War and Remembrance (177 page)

More air strikes against the oncoming Japs in the center; more jubilant damage reports; battleships and cruisers bombed, torpedoed, on fire, turned turtle. On Pug’s chart these reports looked thrilling. The symbols for sunk or damaged ships crowded the Sibuyan Sea. If the reports were true the Jap would never make it, he was a goner already. But why in that case was he continuing to advance? Strikes by thirty to seventy planes were hitting him at will, yet on he came.

Why did he have no air cover?
Where were the Jap carriers?
The question had been nagging at Victor Henry all day, and not only at him; it was troubling William Halsey and his staff, and his group commanders, and Admiral Nimitz in Pearl Harbor, where night had already fallen, and Admiral King in Washington. Those missing flattops weren’t covering the oncoming San Bernardino force. They weren’t with the end runners to the south. What then was their role in this supreme gamble of the Imperial Fleet? It was unthinkable that they could be idling in the Inland Sea. Pug saw two possibilities. He wrote them, for his own future smiles or groans, on a separate sheet of paper.

24 October, 1430, off Leyte.

Q: Where are the enemy carriers?

A:
(1)
Hanging back outside search range in the South China Sea. They’ll run in toward us at high speed once the sun gets low, to strike at dawn tomorrow the cripples of the coming night action off San Bernardino Strait.

(2)
They’re heading down from the north to decoy us away from San Bernardino Strait. If so, they’ll make certain they’re seen before dark, probably well north of Luzon.

There was nothing prescient in Pug’s second guess. Several of Halsey’s group commanders were making the same surmise. A captured Japanese tactical manual recently sent out by ONI had discussed sacrificing carriers as a diversion gambit. Somehow the carrier force had gotten out of the Inland Sea undetected by submarine pickets. They might just now be moving into air search range. The answer — so Pug felt as the last Halsey strike was heading home — would come before sundown.

Vice Admiral Ozawa’s gambit carriers were in fact already to the north of Luzon, and Ozawa was doing everything to attract Halsey’s attention except — so to say — stand on his head and wiggle his ears. But Halsey had assigned the northward search to Sherman, and in the confusion of the air attack
and the
Princeton
fire the launch had stalled. So Ozawa had dispatched the motley aircraft in his flattops — only seventy-six in all — to attack Sherman’s group, hoping to alert Halsey if nothing else. This flight had less luck than the land-based strike that had fired the
Princeton.
Many of the pilots were shot down; most of the rest were too green to land on a moving carrier, so they flew on to Luzon or else dropped in the sea. Halsey was not alerted; this straggling strike was evaluated as probably coming from Luzon.

Ozawa also broadcast copious radio signals, hoping to be detected. Late in the day, desperate to be seen and pursued, he sent southward two hermaphrodite battleships — bizarre gunships with flight decks grafted on — to engage Sherman’s group in surface combat. Ozawa notified Kurita by radio of all these actions. The two forces were about a thousand miles apart, well within radio range. But Kurita received no messages from him, either directly or via Tokyo or Manila.

Halsey’s battle plan for the night came through about three o’clock. It named four battleships, including the
Iowa
and the
New Jersey,
two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and fourteen destroyers.

THESE SHIPS WILL BE FORMED AS TASK FORCE 34 UNDER VICE ADMIRAL LEE COMMANDER BATTLE LINE X TASK FORCE 34 WILL ENGAGE DECISIVELY AT LONG RANGES X

Form Battle Line!

Pug Henry had studied battle-line tactics all his life. He knew the manual by heart. He had gamed, times beyond counting, Jutland and Tsushima Strait, and Nelson’s classic actions at Trafalgar and Saint Vincent. The showdown between ships of the line was the supreme historical test of navies. So far in this war, the graceless weak floating barns called carriers had eclipsed the battleship. Well, by God, here was Japan sending its battle line through San Bernardino Strait to smash the Leyte invasion, and all Halsey’s carriers were not stopping it from coming on.

Form Battle Line!
It was the sounding of the charge. His blood racing as though he were twenty, Victor Henry pulled the telephone from its bracket and buzzed Captain Bradford. “Staff meeting in my quarters at sixteen hundred. Leave one watch officer in flag plot. You come down.”

It did not escape Pug’s notice that Halsey, in the
New Jersey,
would be OTC of the Battle Line. Willis Lee would form the task force, and he would do a superb job, but Halsey would take over and fight the engagement. What wild excitement must be fizzing over in the flag quarters of the
New Jersey!
If Pug Henry had been waiting thirty years for this, Bill Halsey had been waiting forty years. Of all admirals in history, not one had been more hungry or ready for an all-out fleet battle. The man and the moment had come together for the forging of a famous victory.

Pug ran up to the flag bridge to air out his lungs. He had gone through three packs of cigarettes. The scene on the sea could not be more tranquil: carriers, battleships, and their screening vessels spreading as far as the eye could see in afternoon sunshine, extending below the horizon north and south, gray familiar shapes of war steaming slowly in AA formation on the mildly foaming blue ocean. No land was in sight, no foe, no smoke, no fire. All the excitement was in the chatter of the flag plot loudspeakers, in the facts tumbling out of the coding machines in Navy abracadabra. Wireless communications, airplanes, and black oil had made for a new kind of sea warfare reaching out hundreds, thousands of miles for contact, encompassing millions of square miles as the field of battle. Yet the signal of signals was unchanged from Trafalgar, and no doubt from Salamis.

Form Battle Line!

Battle was the ultimate risk. The giant
Iowa
could go down like any other warship. The sinking of the
Northampton
was much on Pug’s mind, and he was running over what he would say to the staff about torpedo attack. Yet he felt, as he stood there alone in rumpled khakis, taking deep breaths of the streaming tropic sea air, that this night would do much to justify his life. He was filled with exaltation that was half-guilty because the business was only slaughter, and many Americans might die, and yet he was so damned happy about it.

The staff conference was not fifteen minutes along when flag plot called him with a new position report on the Japs in the Sibuyan Sea. Noting the latitude and longitude on a scratch pad, Pug snapped, “Check the decoding, that’s a mistake,” and hung up. Soon the watch officer apologetically called again. The decode checked out. There was another sighting, a much more recent one. Pug wrote down the numbers, abruptly went off into his office, and presently called in the chief of staff.

“What do you make of that?”

On his chart the orange track of the Jap force now hooked around to westward. Retreat!

“Admiral, I didn’t see how he could keep coming as long as he did.” Running his fingers through his white hair, Bradford shook his head. “He was like a snowball rolling along on a hot stove. He’d have arrived with nothing.”

“You think he’s quit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t. Meeting’s suspended. Get on up there, Ned. Sift the dispatches. Pick up what you can on TBS. Double the coding watch on command channel intercepts. Let’s get the word on these position reports.”

Soon Bradford telephoned down that the whole fleet was buzzing with the Jap turnaround. Pug stared at the chart, calculating the possibilities, as in a chess game after a surprise move. He began to write:

24 October,
2645.
Cenerai Force turns west.

Why?

1. Beaten by air strike. Slinking home to Nippon.
   
2. Ahead of schedule. Carriers not yet in search range. Rendezvous off Leyte fouled up. Killing time. Also confusing us.
   
3. Avoiding a night action. Jap minor forces prefer night fighting, what with long-range torpedoes, etc. This fellow wants good visibility for his big guns.
   
4. Preserving maneuverability in daylight hours.
   
5. Made damage report to Tokyo and awaits further orders.
   
6. Remember Spruance “retreating” at Midway? This is a tough individual, a strong force, and a resourceful mind at work. May be tantalizing Halsey to charge through San Bernardino Strait after him, whereupon he’ll come about and cross our T.
   

As Pug sat mulling over these possibilities an excited knock came at his door. “Admiral, I thought I’d better bring you this.” Eyes gleaming, Bradford laid a decode on his desk, strips of tape pasted on a blank form. It was from Halsey.

TO: ALL GROUP COMS AND DIV COMS THIRD FLEET

SHERMAN REPORTS X 3 CARRIERS 2 LIGHT CRUISERS 3 DESTROYERS 18-32 N

125-28
E X

Pug darted his orange pen to the chart. Northeast of Luzon, two hundred miles off shore; there was the answer on the Jap carriers.

“Hml Any late word on that force in the Sibuyan Sea?”

“None, Admiral.”

They looked at the chart, and at each other, wryly grinning. Pug said, “Okay, you’re Halsey. What do you do?”

“Take off like a bat out of hell after those carriers.”

“What about San Bernardino Strait? What about that fellow in the Sibuyan Sea?”

“He’s still retreating. If he turns around and comes back, the Battle Line will fix him.”

“So you go north with the carriers only, leaving the battleships behind? Isn’t that risky?”

“The carriers can pick up Sherman’s two battleships as they steam north. That’s enough power to handle any carrier force the Japs have got.”

“What about concentration of force?”

Bradford scratched his head. “Well, the Japs haven’t done that, have they? They’re coming at me from two directions. They’re too far apart for me to hit one outfit and then the other with a concentrated force. I’d say the tactical situation prevails over the principle. I’ve got to divide my force to make
sure I hit both his teams. My two sections are much stronger than his two, anyway.” Pug gave him a horrible frown. Bradford added uncertainly, “Admiral, I get paid for saying what I think, however stupid, when asked.”

“You’ve made Mahan turn over in his grave. However, I agree with you. Get back up there, Ned.”

The steward knocked and offered to bring the admiral dinner on a tray. Pug felt he could not force an olive down his throat. He asked for more coffee, and sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, trying to think himself into Halsey’s brain.

Here was an embarrassment of riches for the old gunfighter —
two
great engagements within his grasp! He could be the Lord Nelson of either one, but not of both; too far apart, as Bradford said. The
New Jersey
would have to be detached from the Battle Line, if he decided to run north with the carriers. In that case Willis Lee would fight the Battle Line night action, with one of Sherman’s battlewagons replacing the
New Jersey.
Or Halsey could stay off San Bernardino with the battleships, and turn Mitscher’s flattops loose to run north and get the carriers. That was what Ray Spruance had declined to do at Saipan.

The San Bernardino fight, Pug thought, would be the more decisive one. That was the big immediate menace to the beachhead. But suppose the Jap didn’t reverse course and come on? In that case Bill Halsey would patrol at dead slow all night with silent guns, while Marc Mitscher sailed off to the biggest carrier victory since Midway.

Not a chance, Pug Henry thought. Not a chance. Bradford was right. In Halsey’s place he, Pug, might well go north himself.

But he hoped Halsey would take only the
New Jersey
and not drag the
Iowa
along. Those Jap flattops would be meat for Mitscher’s aviators. The battleship function in the north would be merely sinking cripples. At San Bernardino Strait there would be battle. That Jap had not quit; so a sixth sense told Pug.

Down from flag plot came an intercepted visual signal from Willis Lee to Halsey, sent just before dark. It was a situation analysis close to Pug’s, which made him feel good. Lee was a shrewd veteran strategist. The Jap carriers were weak decoys, Lee said, low on aircraft; the Sibuyan turnaround was temporary; that force would return and come through the strait at night.

Division of opinion in Halsey’s staff quarters must be deep and debate furious, Pug surmised. Time was slipping by. No orders were forthcoming, not even the “Execute” for the Battle Line plan, and Willis Lee needed time to organize and form up his force. Shortly after eight o’clock the orders did at last come through. Bradford did not deliver or telephone this crucial dispatch. He sent it down by messenger, a very odd thing to do. When Pug read the long battle order, he understood why.

Halsey was going north after the carriers, all right; but he was taking with him the entire Third Fleet,
leaving not one vessel behind to guard San Bernardino Strait.

Pug was still digesting this sickening surprise when another dispatch came down, again by messenger. It was a sighting report of the Sibuyan Sea force by a night search plane. The longitude numbers made his hair prickle before he put his pen to the chart. The Jap had turned around and was heading for San Bernardino Strait at twenty-two knots.