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in a radio compartment. Watertight doors protected his own position, but those above were flooded. Garsian used mattress padding to check water trickling in, and at last attracted attention by shouting through a ventilation duct. Rescuers had to cut through four inches of armour with acetylene torches before he was finally rescued, after sixteen hours in what he feared would prove his tomb. More Japanese raiders approached while the crew was labouring to save Honolulu. Reckless anti-aircraft fire from neighbouring ships killed a further six of the cruiser’s men and wounded eleven. Off Leyte, promiscuous American shooting became almost as alarming a hazard as the Japanese, with thousands of nervous gunners striving to engage low-level attackers.

Admiral Kinkaid signalled Nimitz, asking for urgent carrier strikes against the kamikaze bases: “Air situation now appears critical.” He also pressed Kenney, in a stream of messages: “If adequate fighter cover not maintained323 over combatant ships their destruction is inevitable. Can you provide the necessary protection?” No, Kenney could not. The lack of usable fields on Leyte, together with steady losses to Japanese strafing, rendered the U.S. Army’s airmen incapable of deploying sufficient force to stave off attacks, as well as providing support for Krueger’s ground forces. Before commencing the Philippines operations, MacArthur assured the chiefs of staff that Kenney’s squadrons, together with the aircraft of Seventh Fleet under his own command, would easily be able to handle the air situation after the first few days ashore. Instead, in early November the general found himself obliged to ask for the return of Halsey’s carriers. Third Fleet’s aircraft rejoined the battle, and inflicted a level of attrition quite unsustainable by the Japanese. But in the first weeks of the Leyte campaign, the Americans suffered more heavily from enemy air power than at any time since 1942.

On 27 November, kamikazes struck the light cruisers St. Louis and Montpelier and the battleship Colorado. By some freak, as a Japanese plane on its death ride streaked between the foremast and forward stack of Colorado, blood from its wounded pilot showered down on sailors manning 20mm gun tubs. “I was standing in the open324 and was so scared I was paralysed,” wrote James Hutchinson. “I couldn’t come to my senses enough to move until it was all over.” Two days later, kamikazes got to the battleship Maryland and the destroyer Aulick, inflicting major damage and casualties, and hitting another destroyer. Third Fleet’s fast carrier force was attacked on 25 November. Two suicide aircraft inflicted fresh damage on Intrepid, another struck Cabot, yet another Essex. The Japanese sneaked in amidst a cloud of American aircraft returning from a mission, becoming indistinguishable on saturated radar screens.

Even when enemy planes were identified, their pilots were taught to veer constantly, so that American gunners remained uncertain which ship was targeted. “You just don’t know which one’s325 coming at you,” said Louis Erwin of the cruiser Indianapolis, a turret gunner. A destroyer of Desron 53 rammed a sister ship while taking drastic evasive action, one of several such incidents. Crews learned to curse low cloud, which shielded suicide attackers from combat air patrols. “The first thing I saw that day326 was a plane with meatballs on the wings just rolling into a dive,” wrote a destroyer crewman on 29 November. For a dismaying number of Americans serving in the ships off Leyte, such a sight was their last.

Fire, always fire, was the principal horror unleashed by a kamikaze strike on an aircraft carrier, laden with up to 200,000 gallons of aviation gas. An airman on Essex “rushed over to help get a man327 out of a 20mm gun mount. I tried to pull him out of the fire but part of his arm came off…I got sick.” Another ran onto the flight deck: “I seen these fellows with short sleeves328, the flesh hanging. I grabbed a big tube of Ungentine and tried to rub it on one guy’s arms. The skin came off in my hands.” In action,