Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [107]
Escort carriers, workhorses of the war at sea, were crude floating runways, most converted from tankers and merchantmen. Their class acronym, CVE, was alleged by cynics to stand for “Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable.” They lacked the defensive armament, aircraft capacity and speed of purpose-built fleet carriers four times their tonnage. They were intended only to provide local air support, in this case for the Leyte Gulf amphibious armada and MacArthur’s soldiers ashore. Each carried twelve to eighteen obsolescent Wildcat fighters and eleven or twelve Avenger torpedo and bomber aircraft. The previous day, the fighters had accounted for some twenty-four Japanese aircraft over Leyte.
That morning, Taffy 3’s five carriers, three destroyers and four destroyer escorts had just secured from routine pre-dawn general quarters. It was the midst of the most unpopular watch of the day, 4 to 8 a.m., when, in the words of a jaundiced Pacific sailor, “the morning sun289 would be looking like a bloody bubble in a peepot.” Most crews had gone to breakfast as the ships turned into the north-east wind and prepared to fly off the first sorties of the day. Lookouts suddenly reported anti-aircraft fire north-westwards, and radio rooms a gabble of Japanese voices flooding the ether. At 0647, in what one captain called “a rather frantic voice transmission,” an anti-submarine-patrol pilot announced that four Japanese battleships, eight cruisers and accompanying destroyers were just twenty miles from Taffy 3. Momentarily, its commander, Rear-Admiral Clifton “Ziggy” Sprague—confusingly, two unrelated Admiral Spragues were off Leyte that day—believed these must be Halsey’s ships. Then the Americans saw pagoda masts, and at 0658 the Japanese opened fire.
It was one of the great surprise attacks of the war. Despite all the technological might of the U.S. Navy, Kurita’s ships had been able to sail almost 150 miles in seven hours, unnoticed by the Americans. Human eyes detected them before radar did. Admiral King, in Washington, blamed Kinkaid for failing to watch Kurita’s movements. It can certainly be suggested that the admiral could have spared a few search planes of his own to monitor Kurita’s movements alongside Halsey’s aircraft. Richard Frank persuasively argues that, with the Japanese known to be at sea, Kinkaid should also have moved his Taffies further from San Bernardino.
Yet it seems impossible to dispute the fundamental point, that dealing with Kurita was Halsey’s responsibility. Seventh Fleet was nicknamed, somewhat derisively, “MacArthur’s private navy.” Kinkaid’s mission was to support Sixth Army. “Halsey’s job290,” said Kinkaid later, “was to keep the Japanese fleet off of our necks while we were doing this.” Halsey had already engaged Kurita, and possessed overwhelming firepower for the purpose. Kinkaid knew that Halsey had gone in pursuit of Ozawa, but it never occurred to him that he had taken his entire force. Given the strength of Third Fleet, there were ample heavy units for some to have guarded against the Japanese battle squadron—yet none was left behind. This, although on the night of the twenty-fourth Halsey was told that Kurita had turned back towards San Bernardino. Here were the painful consequences of divided command. Halsey was answerable to Nimitz, Kinkaid to MacArthur. At Leyte Gulf, failure to appoint an overall supreme commander for the Pacific theatre came closer than at any other time to inflicting a disaster on American arms.
Sprague and his officers, confronted by an array of impossibly mighty enemy ships, almost twice as fast as their own carriers, believed they faced a massacre as surely as