Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [114]
Cmdr. Ted Winters, CO of Lexington’s Air Group 19, was a fascinated airborne spectator: “There wasn’t any of this307 having the carriers blow up and roll over like I had thought when I went out. They took the first [hits] like somebody getting a slug in the stomach and then fires broke out…when a fish hits one of those ships it doesn’t look like a big explosion like a bomb; it looks like someone running over a fire plug—a spurt straight up in the air. The fires didn’t consume the entire ship, though. Finally after about three hours the carriers rolled slowly, finally rolled over and went down.” Fourth and fifth waves of American aircraft failed to sink Ise. A sixth strike at 1810, delivered by tired aircrews, accomplished little. Four carriers and a destroyer had thus been destroyed by 527 bomb and torpedo sorties, supported by 201 fighters. Masanori Ito wrote with justice that Ozawa’s “mission was to be defeated308, and in being defeated he accomplished that mission.”
Halsey had reluctantly ordered his battleships south at 1115, to support Seventh Fleet. He would have preferred to keep Lee’s squadron to finish off the Japanese cripples. Captain Lewis Dow, Halsey’s communications officer, afterwards adopted a contemptuous tone about Sprague’s appeals for help: “We had frantic screams309 from the Seventh Fleet that they were being annihilated…” Only late that afternoon were American submarines alerted to concentrate on Ozawa’s force, and their sole prey was the light cruiser Tama.
Ted Winters was flying back to Lexington when he saw the stricken Japanese carriers below him, “still smoking a little. Going back past this other Jap carrier dead in the water, I found a bunch of our cruisers steaming in a north-westerly direction. I thought at first they were Japs because they were so near. I called on the VHF: ‘If you will change course forty-five degrees to the right, you will find a Jap carrier dead in the water with no destroyers or battleships around.’” The cruisers asked Winters to sweep north and check that no Japanese heavy units were in range. After reporting the sea clear, he spotted fall of shot for the cruisers, watching the alternating green, yellow and red splashes. With futile courage, a few Japanese gunners were still firing from the hulk. “It wasn’t five minutes310 after they opened fire, and it looked like she just rolled over and went down in a cloud of smoke leaving her fanny sticking up in the air…The coordinator’s job is a lot of fun.”
Halsey described in characteristic terms the moment at which his fleet overran the scene of the Japanese sinkings: “We found no Jap ships, but Jap swimmers were as thick as water bugs. I was having breakfast when Bill Kitchell burst in and cried: ‘My God Almighty, Admiral, the little bastards are all over the place! Are we going to stop and pick them up?’” Halsey replied: “Not until we’ve picked up our own boys”—downed American pilots. He signalled his destroyers not to be over-zealous about their rescue activities: “Bring in cooperative flotsam for an intelligence sample. Non-cooperators would probably like to join their ancestors, and should be accommodated.”
Eleven of Ozawa’s original seventeen ships were able to sail home. Halsey afterwards made much of the importance of his action off Cape Engano, in writing off the last of Japanese carrier capability. Yet it was Japanese, and not Americans, who scripted Halsey’s battle, and he conformed to their design with embarrassing exactitude. The enemy had accepted that their carriers were no longer useful as aircraft platforms, but could serve one last function in luring Third Fleet from the path of Kurita’s advance. Halsey accepted the bait. Only Kurita’s feebleness prevented the Combined Fleet from inflicting serious