The
Battle of Leyte Gulf, also called the "Battles
for Leyte Gulf", and formerly known as the "Second Battle of the
Philippine Sea", is generally considered to be the largest naval
battle of
World War II and also one of
the
largest naval
battles in history.
It was
fought in waters near the Philippine
islands of Leyte
, Samar
, and
Luzon
, from 23 to 26 October 1944, between naval and
naval-air forces of the Allies and those of the Empire of Japan
. On 20 October, United States troops invaded the island of
Leyte
as part of a strategy aimed at isolating Japan from
the countries it had occupied in South
East Asia, and in particular depriving its forces and industry
of vital oil supplies. The
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)
mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an
attempt to defeat the Allied invasion, but was repulsed by the
US Navy's
3rd and
7th Fleet. The IJN failed to
achieve its objective, suffered very heavy losses, and never
afterwards sailed to battle in comparable force. The majority of
its surviving heavy ships, deprived of petroleum fuel, remained in
their bases for the rest of the Pacific War.
The Battle
of Leyte Gulf included four major naval battles: the Battle of the
Sibuyan
Sea
, the Battle of Surigao Strait
, the Battle off Cape Engaño and the Battle off Samar, as well as other
actions.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf is also notable as the first battle in
which Japanese aircraft carried out organized
kamikaze attacks. Also worth noting is the
fact that Japan at this battle had fewer aircraft than the Allied
Forces had sea vessels, a clear demonstration of the difference in
power of the two sides at this point of the war.
Background
The
campaigns of August 1942 to early 1944 had driven Japanese forces
from many of their island bases in the south and central Pacific Ocean
, while isolating many of their other bases (most
notably in the Solomon
Islands
, Bismarck Archipelago
, Admiralty Islands
, New
Guinea
, Marshall
Islands
, and Wake
Island
), and in June 1944, a series of American amphibious
landings supported by the US Fifth Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force
captured most of the Mariana Islands
(bypassing Rota). This
offensive breached Japan's strategic inner defense ring and gave
the Americans a base from which long-range
B-29 Superfortress bombers could attack
the Japanese home islands. The Japanese counterattacked in the
Battle of the Philippine
Sea. The
U.S. Navy destroyed three Japanese aircraft
carriers (and damaged other ships) and approximately 600 Japanese
aircraft, leaving the IJN with virtually no carrier-borne airpower
or experienced pilots.
For subsequent operations, Admiral
Ernest
J. King and other
members of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff favored blockading Japanese forces in the Philippines and
attacking Formosa
to give the
Americans and Australians control of the
sea routes between Japan and southern Asia. U.S. Army General
Douglas MacArthur championed an invasion
of the Philippines, which also lay across the supply lines to
Japan. Leaving the Philippines in Japanese hands would be a blow to
American prestige and an affront to the personal honor of
MacArthur, who in 1942 had famously pronounced, "I shall return."
Also, the considerable air power the Japanese had amassed in the
Philippines was thought too dangerous to bypass by many
high-ranking officers outside the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, including
Admiral Chester
Nimitz. However, Nimitz and MacArthur initially had opposing
plans, with Nimitz's plan initially centered on an invasion of
Formosa, since that could also cut the supply lines to southeast
Asia. Formosa could also serve as a base for an invasion of
mainland China, which MacArthur felt unnecessary. A meeting between
MacArthur, Nimitz, and
President Roosevelt helped confirm
the Philippines as a strategic target, but had less to do with the
final decision to invade the Philippines than is sometimes claimed.
Nimitz eventually changed his mind and agreed to MacArthur's
plan.It was also estimated that an invasion of Formosa would
require about 12 divisions of U.S. Army soldiers and
U.S. Marines, and that was more land
power than the Americans could muster in the whole Pacific Ocean
area at that time.
The entire Australian Army was engaged in the
Solomon Islands, on New Guinea, in the Dutch East Indies
, and on various other Pacific islands.
Perhaps the most decisive consideration against the Formosa-China
plan, as envisaged by Admiral King and others, was that the
invasion of Formosa would require much larger ground forces than
were available in the Pacific in late 1944, and would not have been
feasible until the defeat of Germany freed the necessary
manpower.
It was eventually decided that MacArthur's forces would invade the
island of
Leyte in the central Philippines.
The amphibious forces and close naval support would be provided by
the 7th Fleet, commanded by
Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid. The 7th Fleet at this time
contained units of the U.S.
Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, including the
County-class heavy cruisers HMAS Shropshire and , and the
destroyer , and possibly a few warships from New Zealand
and/or The Netherlands
.
The 3rd Fleet, commanded by Admiral
William F. Halsey, Jr., with Task Force 38 (the
Fast Carrier Task Force, commanded by
Vice
Admiral Marc Mitscher) as its main
component, would provide more distant cover and support for the
invasion.
A serious and fundamental defect in this plan was that there would
be no overall American naval admiral in command. This lack of a
unified command, along with failures in communication, was to
produce a crisis, and very nearly a strategic disaster, for the
American forces. (Fuller 1956, Morison 1956). By coincidence, the
Japanese plan using three separate fleets also failed to designate
an overall commander.
The American options were equally apparent to the
Imperial Japanese Navy.
Combined Fleet Chief
Soemu Toyoda prepared four "victory"
plans: Shō-Gō 1 ( ) was a major naval operation in the
Philippines, while Shō-Gō 2, Shō-Gō 3 and
Shō-Gō 4 were responses to attacks on Formosa, the
Ryukyu
and Kurile Islands
respectively. The plans were for complex
offensive operations committing nearly all available forces to a
decisive battle and therefore of necessity substantially depleting
Japan's slender reserves of oil fuel.
On 12 October 1944, the US 3rd Fleet under Admiral Halsey began a
series of carrier raids against Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands,
with a view to ensuring that aircraft based there could not
intervene in the Leyte landings. The Japanese command therefore put
Shō-Gō 2 into action, launching waves of air attacks
against 3rd Fleet's carriers. In what Morison refers to as a
"knock-down, drag-out fight between carrier-based and land-based
air" the Japanese were routed, losing 600 aircraft in three days,
almost their entire air strength in the region. Following the
American invasion of the Philippines, the Japanese Navy made the
transition to
Shō-Gō 1.
Shō-Gō 1 called for
Vice-Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa's ships, known as
Northern Force, to lure the main American covering forces away from
Leyte. Northern Force would be built around several aircraft
carriers, but these would have very few aircraft or trained
aircrew. The carriers would serve as the main bait. As the US
covering forces were lured away, two other surface forces would
advance on Leyte from the west. The Southern Force under Admirals
Nishimura and Shima would strike at the landing area via Surigao
Strait. The Center Force under Admiral Kurita, by far the most
powerful of the attacking forces, would pass through San Bernardino
Strait into the Philippine Sea, turn southwards, and then also
attack the landing area.
This plan was likely to result in the destruction of one or more of
the attacking forces, but Toyoda later explained this to his
American interrogators as follows:
The submarine action in Palawan Passage (23 October)
(Note: this action is referred to by Morison as "The Fight in
Palawan Passage", and is elsewhere occasionally referred to as "the
Battle of Palawan Passage").
As it sortied from its base in Brunei, Kurita's powerful "Center
Force" consisted of five battleships ( , , , , and ), ten heavy
cruisers ( , , , , , , , , and ), two light cruisers ( and ) and 15
destroyers.
Kurita's ships passed Palawan Island around midnight on 22-23
October. The American submarines and were positioned in company
with each other on the surface close by. At 00:16 on 23 October,
Darter s radar detected the Japanese formation at a range
of . Her captain promptly made visual contact. The two submarines
quickly moved off in pursuit of the ships, while
Darter
made the first of three contact reports. At least one of these was
picked up by a radio operator on
Yamato, but Kurita failed
to take appropriate anti-submarine precautions.
Darter and
Dace (travelling on the surface at
full power) after several hours gained a position ahead of Kurita's
formation with the intention of making a submerged attack at first
light. This attack was unusually successful. At 05:24,
Darter fired a spread of six torpedoes, at least four of
which hit Kurita's flagship, the heavy cruiser
Atago. 10
minutes later,
Darter made two hits on the
Atago
s sister ship
Takao with another spread of torpedoes. At
05:56
Dace made four torpedo hits on the heavy cruiser
Maya (sister to
Atago and
Takao).
Atago and
Maya quickly sank.
Takao turned
back to Brunei
escorted by
two destroyers — and was followed by the two submarines. On
24 October, as the submarines continued to shadow the damaged
cruiser,
Darter ran aground on the Bombay Shoal. All
efforts to get her off failed, and she was abandoned. Her entire
crew was, however, rescued by
Dace.
Takao returned to Singapore, where she remained for the
rest of the war; joined in January 1945 by
Myōkō.
Atago had sunk so rapidly that Kurita was forced to swim
in order to survive. He was rescued by one of the Japanese
destroyers, and he then transferred to the battleship
Yamato.
The Battle of the Sibuyan Sea (24 October)
Around
08:00 on 24 October, the Center Force was spotted and attacked
entering the Sibuyan
Sea
by VF-20 squadron Hellcat fighters, VB-20 Helldiver dive
bombers, and VT-20 Avenger torpedo bombers from of Halsey's 3rd
Fleet. Despite its great strength, 3rd Fleet was not
well-placed to deal with the threat. On 22 October, Halsey had
detached two of his carrier groups to the fleet base at Ulithi to
provision and rearm. When
Darter s contact report came in
Halsey recalled Davison's group but allowed Vice Admiral
McCain, with the strongest of Task Force
38's carrier groups, to continue towards Ulithi. Halsey finally
recalled McCain on 24 October — but the delay meant that the most
powerful American carrier group played little part in the coming
battle, and that 3rd Fleet was therefore effectively deprived of
nearly 40% of its air strength for most of the battle. On the
morning of 24 October, only three groups were available to strike
Kurita's force, and the one best positioned to do so —
Bogan's Task Group 38.2 — was by mischance
the weakest of the groups, containing only one large carrier — the
— and two light carriers (the failure to promptly recall McCain on
23 October was also effectively to deprive 3rd Fleet, throughout
the battle, of four of its six heavy cruisers).

hit by a bomb near her forward gun
turret in the Sibuyan Sea.
Planes from carriers
Intrepid and of Bogan's group
attacked at about 10:30, making hits on the battleships
Nagato,
Yamato,
Musashi and severely
damaging the heavy cruiser
Myōkō. A second wave from
Intrepid, and later attacked, with VB-15 Helldivers and
VF-15 Hellcats from
Essex, scoring another 10 hits on
Musashi. As she withdrew, listing to port, a third wave
from
Enterprise and hit her with 11 bombs and 8
torpedoes.
Kurita turned his fleet around to get out of range of the aircraft,
passing the crippled
Musashi as his force retreated. He
waited until 17:15 before turning around again to head for the San
Bernardino Strait —
Musashi capsized and sank at about
19:30.
Meanwhile, Vice-Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi had directed three
waves of aircraft from his First Air Fleet based on Luzon
against the
carriers of Rear Admiral Sherman's Task Group 38.3 (whose aircraft
were also being used to strike airfields in Luzon to prevent
Japanese land-based air attacks on Allied shipping in Leyte
Gulf). Each of Ōnishi's strike waves consisted of some fifty
to sixty aircraft.
_1944_10_24_1523explosion.jpg/180px-USS_Princeton_(CVL-23)_1944_10_24_1523explosion.jpg)
USS
Princeton explodes at
15:23
Most of the attacking Japanese planes were intercepted and shot
down or driven off by Hellcats of Sherman's combat air patrol, most
notably by two fighter sections from
Essex led by
Commander
David McCampbell (who is
credited with shooting down nine of the attacking planes in this
one action). However, one Japanese aircraft (a
Yokosuka D4Y Judy) slipped through the
defences, and at 09:38 hit the light carrier with a armor-piercing
bomb which caused a severe fire in
Princeton s hangar. Her
emergency sprinkler system failed to operate, and fires spread
rapidly. A series of explosions followed. The fires were gradually
brought under control, but at 15:23 there was an enormous explosion
(probably in the carrier's bomb stowage aft), causing more
casualties aboard
Princeton, and even heavier casualties —
more than 300 — aboard the cruiser which was coming back alongside
to assist with the firefighting.
Birmingham was so badly
damaged that she was forced to retire. Other nearby vessels were
also damaged. All efforts to save
Princeton failed, and
she was finally
scuttled — torpedoed by
the light cruiser — at 17:50.
In all US 3rd Fleet flew 259 sorties against Center Force, mostly
by Hellcats, on 24 October. This weight of attack was not nearly
sufficient to neutralize the threat from Kurita. It contrasts with
the 527 sorties flown by 3rd Fleet against Ozawa's much weaker
Northern Force on the following day. Moreover, a large proportion
of the Sibuyan Sea attack was directed against just one ship,
Musashi. This great battleship was sunk, and cruiser
Myōkō crippled, but every other ship in Kurita's force
remained battleworthy and able to advance.
As a
result of the momentous decision now taken by Admiral Halsey,
Kurita was able to proceed through San Bernardino Strait
during the night, to make an unexpected and
dramatic appearance off the coast of Samar
on the
following morning.
Task Force 34 / San Bernardino Strait
After the Japanese Southern and Center forces had been detected,
but before Ozawa's carriers had been located, Halsey and the staff
of 3rd Fleet, aboard the battleship
New Jersey, prepared a
contingency plan to deal with the threat from Kurita's Center
Force. Their intention was to cover San Bernardino Strait with a
powerful task force of fast battleships supported by two of the 3rd
Fleet's fast carrier groups. The battleship force was to be
designated Task Force 34 and to consist of 4 battleships, 5
cruisers and 14 destroyers under the command of Vice Admiral
Willis A. Lee. Rear Admiral Ralph E. Davison of Task
Group 38.4 was to be in overall command of the supporting carrier
groups.
At 15:12 on 24 October, Halsey sent a telegraphic radio message to
his subordinate task group commanders, giving details of this
contingency plan :
Halsey sent information copies of this message to Admiral Nimitz at
Pacific Fleet headquarters and Admiral King in Washington. But he
did not include Admiral Kincaid (7th Fleet) as information
addressee. The message was picked up by 7th Fleet, anyway, as it
was common for Admirals to direct radiomen to copy all message
traffic they detected, whether intended for them or not. As Halsey
intended Task Force 34 as a contingency to be formed and detached
when he ordered it, when he wrote "will be formed" he meant the
future tense, but he neglected to say
when Task Force 34
would be formed, or under what circumstances. This omission led
Admiral Kinkaid of 7th Fleet believe that Halsey was speaking in
the imperative, not the future tense, and so he concluded that Task
Force 34 had been formed and would take station off San Bernardino
Strait. Admiral Nimitz, in Pearl Harbor, reached exactly the same
conclusion. Halsey did send out a second message at 17:10
clarifying his intentions in regard to Task Force 34:
Unfortunately, Halsey sent this second message by voice radio, so
7th Fleet did not intercept it, and Halsey did not follow up with a
telegraphic message to Nimitz or King. The serious misunderstanding
caused by Halsey's ambiguous wording of his first message and his
failure to notify Nimitz, King, or Kincaid of his second clarifying
message was to have a profound influence on the subsequent course
of the battle.
Halsey's Decision (24 October)
The 3rd Fleet's aircraft failed to locate Ozawa's Northern (decoy)
force until 16:40 on 24 October. This was largely because 3rd Fleet
had been preoccupied with attacking Kurita and defending itself
against the Japanese air strikes from Luzon. So, oddly enough, the
one Japanese force that
wanted to be discovered was the
only force the Americans hadn't been able to find. On the evening
of 24 October Ozawa intercepted a (mistaken) American communication
describing Kurita's withdrawal, and he therefore began to withdraw
too. However, at 20:00 Soemu Toyoda ordered all his forces to
attack "counting on divine assistance." Trying to draw 3rd Fleet's
attention to his decoy force, Ozawa reversed course again and
headed southwards towards Leyte.
Halsey was convinced that the Northern Force constituted the main
Japanese threat, and he was determined to seize what he saw as a
golden opportunity to destroy Japan's last remaining carrier
strength. Believing that the Center Force had been neutralized by
3rd Fleet's air strikes earlier in the day in the Sibuyan Sea, and
that its remnants were retiring, Halsey radioed (to Nimitz and
Kinkaid):
The words "with three groups" proved dangerously misleading. In the
light of the intercepted 15:12 24 October "…will be formed as Task
Force 34" message from Halsey, Admiral Kinkaid and his staff
assumed, as did Admiral Nimitz at Pacific Fleet headquarters, that
Task Force 34, commanded by
Lee, had
now been formed as a separate entity. They assumed that Halsey was
leaving this powerful surface force guarding San Bernardino Strait
(and covering Seventh Fleet's northern flank) while he took his
three available carrier groups northwards in pursuit of the
Japanese carriers. But Task Force 34 had not been detached from his
other forces, and Lee's battleships were on their way northwards
with the 3rd Fleet's carriers. Halsey had consciously and
deliberately left San Bernardino Strait absolutely unguarded. As
Woodward wrote "Everything was pulled out from San Bernardino
Strait. Not so much as a picket destroyer was left".
Halsey and his staff officers ignored information from a night
reconnaissance aircraft operating from the light carrier that
Kurita's powerful surface force had turned back towards San
Bernardino Strait, and that after a long blackout the navigation
lights in the Strait had been turned on. When Rear Admiral
Gerald F. Bogan, commanding TG 38.2, radioed this
information to Halsey's flagship, he was rebuffed by a staff
officer, who tersely replied "Yes, yes, we have that information."
Vice Admiral Lee, who had correctly deduced that Ozawa's force was
on a decoy mission and indicated this in a blinker message to
Halsey's flagship, was similarly rebuffed.
Commodore Arleigh
Burke and Commander
James Flatley
of
Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's staff had come to the same
conclusion. They were sufficiently worried about the situation to
wake Mitscher, who asked "Does Admiral Halsey have that report?" On
being told that Halsey did, Mitscher, knowing Halsey's temperament,
commented "If he wants my advice he'll ask for it" and went back to
sleep.
The entire available strength of 3rd Fleet continued to steam
northwards, away from San Bernardino Strait.
The Battle of Surigao Strait (25 October)
Nishimura's "Southern Force" consisted of the battleships and , the
heavy cruiser , and four destroyers. They were attacked by bombers
on 24 October but sustained only minor damage.
Because of the strict radio silence imposed on the Center and
Southern Forces, Nishimura was unable to synchronise his movements
with Shima and Kurita. When he entered the narrow Surigao Strait at
02:00, Shima was behind him, and Kurita was still in the Sibuyan
Sea, several hours from the beaches at Leyte.
As the Southern Force approached Surigao Strait, it ran into a
deadly trap set by the 7th Fleet Support Force. Rear Admiral
Jesse Oldendorf had a substantial
force.
There were six battleships: , , , , , and ;
all but Mississippi had been sunk or damaged in the
attack on
Pearl Harbor
and since repaired. There were the and guns
of the four
heavy cruisers (
(Flagship), , and
HMAS
Shropshire) and four
light
cruisers ( , , and ). There were also the smaller guns and
torpedoes of 28 destroyers and 39 motor torpedo boats
boats). To pass through the narrows and reach the
invasion shipping, Nishimura would have to run the gauntlet of
torpedoes from the PT boats followed by the large force of
destroyers, and then advance under the concentrated fire of the six
battleships and their eight flanking cruisers disposed across the
far mouth of the Strait.
At 22:36, one of the PT boats —
PT-131 — first made
contact with the approaching Japanese ships. Over more than
three-and-a-half hours, the PT boats made repeated attacks on
Nishimura's force. They made no torpedo hits, but sent contact
reports which were of use to Oldendorf and his force.
As Nishimura's ships entered Surigao Strait they were subjected to
devastating torpedo attacks from the American destroyers disposed
on both sides of their line of advance. At about 03:00, both
Japanese battleships were hit by torpedoes.
Yamashiro was
able to steam on, but
Fusō exploded and broke in two. Two
of Nishimura's four destroyers were sunk; another, , was hit but
able to retire, and later sank.
At 03:16,
West Virginia s radar picked up the surviving
ships of Nishimura's force at a range of and had achieved a firing
solution at .
West Virginia tracked them as they
approached in the pitch black night. At 03:53, she fired the eight
guns of her main battery at a range of , striking
Yamashiro with her first salvo. She went on to fire a
total of 93 shells. At 03:55,
California and
Tennessee joined in, firing a total of 63 and 69 shells,
respectively.
Radar fire control
allowed these American battleships to hit targets from a distance
at which the Japanese battleships, with their inferior fire control
systems, could not return fire.
The other three US battleships, equipped with less advanced gunnery
radar, had difficulty arriving at a firing solution.
Maryland eventually succeeded in visually ranging on the
splashes of the other battleships' shells, and then fired a total
of 48 projectiles.
Pennsylvania was unable to find a
target and her guns remained silent.
Mississippi only obtained a solution at the end of the
battle-line action, and then fired just one (full) salvo of twelve
shells. This was the last salvo ever to be fired by a battleship
against another heavy ship, ending an era in naval history.
Yamashiro and
Mogami were crippled by a
combination of and armor-piercing shells, as well as the fire of
Oldendorf's flanking cruisers. turned and fled but lost steering
and stopped dead.
Yamashiro sank at about 04:20, with
Nishimura on board.
Mogami and
Shigure retreated
southwards down the Strait.
The rear of the Southern Force, the "Second Striking Force"
commanded by Vice Admiral Shima, had approached Surigao Strait
about 40 miles astern of Nishimura. It too came under attack
from the PT boats, and one of these hit the light cruiser
Abukuma with a torpedo which crippled her and caused her
to fall out of formation. Shima's two heavy cruisers ( and ) and
eight destroyers next encountered remnants of Nishimura's force.
Seeing what he thought were the wrecks of both Nishimura's
battleships (actually the two halves of
Fusō), Shima
ordered a retreat. His
flagship,
Nachi, collided with
Mogami, flooding
Mogami s steering-room and causing her to fall behind in
the retreat; she was sunk by aircraft the next morning. The bow
half of
Fusō was sunk from gunfire by
Louisville,
and the stern half sank off Kanihaan Island. Of Nishimura's seven
ships, only
Shigure survived. Shima's ships did survive
the Battle of Surigao Strait but they would be sunk in further
engagements around Leyte.
The Battle of Surigao Strait was the last
battleship-versus-battleship action in history. It was also the
last battle in which one force (the Americans, in this case) was
able to "
cross the T" of its opponent.
However, by the time the battleship action was joined the Japanese
line was very ragged and consisted of only one battleship
(
Yamashiro), one heavy cruiser and one destroyer, so that
the "crossing of the T" was notional and had little effect on the
outcome of the battle.
The Battle off Samar (25 October)
Prelude
Halsey's decision to take all the available strength of 3rd Fleet
northwards to attack the carriers of the Japanese Northern Force
had left San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded.
It had been generally assumed by senior officers in 7th Fleet
(including Kinkaid and his staff) that Halsey was taking his three
available carrier groups northwards (McCain's group, the strongest
in 3rd Fleet, was still returning from the direction of Ulithi) but
leaving the battleships of Task Force 34 covering San Bernardino
Strait against the Japanese Center Force. In fact, Halsey had not
yet formed Task Force 34, and all six of Willis Lee's battleships
were on their way northwards with the carriers, as well as every
available cruiser and destroyer of the Third Fleet.
Kurita's
Center Force therefore emerged unopposed from San
Bernardino Strait
at 03:00 on 25 October and steamed southward along
the coast of the island of Samar
. In
its path stood only the 7th Fleet's three escort carrier units
(call signs 'Taffy' 1, 2, and 3), with a total of 16 small, very
slow, and unarmored
escort carriers,
protected by a screen of lightly armed and unarmored destroyers and
smaller
destroyer escorts (DEs).
Despite the losses in the Palawan Passage and Sibuyan Sea actions,
the Japanese Center Force was still very powerful, consisting of
four battleships (including the giant ), six heavy cruisers, two
light cruisers and 11 destroyers.
The battle
Kurita's force caught Rear Admiral
Clifton Sprague's Task Unit 77.4.3 ('Taffy
3') entirely by surprise. Sprague directed his carriers to launch
their planes, then run for the cover of a rain squall to the east.
He ordered the destroyers and DEs to make a smoke screen to conceal
the retreating carriers.
Kurita, unaware that Ozawa's decoy plan had succeeded, assumed that
he had found a carrier group from Halsey's 3rd Fleet. Having just
redeployed his ships into anti-aircraft formation, he further
complicated matters by ordering a "General Attack", which called
for his fleet to split into different divisions and attack
independently.
The destroyer was the closest to the enemy. On his own initiative,
Lieutenant Commander Ernest E. Evans steered his hopelessly outclassed ship
into the foe at flank speed. Seeing this, Sprague gave the order
"small boys attack", sending the rest of Taffy 3's screening
ships into the fray. Taffy 3's two other destroyers, and , and
the destroyer escort , attacked with suicidal determination,
drawing fire and disrupting the Japanese formation as ships turned
to avoid their torpedoes.
Meanwhile,
Thomas Sprague ordered the
16 carriers in his three task units to launch their aircraft
equipped with whatever weapons they had available, even if these
were only machine guns or depth charges. He had a total of some 450
aircraft at his disposal, mostly FM-2 Wildcat and TBM Avenger
torpedo bombers. The air counterattacks were almost unceasing, and
some, especially several of the strikes launched from
Felix Stump's Task Unit 77.4.2, were relatively
heavy.
The carriers of Taffy 3 turned south and retreated through the
shellfire. , at the rear of the American formation, was sunk, while
most of the other carriers were damaged.
Admiral Kurita withdraws
_2.jpg/180px-USS_St_Lo_(CVE-63)_2.jpg)
explodes after a
kamikaze
strike.
The ferocity of the defense confirmed the Japanese assumption that
they were engaging major fleet units rather than escort carriers
and destroyers. The confusion of the "General Attack" order was
further compounded by the air and torpedo attacks, when Kurita's
flagship
Yamato turned north to evade torpedoes and lost
contact with the battle. Kurita abruptly broke off the fight and
gave the order 'all ships, my course north, speed 20', apparently
in order to regroup his disorganized fleet. Turning again towards
Leyte Gulf, Kurita's battle report stated that he received a
message indicating that a group of American carriers was steaming
north of him. Preferring to expend his fleet against capital ships
rather than transports, Kurita set out in pursuit and thereby lost
his opportunity to destroy the shipping in Leyte Gulf. After
failing to intercept the non-existent carriers, Kurita finally
retreated towards San Bernardino Strait. Three of his heavy
cruisers had been sunk, and the determined resistance had convinced
him that persisting with his attack would only cause further
Japanese losses. Kurita was also influenced by the fact that he did
not know that Ozawa had lured Halsey away from Leyte Gulf. Kurita
remained convinced that he had been engaging elements of the 3rd
Fleet, and that it would only be a matter of time before Halsey
surrounded and annihilated him. Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague wrote
to his colleague Aubrey Fitch after the war, "I ... stated [to
Admiral Nimitz] that the main reason they turned north was that
they were receiving too much damage to continue and I am still of
that opinion and cold analysis will eventually confirm it."
Almost all of his surviving force succeeded in escaping. Halsey and
the 3rd Fleet battleships arrived too late to cut him off.
Nagato,
Haruna and
Kongō had been
moderately damaged by air attack from Taffy 3's escort
carriers. Kurita had begun the battle with five battleships. On
their return to their bases, only
Yamato remained
battleworthy.
As the desperate surface action was coming to an end, Vice Admiral
Takijirō Ōnishi put his
'Special Attack Force' into operation, launching
kamikaze
attacks against the Allied ships in Leyte Gulf and the escort
carrier units off Samar. The escort carrier of Taffy 3 was hit
by a
kamikaze aircraft and sank after a series of internal
explosions.
Losses
Two
escort carriers Gambier
Bay and
St. Lo, the
destroyers Hoel and
Johnston,
and the
destroyer escort Samuel
B. Roberts were sunk and four other American ships
damaged. The destroyer
Heermann, despite her unequal fight
with the enemy, finished the battle with only six of her crew
dead.
More than one thousand sailors and aircrewmen of the escort carrier
units were killed. As a result of communication errors and other
failures, a very large number of survivors from Taffy 3 were
not rescued for several days, many dying unnecessarily as a
consequence.
The Battle of/off Cape Engaño (25–26 October)
Ozawa's "Northern Force" comprised four aircraft carriers( — the
last survivor of the
six
carriers which had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 — the light
carriers , , and ), two
World War I
battleships partially converted to carriers ( and — the two after
turrets had been replaced by a hangar, aircraft handling deck and
catapult, but neither battleship carried any aircraft in this
battle), three light cruisers ( , , and ), and nine destroyers. His
force had only 108 aircraft.
Ozawa's force was not located until 16:40 on 24 October, largely
because Sherman's Task Group 38.3, which as the northernmost of
Halsey's groups was responsible for searches in this sector, had
been too involved with attacking Kurita and defending itself
against the air strikes from Luzon. On the evening of 24 October,
Ozawa intercepted an American signal describing Kurita's
withdrawal. He therefore began to withdraw his force as well, but
at 20:00 Soemu Toyoda ordered all forces to the attack, 'counting
on divine assistance'. Ozawa therefore turned southwards again —
towards 3rd Fleet.
Halsey was convinced that the Northern Force was the main threat,
and was determined to seize what he saw as an almost perfect
opportunity to destroy Japan's remaining carrier strength.
Believing
that the Japanese Center Force had been neutralized by 3rd Fleet's
air strikes on 24 October in the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, and
that its remnants were retiring to Brunei
, Halsey
radioed "Central Force heavily damaged according to strike
reports. Am proceeding north with three groups to attack
carrier forces at dawn."
The force which Halsey was taking north with him — three groups of
Mitscher's Task Force 38 — was overwhelmingly stronger than the
Japanese Northern Force. Between them, these groups had five large
fleet carriers ( , , , , and ),
five
light fleet carriers ( , , , , and ), six
battleships ( , , , , , and ), eight cruisers
(two heavy and six light), and more than 40 destroyers. The air
groups of the 10 US carriers present contained a total of more than
600-1,000 aircraft.
At 02:40 on 25 October, Halsey detached Task Force 34, built around
the 3rd Fleet's six battleships and commanded by Vice Admiral
Willis A. Lee. As dawn approached, the ships of Task Force 34 drew
ahead of the carrier groups. Halsey intended Mitscher to make air
strikes followed by the heavy gunfire of Lee's battleships.
Around dawn on 25 October, Ozawa launched 75 aircraft to attack the
3rd Fleet. Most were shot down by American combat air patrols, and
no damage was done to the US ships. A few Japanese planes survived
and made their way to land bases on Luzon.
During the night Halsey had passed tactical command of Task Force
38 to Admiral Mitscher, who ordered the American carrier groups to
launch their first strike wave, of 180 aircraft, at dawn — before
the Northern Force had been located. When the search aircraft made
contact at 07:10 this strike wave was orbiting ahead of the task
force. At 08:00, as the attack went in, its escorting fighters
destroyed Ozawa's combat air patrol of about 30 planes. The US air
strikes continued until the evening, by which time Task Force 38
had flown 527 sorties against the Northern Force, sinking
Zuikaku, the light carriers
Chitose and
Zuihō, and the destroyer
Akitsuki. The light
carrier
Chiyoda and the cruiser
Tama were
crippled. Ozawa transferred his flag to the light cruiser
Ōyodo.
The crisis – US 7th Fleet's calls for help
Shortly after 08:00, desperate messages calling for assistance
began to come in from 7th Fleet. One from Kinkaid, sent in plain
language, read: "MY SITUATION IS CRITICAL. FAST BATTLESHIPS AND
SUPPORT BY AIR STRIKES MAY BE ABLE TO KEEP ENEMY FROM DESTROYING
CVES AND ENTERING LEYTE." Halsey recalled in his memoirs that he
was shocked at this message, recounting that the radio signals from
the 7th Fleet had come in at random and out of order because of a
backlog in the signals office. It seems that he did not receive
this vital message from Kinkaid until around 10:00. Halsey later
claimed that he knew Kinkaid was in trouble, but had not dreamed of
the seriousness of this crisis.
One of the most alarming signals from Kinkaid reported that, after
their action in Surigao Strait, 7th Fleet's own battleships were
critically low on ammunition. Even this failed to persuade Halsey
to send any immediate assistance to Seventh Fleet. In fact, the 7th
Fleet battleships were not as short of ammunition as Kinkaid's
signal implied, but Halsey did not know that.
From away in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz had been monitoring the
desperate calls from Taffy 3, and sent Halsey a terse message:
"TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO
COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY
FOUR RR
THE WORLD WONDERS." The
first four words and the last three were "padding" used to confuse
enemy listeners (the beginning and end of the true message was
marked by double consonants). The communications staff on Halsey's
flagship correctly deleted the first section of padding but
mistakenly retained the last three words in the message finally
handed to Halsey. The last three words, probably selected by a
communications officer at Nimitz's headquarters, may have been
meant as a loose quote from Tennyson's poem on "
The Charge of the Light
Brigade", suggested by the coincidence that this day, 25
October, was the ninetieth anniversary of the Battle of Balaklava –
and was not intended as a commentary on the current crisis off
Leyte. Halsey, however, when reading the message, thought that the
last words — ‘THE WORLD WONDERS’ — were a biting piece of criticism
from Nimitz, threw his cap to the deck and broke into "sobs of
rage".
Rear Admiral Robert Carney, his
Chief of Staff, confronted him, telling Halsey "Stop it! What the
hell's the matter with you? Pull yourself together."
Eventually, at 11:15, more than two hours after the first distress
messages from 7th Fleet had been received by his flagship, Halsey
ordered Task Force 34 to turn around and head southwards towards
Samar. At this point, Lee's battleships were almost within gun
range of Ozawa's force. Two-and-a-half hours were then spent
refuelling Task Force 34's accompanying destroyers.
After this succession of delays it was too late for Task Force 34
to give any practical help to 7th Fleet, other than to assist in
picking up survivors from Taffy 3, and too late even to
intercept Kurita's force before it made its escape through San
Bernardino Strait.
Nevertheless, at 16:22, in a desperate and even more belated
attempt to intervene in the events off Samar, Halsey formed a new
Task Group (TG 34.5) under Rear Admiral Badger, built around Third
Fleet's two fastest battleships,
Iowa and
New
Jersey – ships capable of a speed of more than – and Task
Force 34's three cruisers and eight destroyers, and sped
southwards, leaving Lee and the other four battleships to follow.
As Morison observes, if Badger's group
had succeeded in
intercepting the Japanese Center Force it would have been seriously
outgunned by Kurita's battleships.
Cruisers and destroyers of Task Group 34.5 did, however,
encountered and sank the destroyer
Nowaki, the last
straggler from Center Force, off San Bernardino Strait.
Battle of Cape Engaño – Final Actions
When Halsey turned Task Force 34 southwards at 11:15, he detached a
task group of four of its cruisers and nine of its destroyers under
Rear Admiral DuBose, and reassigned this group to Task Force 38. At
14:15, Mitscher ordered DuBose to pursue the remnants of the
Japanese Northern Force. His cruisers finished off the light
carrier
Chiyoda at around 17:00, and at 20:59 his ships
sank the destroyer
Hatsuzuki after a very stubborn
fight.
When Admiral Ozawa learned of the deployment of DuBose's relatively
weak task group, he ordered battleships
Ise and
Hyūga to turn southwards and attack it, but they failed to
locate DuBose's group, which they heavily outgunned. Halsey's
withdrawal of all six of Lee's battleships in his attempt to assist
Seventh Fleet had now rendered Task Force 38 vulnerable to a
surface counterattack by the decoy Northern Force.
At about 23:10, the American submarine torpedoed and sank the light
cruiser
Tama of Ozawa's force. This was the last act of
the Battle of Cape Engaño, and — apart from some final air strikes
on the retreating Japanese forces on 26 October — the conclusion of
the Battle for Leyte Gulf.
Criticism of Halsey

Admiral William F.
'Bull' Halsey - Commander US Third Fleet at Leyte Gulf
Halsey was criticized for his decision to take Task Force 34 north
in pursuit of Ozawa, and for failing to detach it when Kinkaid
first appealed for help.
A piece of US Navy slang for Halsey's
actions is 'Bull's Run', a phrase combining Halsey's newspaper
nickname "Bull" (in the US Navy he was known as 'Bill' Halsey) with
an allusion to the Battle of Bull Run
in the American Civil
War.
In his dispatch after the battle, Halsey justified the decision as
follows:
Halsey also argued that he had feared that leaving Task Force 34 to
defend the strait without carrier support would have left it
vulnerable to attack from land-based aircraft, while leaving one of
the fast carrier groups behind to cover the battleships would have
significantly reduced the concentration of air power going north to
strike Ozawa.
However, Morison states that Admiral Lee told him that he would
have been fully prepared for the battleships to cover San
Bernardino Strait without
any carrier support. Moreover,
if Halsey had been in proper communication with 7th Fleet, it would
have been entirely practicable for the escort carriers of Task
Force 77 to provide adequate air cover for Task Force 34 — a much
easier matter than it would be for those escort carriers to defend
themselves against the onslaught of Kurita's heavy ships.
It may be argued that the fact that Halsey was aboard one of the
battleships, and "would have had to remain behind" with Task Force
34 (while the bulk of his fleet charged northwards to attack the
Japanese carriers) may have contributed to this decision, but this
is in all likelihood a minor point. It has been pointed out that it
would have been perfectly feasible (and logical) to have taken one
or both of 3rd Fleet's two fastest battleships (
Iowa
and/or
New Jersey) with the carriers in the pursuit of
Ozawa, while leaving the rest of the Battle Line off San Bernardino
Strait (indeed, Halsey's original plan for the composition of Task
Force 34 was that it would contain only four, not all six, of the
3rd Fleet's battleships); thus, guarding San Bernardino Strait with
a powerful battleship force would
not have been
incompatible with Halsey personally going north aboard
New
Jersey.
Probably a more important factor was that Halsey was
philosophically against dividing his forces; he believed strongly
in concentration as indicated by his writings both before World War
II and in his subsequent articles and interviews defending his
actions. In addition, Halsey may well have been influenced by the
criticisms of Admiral Spruance, who was widely thought to have been
excessively cautious at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and so
allowed the bulk of the Japanese fleet to escape. It also seems
likely that Halsey was influenced by his Chief of Staff, Rear
Admiral
Robert "Mick" Carney, who was
also wholeheartedly in favor of taking all 3rd Fleet's available
forces northwards to attack the Japanese carrier force.
However, Halsey did have reasonable and in his view, given the
information he had available, practical reasons for his actions.
First, he believed that Admiral Kurita's force was more heavily
damaged than it was. While it has been suggested that Halsey should
have taken Kurita's continued advance as evidence that his force
was still a severe threat, this view cannot be supported given the
well-known propensity for the members of Japanese military to
persist in hopeless endeavours to the point of suicide. So in
Halsey's estimation, Kurita's weakened force was well within the
ability of Seventh Fleet to deal with, and did not justify dividing
his force.
Second, Halsey did not know — nor did anyone else in the US Navy —
just how badly compromised Japan's naval air power was and that
Ozawa's decoy force was nearly devoid of aircraft. Halsey made an
understandable and, to him, prudent threat-conservative judgment
that Ozawa's force was still capable of launching serious attacks.
Halsey later explained his actions partly by explicitly stating
that he did not want to be "shuttle bombed" by Ozawa's force (a
technique whereby planes can land and rearm at bases on either side
of a foe, allowing them to attack on both the outbound flight and
the return) or to give them a "free shot" at the US forces in Leyte
Gulf. He was obviously not similarly concerned with giving Kurita's
battleships and cruisers a free shot at those same forces.
The fact that Halsey made one seemingly prudent threat-conservative
judgment regarding Ozawa's aircraft carriers and another rather
opposite judgment regarding Kurita's battleships probably reflects
his understandable bias toward aircraft carriers as the prime
threat of the war. At Leyte Gulf, Halsey failed to appreciate that
under certain circumstances battleships and cruisers could still be
extremely dangerous, and ironically, through his own failures to
adequately communicate his intentions, he managed to bring those
circumstances about.
Clifton Sprague, commander of Task Unit 77.4.3 in the battle off
Samar, was later bitterly critical of Halsey's decision, and of his
failure to clearly inform Kinkaid and 7th Fleet that their northern
flank was no longer protected:
Regarding Halsey's failure to turn Task Force 34 southwards when
7th Fleet's first calls for assistance off Samar were received,
Morison writes:
Instead, as Morison also observes:
Perhaps the most telling comment is made laconically by Vice
Admiral Lee in his action report as Commander of Task Force 34
—
Aftermath
The Battle of Leyte Gulf secured the
beachheads of the
U.S. Sixth
Army on Leyte against attack from the sea.
However, much hard
fighting would be required before the island was completely in
Allied hands at the end of December 1944: the Battle of
Leyte
on land was fought in parallel with an air and sea
campaign in which the Japanese reinforced and resupplied their
troops on Leyte while the Allies attempted to interdict them and
establish air-sea superiority for a series of amphibious landings
in Ormoc
Bay
— engagements collectively referred to as the
Battle of Ormoc
Bay.
The Imperial Japanese Navy had suffered its greatest loss of ships
and crew in its history. Its failure to dislodge the Allied
invaders from Leyte meant the inevitable loss of the Philippines,
which in turn meant that Japan would be all but cut off from her
occupied territories in Southeast Asia. These territories provided
resources which were vital to Japan, in particular the oil needed
for her ships and aircraft, and this problem was compounded because
the shipyards, and sources of manufactured goods such as
ammunition, were in Japan itself.
Finally, the loss of Leyte opened the way
for the invasion of the Ryukyu Islands
in 1945.
The major IJN surface ships returned to their bases to languish,
entirely or almost entirely inactive, for the remainder of the war.
The only major operation by these surface ships between the Battle
for Leyte Gulf and the Japanese surrender was the suicidal sortie
in April 1945 (part of
Operation
Ten-Go), in which the battleship
Yamato and her
escorts were destroyed by American carrier aircraft.
The first use of
kamikaze aircraft
took place following the Leyte landings. A kamikaze hit the
Australian
heavy cruiser on 21
October. Organized suicide attacks by the "Special Attack Force"
began on 25 October during the closing phase of the Battle off
Samar, causing the destruction of the escort carrier
St.
Lo.
J.F.C. Fuller, in his 'The Decisive Battles of the
Western World', writes of the outcome of Leyte Gulf:
Notes
- Howard (1999).
References
Audio/visual media
External links