Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [108]
Yet Kurita, in his turn, was shocked—and wildly deceived. He had supposed that no significant American naval force lay between himself and Leyte Gulf, that his course was open to ravage Kinkaid’s amphibious armada. A first glimpse of Sprague’s ships persuaded him that he faced Halsey’s Third Fleet and its huge carriers. Rather than organise a concerted movement led by his destroyers, he ordered a general attack, every Japanese ship for itself. In four columns, Kurita’s squadron began to close on Sprague’s task group, firing as they came. A cluster of pilots in a carrier ready room was broken up by the entry of an officer who said: “The Jap fleet’s after us.” This was received with disbelief. “Everybody was laughing and joking, couldn’t believe it,” said an aviator whose plane was unserviceable. “We went up on the flightdeck292 and about half an hour later, we began to hear things whistling and dropping astern of us, which turned out to be sixteen-inch shells. It was a kind of funny feeling to be on deck when you’re under attack and don’t have anything to fly.”
Sprague’s ships laboured to increase speed to 171/2 knots and open the range, making smoke while sustaining an easterly course so that they could fly off aircraft. Rear-Admiral Felix Stump of Taffy 2 tried to reassure Sprague on voice radio: “Don’t be alarmed, Ziggy—remember, we’re back of you—don’t get excited—don’t do anything rash!” Yet Stump’s tone conveyed his own dismay, and his words were unconvincing. Taffy 2 possessed no more firepower than Taffy 3. Sprague’s six carriers were arrayed in a rough circle, with the destroyers beyond. In the first four minutes of action, White Plains was straddled four times by fifteen-inch gunfire. Her crew were fascinated by the vari-dyed water plumes, designed to enable Japanese gunners to distinguish each ship’s salvoes: “They’re shooting at us in Technicolor!” By a twist of fortune, a heavy rain squall now swept across the sea. For fifteen important minutes this masked the American ships from the Japanese, who were obliged to resort to radar-directed fire. Kurita signalled triumphantly home that his squadron had sunk a heavy cruiser. Yet so poor was Japanese fire control that at this stage their guns had hit nothing at all.
Here was one of the strangest melodramas of the Second World War. After more than two years of Pacific combat dominated by clashes between ships and aircraft whose parent fleets were often hundreds of miles apart, American seamen now watched with naked eyes as some of the largest warships in the world fired upon them at almost point-blank range, in the manner of the navies of Nelson and Decatur. Fevered activity on the carriers launched one by one into the air every plane that could fly, carrying whatever ordnance chanced to be fitted, to fulfil a simple mission: hit the Japanese. On Gambier Bay, Captain William Vieweg ordered the crew out of a plane already on the catapult, then deliberately fired it into the sea, for his ship was generating too little wind speed to launch. With only a few torpedoes and bombs loaded, many planes which did get off were reduced to strafing the Japanese waraship decks with machine-gun fire.
Rationally, this was as useful as belabouring an armoured knight with a walking stick. Yet, from beginning to end of the Leyte battle, perverse psychological forces were in play. The Japanese had embarked on the Shogo operation anticipating