War and Remembrance (176 page)

A hint of the answer came at sunrise of the twenty-third. Without warning, four torpedoes one after the other struck Kurita’s flagship. The whole force had just begun its daylight zigzagging. As the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser
Atago
shuddered under Kurita’s feet, he saw the next cruiser astern get hit too in smoke, flame, and great climbing showers of white water. Within minutes the
Atago
was wrapped in fire, shaking with explosions, and going down. Kurita’s attention narrowed to saving himself. Destroyers approached the burning wreck to take him off, but there was no time. The admiral and his staff had to swim for their lives in heaving warm salt water.

A destroyer fished Kurita aboard. There another sad sight met his brine-stung eyes: a third heavy cruiser nearby, blowing apart like a firecracker in pale flame and dense black smoke, its pieces going down while he stood there dripping. This day was not half an hour old, and he had lost two heavy cruisers out of ten to submarine assault; a third was dead in the water and afire; and he was two full days’ steaming from Leyte Gulf.

The picket submarines
Darter
and
Dace
had detected Kurita’s force in the night, chased it on the surface, and submerged for this dawn attack. They escaped the cascade of destroyer depth charges that raised great geysers all over the sea, but tracking the crippled cruiser, the
Darter
ran up on a reef. The
Dace
rescued its crew. The
Darter
had sounded the alarm and drawn first blood, but its day was done.

Panicky false periscope sightings disarrayed Kurita’s force most of that day until he managed to transfer with his staff to the
Yamato.
There, in the world’s mightiest gunship, in spacious elegant flag quarters, he regained his grip on the situation. His grand armada was, after all, mainly intact. He had not expected to advance without losses. Night would soon fall and cover his movements. Tokyo radioed him that the decoy force had as yet made no contact with Halsey; so aircraft attacks, as well as the submarine menace, lay ahead for the morrow. The day after that, it now seemed, he would run straight into Halsey at the mouth of San Bernardino Strait. But Takeo Kurita had this command because he was a man who would push on through fire walls. As the sun set he went to full speed.

Night gave him twelve hours of a peaceful fast run. With the sunrise on October twenty-fourth the carrier attacks came, and never stopped coming. Five major strikes, hundreds of sorties, repeated and repeated assaults with bombs and torpedoes, kept the air buzzing over the Main Striking Force all day. Kurita had been promised air cover from Luzon and Formosa. There was none.

Still he steamed doughtily on, winding a course past beautiful mountainous islands, throwing up AA fire from hundreds of guns, in desperation shooting his main batteries at oncoming clusters of airplanes. In this greatest of all fights between aircraft and surface ships, on October twenty-fourth, called now the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, Kurita did very well. Only the supergiant
Musashi,
hit early by a torpedo, attracted the full fury of the waspish Yank planes. Supposedly unsinkable, it absorbed in the five strikes nineteen torpedoes and uncounted bombs; sank lower and listed farther as it fell astern, the hours passed, and the punishment went on; and toward sundown it rolled over and sank with half its crew, never having fought except with tiny flying machines.

That was the worst. A tragic loss, but the Main Striking Force had weathered the storm with plenty of power to carry out its mission. However, no word had ever come from Ozawa’s decoy force. Was there to be no relief, all the way to Leyte? Halsey obviously had not yet been tricked; this day’s harsh pounding had come from carrier aircraft. Kurita’s radioed pleas for air cover were going unheeded. The day’s attrition so far — the
Musashi
in tragic death throes, the disabling of yet another cruiser, and much bomb damage to other ships — could be accepted; but how long could a force defenseless from the air survive against fifteen or twenty carriers?

About four o’clock Kurita turned his ships around and retreated westward, to increase the range from Halsey’s flattops and stay in open water, where his captains could at least continue their successful squirming and dodging; for once in the straits, they would lose maneuverability and become easy targets. Again he beseeched Tokyo and Manila for air cover, citing the damage he was sustaining. Manila made no answer. The air commander there had decided to use his planes against enemy carriers, not in covering Kurita.

It seemed to Takeo Kurita at this juncture, as his ships milled about on a calm sea bounded by the ridges of green islands, and the blasted
Musashi
dropped out of sight trying to beach itself and “become a land battery,” that the
Sho
plan was already collapsing. The air and submarine attacks had thrown off the timing. The air cover element was missing. The deception was not working. Still, having put off entering narrow waters until darkness was near, he reversed course once again, and made for San Bernardino Strait. As he went he notified the southern force to slow down and postpone the pincer attack on the gulf by several hours. Tokyo headquarters in a helpful mood now sent this message:
“All forces will dash to the attack, counting on Divine assistance.”

Night once more veiled the Main Striking Force. Yet even so, Kurita faced mounting perils. Ahead lay narrow heavily mined waters. In traversing San Bernardino Strait, he would have to take his force through in column. Halsey’s battleships and cruisers would undoubtedly be patrolling the entrance, waiting to cross the
T
and pick off his ships one by one as they came out. In precisely such a maneuver, during the great Battle of Tsushima Strait in 1905, the Japanese navy had crushed the czarist fleet and won a war. Now Kurita was cast in the Russian role of that battle he had studied all his life, with no way to escape; no alternative but to steam on to his fate, “counting on Divine assistance.”

Astern, a yellow quarter-moon was setting over the dark Sibuyan Sea. Ahead, the Japanese command in Manila had turned on the navigation lights of San Bernardino Strait. The night was clear. Posting himself on the flag bridge of the giant
Yamato,
Takeo Kurita sent a blunt final dispatch to his crews:
Chancing annihilation, we are determined to break through to the anchorage and destroy the enemy.
The force passed into the narrows, forming into column, and all ships went to battle stations. Despite the hellish day the haggard crews stood to their guns. They were good men, well trained in night action. Kurita could count on them to give the Americans up ahead a real fight, and die for the Emperor if they must.

At midnight the moon went down. Half an hour later, in starlit darkness, the Main Striking Force began to emerge, ship by ship, between the headlands of Luzon and Samar into the quiet open waters of the Philippine Sea. Admiral Kurita could see nothing ahead. Nor could the lookouts on any
of his vessels. Radar sweeping the sea for fifty miles in all directions found nothing.

Nothing! Not so much as a single picket destroyer guarding the entrance to San Bernardino Strait!

Astounded, his hopes rebounding, Kurita formed up for battle and made full speed south along the coast of Samar for Leyte Gulf. He had to accept the evidence of his senses. By some fantastic chance of war Halsey was gone, and MacArthur lay at the mercy of the Emperor’s biggest guns.

T
HE
strange events on the American side which led to this incredible circumstance will remain in controversy as long as anybody cares about naval battles. The events are clear enough. The controversy lies in how and why they happened. Victor Henry lived through them in the
Iowa’s
flag quarters.

He was up well before dawn of that October twenty-fourth, in flag plot, checking his staff’s setup for following the situation, for joining battle, and even for taking command of the task group if necessary. Pug knew very well how junior he was in Halsey’s force, yet misfortune might thrust extraordinary responsibility on him. He intended to stay as fully informed as though he were Halsey’s chief of staff.

Flag plot was a large dimly lit room over his quarters, reached by a private ladder. Here radar scopes showed in phosphorescent green tracery movements of ships and aircraft, storm patterns, configuration of nearby land, and — especially in night action — a better picture of the foe than eyes could discern on the sea. Here large Plexiglas displays manned by telephone talkers gave at a glance in vivid orange or red grease hand-printing abstract summaries of what was happening. Here dispatches poured in to the watch officer for quick digest and display. Coffee, tobacco smoke, and ozone from the electronic gear stewed together in an unchanging flag-plot smell. Loudspeakers hoarsely spouted bursts of signal jargon:
“Baker Jig How Seven, Baker Jig How Seven, this is Courthouse Four. Request Able Mike Report Peter Slant Zed. Over,”
and the like.

But sometimes — as now at five in the morning, when the admiral looked in — flag plot was quiet. Shadowy sailors sat at the scopes, their faces ghastly in the glow, drinking coffee, smoking, or munching candy bars. Telephone talkers murmured into their receivers or wrote on the Plexiglas; stationed behind the display, they were adept at printing backward. Officers bent over charts, calculating and talking low. The chief of staff was already at the central chart desk. In the Formosa strikes Captain Bradford had satisfied Pug that he could run flag plot and sort out pertinent facts from the torrent of noise. Pug went below and alone in his quarters heartily ate canned peaches, cornflakes, ham and eggs, and fresh biscuits with honey. It might
be a long time before he sat down to a meal again. He was drinking coffee when Bradford buzzed him.

“Preparing to launch air searches, Admiral.”

“Very well, Ned.”

Pug ran up the ladder, went out on the flag bridge in a clear warm violet dawn, and watched the dive-bomber squadrons soaring off under the morning stars from the
Intrepid,
the
Hancock,
and the
Independence.
A quiet pain stirred in his heart.
(Absalom, Absalom!)
When the last planes left he returned below to a small office off his sea cabin. Pug meant to keep his own command chart here. Only in combat would he post himself in flag plot near the radars, the TBS, and the flag bridge. For many hours yet, bald plotted facts would matter most: sightings, distances, courses, speeds, damage reports, and what these implied.

It was Blue versus Orange again, after all, the old clash of the War College game boards and the peacetime fleet exercises. The real thing was flaringly different, yet one factor would not change. Even in make-believe combat the hardest thing to do was to keep one’s head; how much more so now! Let Bradford enjoy the excitement and the hot news in flag plot. Pug meant to weigh essentials here until the fight was on, and talk to his staff only when he had to.

In the peace of this office, as he plotted on his chart in orange and blue ink reports of the morning sightings and strikes, what struck him most was the steady Jap advance. This fellow heading for San Bernardino Strait meant business. The reported submarine sinkings the day before had failed to shake him. Unless the air strikes could turn him back, it looked like night battle off the strait, perhaps only sixteen to twenty hours hence.

An early sighting of a second surface force far to the south heading for Surigao Strait didn’t surprise Pug. Diversionary end run, standard Jap tactics. This was exactly why Spruance had refused to leave the Saipan beachhead. The Japs were really throwing everything in! Davison’s task group, to the south, would probably go after that force. No, wrong guess, Halsey was ordering him to concentrate off San Bernardino, too. Well, Kinkaid’s fleet down in the gulf had six old battleships, five of them resurrected from the Pearl Harbor graveyard, including the good old
California
— also plenty of cruisers and escort carriers, to hit that diversionary force making for Surigao. The jeep flattops were converted merchantmen, slow as molasses, small and flimsy; but in the aggregate they could launch a fair air strike.

First damage to the Halsey fleet! Sherman’s flattops, the northernmost group, under air attack at nine-thirty
A.M.;
Princeton
bombed and on fire. Planes could be from Luzon or Jap carriers, according to Sherman. His aviators massacring the enemy pilots. Now a welcome intercept: Halsey calling back the fourth carrier group, until now bound for Ulithi. At last, and none
too soon! The chart indicated that they would have to fuel at sea, and were a full day’s run away. If the blow to the
Princeton
had jolted this decision out of Halsey, it might prove worth the cost.