Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

On July 27th President Roosevelt, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and General MacArthur, meeting at Pearl Harbor, decided to speed up the assault on Japan, to recapture the Philippines without awaiting the defeat of Germany, and to force Japan “to accept our terms of surrender by the use of sea and air power without an invasion of the Japanese homeland.” On September 13th Admiral William F. Halsey suggested cancellation of four projected intermediate landings and use of these troops for the immediate seizure of Leyte. The suggestion, conveyed to Roosevelt and Churchill at the Second Quebec (“Octagon”) Conference, was approved and ordered within ninety minutes (September 15, 1944). The Palau landing began the same day.

Both the time and place of the American landing at Leyte were anticipated in Tokyo, but the Japanese were unable to reinforce the single division on the spot. To cover the landing Admiral Halsey led the Third Fleet of 9 fleet carriers, 8 escort carriers, 6 battleships, 14 cruisers, and 58 destroyers to pound the Ryukyu Islands, Formosa, and Luzon (October 10-17, 1944). With over 1,000 American planes in the air at a time, this force destroyed 915 enemy planes and hundreds of naval vessels. Since Japanese naval planes had been critically reduced in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and since most of these destroyed in Halsey’s sweep were land-based, the Japanese were critically short of trained pilots after October 17th, and began to adopt kamikaze (suicide) tactics. In these tactics half-trained pilots dived their planes, loaded with bombs, onto the decks of American ships. These new tactics inflicted severe losses on the Americans in the next few months.

In the week of October 17-24, Halsey’s Third Fleet was back off Leyte to cover the invasion force of 732 ships. In five days 132,400 men and 200,000 tons of supplies ‘were landed against only moderate opposition. To destroy this landing the Japanese gave orders which resulted in the Battle of Leyte, the largest naval conflict in history.

The eastern shore of the Philippines may be regarded as two very large islands, Luzon on the north and Mindanao to the south, separated by a cluster of smaller islands (the Visayas) which include almost contiguous Samar and Leyte on the eastern shore. Between Luzon and Samar was San Bernardino Strait, while, farther south, Leyte and Mindanao are separated by Surigao Strait. The Japanese plan was to send a small force as bait from Japan to entice Halsey’s Third Fleet northeast from Luzon, while three other Japanese forces (one from Japan and two from Sinpapore) would secretly approach from the west, with the Center Force under Admiral Takao Kurita passing through San Bernardino Strait, and the Southern Force under Admirals Kiyohide Shima and Shoji Nishimura passing through Surigao Strait to converge on Admiral Frederick C. Sherman’s Seventh Fleet to destroy both it and the Leyte beachhead before Halsey could return from his northern pursuit of Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s sacrificial “bait.”

These plans, requiring precise timing and ruthless execution, failed only because the quality of American fighting men was so superior to that of Japanese admirals that it overcame Japanese superiority in guns and ships in actual combat. The resulting Battle of Leyte ended the Japanese Navy as an effective fighting force. On one side were 216 American and 2 Australian ships, with 143,668 men, plus many auxiliary vessels, while the enemy had 64 major ships manned by 42,800 Japanese.

The Japanese Northern Force was made up of 2 heavy, 1 large, and 3 small carriers, which could no longer be used as carriers because of lack of naval aviators. These 6 vessels, escorted by 3 light cruisers and 8 destroyers, sailed down from Japan to entice “Bull” Halsey’s Third Fleet, with almost all the American heavy striking power, northward away from the Leyte landing. Unexpectedly it escaped observation until October 24th, a day later than expected, and had to sail in circles waiting for Halsey to come north.

In the meantime, Kurita’s Center Force, which hoped to remain undetected, had been intercepted by American submarines, and reported. This Japanese force, headed for San Bernardino Strait, had 7 battleships (including the two largest in the world of 68,000 tons, with 18.1-inch guns), 11 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 19 destroyers. All these major vessels were faster and heavier than comparable American ships but had little air cover, poor fire control, and inferior morale. On October 23rd the American submarines Darter and Dace torpedoed three of Kurita’s heavy cruisers, sinking two (including Kurita’s flagship). While Kurita was being rescued from the water and dried out, Halsey, warned by Darter , sent an air strike over the top of the Philippines and sank the 68,000-ton battleship Musashi with 19 torpedoes and 17 bomb hits, and also knocked out a heavy cruiser. Hours earlier, Japanese land planes from Luzon made a strike at Halsey and were mostly destroyed, but a single bomb, exploding in the carrier Princeton’s bakery, set a fire which ignited its torpedoes and aviation gasoline and blew it apart, inflicting heavy casualties on the cruiser Birmingham which had come to the rescue. When Halsey’s planes, returning from west of the Philippines, gave exaggerated reports on the damage to Kurita and announced that he had turned westward, Halsey took off with 65 ships (including all his heavy vessels) northward to where Ozawa’s “bait” of 17 ships was patiently circling. Kurita, seven hours behind schedule, resumed his course to San Bernardino Strait and Leyte Gulf.

In the meantime, two other Japanese forces were converging on Surigao Strait, far to the south. Together they had 2 battleships, 3 heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and 8 destroyers. Their approach was reported to the American Seventh Fleet off Leyte. This moved southward to meet the threat at Surigao Strait, assuming that Halsey would continue to cover San Bernardino Strait. The intercepting force of Admiral Thomas Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet had 6 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, and 28 destroyers.

As the Japanese Southern Force plowed through Surigao Strait in the long, dark night of October 24-25, it was attacked by 30 PT boats; these were dispersed after great confusion. Then came more than 100 torpedoes from American destroyers, scoring 9 hits, which sank 3 Japanese destroyers and a battleship. Gunfire from the American heavy ships then sank most of the Southern Force; damaged vessels were pursued by air and submarine, until, by November 5th, only one cruiser and 5 destroyers of the whole force were still afloat.

As the Seventh Feet disengaged from the remnants of the Southern Force at 5:00 a.m. on October 25th, the main Japanese force, under Kurita, 175 miles to the north, had emerged from San Bernardino Strait and was bearing down on Leyte, which was protected by a flotilla of 6 escort carriers with a screen of 7 destroyers under Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague. These small vessels were off Samar Island with about 25 planes each and were backed by two similar flotillas farther south. Surprise was complete on both sides, at 6:47 a.m., when a patrol plane discovered Kurita’s presence. The news had hardly registered, when the Japanese big guns opened fire. Fortunately, Kurita was completely disconcerted by the encounter, and believed he had run into Halsey’s fleet.

Sprague, under cover of smokescreens and rain squalls, tried to escape the heavy Japanese gunfire, while holding the enemy out of Leyte Gulf by vigorous air strikes from his “baby flat-tops” and torpedo attacks from his destroyers. The Japanese shells, of 5- to 16-inch caliber, were all armor-piercing and went through the thin plates of Sprague’s vessels without exploding; but, with up to forty holes each, these ships were soon leaking freely. They attacked so vigorously, however, using their 5-inch guns when all torpedoes were gone, that Kurita’s fleet was scattered, and he decided to withdraw to regroup his forces. He had sunk two American destroyers, an escort carrier, and a destroyer escort, but lost three heavy cruisers in return. By this time (9:15 a.m.) air attacks were beginning to come in from all over the Philippines, and Kurita had received news that only one destroyer had survived the Southern Force’s defeat at Surigao. He began to withdraw through San Bernardino Strait. Sprague’s escort carriers were much cut up, and still under heavy pounding from the earliest kamikaze attacks. These sank St. Lǒ, an escort carrier, about 11:30.