Leyte Gulf is a somewhat exposed anchorage
on the eastern edge of
the Philippines,
with a small
port at Tacloban
on Leyte.
It was the site of an American
invasion
in October 1944 that led to a full-scale naval battle between the U.S.
and Japanese
fleets.
Command arrangements for the Leyte campaign were muddled, as the Philippines lay close to the theater boundaries for the Southwest Pacific Area, Pacific Ocean Areas, and China-Burma-India theaters. Although MacArthur commanded Kinkaid's 7 Fleet in immediate support of the landing operations, distant cover was provided by the fast carriers of 3 Fleet, which was the main striking force of Pacific Fleet under Nimitz. This divided command would have important consequences during the battle. In particular, Halsey was under orders to make the destruction of the Japanese Fleet, not the protection of the amphibious forces, his highest priority.
The Japanese contingency plan for the defense of the Philippines, Sho-go, was activated on 22 October 1944 when word reached Tokyo that the Americans had begun landings at Leyte. Due to massive attrition and lack of fuel, the Japanese had virtually no aircraft and pilots for their remaining carriers (under the command of Ozawa), but they still had powerful surface forces (under Kurita) built around the Yamato and Musashi. These were based at Singapore in order to be close to their fuel supplies, while the carrier forces remained in the Inland Sea. In order to give Kurita a chance to reach and destroy the American amphibious force, Ozawa was ordered to deliberately allow his force to be spotted and pursued by 3 Fleet under Halsey. Kurita was to split his force, taking the main body through San Bernardino Strait north of Leyte Gulf while a detachment under Nishimura would enter Leyte Gulf through Surigao Strait to the south. Nishimura was to be joined by Shima, who was coming south with a small force of cruisers and destroyers after eluding a trap set by Halsey off Formosa.
The Japanese plan was overly complex and went badly
from the start. Kurita's force was discovered off Palawan on 23 October
1944 by submarines Darter
and Dace, which sank Atago
and Maya and severely damaged Takao.
The American submarine commanders found their approach simplified by
the low speed of Kurita's force, just 16 knots, and by Kurita's failure
to station any picket destroyers ahead of his main force. Their contact
report was the first indication to Allied intelligence that the main
strength of the Japanese Navy was coming out to contest the Leyte
landings. However, Darter ran
aground in the poorly charted reefs of Palawan while maneuvering for a
second attack (there had been no opportunity for a navigational fix in
over 24 hours) and had to be scuttled, her crew being taken off by Dace.
Naval Historical Center #NH 63432
The next few days saw the largest fleet action in history. Historians
have generally divided the battle into four major engagements and a
number of lesser engagements.
Battle of the Sibuyan
Sea. All through 24 October 1944, Kurita's force was hammered
from the air by
strikes from Halsey's carriers. The giant battleship Musashi
sank after taking 17 bomb hits and
19 torpedo hits. Her commander
attempted to beach her, but she capsized at 1935 with 1,096 of her
crew. Battleships Yamato and Nagato
each took two bomb hits that inflicted significant damage to their
upper
works, hindering fire control and communications, and heavy cruiser Myoko
took a torpedo hit that damaged two shafts and forced her to withdraw
Fighter protection from land bases was nonexistent, and the
Japanese antiaircraft fire,
while voluminous, was largely ineffective. Just 18 Allied aircraft were
shot down out of 259 sorties against the Japanese force.
At 1600, Kurita
finally reverse course while broadcasting pleas for help.
National Archives #80-G-270357
While the American combat air patrol was successfully
driving off a Japanese strike of about 60 aircraft, a single Judy dive bomber broke through the
cloud cover and put its bomb through
the flight deck of light carrier
Princeton. The blast ignited
gasoline in the hangar deck and the flames began detonating torpedoes loaded on TBF Avengers. The crew fought the fire for almost six
hours before the flames reached the torpedo magazine and a massive
explosion blew up the stern of the ship. There were heavy casualties on
cruiser Birmingham, alongside assisting
with firefighting, and Princeton
was scuttled shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, Ozawa was trying to be detected by the
Americans, unaware that his radio transmitter was malfunctioning and
preventing his radio traffic from being heard by either friend or
foe.
The Americans finally spotted him at 1540, and Halsey,
overestimating the damage to Kurita's force and believing it was
retiring for good, took off in hot
pursuit of
Ozawa with all his forces. Now it was the Americans whose plans were
thrown into confusion. Halsey had transmitted a contingency plan for
detaching his battle line as Task Force 34 to guard San Bernardino
Strait. However, with Kurita seemingly in retreat, Halsey decided this
was unnecessary. But the original message was the only one seen by
other commanders (principally Kinkaid
with 7 Fleet in
Leyte Gulf) and they were left with the
mistaken impression that San Bernardino Strait was being watched.
At 1935 a night reconnaissance
flight from Independence found that
Kurita's force had returned to a course for San Bernardino Strait. It
is unclear why Halsey did not then detach Task Force 34 to cover the
strait. Mitscher, possibly
smarting from having been bypassed all day by Halsey (who issued orders
directly to Mitscher's task group commanders), declined to radio such a
recommendation to Halsey. Three of Halsey's task force commanders also
wondered at the order, and Bogan
went so far as to contact Halsey's staff with the information that the
navigation lights in San Bernardino Strait were lit. He was brushed
off, and made no further protest. Lee,
the battle line commander, correctly deduced that Ozawa's force was a
decoy with little striking power, but his signal to Halsey warning that
Kurita was likely to come out of San Bernardino Strait was also brushed
off. Halsey's failure to guard the strait must be judged one of the
great blunders of the Pacific War.
Battle of Surigao Strait. Nishimura's force was sighted around 0950 on 24 October, but no strikes were launched against him and no further sightings were made that day. However, Kinkaid correctly guessed Nishimura's intentions to come through Surigao Strait during the night. Thinking his rear was covered, he ordered Oldendorf to take the heavy units of 7 Fleet to lay an elaborate trap for Nishimura's force. Nishimura's ships were attacked by waves of PT boats and destroyers even before coming within range of Oldendorf's waiting battle line. Only one destroyer escaped out of the original force of two battleships, a cruiser, and four destroyers. Shima, the admiral who previously eluded Halsey's trap off Formosa, encountered the shattered remnants of Nishimura's fleet and prudently withdrew.
Battle off Samar. Meanwhile, Kurita had reversed course again and slipped through San Bernardino Strait, albeit seven hours later than the Japanese had originally planned. He found to his surprise that the strait was unguarded. As dawn broke, his lookouts spotted several escort carriers protected by destroyers and destroyer escorts, which he mistook for fleet carriers protected by cruisers and destroyers. The American ships were completely outgunned and at least twelve knots slower than Kurita’s cruisers, but fought fiercely, and American aircraft in the area made repeated passes against Kurita’s ships even after expending whatever munitions they were carrying. Kurita believed he was up against much stronger forces than was the case, and retreated back through San Bernardino Strait after sinking three destroyers and an escort carrier. He left one of his own cruisers sinking.
At about the same time, land-based air units carry out the first kamikaze attacks of the war, sinking the escort carrier St. Lo and badly damaging two others.
Battle of Cape Engano. Meanwhile, Halsey was in the process of annihilating Ozawa’s force (he had already sunk Chitose and Chiyoda) when a message reached him from Nimitz in Hawaii. The original message was a simple query: “Where is Task Force 34?” However, Nimitz’ communications technician, sensing a certain urgency in the query, saw fit to slightly strengthen the message. A further gaffe occurred due to a poor choice of padding: Like all coded U.S. messages, the message had been padded at its beginning and end with phrases that were supposed to be nonsense. The end padding sufficiently resembled part of the message that it was left in place by Halsey’s decoders, and the message ultimately handed to Halsey read: “WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE 34 XX THE WORLD WONDERS”. Halsey reportedly threw his hat on the deck and started weeping with rage, then returned with his battleship force and one of his carrier task forces to San Bernardino Strait — too late to catch Kurita. It hardly mattered; the Japanese Navy was practically finished as a fighting force. Halsey's other two carrier task groups were able to finish off carriers Zuiho and Zuikaku and sink an additional cruiser and two destroyers before they, too, were forced to break off the pursuit.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a decisive American
victory, yet it did
not reflect all that well on the Americans, who had overwhelming
superiority in numbers. Halsey's blunder (few historians now call it
anything else) was the most serious mistake on the American side, but
most of the men of 3 Fleet were exhausted from prolonged operations and
it showed. The air strikes against Kurita on 24 October 1944 scored
only 45 hits with 259 strike aircraft. On the other hand, the Japanese
performance was even worse than that of the Americans. Kurita badly
mismanaged the battle off Samar even before giving the command to
retreat, and the Japanese gunfire against the American escort carriers
was notably inaccurate. The battle resembled the final round of a
heavyweight prize fight, with both boxers barely able to remain on
their feet.
References
Hornfischer
(2004)
Morison
(1958)
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2007-2009 by Kent G. Budge. Index
