World Battlefronts: Victory in Three Parts

All summer long the Japanese naval high command, reshuffled after the smashing defeat in the First Battle of the Philippine Sea, had planned for the next inevitable meeting with the U.S. Fleet. The blow must be struck when the U.S. amphibious forces entered the last island defense line, Japan-Ryukyus-Formosa-Philip-pines. So for the three top-ranking taisho* there was not a wide choice of time. But the taisho could still pick the specific moment: it would be in the first confused days of the beachhead. They devised an ingenious Japanese plan, last week snapped it into execution, after the Americans’ surprise landing on Leyte.

Result: a disastrous defeat from which the Empire’s once proud navy would never completely recover.

When the battle ended:

¶ Twenty-four Jap warships were on the bottom: two battleships, four carriers, nine cruisers, three flotilla leaders and six destroyers.

Possibly sunk were a battleship, five cruisers and seven destroyers.

¶ Damaged when they left the Philippine Sea were six battleships, five cruisers and ten destroyers.

¶ Of 60 warships sent into action, only two escaped without hurt: the 34 that limped home, broken and smoking, would clog their repair yards for months while U.S. planes hammered at them to put them out of business for keeps.

Born of Necessity. While they were waiting to see where the U.S. blow on the island defenses would fall, the Japs had dispersed their fleet, at stations from the home islands to Singapore. When General MacArthur’s men stormed ashore on Leyte with four assault divisions, the admirals set their prefabricated plans in operation.

They had lost the initiative long ago; now to get at Leyte Gulf and its cluster of soft-shelled U.S. transports, their war ships must pass through narrow waters.

Nothing south of the Philippines would do for the attack: Lieut. General Kenney’s airmen based on Morotai had closed those routes. There were only two channels through the Philippines. The Japs bent their strategy to geographic necessity.

Their central thrust, with a force built around five battleships, would rush the narrow San Bernardino Strait and strike Vice Admiral Thomas Cassin Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet, guarding the Leyte beach head, on its northern flank.

Although black-browed Tom Kinkaid had received divisions of escort carriers and at least five battleships to fill out the contours of his normally skinny fleet, the Japs knew he would be hard pressed to stave off this assault. To make doubly sure, their southernmost force would charge through Surigao Strait. Either or both of these forces would strive for a chance to pot sitting ducks — the helpless transports off Leyte.

Their third, northernmost force, which included four of their precious, dwindling stock of flattops, would send off planes to smear Admiral Mitscher’s bare-decked carriers when the latters planes were far away, giving Kinkaid support which the Japs’ were confident he would need and demand.

Oversight. On paper it was a fine complex plan. There were only two things against it: one was that Old Stagers Halsey, Mitscher and Kinkaid were comb ing the seas with planes and submarines looking for the attack; another was the overwhelming power of the U.S. force.

Two or three days before the battle, U.S. submarines in the South China Sea surfaced in darkness and radioed what they had seen: major Jap fleet units advancing northeast from Singapore. Then the subs went to work, sank two Atago-class heavy cruisers and heavily damaged a third.

Admiral Halsey disposed his Third Fleet to the east of the central Philippines—off southern Luzon, Samar and Leyte. Long-range scouts from Mitscher’s carriers spotted the Japs’ central and southern forces, ploughing through the Sibuyan and Sulu Seas. The central force was spearheaded by two new battleships of more than 40,000 tons, the Yamato and Musahi; three oldsters, the Nagato and the durable Kongo and Haruna. Shepherding them were eight cruisers and 13 destroyers. To the south were the 29,000-ton Huso and Yamasiro, going on 30 years old, four cruisers and seven or eight destroyers.

Mitscher’s Avengers. It was time for the first strike. Mitscher sent off powerful forces of Hellcats, Avengers and Hell-divers against both Jap fleets. In the central force, they damaged a battleship and a cruiser, both of which may have sunk. A light cruiser was torpedoed; it capsized and sank. Three battleships and three heavy cruisers absorbed both bombs and torpedoes, but pressed on.

The Japs were not idle, either. They flew off hundreds of planes from their repaired fields. Although no less than 150 were shot down, some of them got in at the light carrier Princeton. She was bombed and set afire, gradually went to pieces as one explosion after another racked her slim 10,000-ton cruiser hull. When the main magazine went, she had to be sunk by U.S. gunfire.

The complicated battle thundered on. That same afternoon, a land-based search plane spotted the Japs’ northernmost force: four carriers, two battleships (of the Ise class, with flight decks aft), five cruisers and six destroyers.

By then the Japanese plan of encirclement was completely revealed, and “Bull” Halsey had a hard decision to make. He weighed the alternatives, concluded that the newly found northern force was the greatest threat (especially in view of the heavy damage reported done to the central force). Then he acted. His characteristic decision was: attack. He and Mitscher charged north through the night at high speed with most of the fast carrier groups and fast battleships.

Ambush. The Japs’ southernmost fleet suffered least from U.S. aerial pounding during its approach, and reached the scene of battle first. The first-quarter moon had set early, and the morning darkness was deep in Surigao Strait. At the southern end, squadrons of PT boats lay in ambush. As the Huso and Yamasiro entered the narrows with their screen, the PTs attacked. The tiny, bucking craft had made their reputation for dash and expendability in the Philippines, and they lived up to it. They scored some hits, lost several of their number.

Still the Japs came on. Now it was the U.S. destroyers’ turn. At 3:30 a.m. they attacked with torpedoes. Then hulking

Rear Admiral Jesse Barrett Oldendorf, commanding a powerful, balanced task force, put into effect his policy of “never give a sucker an even break.” If the Japs were suckers enough to try to drive through the Strait, he meant to let them come. They came, into the twelve-mile-wide pass between Hingatungan and well-named Desolation Point.

It was Oldendorf’s moment. His ships laid down a semicircular wall of fire, from guns of all calibers, 5-inch to 16-inch. Laying it down were five battlewaeons salvaged from the wreckage of Pearl Harbor: the California, Tennessee and Pennsylvania (14-inch), West Virginia and Maryland (16-inch). Ultramodern fire control and crack handling put the first salvos squarely on the targets.

The Japs slowed from 20 knots to twelve. They hesitated as their leading ships caught fire; then they turned and ran. In a 40-minute hail of shellfire at ranges of eight to ten miles, and a later hail of bombs as they trailed oil through the Mindanao Sea, the Japs lost the battleships Huso and Yamasiro. MacArthur proclaimed that every ship was sunk; Nimitz hedged, saying all units were “sunk or decisively defeated.”

Their Own Petard. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the north, Mitscher’s air fleets had flown off the battle carriers’ ample decks, long before dawn. They swooped out of the rising sun upon the ships which flew it as their battle flag. The U.S. flyers were amazed to find virtually no air opposition: the Japs had been caught in a variation of-the trick which had brought them disaster in June. Their carriers’ planes were refueling on Luzon.

One possible explanation was that they had flown from there the day before to launch attacks like the assault on the Princeton.

By the time they got back, it was too late. Helldivers had scored up to a dozen hits on the Zuikaku; Avengers had slammed in three torpedoes. Commander Theodore Hugh Winters, air group commander, cruised around upstairs, watching the Zuikaku’s death throes.

After two hours, she lay on her side and went down quietly. After another hour, a smaller carrier went down. Yet another of the same (Titose) class was sunk by air attack. One of the Zuiho class was polished off by cruiser gunfire, and so was a destroyer flotilla leader. A damaged cruiser was knocked out during the night by a lurking submarine. Both battleships in the force were damaged.

The Third Fleet’s thundering air groups lost only ten planes, eight pilots and ten crewmen.

Good News for the Cripples. “Bull” Halsey’s swift stroke had been brilliantly successful, but he was going to have to let some of the cripples get away. In mid-battle, he got a desperate call for help from Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet. Had Halsey stayed too long at his appointment in the north? Kinkaid’s jeep carriers had already caught it hot & heavy from the Japs’ central force, which whipped through San Bernardino Strait before dawn—before the jeeps’ aircraft could get off. The CVEs were at no pains to hide their plight: they shrilled for help in uncoded voice radio.

And well they might. While the Japs’ bomb-battered battleships and destroyers hugged the coast of Samar, heading for the supply ships, Jap cruisers and more destroyers swung wide into the Philippine Sea, heading for the U.S. carriers. Their 6-and 8-inch guns outranged the jeeps’ 5-inchers. Their speed was vastly superior. It looked like murder.

The CVEs executed the best-known naval maneuver: they turned south, firing over their sterns. They claimed some hits. Luckily the Taps’ gunnery was bad. At sunup the CVEs got the planes off their rainswept decks. Their Avengers probed storm clouds and smoke clouds, stabbing at the Japs. Hellcats dived down cones of multicolored ack-ack to strafe Jap gun stations.

Two destroyers and a destroyer-escort covered the carriers’ retreat by a furious attack launched about 8:30. With torpedoes and 5-inch guns they tore into the vastly superior enemy. Two U.S. ships were quickly blown up. The third, hit in one engine room, fired a spread of torpedoes at a heavy Jap ship, then limped around to fire another spread. After an hour she was abandoned. Jap destroyers charged through the survivors clinging to life rafts, but the enemy saved their bullets and shot only with cameras.

Victory Drive. For some reason the Jap fleet faltered in the pursuit when their land-based aircraft arrived. One Val (Aichi-99 dive bomber) sailed over a U.S. escort carrier as though for a landing, then the pilot pushed his stick forward, dove into the carrier and sank it. Other bombers sank a second jeep carrier.

The Jap seaborne battle force returned to the assault, but now it was finally repelled by the superhuman efforts of the carriers’ airmen. By this time they had help. Mitscher’s men had raced in from the north. One “cheat cruiser” of the Mogami class (built as light cruisers under the terms of the 1922 Washington Treaty and then refitted as heavies) went down. Another cruiser was pounded into the sea by Third Fleet guns. The rest of the Jap force turned tail and fled into San Bernardino Strait.

This week Mitscher’s flyers still were pounding Jap ships in the countless Philippine inlets, transferring them from the “damaged” to the “sunk” column.

* The Navy Minister, tall, bull-voiced Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai; the Chief of Naval Staff, courteous, capable Admiral Koshiro Oi-kawa; the Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, fat, ugly Admiral Soemu Toyoda.