losses. It had been attacked by land-based planes from Luzon, as well as the remnants of Ozawa’s carrier-based planes. Sherman’s planes fought off the attackers extremely well, but one lone bomber managed to break through the combat air patrol and hit the light carrier Princeton, starting an inferno that soon engulfed the ship.

  To Halsey, the loss of the Princeton was evidence that the Japanese still packed a punch, but at least he now knew that Ozawa’s carriers were close. Prior to hearing that Kurita’s force had turned around, Halsey issued a battle plan that four battleships (including his own New Jersey), tw
o heavy cruisers, and assorted light cruisers and destroyers would be culled from the three task groups and formed as Task Force 34 to block Kurita’s exit from San Bernardino Strait. Kinkaid directed Oldendorf to do much the same thing with his battle line at the exit to Surigao Strait. The difference between Halsey and Kinkaid was that whereas Kinkaid executed his order and Oldendorf steamed into position, Halsey’s message was only a plan to be executed upon his command, which was never given. He specifically clarified this two hours later with a follow-up radio message: “If the enemy sorties [through San Bernardino], TF 34 will be formed when directed by me [emphasis in original].”27

  As evening fell on that day of massive air strikes, Halsey faced a command decision that only he could make. To his mind, he had three alternatives. First, he could divide his forces, “leaving TF 34 to block San Bernardino Straits while the carriers with light screens attacked the Northern Force.” This option he rejected, largely because he did not know the full complement of the Northern Force and might need his battleships as well as his full carrier strength. (If Task Force 34 was indeed to be formed, it would need several carriers for its own air cover unless it was to suffer Kurita’s naked fate. With McCain’s Task Group 38.1 out of reach, Halsey feared he might not in fact have overwhelming superiority.)

  Second, Halsey could sit off the eastern end of San Bernardino Strait with his combined force and wait for whichever Japanese force might appear—Kurita through San Bernardino Strait should he try again, or Ozawa from the north. This, too, Halsey rejected, as it gave Ozawa far too much initiative to operate “unmolested” and might well mean the eventual escape of the Japanese carriers. Halsey did not even hint at it in his after-action report, but one senses that what he left unsaid was that this alternative smacked too much of Spruance’s actions at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. They had proved prudent and—thanks to American pilots—decisive in crippling Japan’s air arm, but sitting and waiting to be attacked was hardly Halsey’s style.

  Finally, there was the option of striking north against Ozawa’s carriers with all his combined strength. This would leave San Bernardino Strait unguarded, but at the moment it appeared that Kurita’s Center Force was retreating west. Based on pilot reports—perhaps overly optimistic reports, as tended to be made on both sides—Halsey concluded that the fighting power of Kurita’s Center Force had been “too seriously impaired to win a decision.” In truth, it had been battered, but only the Musashi had been sunk by aircraft. Thus, Halsey became convinced that this option “would contribute most to the over-all Philippines campaign even if a temporarily tight situation existed at Leyte.”28

  Halsey turned to Mick Carney, his chief of staff in the flag plot of the New Jersey, jabbed a finger at the Northern Force’s charted position some three hundred miles away, and made his decision. “Here’s where we’re going. Mick, start them north.” With that, the admiral, who along with most of his flag staff had been fighting a flu bug, went to bed for a few hours of sleep. The record is not entirely clear if he did so before or after a lone search plane flashed the news from high above the Sibuyan Sea that Kurita’s Center Force had turned around and was once again bearing down on San Bernardino Strait.29

  Aboard the carrier Lexington in Task Group 38.3, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, the Task Force 38 commander, was somewhat surprised that he was not asked for his opinion before Halsey’s decision to run north. Mitscher, too, wanted to strike the Japanese carriers, but with a smaller, more nimble force. Done quickly, it might well trounce the carriers and be back off Leyte in time to help pin Kurita’s force outside San Bernardino Strait—if it came through, which now again seemed quite plausible.

  Mitscher’s chief of staff, Captain Arleigh Burke, was concerned that Ozawa’s carriers might be decoys, particularly now that he had the information about Kurita’s renewed advance. But Mitscher appeared reluctant to press the matter with Halsey. “Admiral Halsey is in command now,” Mitscher told his staff with some sign of resignation. Burke pressed the issue with Mitscher but didn’t get very far. “I think you’re right,” Mitscher told Burke, “but I don’t know you’re right [and] I don’t think we ought to bother Admiral Halsey.”30

  Halsey would assume that Kinkaid’s air reconnaissance was doing the job, and Kinkaid would assume that the entire battle line of phantom Task Force 34 was in place there. But why Halsey did not leave so much as a picket destroyer or a submarine to monitor the eastern end of the strait—or at least request Kinkaid to do so with one of his units—has never been satisfactorily answered.

  Meanwhile, Shima and Nishimura’s twin forces were converging on Surigao Strait, and there appeared to be a great reluctance on the part of the two commanders to coordinate their operations. Shima, coming south from Japan, was the ranking officer, but Nishimura was older, had more battle experience, and, as a subordinate of Kurita’s Center Force, may have felt the need to rush ahead to maintain his time schedule as the southern pincer of Kurita’s move against Leyte. And that is just what he did. Shima’s force of two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and four destroyers may not have made much of a difference against Oldendorf’s slow but steady battle array, but Nishimura attempted to force the strait alone.

  Oldendorf’s tactics at the Battle of Surigao Strait were superb. Not only did he succeed in routing the advancing Southern Force, but he did so in a night engagement with classic tactics of the age of battleships, parading his Pearl Harbor survivors back and forth and crossing the enemy’s T after his cruisers and destroyers had harried its flanks. The Japanese had sought another Tsushima, but Oldendorf won one for the Americans.

  Nishimura went down with his flagship, the battleship Yamashiro. The battleship Fuso and the cruiser Mogami also sank. By the time Shima’s force entered the strait and fought its way past American PT boats, the remnants of Nishimura’s force were fleeing toward him. Shima turned his force around and sailed west. The threat to the Leyte beachhead from Surigao Strait was over. Jesse Oldendorf’s day, however, was not.

  At 7:28 on the morning of October 25, Oldendorf received a “well done” dispatch from Kinkaid. But before he could even savor a cup of coffee, he was handed a second dispatch from Kinkaid that bespoke a terrible new urgency. Kurita’s force had indeed exited San Bernardino Strait and was firing on the northern group of escort carriers off Samar Island. “With his fuel dangerously low, his torpedoes almost exhausted, and his ammunition near the vanishing point,” Oldendorf put his battle line on course for Leyte Gulf to lend what assistance he could.31

  As the Battle of Surigao Strait was winding down, Kinkaid had gotten nervous about San Bernardino Strait. His operations officer spoke the obvious: “We’ve never asked Halsey directly if Task Force 34 is guarding the San Bernardino Strait.” No, Kinkaid agreed, they hadn’t, and he directed that a message be sent asking, “Is TF 34 guarding San Bernardino Strait.” The query went out at 4:12 a.m. on October 25, but given the frequently circuitous radio communications—particularly between fleets—Halsey did not receive it until 6:48 a.m., a full two and a half hours later. Preoccupied with operations up north, Halsey shot back, “Negative. Task Force Thirty Four is with carrier groups now engaging enemy carrier force.”32

  But Kinkaid wasn’t the only one wondering about the location of Task Force 34. In Pearl Harbor and in Washington, Nimitz and King had been monitoring radio traffic routinely copied to them for information purposes. Just as Kinkaid had done, Nimitz grew nervous about San Bernardino Strait, but questioning Halsey about it was a dicey matter. Like King, Nimitz didn’t question his commanders in the field, and he was reluctant to press Halsey on the matter now. Finally, however, one of Nimitz’s aides suggested that Nimitz send the most basic of queries and simply ask, Where is task force 34? Nimitz thought for a moment and concurred.

  All such radio traffic was routinely buffered by nonsense phrases inserted by operators and intended to confuse Japanese code breakers. Receiving operators routinely stripped out the same so that command recipients saw
only the pertinent information. A double consonant separated the real message from the gibberish that was supposed to have absolutely nothing to do with the former. There could be no chance of confusion. But confusion was about to occur in spades.

  The operator encoding Nimitz’s query added the buffering gibberish “Turkey trots to water” before the question “Where is Task Force 34?” and then closed with additional gibberish—or at least it was supposed to be such. The message Halsey received on the New Jersey read, “Where is Task Force 34? The world wonders.”33

  Inexplicably, the sending operator in Pearl Harbor had added buffering at the end of the message that could be confused with the message itself. And it was. Later, much would be made of the fact that October 25 was the ninetieth anniversary of the Crimean War’s Battle of Balaklava, immortalized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Twice the poem critically asserts, “All the world wonder’d” at such a military blunder. The young ensign who encoded the message later claimed that “The world wonders” buffer was “just something that popped into my head.”34 But every man of Halsey’s generation knew well the reference, and the damage had been done.

  Halsey reread the message in his flag plot on the New Jersey and jumped to the immediate conclusion that not only was Nimitz questioning his tactical deployments but also he was mocking the same to the world. By his own recollection, Halsey was “as stunned as if I had been struck in the face.” He snatched off his cap, “threw it on the deck and shouted something” he was ashamed to remember. Only Mick Carney’s quick intervention seems to have stopped a full-blown tirade.35

  A good deal of the tension came from the fact that Kinkaid, having discovered the exit from San Bernardino Strait was indeed unguarded and Kurita’s main Center Force was steaming through to engage his escort carriers off Samar Island, had just implored Halsey that his situation was critical. Only fast battleships and air strikes, Kinkaid radioed Halsey, could prevent Kurita from destroying the CVEs and entering Leyte Gulf.36