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with planes preparing for take-off. Fuel caught fire, torpedoes exploded, hundreds of desperate men crowded the flight deck. At 1010, half an hour after the initial explosion, all crewmen save damage-control parties abandoned ship. The cruiser Birmingham steamed close alongside to help fight Princeton’s fires, sending thirty-eight volunteers aboard the stricken carrier. A jeep and a tractor slid from Princeton’s lofty deck onto the destroyer Morrison, which was taking off men while using machine guns to ward off sharks from survivors in the water. Princeton’s agony continued for 21/2 hours, until a new Japanese air raid was signalled. Birmingham temporarily stood off. After Lexington’s Hellcats broke up the attackers, however, the heroic cruiser closed in once more, and tried to take Princeton in tow.

A huge explosion in the carrier’s torpedo stowage put an end to the salvage attempt, and inflicted shocking damage on Birmingham. The ship’s war diary recorded: “Dead, dying and wounded, many of them bloody and horrible, covered the decks…Blood ran freely down the waterways.” The hulk of Princeton was sunk by American torpedoes. Birmingham retired from the fleet, “a dockyard case.” Amazingly, thanks to the courage and skill displayed aboard all the ships involved, only 108 men died and 190 were wounded. If this was a bitter morning for Halsey’s TG3, it was also a time for pride.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23–25 October 1944

Third Fleet’s first air strike fell upon Kurita’s ships at 1026, followed by a second wave at 1245, another at 1550. Aboard a nearby American submarine, sailors eavesdropped on the airmen’s radio chatter. One pilot interrupted his controller’s instructions impatiently: “Let’s get this over with269.” Then there was a clamour of yells: “Yippee! I’ve got a battleship!” followed by: “All right, let the battleship alone. Line up on the cruiser.” Kurita was now flying his flag in Yamato, in uneasy concourse with Ugaki, who commanded the battleship element from the same ship, and despised his superior. The admiral pleaded in vain with shore command for air support. This was refused, on the absurd grounds that fighters were more profitably engaged in attacking U.S. carriers. Here, once again, was the Japanese obsession with the inherent virtue of offensive action, matched by impatience with the humdrum requirements of defence. Kurita was obliged to watch, almost impotent, as American aircraft struck his ships again and again.

Avenger gunner Sherwin Goodman was quietly contemplating the sky amidst a huge formation of American aircraft when his thoughts were interrupted: “It was a beautiful day270…My goodness, what have we got here?” It was the Yamato group, far below them. The torpedo-carriers dropped and circled, to reach firing positions. Goodman rotated his turret forward, and could see only gun flashes from the enemy ships: “It looked like a tunnel of fire.” At a thousand yards, they released their torpedo, the plane lifted, and Goodman cried at his pilot, “Break left! Break left!” Gazing down as they swung away, he exclaimed triumphantly: “We hit him!” Their victim was the light cruiser Noshiro, which sank almost immediately. Two American bombs caused slight damage to Yamato, giving Kurita another bad fright. His chief of staff was wounded by splinters.

Every gun in the Japanese fleet fired on the incoming Americans, yet achieved small success. Since 1942, U.S. ships had made great strides in countering air attack by radio fighter direction, radar-controlled gunnery and radio-guided proximity shell fuses. The Japanese had not begun to match such advances. Their anti-aircraft defences were woefully inadequate. “Our captain was a271 great gunnery enthusiast,” said Petty Officer Kisao Ebisawa, who served on a warship through many U.S. air attacks. “He was always telling us that we could shoot the Americans out of the sky. After innumerable raids in which our guns did not even scratch their wings, he was left looking pretty silly. When air attacks came in, there was nothing much we could do but pray.”