Leyte Gulf – the Largest Naval Battle
Meanwhile, almost 3,000 miles to the east, the United States Navy advance towards Japan was gaining momentum. On 30 and 31 March 1944, Vice-Admiral Marc Mitscher sent carrier aircraft to attack Japanese airfields in the Palau Islands, inflicting further heavy losses on the enemy for the cost of twenty-five US aircraft. When the actual landings at Hollandia in New Guinea took place on 22 April, Mitscher then provided air cover for the invasion force and there were further attacks on Japanese airfields. The landings themselves were covered by Kinkaid with the Seventh Fleet, with eight escort carriers and five cruisers, while the 24th and 41st Infantry Divisions were put ashore. A week later, the carriers made a further attack on Truk, losing twenty-six aircraft to the ninety Japanese losses. Further landings took place on 17 May at Wakde, a small island off the north coast of New Guinea, and on which the Americans established an airfield after overcoming light resistance. Ten days later, Biak, another island further west, was also invaded by the 41st Infantry Division, although this time resistance was more determined and it took a month to subdue the island.
Not all of the action was taking place in the skies at this time. Between 19 and 31 May 1944, the destroyer USS England sunk six Japanese submarines in just twelve days, setting a record for a single ship that stands to this day.
Preparing to attack the Marianas, Mitscher divided his carrier fleet, now known as TF58, into four groups to destroy Japanese shore-based aircraft over 11–17 June, while Japanese attempts at a counter-attack were unsuccessful. During this period, on 15/16 June, two carrier combat groups were sent to attack the Bonin Islands, halfway to Japan, to ensure that further reinforcements could not be sent to the Marianas. Despite determined Japanese aerial counter-attacks against the fleet, TF58’s aircraft succeeded in destroying 300 Japanese aircraft for the loss of just twenty-two American aircraft.
On 15 June, TF52 under Vice-Admiral Turner landed V Amphibious Corps under Lieutenant General H.M. Smith on Saipan at the southern end of the Marianas chain. Smith had the US 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions with the 27th Infantry Division in reserve, using a landing fleet of 550 ships, while cover was provided by eight escort carriers with 170 aircraft and another four escort carriers had reserve aircraft. The battleships Tennessee, California, Maryland, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Idaho were escorted by eleven cruisers and fifty destroyers. Believing that there would be underwater obstacles to prevent an invasion, the Americans sent in frogmen but no obstacles were found. Nevertheless, resistance by 22,700 Japanese soldiers and 6,700 sailors was especially intense as the defenders expected the Imperial Japanese Navy to intervene, as indeed it did, so that on 19 and 20 June, one of the major battles of the Pacific war, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, known to the Americans as the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’, took place.
THE ‘GREAT MARIANAS TURKEY SHOOT’
Opposing each other were the US Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond Spruance and the Japanese Combined Fleet under Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa. Spruance had 890 aircraft in his carrier fleet, TF58 commanded by Mitscher, with ships including Hornet, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, Enterprise, Wasp, Lexington and Essex, and the light carriers Cabot, Cowpens, Belleau Wood, San Jacinto, Langley, Bataan, Monterey and Princeton, supported by the battleships Iowa, New Jersey, Washington, North Carolina, South Dakota and Indiana, as well as eight heavy and thirteen light cruisers and sixty-seven destroyers. At this stage in the war, the Japanese could no longer compete with the United States, even though Ozawa had a far stronger carrier force than had been sent to Pearl Harbor with Taiho, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Junyo and Hiyo, and the light carriers Ryuho, Chitose, Chiyoda and Zuiho, but with a total of just 430 aircraft between them, supported by the battleships Yamato, Musashi, Haruna, Kongo and Nagato, with eleven heavy and two light cruisers and twenty-eight destroyers.
Possibly the best measure of the increasingly desperate state of the Imperial Japanese Navy was that in April 1944, the Japanese Navy Air Force had fewer than 100 pilots available for duty in the central Pacific, not simply because of the predations of American fighters but also due to sickness, especially malaria. When 500 new pilots and 500 radio operators graduated from the training school at Kasumigaura, their training was still incomplete and, of course, they lacked combat experience. The new airmen were sent to Admiral Ozawa to continue their training, but he was running short of airfields and his carriers, based at Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Islands, seldom went to sea for fear of attack by US submarines. While there were still nine Japanese carriers left following the completion of the new Taiho on 7 March, both Shokaku and Zuikaku were badly battered and in need of a refit. Most of what remained were best described as light carriers, although some approximated more to escort carriers.
Nevertheless, those ashore defending the Marianas were right in believing that the IJN would be coming to their aid, as the Japanese planned a strong counter-attack using both carrier and shore-based aircraft.
In the days before battle was joined, Ozawa moved his fleet to a position east of the Philippines, ready to relieve Saipan, while the Americans were positioned west of the Marianas in order to cover the landing fleet. Ozawa’s plan was to get the US Fifth Fleet between his carriers and the Japanese Army Air Force bases in the Marianas so that the Americans could be attacked from both sides. He anticipated his aircraft striking at the Americans and then continuing to land at Guam and Rota to refuel and rearm, so that they could then mount a second strike on the Fifth Fleet on their return to the carriers – in effect a short-range version of what became known in the later stages of the air campaign in Europe as ‘shuttle bombing’. Ozawa divided his carrier force into two, with Force A under himself including the new Taiho, Shokaku and Zuikaku with 207 aircraft, while Force B had Junyo, Hiyo and Ryuho with 135 aircraft, and Kurita had a van force with Chitose, Chiyoda and Zuiho and eighty-eight aircraft.
Both navies sent submarines into the Philippine Sea, although only the American submarines saw action, engaging Japanese warships and also providing additional reconnaissance.
Japanese reconnaissance aircraft first sighted the American carriers during the afternoon of 18 June, but at this stage Mitscher was still unaware of the exact position of the Japanese carriers.
The following morning, realising that he was vulnerable to Japanese attack, Mitscher had most of his fighters prepared and either in the air on combat air patrols or ranged on deck ready for take-off at an early hour. It was not until 10.00 that the first Japanese attacks came, but these were shore-based aircraft from Guam. Additional aircraft were launched from the carriers to reinforce the CAP and in the fierce dogfights that ensued, just twenty-four out of the sixty-nine Japanese aircraft sent against the Fifth Fleet survived. The next wave consisted of 130 aircraft, of which ninety-eight were shot down. These attacks were followed by the first of four waves of carrier-borne aircraft, but anticipating an attack, Mitscher had positioned his fighters 50 miles ahead of the fleet, and once again the Japanese suffered heavy losses, with those aircraft that managed to evade the fighters being caught by the intense anti-aircraft fire put up by the ships. Just twenty or so aircraft managed to press home their attack, and hits were scored on the battleship South Dakota and the carriers Wasp and Bunker Hill, but no ship was badly damaged and all continued in action. There were also near misses on a number of other ships, including the Indiana and a cruiser. These strikes continued for five hours, but most of the aircraft in each successive wave were successfully repulsed by the fleet’s fighters before they could reach the ships. Even those aircraft that managed to reach the shore bases in Guam were attacked and destroyed by American fighters as they landed, a time when combat aircraft were always vulnerable. Ozawa had viewed Guam as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, a view often taken of islands packed with airfields; unsinkable perhaps, but it lacked the manoeuvrability of a ship at sea! There was another problem, as increasingly Japanese pilots lacked experience with so many of the original pilots dead by this time.
AMERICAN SUBMARINES FIND THE CARRIERS
While the American aircraft were attacking the airfields in Guam, the Japanese carriers were themselves under attack but from below the waves. At 09.11, just after the Japanese aircraft had taken off, the submarine USS Albacore torpedoed the Taiho, Ozawa’s flagship but which enjoyed a very brief operational career as aviation fuel fumes from a fractured pipe filled the whole vessel and after six hours, a gigantic aviation fuel explosion destroyed the ship and killed half her crew. Just over three hours later at 12.20, another submarine, the USS Cavalla, put three torpedoes into Shokaku, at one time with Zuikaku, pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and three hours later, she also blew up as aviation fumes ignited and sank. To make their misery complete, during the afternoon just 100 aircraft returned to the Japanese carriers. Ozawa meanwhile had moved his flag to the cruiser Naguro.
The Americans had successfully deployed their carrier fighters using 300 Hellcats in rotation to provide constant air cover and remaining capable of sending up reinforcements when required. At one time, alerted by the radar aboard the battleship Alabama of an incoming Japanese attack, Mitscher managed to get 200 aircraft into the air:
‘So, we got word that a great number of Japanese planes were being staged into Guam,’ recalled Butch Voris, an American fighter-bomber pilot. ‘We immediately launched half of our ready strike force for Guam, to intercept them and try to destroy them there before they could get to our fleet. So we sent the first wave out . .. that first wave caught the aeroplanes both landing and on the ground re-arming and refuelling. I happened to be in … the second strike … I guess that we were about 225 miles from Guam.’
Butch took off and climbed to 20,000 feet, but suddenly the aircraft in his wave had an emergency recall, implying that the fleet was about to come under attack.
It was a major wave and I would think that it would be somewhere around two to three hundred Japanese fighters and dive-bombers and torpedo planes. A major strike against our carrier force. And they were at high altitude … somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 feet. Now that’s way above our normal operating altitude in those days, and so as we climbed up to intercept them … we saw them coming … they had already started their run in … and were heading downhill picking up speed. And I remember the fighters criss-crossing over the dive-bombers, and the attack, and the torpedo planes, and we just went full throttle and came right on top of ’em … right on down … we were able to work the attack force for a period of about a hundred miles and we just started as you will, one at a time, dibbling them away and by the time they had traversed that last 100 miles I don’t think more than a dozen … ever reached our task force.
Japanese tactics when attacking ships at sea differed little from those of the Americans, which was not surprising since the nature of the aircraft dictated how the mission should be flown. Torpedo aircraft attacked low, at no more than 200 feet, while the dive-bombers remained at medium altitude ready to start their dive onto the selected target. Above it all remained the fighters. Voris recalls having to go for the fighters and yet not forget to destroy the strike aircraft:
We had to get a fighter on the way through and then keep going after … main body of the striking force . .. I couldn’t get through the fighters … I got tied up with a fighter immediately and I couldn’t disengage … in fact we got right into anti-aircraft range of our own forces before we got the last ones.
Having lost three-quarters of his aircraft and two of his largest carriers, Ozawa had little option but to withdraw, and after darkness fell started to steam slowly to the north-west. Mitscher realised that this could be a major opportunity. By this time, many of his carriers were low on fuel but he made the most of this problem by leaving these behind to neutralise enemy air power on Guam. Mitscher sent three carriers under Rear Admiral Clark in pursuit of Ozawa’s fleet.
CHASING THE ENEMY
Reconnaissance aircraft from TF58 were launched starting at 05.30 on 20 June. Despite reports from American submarines that had spotted the Japanese fleet, looking for ships even as large as aircraft carriers in the vast reaches of the Pacific was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, and it was not until 15.00 that an American aircraft located the retreating Japanese. At this stage, Ozawa’s ships were at extreme range from the pursuing American carriers.
Butch Voris was among those sent looking for the Japanese, taking part in the first search that had involved him flying 350 miles from his ship, the USS Hornet, and then flying 50 miles on a cross leg before returning to his ship. His day had started at 02.30 and at 15.00 he was dozing in his bunk, convinced that the Japanese were out of reach and had escaped. He was awakened by the sounding of an emergency flight point, the signal that every aviator had to man his flight quarter stations immediately. He checked the teletype and saw that it contained a contact report of the Japanese fleet on a bearing of 330 degrees at a distance of 225 miles. The distance was wrong; the Japanese were much further away.
This was Mitscher’s opportunity. He immediately ordered an attack on the fleeing Japanese. Butch in his Hellcat was among 200 aircraft that were sent that afternoon to attack the Japanese ships, but as he sat in his aircraft, its engine roaring, waiting to take off, he happened to see the ‘talker’ holding the blackboard standing in the wind, with the message that the new enemy position was 350 miles away! It was his turn to take off, but as he raced down the deck and into the air, his thought was ‘how can we do this?’ Nevertheless, Voris and everyone else knew that this was a great opportunity to inflict major damage on Japan’s ambitions.
The American aircraft struggled to use as little fuel as possible, with their pilots flying them on as lean a mixture as possible and taking a full two hours to reach the Japanese fleet. They had plenty of time to think about the difficulty of operating at full pressure over the combat zone and then returning to their ships, and if they didn’t manage to conserve enough fuel, in all probability having to ditch in the sea at night, hoping to be rescued by the advancing fleet. This prospect dominated their thinking far more than the reception that they could expect from the Japanese. The pilots and navigators on the torpedo planes believed that they could not hope to return to their carriers, while their comrades in the dive-bombers considered that it would be touch and go. The fighter pilots thought that they could do it, if only they didn’t use too much fuel in a dogfight or find themselves forced to operate at full power for too long. Part of the problem was that even the fighters were carrying bombs, increasing their weight and spoiling their performance with their drag, because everyone was expected to take a shot at a Japanese ship, even if they had little or no bombing experience. Then, of course, there was the unspoken question mark hanging over the position of the enemy ships: would they be exactly where they were expected to be, or would fuel be wasted searching for them?
Flying at 18,000 feet the strike force was in bright sunshine, although most reckoned that down on the surface, it would be sunset. Looking ahead, Voris could see a large cumulus cloud, and beneath it he spotted ships that seemed to be turning. It was the Japanese carriers turning into the wind to launch their fighters. Seeing that the Japanese were aware of their presence, the leader of the strike broke radio silence and started to issue instructions:
‘We held our altitude in case we ran into Japanese Zeros,’ recalls Voris. ‘Then just rolled over and just came straight down because that increases your accuracy … don’t have to compute for slant range and angle of attack … I just remember saying ‘‘boy, that’s an awful small target when you’re that altitude’’ … you see the flight deck get larger … I could see an anti-aircraft screen … magnificent .. . bursts of purple, and green and lavender … and then coming back real quickly to realise that if I end up in one of those it’s all over …’
Unlike the Allies, the Japanese used different coloured powder in their ammunition, something that distracted many of the American pilots and perhaps reduced the sense of threat from enemy AA fire. For those who hadn’t bombed a Japanese ship before, there were also the different deck markings, another distraction! The Japanese were heavily dependent on AA fire for their survival, as Ozawa had just thirty-five fighters left to protect his fleet.
One problem with dive-bombing was that pilots could not see whether or not their bombs had hit the target as they would have to pull back the control column as they released the bombs, allowing themselves enough height above the target for the aircraft to bring its nose up – the steeper the dive, the more room needed to pull up and climb away – this was another danger for the inexperienced, especially in the fading light.
After the attack, the aircraft had to reassemble for the long flight back to the carriers. The fighters needed the navigators carried by the torpedo- and dive-bombers. As he prepared to rejoin the main force, Voris was nearly caught by a Zero but as he turned to attack it, his flight commander ordered him to get into formation before he could shoot it down. Certainly, the small number of Japanese fighters was another memory the American pilots had of this operation, while one also recalled that the Japanese fighter defence showed little organisation.
Down below, the carrier Hiyo was so badly damaged that she sank within two hours in yet another fuel vapour explosion. Two of the fleet’s precious tankers were also sunk. Of the other carriers, Zuikaku, Junyo, Ryuho and Chiyoda were all badly damaged, as was the battleship Haruna and a cruiser. Just twenty American aircraft had been shot down in the attack.
The attackers turned for home, flying at 7,000 feet to conserve fuel. Flying in the darkness, the steady drone of the aircraft engines was interrupted from time to time as one pilot after another called that they were running out of fuel and would have to ditch. Eventually all of the torpedo-bombers were in the water, and then it was the turn of the dive-bombers as they flew the last 100 miles to the carriers, coming at full speed towards them. Homing beacons guided the aircraft towards the carriers, but the ships themselves were blacked-out and the pilots could not see them until Clark ordered searchlights to be shone onto the sea:
‘I saw the three lights of the landing signal platform,’ Voris remembers. ‘I made my left turn and started in towards the 180-degree turn to the … stern of the ship and as I got right in and the landing signal officers used two great wands, that was all you could see, about three foot long and at first I remember a high and then an Okay and then a frantic wave off, the ship wasn’t right into the wind yet, it was still 40 degrees turning … had I gone straight on I’d have run right into the island so I made an emergency turn away … the next time … I landed and I stopped right behind a number of four 5-inch turrets, and had I missed a wire I’d have been killed.’
His wingman was next down, missing all of the wires in the dark and then hitting the barriers, destroying all five of them and wrecking his aircraft, which was immediately pushed over the side so that nothing would delay the following aircraft, all desperately short of fuel. There was no time to replace the wrecked barriers and everything depended on Hornet’s remaining aircraft catching the arrester wires. Inevitably, another aircraft missed all of the wires and hit the AA guns on the port side of the flight deck.
Eighty aircraft had been lost of the return flight after running out of fuel. Mitscher wanted the pursuit to continue, but on hearing of the losses, Spruance forbade it. In any case, even though the fighters could carry small bombs, it was the torpedo-bombers and dive-bombers that would be needed to inflict real damage on the Japanese and almost all of these had been lost. Combined, the attack and the homeward run saw forty-nine American aviators killed with most of those ditching being rescued, which was an achievement bearing in mind that most of the aircraft were torpedo- and dive-bombers with a two-man crew. Nagumo, whose career seems to have been marked with missed opportunities and failures, finally committed hara-kiri ashore on Saipan when he learned of the defeat. At least one Japanese admiral and some of his staff officers also seem to have committed suicide, although there is some doubt about this as it may have been an accident.
The temptation to strike at the Japanese and finish the job started on 19 June was understandable, but flying off aircraft at extreme range was a desperate measure not justified by the results, and especially not justified by the loss of so many aircraft so far from home. Destruction of the Japanese fleet could have waited for another day, and indeed the Americans could have closed the gap overnight and struck in broad daylight the following day, with greater chances of success and without the loss of so many aircraft on the return flight. In fairness, it can only be argued that perhaps neither Clark nor his superior Mitscher may have realised just how slowly the Japanese were moving. This was probably the worst tactical error made by the United States Navy in its push towards Japan, as even the massive support mechanism of the Americans could not replace so many downed aircraft immediately.
Japanese aircraft losses were so high that the Americans promptly described the Battle of the Philippine Sea as the ‘Marianas Turkey Shoot’. Ozawa had lost three aircraft carriers and 400 carrier-borne aircraft, as well as another fifty aircraft based ashore. American losses overall were 130 aircraft and seventy-six aircrew.
On 24 June Mitscher took three of his four carrier groups to Eniwetok for refuelling and replenishment, while Clark took the fourth group to attack Iwo Jima and the Pagan Islands. It was not until 9 July that Japanese resistance on Saipan ended, and on 21 July the Americans landed on Guam with Task Force 53 under Rear Admiral Conolly putting III Amphibious Corps ashore with the support of many of the battleships and escort carriers involved in the landings on Saipan, while Mitscher’s carriers sent their aircraft to attack Japanese bases within range of the Marianas to prevent them from harassing the invading troops. The escort carriers involved in the Guam landing for the first time sent their aircraft on close air support sorties to support the troops ashore. It took several weeks for Japanese resistance on Guam to be broken, but the island then became the major US base in the western Pacific.
Landings on Tinian followed next on 24 July, when Task Force 52 put V Amphibious Corps ashore, with US Army heavy artillery ashore on Saipan joining the battleships in providing heavy fire support.
Command of the fast naval force, the Third Fleet, passed from Vice-Admiral Ghormley to Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey, who had acquired his nickname because of his short temper. Halsey had been in overall command of the carriers involved in the Doolittle raid in 1942. The Third Fleet was given the task of further weakening Japanese air power to help the next set of landings. Halsey started his campaign with attacks by carrier aircraft on the Bonin Islands between 31 August and 2 September, and then on 7 September starting four days of air-raids on Japanese forces in the southern Philippines when Mitscher’s redesignated Task Force 38 sent all of its aircraft to attack airfields and naval installations, finding resistance to be light. This was followed by attacks on the central Philippines on 12/13 September, before the fleet withdrew to prepare to support the next round of landings.
Meanwhile, on 15 September landings were made on Morotai when General MacArthur’s VII Amphibious Force landed the 31st Infantry Division, finding the island to be lightly defended. The capture of Morotai finally brought the US Army Air Force into the war in the Pacific after a period when their main effort had been attacking Japanese forces in Burma using Consolidated B-24 Liberators, an aircraft known for its long range. The eastern islands in the Sundra Group were now within USAAF range.
Between 15 and 23 September, Rear Admiral Wilkinson took Task Force 31 to land III Amphibious Corps on the Palau Islands, an important stepping-stone between Guam and Saipan and the Philippines. No less than twelve escort carriers were used on this operation, as well as the battleships Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Maryland, West Virginia and Mississippi, with eight cruisers and twenty-seven destroyers. The undefended Ulithi Atoll was also seized and a forward naval base constructed. At the same time, on 21 and 22 September TF38 attacked Manila Harbour, sinking three destroyers and twenty merchantmen, as well as causing extensive damage to harbour installations and to airfields ashore. This was followed by attacks on Japanese shipping and airfields in the central Philippines on 24 September, destroying 1,200 Japanese aircraft, many of them on the ground, and a further thirteen ships, all for the loss of seventy-two USN aircraft. The attacks showed that the defence of the Philippines was far weaker than the Americans had expected, and led them to advance the date for the first landings from December to October. General MacArthur, who had been in command of the defence of the Philippines when the Japanese invaded, had pressed to be given command of the liberation force, and the ships and landing-craft of the newly-formed Central Pacific Command under Admiral Nimitz were placed under MacArthur’s overall command, leaving Halsey’s Third Fleet to operate independently.
However, the Americans first wanted to take the vital island of Formosa, close to the coast of China and also within easy range for heavy bombers heading for the Philippines and for the Japanese island of Okinawa, as well as Japan itself. Formosa also sat comfortably close to the shipping lanes between Japan and its empire, or more importantly, the resources that the empire could send home to Japan.
THE PHILIPPINES
Leaving the Philippines after the Japanese invasion, General Douglas MacArthur promised that ‘I shall return.’ It was a promise that he intended to keep even while he struggled to push the Japanese out of New Guinea. Because of this promise, the Americans found themselves pushed to retake the Philippines first, rather than invade Formosa, closer to Japan and off the coast of China.
As with the other major landings during 1944, the invasion of the Philippines was preceded not just by a heavy aerial assault on the islands themselves, but by heavy attacks on those Japanese airfields within range of the landing forces, including those on Formosa. The Battle of Formosa started on 10 October with Halsey sending 340 aircraft to attack Okinawa, and he followed this with a diversionary attack on Luzon, the main island in the Philippines, before attacking Formosa itself. While most of the Japanese air power in the Philippines had been neutralised, it was known that Formosa would not be an easy action, with very heavy Japanese forces occupying the island including the Japanese Navy Air Force’s powerful 2nd Air Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Fukudoma, based ashore.
Recognising the growing threat to Japan’s communications posed by the American advances, Imperial Japanese Headquarters had ordered a series of war games so that the best strategy could evolve. It was decided that this would be for all available aircraft to be evacuated to Kyushu so that they would remain available for the later defence of the home islands. Not for the last time, the plan was wrecked by the failure of the commander in the field to follow his orders as Fukudoma gave battle. A persistent weakness among even such senior Japanese officers throughout the war seems to have been a failure to appreciate broader strategic considerations.
Once again Mitscher’s Task Force, by now TF38 with seventeen aircraft carriers, was divided into four carrier task groups, each with supporting battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Vice-Admiral McCain commanded TG38.1, with the Hornet and the new Wasp with the light carriers Monterey, Cabot and Cowpens, while TG38.2 was led by Rear Admiral Bogan, with Bunker Hill, Hancock and Intrepid, and the light carrier Independence. Rear Admiral Sherman had Mitscher’s flagship Lexington as well as the Essex and the light carriers Langley and Princeton, while Rear Admiral Davison had Enterprise and Franklin, and the light carriers Belleau Wood and San Jacinto.
On 12 October aircraft from all seventeen carriers attacked Formosa and an intense air battle developed, with the Japanese losing 160 aircraft to the Americans’ forty-three. The next day the emphasis of the American attack switched to the airfields and port facilities on Formosa, while the Japanese attempted a counter-attack against TF38, but succeeded only in putting a single torpedo into the heavy cruiser USS Canberra, the only US warship to be named after a foreign city and a compliment to HMAS Canberra, lost in the night battle off Savo Island. On 14 October the pattern of attacks was repeated, although on this day operations were also mounted against targets in northern Luzon, and again the Japanese counter-attacked, putting a torpedo into the heavy cruiser Houston. The heavy air battles resumed on 15 October as the Third Fleet attempted to withdraw, with the unfortunate Houston suffering yet another torpedo, but still the Japanese failed to sink the ship. By this time, during the period beginning 10 October, the Japanese had lost 600 aircraft in Formosa, Luzon and Okinawa compared with the ninety lost by the Americans. The Japanese estimates of their losses were lower than those of the United States, at 312 aircraft.
Japan’s propaganda machine remained undamaged by the losses with yet another great victory proclaimed, but one that relied heavily on the ignorance of naval matters among the mass of Japanese people. One can see just how out of touch the population was allowed to become when the Asahi newspaper was able to publish on 19 October a list of enemy warships lost: ‘sunk, eleven carriers, two battleships, three cruisers and one destroyer; damaged, eight carriers, two battleships, four cruisers and thirteen unidentified ships …’
According to the wild claims of the propaganda department, the Americans had suffered more carriers lost and damaged than had been deployed!
THE SEARCH FOR A CLASSICAL NAVAL ENGAGEMENT – LEYTE GULF
Following their success over Formosa, the United States was ready to retake the Philippines. The operation called for one of the biggest efforts so far. On 20 October General MacArthur’s forces went ashore for the first time, with Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet of 300 landing ships and transports landing Lieutenant General Krueger’s Sixth Army at Tacloban on Leyte, one of the smaller islands in the Philippines. As on previous landings, heavy fire support was given by six battleships and nine heavy and light cruisers, supported by fifty-one destroyers and with no less than eighteen escort carriers with aircraft to provide close air support and fighter protection, all under the command of Rear Admiral Oldendorf. The eighteen escort carriers were commanded by Rear Admiral Sprague and were divided into three groups known as ‘Taffy One’, led by Sprague himself, with subordinate commanders leading ‘Taffy Two’ and ‘Taffy Three’. Japanese airfields on Luzon and in the central Philippines were kept under constant attack by aircraft from Halsey’s Third Fleet, with Mitscher still in command of TF38 with its four carrier groups with eight fleet carriers, Lexington, Wasp, Hornet, Hancock, Intrepid, Essex, Enterprise and Franklin, and another eight light carriers, Monterey, Cabot, Cowpens, Independence, Langley, Princeton, Belleau Wood and San Jacinto, supported by six battleships, fifteen cruisers and sixty destroyers. The Third Fleet’s carriers had 1,000 aircraft between them.
Even so, despite the earlier heavy raids on airfields in northern Luzon, the Japanese managed to counter-attack and a torpedo was put into the cruiser Honolulu and a bomb found the cruiser HMAS Australia.
Given MacArthur’s commitment to their liberation, it might be tempting to consider the Philippines as being symbolic to the Americans, not least because they were the sole instance of US-occupied territory to fall to the advancing Japanese. Tempting, but wrong. The Philippines were not simply a matter of American pride as their possession would enable US forces to cut the sea lanes between Japan and its ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, its new empire. Japan would have to fight the remainder of the war without access to fuel or rubber as well as other raw materials including timber, and would once again become dependent on whatever food it could grow itself or obtain from Korea or its territory in China. In short, it would face the same wartime predicament with which the British were familiar, but without the well-established convoy system and certainly without the help provided by the United States Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy and Air Force.
The dangers were obvious to the Japanese high command, which could finally see defeat looming. It was no longer a case of losing a battle, but of losing the war. It would be impossible to keep the failure from the population as a whole as starvation was inevitable. This was to be the background against which was set the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Not surprisingly, in contrast to the propaganda fed to the masses at home, the reality was that Japanese anxiety reached its peak with a desperate plan calling for four aircraft carriers, the recently-repaired Zuikaku and the light carriers Zuiho, Chitose and Chiyoda, with just 116 aircraft, still commanded by Vice-Admiral Ozawa, and a total force of nine battleships, nineteen cruisers and thirty-five destroyers. This was a small number of aircraft by any estimation, but it was partly due to a decision to leave as many aircraft as possible ashore in Formosa to counter the expected invasion. On Luzon itself, the Japanese Naval Air Force and Japanese Army Air Force had another 300 aircraft based ashore.
The primary objective was to finally bring the Japanese battleships, which had enjoyed a quiet war as fleet clashes had become the preserve of carrier-borne aircraft, into action. Senior officers brought up to have the ‘big gun’ mentality wanted to prove what these wasted assets could achieve. The result was that Leyte Gulf was to be what many have described as the greatest battle in naval history. It was to be in four parts, with an air-sea battle in the Sibuyan Sea on 24 October followed by a night battle in the Surigao Straits on 24/25 October, with a battle off Samar and an air-sea battle off Cape Engano that same day. Every Japanese ship in the area was put into the battle with the fleet divided into four, with Ozawa having the carriers, two battleships, the hybrid Ise and Hyuga, with a flight deck in place of the after armament but with no aircraft, three cruisers and nine destroyers, with the task of luring the Third Fleet to the north, away from Leyte. To the west of Luzon, Vice-Admiral Shima was to head south from Japan with three cruisers and seven destroyers, while from the west would come Vice-Admiral Kurita’s First Striking Force with five battleships, including the giants Yamato and Musashi, twelve cruisers and fifteen destroyers and, to the south of Kurita, Vice-Admiral Nishimura with two battleships, four cruisers and four destroyers. These force dispositions show just how depleted the Imperial Japanese Navy had become, with limited air power available and none at all to the west of the Philippines.
Japanese desperation did not stop ambitious and increasingly unrealistic plans being prepared, with even more ridiculous names being coined for these strategies. The grand design was called ‘Operation Sho-Go’, meaning ‘to conquer’. Whatever impact this might have had on the hotheads, the more realistic among Japan’s planners and senior officers knew that the best that could be managed would be to inflict such unacceptable casualties among the Americans and their allies that some form of compromise could be negotiated between Japan and the Allies. Belatedly, the Japanese had come to realise that they could no longer look for and expect to win any air-to-air combat, and that a classic ship-to-ship naval engagement was not to be expected, but that the only hope of success lay in attacking American troop transports before they reached the landing areas, while they were still at sea and where the loss of life would be greatest.
Throughout the long chain of defeats, the Japanese had managed to maintain a strong propaganda effort aimed at convincing their own people that all was well. This went beyond censorship of correspondence from those in the front line, with the survivors from the worst defeats detained in barracks on return to their home ports, and kept there until they could be posted abroad or to their next ship. At higher levels, including the upper echelons of the armed forces, there was an incredible inability to face the facts as they presented themselves and instead refuge was taken in self-delusion. For these people, ‘Sho-Go’ was not a plan to stave off defeat, but instead a plan to defeat the Allies and give Japan the victory that she had anticipated from the outset of the war.
Part of the problem was that from the Doolittle raid onwards, there was no bombing of the Japanese home islands until after the American conquest of the Marianas in June 1944 had brought the United States Army Air Force bases within reach of Japan. The air-raids on Japan started that autumn, for while the home islands were a tempting target, US strategists realised that there were other priorities even for the vast resources available to the United States. Mine-laying operations and submarine warfare also had a tremendous impact, so that between March 1944 and August 1945, the volume of shipping through the Shimonoseki Straits fell from more than half a million tons to just 5,000 tons. By August 1945 the daily ration could provide just 1,400 calories, and many believe that had the war continued for another year, as many as 8,000,000 Japanese could have died from malnutrition. The initial USAAF bombing sorties from the Marianas concentrated on Iwo Jima, softening up the island ready for the next invasion, and it was not until November 1944 that the Japanese began to suffer the start of a heavy bomber campaign against their cities.
The emerging American threat to the Philippines should have concentrated Japanese minds wonderfully because the loss of the islands would sever the route between the vital oil supplies of Sumatra and the rubber of Malaya and Japan itself. In fact, a few minds were so concentrated but not enough, even though the Americans were expected to invade through Leyte.
The Imperial Japanese Navy organised war games in anticipation of a major battle, while the remaining carriers were hidden and camouflaged in the Inland Sea. There were six carriers left, Zuikaku, Zuiho, the converted submarine tenders Chitose and Chiyoda and the new sisters, Unryu and Amagi, little enough to counter the ever-stronger US Third Fleet which now outnumbered the Japanese in the number of ships, but even worse there were few aircraft left and even fewer well-trained and experienced pilots. A strategic decision was taken to keep most of the available shore-based aircraft in Formosa, ready to counter the expected invasion there, but there would be 300 Japanese aircraft on Luzon drawn from both JNAF and JAAF units.
The action that the Japanese were anticipating was known to them as the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea, and to the Americans as the Battle of Leyte Gulf. At the outset, Kurita was pessimistic:
‘ … the enemy transports would have to be destroyed completely,’ Kurita recalls, remembering the action at Guadalcanal. ‘My opinion at the time was that, in view of the difference in strength of the opposing forces, our chance for a victory after the sorties would be about fifty-fifty. I had also thought that the aerial support would fall short of our expectations.’
While Kurita was right about the need to destroy the invasion transports, repeatedly the Japanese failed to achieve this and when they did, it was too late and they pressed home their attack after the invasion fleet had discharged the men and most of the supplies. The strategy would only have worked if the ships had been caught and sunk on their way to the invasion beaches. That might also have ensured that the casualties would have been sufficient to force a negotiated settlement, although given the level of anger towards Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor before any declaration of war, such a scenario would have been most unlikely.
THE FLEETS CLASH
The Japanese effort got off to a bad start when, on 23 October 1944, two American submarines, Dace and Darter discovered the First Striking Force and torpedoed three heavy cruisers including Kurita’s flagship Atago, which sank almost immediately as did the Maya. Kurita’s orders were to be off Leyte on 25 October, but fighting had started the previous day when aircraft based on Leyte attacked the most northerly of the American carrier groups in the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea. This attack was intended to involve Ozawa’s carrier-borne aircraft, so that the US Third Fleet would be drawn away and leave Kurita with a clear run at the transports, but the aircraft failed to find the American ships and, running short of fuel, attempted to fly to bases on Luzon and many of them were intercepted by American fighters on the way. Being short of fuel, they were easy prey for the Americans.
Aboard the USS Langley Lieutenant John Monsarrat, the fighter direction officer, had spotted Japanese aircraft on his radar screen and ordered four of the ship’s Grumman Hellcats to intercept and immediately asked Essex to send reinforcements. The larger carrier promptly ordered eight patrolling Hellcats to join those from Langley. Very unhappy at sending four fighters to intercept what seemed to be sixty Japanese aircraft, Monsarrat then called to his fighters, ‘Help is on the way, coming up close behind you.’ The Hellcats for the Essex were indeed close behind, and between them the twelve fighters accounted for half the Japanese aircraft. The American pilots noticed the tail hooks on the Japanese aircraft, and took this to mean that they had come from a carrier.
Meanwhile, the shore-based aircraft managed to hit just one of the American carriers, the USS Princeton. It was to be a lucky shot for the Japanese. A single 550lb armour-piercing bomb shot straight through the flight deck just forward of the aft elevator, punching a neat hole in the flight deck as it continued down into the ship, eventually reaching the ship’s bakery, where it exploded and killed everyone present.
The explosion reached up into the hangar deck where six aircraft were being refuelled and re-armed, setting them alight and the heat caused their torpedo heads to explode. This was the result of what had at first seemed a minor matter to the ship’s commanding officer, Captain William Buracker: ‘I saw the hole, which was small, and visualised slapping on a patch and resuming operations.’
A rather more realistic assessment of the situation soon came from the flight deck, where Ensign Paul Drury was standing by his Grumman Hellcat of the carrier’s fighter squadron VF-27. He felt the shock of the explosions below, and later recalled that: ‘I knew that there was no way we were going to get airborne under those circumstances.’
The bomb had struck the ship at 09.35, and at 10.10, it was no longer a case of damage control but Salvage Control Phase 1, as the fire threatened the aviation fuel. Two-thirds of the ship’s company of 1,570 were ordered to abandon the ship, leaving behind fire-fighters and AA gunners, but the latter were also ordered to leave once the ship’s AA ammunition started to explode in the heat. A destroyer came alongside and took the men away. Despite the damage with burning aircraft and exploding ordnance, the fires were slowly brought under control and the ship remained on an even keel without any hull damage. It looked as if she was going to be saved. By 13.30, the only part of the ship still ablaze was that near to the aft magazine. The light cruiser USS Birmingham was ordered alongside to provide further fire-fighting assistance and then to provide a tow, but this was delayed until 15.30 by alerts over attacks by enemy aircraft and as a Japanese submarine was also reported in the vicinity. The cruiser drew alongside with many of her crew on her decks, either helping the fire-fighters or simply watching, and it was then, without any indication of what was about to happen, that the aft magazine exploded, tearing off the carrier’s stern.
There was a terrible staccato of metal-on-metal as shrapnel of all shapes and sizes – pieces of Princeton – raked across Birmingham’s exposed decks:
‘like the deadly grapeshot canisters fired from the cannons of yesterday’s sailing ships,’ recalled one eyewitness. ‘The effect was the same. Hundreds of men instantly fell dead or horribly wounded. Within seconds, the ship’s scuppers ran red with blood as it poured forth from thousands of grotesque wounds, and severed limbs lay about the blood-smeared deck like the casual droppings on a slaughterhouse floor.’
Princeton was lost, although the coup de grâce had to be delivered by a destroyer’s torpedoes, but while the Birmingham survived, the casualty list told a different story. On the cruiser, 233 men were killed and 211 were seriously wounded, with just twenty-five having minor injuries. Aboard the carrier 108 were killed, mainly fire-fighters and 190 wounded. One of the seriously wounded was the carrier’s next commanding officer, Captain John Hoskins, who lost a foot but had the presence of mind to use a length of rope to quickly tie a tourniquet. Later, when a new Princeton was built, a much larger Essex-class carrier, Hoskins managed to persuade the United States Navy to allow him to become her first commanding officer, despite having an artificial foot fitted.
While the Princeton’s tragedy was being played out, two of the other US carrier groups had found Japanese warships steaming through the Sibuyan Sea. The carriers sent four waves of aircraft throughout the day and the giant battleship Musashi, with Yamato one of the two largest warships in the world at that time with the heaviest main armament, 18.1-inch guns, was hit by eleven torpedoes and nineteen bombs, so badly damaged that she eventually sank, slipping beneath the waves as she steamed slowly in circles, her steering gear jammed. Her fate had been sealed once her commanding officer, Rear Admiral Toshihira Inoguchi, refused permission for her gunnery officer to use her 18.1-inch guns to fire large anti-aircraft rounds, similar in concept to large shotgun cartridges, because these had been found to damage the gun barrels which had to be kept for the expected battles off Leyte. Too late, permission was finally given as the repeated torpedo attacks flooded an engine room and when all nine 18.1-inch guns fired at once, those aboard thought that the ship had been hit again, so great was the recoil. Saving the guns for the expected naval battle was pointless. Shrapnel flew through the sky, but not one American aircraft was damaged, while one of the gun barrels was later found to have been damaged.
Damage on a battleship from a direct hit by a bomb tended to be rare, as bombs usually bounced off armour-plating but even in this, Musashi was ill-starred:
‘One bomb detonated directly on the pagoda-like tower housing the command bridges,’ recalls an eye-witness. ‘The damage was extensive and for a brief time it appeared that no one was in command of the ship. Then Inoguchi’s voice emanated from a speaking tube, saying that all personnel on the main bridge had been killed and that he was shifting to the secondary bridge. Moments later, another series of explosions rained heavy shrapnel on Musashi’s command tower. This time Inoguchi was not so fortunate. His weakened voice echoed in the brass speaking tube, saying, ‘‘Captain is wounded. Executive Officer, take command.’’’
Other Japanese ships were badly damaged, with the heavy cruiser Myoko forced to turn back. The other giant battleship, Yamato, was also hit as was another battleship, Nagato, but both managed to remain operational. Vice-Admiral Nishimura’s force to the south of Palawan Island was also found by American carrier aircraft and attacked, but while several ships were damaged, none was sunk.
Faced with such an onslaught, Kurita reversed course, a tactical manoeuvre that Halsey misread as a victory, and while carrier group TG38.1 refuelled, he took the other three groups and gave chase. This was a mistake and against the plans prepared by the Americans before the battle, which called for the Third Fleet to guard the San Benardino Straits while the Seventh Fleet guarded the Surigao Straits against the Japanese Southern Force. With the San Benardino Straits open, Kurita was able to reverse course yet again and pass his ships through them under cover of darkness.
During the night of 24/25 October, Nishimura’s Southern Force was attacked by American motor torpedo boats, although only one ship, the light cruiser Abukuma, was damaged. At 02.00 the US Seventh Fleet mounted a torpedo attack by destroyers, sinking the battleship Fuso and three Japanese destroyers. It was not until 04.20 that a classic naval gunnery engagement got under way, with Nishimura’s flagship, the battleship Yamashiro, suddenly blowing up and splitting into two, with the two halves of the ship burning furiously and no survivors, and the cruiser Mogami damaged. USAAF aircraft attacked shortly after daybreak, sinking the crippled Abukuma, and this was followed by an attack by aircraft from the Seventh Fleet’s escort carriers which sank the Mogami and the remaining destroyers. Two heavy cruisers managed to escape.
At 06.45 on 25 October, American reconnaissance aircraft discovered Kurita’s battle fleet east of Samar, a large island to the north-east of Leyte. Just thirteen minutes later the Battle of Samar began, with Kurita’s Centre Force battleships discovering and starting to shell Sprague’s ‘Taffy One’ group of escort carriers, the most northerly of the force. The escort carriers, with only AA armament, were unable to respond so Sprague ordered all of the aircraft to be flown off and withdrew his ships to the south. A number of the escort carriers were able to put up smoke, while the remainder attempted to improvise a smokescreen by changing the fuel-air mixture for their boiler fires, but this was a dated tactic as the Japanese flagship Yamato now had radar, as did some of the other ships. In desperation, the Americans mounted another destroyer torpedo attack, damaging the cruiser Kumano and causing her to withdraw, but at the cost of three US destroyers:
‘That morning I had a duty on the flight deck,’ recalls George Smith who was a maintainer aboard an escort carrier. ‘ … yelled at me and said you’d better get your helmet on and your Mae West – your life belt – because here comes the Japs and about that time I heard an explosion on the fantail. First I thought it was one of our own planes exploding back there and I looked up and saw all this tin foil falling, this tin foil to jam our radar and of course GQ (General Quarters) and everybody manned GQ stations and then they started shooting … trying to get our range, our skipper turned the ship .. . zig-zagged it, as we were trying to escape from the Japanese … Then we started laying down smoke … trying to blind the Japanese … and they pulled pretty fast on us, they caught one of our carriers back there and they sank it … they got so close we could even see the Japanese flags flying … of course we were opening up with everything we had … this was running battle of about two hours … we were going between these two islands and the Japanese decided that it was leading to a trap … so they broke off the engagement.’
The escort carriers were like sitting ducks and this was the best opportunity the Japanese ever had of destroying part of the American carrier fleet. Aboard the ships, those without any role were left trying to take what shelter they could. The aircraft that had been flown off attempted to attack the Japanese ships, but this had little effect as they were either loaded with fragmentation bombs for use against Japanese ground troops or simply had their guns, with which they attempted to strafe the warships hoping to catch crew members in exposed positions such as the flying bridges. Inevitably, there were some without any ammunition who could only hope to distract the Japanese, and many were short of fuel having been scrambled with whatever was in their tanks, often just the remains of the previous day’s final sortie. Some of the aircraft did run out of fuel and their pilots ditched close to the fleeing carriers, hoping to be picked up, but no one dared stop.
The escort carrier sunk was the USS Gambier Bay, but another three, Fenshaw Bay, Kalinin Bay and White Plains, were damaged. Then it all ended as the Japanese broke off the one-sided engagement and turned away.
Kurita was convinced that he was heading into a trap, but once again, Japanese naval intelligence was lacking, as instead of escort carriers he was convinced that he was attacking standard fleet carriers which, with their much higher speed, would take some time to overtake. This conclusion was strange indeed, since it meant that Kurita, an experienced senior naval officer, thought that the escort carriers were withdrawing at 30 knots or more, double their maximum speed! A second group of escort carriers ahead of him was also mistaken for further fleet carriers. Expecting further American carriers to approach from the north, Halsey’s Third Fleet, he decided that it was safer to do battle in the open sea rather than in the confined waters of Leyte Gulf.
‘Taffy Two’, the second group of six escort carriers, was next to receive the unwanted attentions of the Japanese, as the first properly-planned Kamikaze attacks started. Four aircraft from shore bases dived onto the Second Escort Carrier Group, hitting both Suwanee and Santee, with the second ship also being hit by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine. As Kurita returned to the east of Samar there were further Kamikaze attacks, blowing up the escort carrier St Lo and damaging both Kalinin Bay and Kitkun Bay in ‘Taffy One’. Kurita was unaware of the Kamikaze attacks, and certainly knew nothing about their successes. This was the man who had signalled to his ships the previous day: ‘Braving any loss and damage we may suffer, the First Striking Force will break into Leyte Gulf and fight to the last man.’ Yet, at noon he ordered a withdrawal, having failed completely in his mission to destroy the American transports, scuttling three of his heavy cruisers, while another two, although badly damaged, were considered to be capable of returning safely to Japan.
It was not until later that the Americans realised that they were the targets for suicide attacks. The first few aircraft were seen either as having crashed out of control or having been deliberately flown into the ships by pilots who were frustrated after their aircraft had been badly damaged. After all, in the days before ejection seats, escape from a fast low-flying aircraft was well nigh impossible:
‘We thought they was [sic] dropping bombs on us because one of the carriers off the port side took a direct hit from a Kamikaze,’ George Smith explained. ‘They hit this carrier just dead centre and as we went by men were abandoning ship … and as we got beyond it the whole ship just seemed to explode … there was nothing there. And about that time on our ship a Kamikaze came in on us … just like regular landing I guess he was trying to sneak in on us like one of our own planes … And he started to drop in and of course the skipper seen what was going on so he turned the ship hard port … the men on the starboard side were banged against there, they swung our guns round and shot across the flight deck hitting the Kamikaze and the Kamikaze he winged over and dropped on the other side … into the water and exploded.’
The senior officers in both navies were confused and unaware of the true situation. Both Nimitz and Kinkaid believed that Halsey was working to plan and safeguarding the San Bernardino Strait, and then had to send signals demanding to know his true position once they realised that he had left the Strait open to the Japanese. Halsey was then ordered to return south. Had he sent part of his force northwards, Halsey could have covered the Strait with his remaining force.
Meanwhile, Mitscher’s reconnaissance, using an aircraft from the light carrier Independence, had located the Japanese Northern Force at 02.08, and later discovered that this had divided into two. Halsey sent TF34 forward, with the battleships and cruisers ahead of the carriers:
‘The Commander Third Fleet’s plan for pushing strong surface forces ahead of his carrier groups and toward the enemy was a logical piece of tactics …,’ explained the official US Navy report on the battle. ‘Our expectation, based on past achievements, is that in an exchange of carrier attacks between fleets, it will be our enemy’s fleet that takes the worst of it, and starts retiring while still at a distance many times greater than gun range. The only possibility then of closing and capitalizing on our gun power is to overtake cripples or ships of naturally low speed.’
In short, as with the Japanese plans for the battle, Halsey wanted to use his battleships and cruisers.
At 08.00 Mitscher sent the first of six waves with a total of 527 aircraft to attack Ozawa’s Northern Force with its four aircraft carriers to the east of Luzon. This was to become the Battle of Cape Engano. Against the overwhelming American attack Ozawa had just twenty fighters left, and these were shot down almost as soon as the attackers arrived. The light carrier Chitose was sunk quickly, slipping beneath the waves at 09.37, with Zuikaku, Zuiho and Chiyoda and a light cruiser all damaged, with Ozawa moving his flag from Zuikaku. The three remaining carriers, now with no fighter defence at all, inevitably fell victim to the succeeding waves, with Zuikaku on fire and burning out of control after the third wave of 200 aircraft had attacked. By the afternoon, she too had sunk. Another light cruiser was crippled and finished off by an American submarine, while three destroyers and a tanker were also sunk.
Halsey then turned his attentions to Kurita’s Centre Force, which he should have encountered earlier. Taking his flagship, the battleship New Jersey, at first he was unlucky but later that day and on 26 October, carrier aircraft from the Third and Seventh Fleets found the Centre Force and attacked, sinking two cruisers including one that was not one of Kurita’s ships, but was instead escorting a Japanese transport to Leyte.
Overall, the Japanese had lost three battleships, four aircraft carriers, six heavy and four light cruisers, eleven destroyers, a destroyer transport and four submarines, while the Americans had lost a light carrier and two escort carriers as well as three destroyers. The Japanese had lost 150 aircraft, both shore-based and carrier-borne, compared to 100 US aircraft. Some 10,000 Japanese had lost their lives compared with 1,500 Americans.
Obviously this was another American victory and yet another Japanese defeat. Kurita had failed to make the most of his opportunities, but Ozawa’s strategy had worked, drawing Halsey northward and giving Kurita an opportunity, except, of course, that Ozawa did not have sufficient aircraft even at the outset to ward off a determined American attack.
The big failing at Leyte went far beyond the question of who won the naval battles. The objective had been to catch the American transports at sea and inflict such heavy losses among them that the United States would be forced to think again. Yet, the battle did not develop until several days after the first landings on 20 October, and even had Kurita followed his plan to the letter and finally found himself among the transports, it would have been far too late. The transports had done their work unchallenged. The day for the attack should have been 19 October as the transports neared the Philippines with their troops. Once again, it was a case of too little, too late. The Americans were now setting the agenda.
Halsey does not come out of this without criticism. His belief in not dividing his forces was a nonsense given the overwhelming strength at his disposal, and in disobeying orders and leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded he had left the vulnerable escort carriers and transports at the mercy of Kurita’s force, and it was only the Japanese officer’s bungling that saved the situation. If he had been determined to give chase, he could at least have communicated his decision to the Seventh Fleet and given Kinkaid the opportunity to take the necessary measures to safeguard his flank. Of course, the reason for not letting Kinkaid know was simply that Halsey realised that Nimitz in turn would have got to know and would have ordered him to return to his position. Halsey was simply fortunate that his luck remained good and that Kurita failed, for all of his bravado before the battle, to press home his attack. Believing that he was heading into an American trap does not come out as a good excuse for withdrawal, as even a quick glance at a map beforehand would have shown the dangers. The irony is that had Halsey stayed in position, Kurita would have found the naval battle that so many Second World War admirals on both sides were looking for, but it would have been even more conclusive as without air power, Kurita’s major surface units would have been at a disadvantage. If Kurita had really believed that he was facing the full might of the US Third Fleet, he should have withdrawn even earlier to save his ships.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was by now a spent force. It had lost its aircraft in the First Battle of the Philippine Sea and its ships in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea. The fact that Japan had decided to resort to suicide attacks on American warships spoke volumes about the course of the war, and about the outcome.
There is a nagging suspicion that during the war in the Pacific, the Japanese were let down by their commanders, both afloat and ashore. There were repeated failures of army commanders to adhere to carefully prepared plans for the defence of territory. The best justification for disobeying orders is success, indeed, it is the only justification, but the generals concerned did not enjoy success. Nagumo’s failure to send a third and even a fourth wave of attackers to Pearl Harbor was an early example of poor leadership. He may have been concerned at being found by the American carriers, but good reconnaissance would have reduced the risk. The failure to listen to the experienced carrier officers before Midway was yet another example, as was the poor reconnaissance pattern mounted beforehand, or the indecision that led to aircraft being re-armed and disarmed, and the failure to keep one of the four available flight decks free to launch fighters; all showed poor leadership. Yet, this was a navy with an uninterrupted control of its own aviation.
Yet again, attacking the American carriers may well have been a worthy objective, but the real priority was to attack the transports before they could land troops and equipment. Looking for a traditional naval engagement so that the wasted assets of the battle and cruiser fleets could justify their existence was another example of commanders failing to have any strategic sense and being unable to comprehend just how naval warfare had moved on, when the two roles that these heavy ships could undertake were ignored. These roles were, of course, operating close enough to the Japanese aircraft carriers to provide additional and desperately needed anti-aircraft fire, and heavy bombardment of Allied forces ashore, including transports, especially those on the resupply operation.
On 15 December 1944 US forces landed on Mindoro, a small island to the south of Manila, with three battleships, six escort carriers and seven cruisers providing support. At this time of year, the Pacific was not nearly as calm as its name suggests, and three days later Halsey’s Third Fleet was struck by a typhoon, often referred to as ‘Halsey’s Typhoon’, while still providing support for the landings on Mindoro by mounting heavy air attacks on airfields on Luzon. Halsey has been blamed for the damage inflicted by the typhoon as he did not heed warnings of bad weather. The typhoon sank three destroyers and damaged three of the light carriers, and caused serious damage to the forward end of the wooden flight decks on two of the Essex-class fleet carriers, while also destroying 146 aircraft that were either washed overboard or smashed in their hangar decks.
Luzon itself was finally invaded on 9 January 1945, again with support from the US Third Fleet that allowed MacArthur’s I and XIV Army Corps on the island, once again with close support by Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet. As at Leyte, there were eighteen escort carriers providing close support, as well as the battleships Mississippi, West Virginia, New Mexico, California, Pennsylvania and Colorado, plus eleven cruisers. Once again, Kamikaze attacks were launched at the invaders, with damage to several ships and the loss of an escort carrier as we will see in the next chapter, but by 12 January, the US Third Fleet’s carrier-borne aircraft had destroyed all Japanese air power on Luzon.
Close air support of an invasion fleet had seemed to be the natural role of the United States Marine Corps’ air squadrons. But when Nimitz decided to omit carrier training from the syllabus for aspiring USMC pilots in 1943, the USMC found itself increasingly on the sidelines in the major campaigns of 1943 and 1944. This was an unaccountable decision, since the Marines had become proficient at ground-attack operations and when required were able to mount strafing, bombing and rocket attacks on enemy positions as close as 75 yards away from friendly troops. Early 1945 was to see the USMC’s welcome return to these operations.