Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [112]
Kurita later produced a range of excuses for his disengagement decision: after three days and nights without sleep, “my mind was extremely fatigued302. It should probably be called ‘a judgement of exhaustion.’” He talked unconvincingly about a signal, of which no record was ever found, reporting American warships to the north, in his rear. He claims to have decided to regroup his diminished forces and resume his original mission—an assault on the amphibious shipping in Leyte Gulf. In reality, he havered for more than three hours, then set course for retirement through the San Bernardino Strait. Sprague watched the huge Japanese superstructures fade from the horizon. “I could not get the fact into my battle-numbed brain,” he wrote later. “At best, I had expected to be swimming by this time.” His command of six escort carriers, three destroyers and four escorts, supported by a job lot of aircraft, had mauled and frightened off most of the surviving Japanese battle fleet.
Sprague’s subsequent report to Nimitz said that but for “the very poor decision303 of breaking off the action…the Jap main body could have, and should have, waded through and completed the destruction of this task unit, and continuing to the south would have found our naval opposition very low.” Sprague found the enemy’s poor gunnery “unexplainable,” and attributed his force’s survival to the “definite partiality of Almighty God.” Kinkaid signalled to MacArthur ashore: “Our situation has again turned rosy from black, black, black.”
THE NAVAL ACTION around the Philippines on 25 October was not confined to the attacks of Kurita’s battle fleet. While recovering its own planes Taffy 1 was surprised by six Japanese aircraft and a submarine which damaged the carriers Santee and Suwanee. At 1050, while Taffy 3 was still recovering from the early-morning drama, a Zero crashed into the flight deck of St. Lo, setting off a series of bomb explosions which caused the ship to blow up at 1125. Some 754 survivors were rescued. Soon after noon next day, another plane hit Suwanee, inflicting 245 casualties and doing terrible damage. “The second explosion304…buckled our bulkheads and ruptured water mains…so that we began to flood,” wrote medical officer Walter Burrell.
As the water rose to knee height in our compartment, the ship was listing uncomfortably and lying dead in the water without steerage because of destruction of the bridge and wheelhouse. Isolated from the rest of the ship with only the reflection from the gasoline fires above and a few flickering battle lamps for light, I saw my wounded partially covered with wreckage and already awash…with my corpsmen and stretcher bearers, we were able to move out wounded through the hatches from one compartment to the next…A sailor, apparently in panic, came running along the passageway screaming: “Everyone’s going over the side! The captain’s dead! Everyone on the bridge has been killed! Everyone’s abandoning ship.” Now, contagious panic and cold fear! The wounded…began struggling to get out, screaming hysterically, “Where’s my lifejacket? Who took my lifejacket? Turn that loose! Gimme that! No, it’s mine!” Some were shoving towards the entrance, fighting and scrambling over one another.
Burrell checked the panic, conspicuously taking off his own life jacket and hanging it on a hook. Small-arms ammunition began to explode, ignited by a gasoline fire, and prompting frightened men to jump overboard—a common occurrence when carriers were hit, cause of many needless deaths. The medical officer struggled to aid wounded lying on the forecastle, most “severely burned beyond recognition305 and hope. All that could be done for the