Part 12

Five battleships, ten heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and 15 destroyers. Admiral Kurita was to take this formidable surface fleet through San Bernardino Straits, at the northern tip of Samar, to come down on the transports “like a wolf on the fold” while Halsey’s force was wasting time on the sacrificial carrier decoy in the north.

_Southern Striking Force_, under Vice-Admiral Shima:

Formed of two task units—a vanguard under Admiral Nishima of two battleships, one heavy cruiser and four destroyers, plus a second section under Admiral Shima of two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and four destroyers. These two southern forces were to come up from the East Indies and pass through Surigao Straits—happy hunting grounds of the PTs—to join with the Central Striking Force in Leyte Gulf for the unopposed and leisurely destruction of the Sixth Army.

The Japanese apparently could not believe that the U.S. Navy—once Halsey had been suckered into chasing off after the decoy carriers—had enough ships left afloat to resist the two striking forces. Had not the entire Japanese nation just celebrated an Imperial proclamation of the near annihilation of the American fleet?

All three Japanese forces converged on the Philippines simultaneously. By October 24th, the three forces had been spotted and reported by Allied scouts. Torpedoes and bombs from planes and submarines had made punishing hits on the advancing Central and Southern Striking Forces, but the ships kept plodding on toward the straits north and south of Leyte.

And Admiral Halsey snapped at the bait dangled by Admiral Ozuma’s carriers. For a man of Admiral Halsey’s temperament, the reported sighting of the northern carrier group was too much to resist. He lit out to get them all—leaving unguarded the Strait of San Bernardino, back gate into Leyte Gulf and the transport area.

For once, an American command staff had fallen into the chronic error of the Japanese. Admiral Halsey apparently believed the exaggerated claims of his pilots and thought that the Central Striking Force had been decimated and the remnants driven off. The Japanese had actually lost only three cruisers to submarines and a battleship to aircraft. After a short retreat, Admiral Kurita reconsidered and turned back during the night to resume the transit of San Bernardino Strait. His powerful fleet was steaming toward the transport area at 20 knots.

Admiral Kincaid misinterpreted a message from Admiral Halsey and thought a part of his Third Fleet was still on station, corking up San Bernardino, so Kincaid dismissed the central force from his mind and turned his attention to the southern force heading for Surigao Strait. Not even a scout submarine was watching the northern pass into Leyte Gulf.

Shortly after noon of October 24th, Admiral Kincaid notified his entire command to prepare for a battle that night. He cleared Surigao Strait of all unnecessary traffic, and gave Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf the job of not only stopping but destroying the enemy column.

Admiral Oldendorf had been commanding the bombardment and support forces, and had in his control all the heavy guns of the Seventh Fleet. In a phrase which infuriated the Japanese when they heard it, Oldendorf said that he deployed his forces according to the professional gambler’s code: “Never give a sucker a chance.”

Surigao Strait is a narrow strip of water about thirty-five miles long, running almost north-south between Leyte and Dinegat islands. By its shape and location, the strait was going to force the Southern Striking Force to approach Leyte Gulf in a long, narrow column. Admiral Oldendorf deployed his ancient but still hard-punching battleships in a line across the mouth of the strait where it opens into Leyte Gulf. Thus, without further maneuver, Oldendorf was certain to open fire with his battle line already crossing the T of the Japanese column. His fleet could swing its entire broadside to bear simultaneously; the enemy could fire only the forward turrets on the lead ship.

Admiral Oldendorf was not satisfied with depending entirely on this setup, murderous as it was, so he deployed every other fighting ship in his command to work maximum destruction on the Japanese. He posted cruisers and destroyers between the battleships and the mouth of the straits, as a combined screen and supplementary battle line. Other destroyer squadrons were posted near the strait, so that they could launch torpedoes and then get out of the way during the gunfire phase of the battle.

Admiral Oldendorf’s position was good—except for one thing. The warships had fired off most of their ammunition in beach bombardment, and magazine stocks were low, especially in the armor-piercing shells needed for fighting heavy battleships. Oldendorf ordered the battleships to hold their fire until they were sure of making hits—and he ordered maximum use of torpedoes.

That meant torpedo boats, so 39 of Commander Selman Bowling’s PTs were deployed in 13 sections of three boats each along the shores of Surigao Strait, and also along the coasts of Mindanao and Bohol islands, far into the Mindanao Sea on the other end of Surigao Strait. The farthest PTs were stationed 100 miles from the battleline.

The Seventh Fleet had no night scouting planes, so Admiral Oldendorf informed the PTs that their primary mission was scouting. The boats were to patrol the approaches to the strait and to hide along the wooded shores fringing the coming scene of battle. They were to relay radio contact reports as the Japanese passed their station.

_Then_ they were to attack and do all the torpedo damage possible before the Japanese came within gunshot of the Seventh Fleet battleline.

The PTs took up their stations during the night, and all hands topside peered out to sea, watching for the telltale white bow wave of the first Japanese ship.

The torpedo boat actions that followed are often hard to understand. PTs, by the nature of their attack, provoke wild melees, and survivors of melees rarely remember precisely what happened. What they do claim to remember is usually faulty and contradicted by circumstantial evidence. PT skippers kept only sketchy logs, and those entries giving the time an action took place are often especially inaccurate. As nearly as a historian can tell, however, here is what happened to the PTs.

At 10:15 P.M. Ensign Peter B. Gadd, skipper of PT 131, on station 18 miles south of Bohol Island almost exactly in the middle of the Mindanao Sea and 100 miles from Admiral Oldendorf, picked up two targets on his radar screen. They were between the three-boat section commanded by Lieut. W. C. Pullen, and Bohol Island to the north. Lieut. Pullen tried to reach Admiral Oldendorf by radio, but failed, so he led the PTs 152, 130 and 131, in a torpedo approach.

The radar pips broke into five separate targets, and when a light haze lifted, the skippers clearly saw what they thought were two battleships, two cruisers and a destroyer. The enemy opened fire at three-mile range, with his biggest batteries. Starshells burst overhead and the PTs tore away through a ghastly glare that made them feel naked under the rain of high explosive.

An eight-inch shell hit a torpedo of 130 smack on the warhead and tore through the bow. Miraculously, there was no explosion.

The 152 was hit by a 4.7-incher, probably from a destroyer that was closing fast, with searchlight blazing. (This destroyer, the _Shigure_, was the only ship of the Japanese van to survive the coming massacre.) The explosion tore away the 37-mm. cannon, killed the gunner, stunned the loader, and wounded three sailors. The boat was afire.

Aboard the stricken 152, Lieut. (jg) Joseph Eddins dumped two shallow-set depth charges into his wake and pumped 40-mm. shells at the pursuing destroyer.

“Our 40 mm. made the enemy reluctant to continue the use of the searchlight,” said Lieut Eddins.

The destroyer snapped off the light and sheered away from the geysers of exploding depth charges.

The fight had lasted 23 minutes. Now there were two more targets on the radar screen and the PT sailors were frantic to get their radio report through to the waiting battleline.

Lieut. (jg) Ian D. Malcolm of 130 ran south until he found Lieut. (jg) John A. Cady’s section near Camiguin Island. He boarded PT 127 and borrowed its radio. Just after midnight on October 25th, Lieut. Malcolm made the first contact report of the position, course, and speed of the enemy. It was the first word of the enemy received by Admiral Oldendorf in fourteen hours.

Aboard the 152, the crew put out the fire, and the skipper gave the boat a little test run. The bow was stove in, but the plucky boat could still make 24 knots, so Lieut. Pullen ordered a stern chase of the disappearing Japanese. He had to abandon the attack, however, because the Japanese were too fast for him to catch. There is something touching and ludicrous in the picture of the tiny, bashed-up PT trying to catch the mammoth Japanese battleline.

Lieut. (jg) Dwight H. Owen, in charge of a section near Limasawa Island next picked up signs of the approaching fleet. He tells how it looked:

“The prologue began just before midnight. Off to the southwest over the horizon we saw distant flashes of gunfire, starshells bursting and far-off sweep of searchlights. The display continued about fifteen minutes, then blacked out. Squalls came and went. One moment the moon shone bright as day, and the next you couldn’t make out the bow of your boat. Then the radar developed the sort of pips you read about.”

Lieut. Owen jumped for the radio, but the enemy was jamming the circuit and he could not get his report off. He did the next best thing—he attacked.

At 1,800 yards, the cruiser _Mogami_ snapped on its searchlight and probed for the boats. PT 146 (Ensign B. M. Grosscup), and 150 (Ensign J. M. Ladd), fired one fish each, but missed. The destroyer _Yumagumo_ caught the 151 and the 190 in a searchlight beam, but the boats raked the destroyer with 40-mm. fire and knocked out the lights. The boats zigzagged away behind smoke.

Admiral Nishimura, commanding this van force of the two-section Southern Striking Force, was delighted with himself at this point, and sent a message to Admiral Shima, congratulating himself on having sunk several torpedo boats.

At the southern entrance to Surigao Strait, Lieut. Commander Robert Leeson, on PT 134, commanded the section posted on the western shore. The boat crews saw flashes of the battle with Lieut. Owen’s boats, and half an hour later picked up radar pips ten miles away. Leeson promptly passed the radar sighting to Admiral Oldendorf, and then—the milder duty done—led a torpedo attack.

Lieut. (jg) Edmund F. Wakelin’s 134 was caught by a searchlight while still 3,000 yards from the two battleships. Shells fell close aboard on both sides, splashing water over the boat, and shrapnel from air bursts banged against the deck, but the skipper bore in another 500 yards to launch his fish. The boat escaped from the Japanese and hid in the shadow of Panaon Island, where later in the night the sailors fumed helplessly as four Japanese ships steamed, “fat, dumb, and happy,” past their empty torpedo tubes at 1,000-yard range.

All the torpedo tubes of the section were not empty, however, for Lieut. (jg) I. M. Kovar, in 137, at 3:55 A.M., picked up an enemy formation at the southern end of the strait and attacked. He had no way of knowing it, but this was Admiral Shima’s second section, coming up to the relief of Admiral Nishimura’s van that had already entered the strait, and indeed had at that very moment been shattered by a vicious American destroyer-torpedo attack.

Lieut. Kovar crept up on a Japanese destroyer, maneuvering to take station at the rear of the enemy column. He let fly at the can and had the incredible good luck to miss his target entirely and smack a light cruiser he hadn’t even seen. Aboard the cruiser _Abukuma_, the explosion killed thirty sailors, destroyed the radio shack and slowed the cruiser to ten knots, forcing it to fall out of formation.

The crippled _Abukuma_ was caught and polished off by Army bombers the next day. It was the only victim of Army aviation in this battle and the only positively verified victim of PT torpedoes, though there is some evidence that a PT may have made one of the hits claimed by American destroyers.

The rest of Admiral Shima’s formation sailed majestically up the strait, fired a spread of torpedoes at two small islands it mistook for American warships, and managed somehow to collide with the fiercely burning cruiser _Mogami_, only survivor—except for the destroyer _Shigure_—of the vanguard’s slaughter by the torpedoes and guns of the Seventh Fleet.

Gathering in the two surviving ships, Admiral Shima led a retreat down the strait. At the moment _Shigure_ joined the formation, Lieut. C. T. Gleason’s section attacked, and the Japanese destroyer, which was doing some remarkably able shooting, hit Ensign L. E. Thomas’ 321.

Most sorely hit of the torpedo boats, however, was Lieut. (jg) R. W. Brown’s 493, which had had John F. Kennedy aboard, as an instructor, for a month in Miami. The crew had named the boat the _Carole Baby_ after the skipper’s daughter, who, incidentally, was celebrating her first birthday the night of the Battle of Surigao Strait.

Lieut. Brown tells the _Carole Baby’s_ story:

“I was assigned a division of boats to take position directly down the middle of the strait between Panaon and Dinegat.

“While we were under way to take station, the moon was out but heavy overcast on the horizon threatened to bring complete darkness later. We spotted an occasional light on the beach and we passed an occasional native sailing craft, so the crew’s light mood changed to tension, because they thought we were being spied on.

“When we were on station, strung out across the channel so that the Japs couldn’t get by without our seeing them, I stretched out on the dayroom deck for a little relaxation, but the radio crackled the report that the first PT patrols had made contact.

“‘All hands to General Quarters,’ I ordered. ‘Take echelon formation and prepare to attack.’

“The radarman called up ‘Skipper, eight targets distant twelve miles, estimated speed 28 knots.’

“We closed to three miles, and seconds later my number two boat reported its four torpedoes were in the water. Number Three reported two more fish off and running. I had been maneuvered out of firing position and hadn’t launched any torpedoes yet, so I came around for another attack and was separated from the rest of the section.

“Powerful searchlights pinpointed the two other boats, and starshells lit up the night with their ugly green glare. The two other boats shot up the enemy can and knocked out two of the lights. I didn’t open fire, because the Japs hadn’t seen the _Carole Baby_ yet and I wanted to shoot my fish before they found me.

“At about 500 yards, I fired two and opened up with my guns. The enemy fired starshells and turned on the searchlights. At this close range we could see Japanese sailors scrambling about the ship, and we poured it into them, but the concussion of their exploding shells was creeping steadily closer, so I ordered my executive officer, Nick Carter, to come hard left, open the throttles and GET OUT!

“I went aft to release smoke for a screen so we could return to fire our remaining torpedoes, but we had penetrated an outer destroyer screen without knowing it and had Japs all around us. Eight searchlights pinned us down like a bug on a needle.

“It’s a funny thing how the mind works. I took time at that moment to notice that all those searchlights were turning the sea about us to a beautiful phosphorescent green.

“Our guns blew up two of the searchlights, but we were being hit hard. A. W. Brunelle reported from the engine room that the boat was badly holed at the waterline. I found out later that he took off his kapok life jacket and stuffed it into the hole as the only cork he could find right at hand.

“A blinding flash and terrific concussion threw me out of the cockpit. Stunned, I reeled forward to find that most of the chartroom had been blown away.

“I told Nick to head the _Carole Baby_ for the Island of Panaon, and we limped off with the Jap cans chasing us. When we were out of torpedo range of the capital ships, they turned back but kept throwing shells at us to be sure we didn’t return to attack.

“_Return to attack!_ We weren’t even sure we could stay afloat. The engines were almost completely underwater and though they were still working, they couldn’t chug along forever with water steadily rising in the hold.

“The last destroyer left us just as the bow of the _Carole Baby_ scraped on a coral reef one hundred yards off the beach at Panaon.

“When the shooting stopped, a weird silence settled over us. I went over the boat to see what condition we were in. We were in bad condition. The _Carole Baby_ had been hit by five shells. Two of them had passed clean through us without exploding, but the one that had exploded in the charthouse had killed two and wounded nine of my crew.

“And that isn’t all. We were high on a reef, within rock-throwing distance of an enemy shore. I had to know if those lights we could see came from a Japanese camp, so I armed ten of us with machine guns and grenades and we slipped over the side.

“We found a little village. Somebody had been there, but had run off as we approached, so we decided to search farther. This type of warfare was different from the one the crew was used to, and everybody was ill at ease.”

It is interesting to note that by inference the sailors were _not_ “ill at ease” in the type of warfare they had just been subjected to.

“One of the sailors was almost strangled by what he thought was a low-hanging vine, but we found it was a telephone wire leading to a small hut. We crept close to the hut and listened. No good. Japanese!

“We cut the wire and returned to the safety of our reef.”

Again, consider the character of sailors who talk about the “safety” of a shattered boat, filled with dead and wounded shipmates, stranded on a rock in the midst of history’s greatest naval battle and within pistol range of an enemy shore.

“We expected that wire-cutting bit would stir up some Jap patrols, so we made ourselves into a Little Gibraltar with all the weapons we could scrape together—and on a PT boat that is plenty of weapons.”

Lieut. Brown tells of settling down to enjoy the unaccustomed role of spectator at a battle. Through the night the crew watched the flash and glare of gunfire and exploding ships up the straits.

“We couldn’t tell who was faring best. Through binoculars we could see ships afire and sinking, but we couldn’t tell if they were Japanese or American. Long before dawn the eastern sky looked like sunrise, because of the orange glow of burning ships.

“When day did break we saw natives creeping back to their village, so we waved and yelled ‘_Americanos_’ and ‘_Amigos_’ and friendly stuff like that. They finally believed us and waded out to our boat where the sailors set about their eternal bargaining for souvenirs. I believe an American sailor would bargain with a cannibal tribe while they’re putting him into the pot.

“One of the crew yelled and pointed out to sea. Three PTs were roaring up the straits in broad daylight and we could see what they were after—it was the crippled cruiser _Mogami_, trying to limp home after the fight.

“I watched one of the PTs fire two fish and then race toward us when the cruiser fired at her. We were glad to see her coming, but then we realized with horror that the skipper thought our poor beat-up old _Carole Baby_ was a Japanese barge, and he was getting ready to make a strafing run on us. We jumped up and down and waved our arms and yelled like crazy, even though we knew they couldn’t hear us.

“Just before they got to the spot where I would have opened fire if I had been skipper, we saw the gunners relax and point those gun muzzles away as they recognized us. It was PT 491 that came to our rescue.

“We tried to pull the _Carole Baby_ off the reef, but she was too far gone. She went down in deep water—the only American ship, incidentally, lost in the Battle of Surigao Strait.”

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz radioed from Hawaii:

THE SKILL, DETERMINATION AND COURAGE DISPLAYED BY THE PERSONNEL OF THESE SMALL BOATS IS WORTHY OF THE HIGHEST PRAISE.... THE PT ACTION VERY PROBABLY THREW THE JAPANESE COMMAND OFF BALANCE AND CONTRIBUTED TO THE COMPLETENESS OF THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEFEAT.

By contrast to the corking of Surigao Strait, at the unguarded San Bernardino Strait, the powerful Central Striking Force that morning passed unopposed into Leyte Gulf and jumped the escort carriers and their screen. Something close to worldwide panic broke out in American command centers when the brass realized that the Central Striking Force was already in the gulf and Admiral Halsey’s force was off chasing the carrier decoy—too far off to engage Kurita’s fleet.

A handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts of the screen threw themselves between the Japanese wolf and the transport sheep. Planes from the escort carriers made real and dummy bombing runs on Kurita’s ships. Between them the desperate escort forces—planes and destroyers—battled Kurita to a standstill in the most spectacular show of sheer fighting courage in all of naval history.

Incredibly, Admiral Kurita, with a victory as great as Pearl Harbor within his grasp—the very victory that the northern decoy carrier force was being sacrificed to buy—turned his mighty fleet about and steamed back through San Bernardino Strait, content with sinking two of the escort carriers and three of the screen ships whose gallant skippers had put their destroyers between the enemy and the helpless transport fleet.

Admiral Halsey sank all four carriers, three destroyers, one light cruiser and a fleet oiler of the decoy force.

The _Sho_ plan had worked almost perfectly for the Japanese—but with an unexpected outcome; the Japanese surface fleet, instead of wiping out the American transport fleet, was shattered. Its carrier force virtually vanished. His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s navy could never mount a major attack again.

With the main battleline of the Japanese fleet driven from the scene, the PTs were right back where they had been in New Guinea and Guadalcanal—busting barges and derailing the Tokyo Express.

On the far side of Leyte Island the waters are reef filled, the channels shallow and tortuous. The Japanese were using the dangerous waters of the Camotes Sea and Ormoc Bay to land supplies at night behind their lines. A familiar enough situation for the PT sailors, so the skippers took their shallow-draft torpedo boats into Ormoc Bay, looking for trouble.

On the night between November 28th and 29th, Lieut. Roger H. Hallowell took PTs 127, 331, 128, and 191 around the tip of Leyte and headed up the western shore for Ormoc Bay in the first combat patrol of these waters.

PTs 127 and 331 entered the bay while the other two boats patrolled the islands outside. In the light of a tropical moon, the skippers inside saw a subchaser and crept to within 800 yards before the Japanese opened fire. The two boats launched eight torpedoes and a ripple of rockets (enough explosive to tear a battleship in two, much less a little patrol craft). The retiring PT skippers reported the usual loud explosion, indicating a torpedo hit, which virtually all retiring torpedo-boat captains always reported. This time, however, they were right. The Japanese themselves later admitted the loss of the subchaser SC 53.

The two retiring boats, all their torpedoes spent, met the 128 and 191 at the entrance to the bay, and Lieut. Hallowell “transferred his flag” to the 128 to lead the two still-armed boats in a second attack.