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By Root 1286 0

plodding along with their heads bent down, their arms slapping spasmodically at their sides … Their shoulders were blistered from their packbands, their waists were bruised from the bouncing of their cartridge belts, and their rifles clanked abrasively against their sides, raising blisters on their hips … Like litter-bearers, they had forgotten everything; they did not think of themselves as individual men any longer. They were merely envelopes of suffering.’

Even as the Americans hacked a painful path across Leyte island, at sea their foes launched an ambitious and desperate attempt to wreck the campaign. The Imperial Japanese Navy dispatched four carriers scantily provided with aircraft to make a feint from the north, designed to lure away Halsey’s Third Fleet at the almost inevitable cost of their own destruction. Meanwhile, Japanese heavy units set forth to converge on Leyte Gulf, where they planned to attack the American amphibious armada and its relatively weak naval support force – Admiral Thomas Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet. Operation Sho-Go was never likely to succeed: whatever havoc the attackers contrived, American strategic superiority was overwhelming. But a change of Japanese codes and wireless silence imposed on their fleet at sea denied Halsey and Kinkaid foreknowledge of what was afoot. Only on 24 October was a powerful Japanese battle squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral Takeo Kurita, spotted entering the Sibuyan Sea between Luzon, Panay and Leyte. American submarines promptly sank two of its cruisers, and Third Fleet launched carrier aircraft which sank the huge battleship Musashi and damaged other vessels. Kurita turned away, apparently conceding defeat. The impulsive Halsey, convinced he had seen off the Japanese, then disappeared north with his entire force of sixty-five ships in pursuit of Ozawa’s carrier decoy force, located by reconnaissance aircraft.

That night of the 24th, as Halsey steamed towards a far horizon, Seventh Fleet fought a notable battle of its own. A second Japanese battle squadron was sighted closing on Leyte Gulf from the south, up the Surigao Strait. To meet this, Kinkaid deployed his old bombardment battleships, together with cruisers, destroyers and PT-boats. A remarkable action followed. In darkness soon illuminated by eruptions of flame, the American mosquito craft inflicted little damage on the column of Japanese warships. But just before 0400 destroyer torpedoes and radar-guided fire from the fourteen-inch and sixteen-inch main armament of Kinkaid’s big ships sank the Japanese battleships Yamashiro and Fuso, together with three of their escorts. The heavy cruiser Mogami and the light cruiser Abukuma were also hit, and later sunk by US aircraft. The surviving elements of the Japanese task force turned for home – two heavy cruisers and five destroyers escaped. American ships suffered only thirty-nine men killed, most of these victims of friendly fire in the confusion of darkness. It had been a slaughter: the Japanese performance reflected not only inferior technology and gunnery, but resignation to sacrifice. The battle squadron had no realistic prospect of traversing the narrow waters of the Surigao Strait and achieving useful results unless it had the benefit of surprise, and unless the Americans responded as feebly as they had done two years earlier, in similar circumstances off Savo island. This was never likely. The Japanese sailed to meet death, and duly did so.

But the most remarkable action of the battle, and indeed one of the strangest naval encounters in history, was still to come. During the night, the Japanese battlefleet mauled by Halsey’s planes once more about-turned; after steaming eastward through the San Bernardino Strait, it steered south towards Leyte Gulf, undetected even when daylight came, and meeting no opposition. Just before 0700, the six small escort carriers and seven escorts of Rear-Admiral Clifton Sprague’s Task Force 77.4.3 – immortalised by its radio call-sign as ‘Taffy 3’ – had just secured from pre-dawn general quarters when a panic-stricken voice