Battle off Samar
The Battle off Samar was the centermost action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history, which took place in the Philippine Sea off Samar Island, in the Philippines on October 25, 1944. It was the only major action in the larger battle in which the Americans were largely unprepared. After the previous day's fighting, the Imperial Japanese Navy's First Mobile Striking Force, under the command of Takeo Kurita, had suffered significant damage and appeared to be retreating westward. However, by the next morning, the Japanese force had turned around and resumed its advance toward Leyte Gulf. With Admiral William Halsey Jr. lured into taking his powerful Third Fleet north after a decoy fleet and the Seventh Fleet engaged to the south, the recently landed 130,000 men of the Sixth Army were left vulnerable to Japanese attack on Leyte.
Kurita, aboard the, took his large force of battleships, cruisers and destroyers from the San Bernardino Strait and headed south toward Leyte, where they encountered Task Unit 77.4.3, the northernmost of the three escort carrier groups under Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague that comprised the only American forces remaining in the area. Composed of only six small escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, Taffy 3 was intended to provide shore support and anti-submarine patrols, and did not have guns capable of penetrating the Japanese armor. The Japanese opened fire shortly after dawn, targeting Taffy 3's escort carriers, which Kurita mistook for the main carriers of the Third Fleet. The escort carriers fled for the cover of rain squalls and launched their aircraft in defense, while the three destroyers and destroyer escort, led by, launched a torpedo attack that sank one ship and sent the Japanese strike force into disarray.
Japanese aircraft from the base at Luzon launched kamikaze attacks on the retreating American task force, sinking the escort carrier USS Saint Lo and damaging three others. With Taffy 2's aircraft joining the battle, the increasing severity of the air attack further convinced Kurita that he was engaging the Third Fleet's surface carriers. Satisfied with sinking what he believed were multiple carriers and worried the bulk of the Third Fleet was approaching, Kurita withdrew his fleet north, having failed to carry out his orders to attack the landing forces at Leyte Gulf.
Taffy 3 sustained heavy losses in the action, losing two escort carriers, two destroyers, a destroyer escort and numerous aircraft. Over 1,000 Americans died, comparable to the combined losses of American men and ships at the Coral Sea and Midway. Three Japanese cruisers were sunk by air attack, and three others were damaged. The Japanese had over 2,700 casualties. Taffy 3 was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and Captain Ernest E. Evans of the sunk Johnston was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz wrote afterwards that the success of Taffy 3 was "nothing short of special dispensation from the Lord Almighty." The Battle off Samar has been cited by historians as one of the greatest last stands in naval history.
Background
The overall Japanese strategy at Leyte Gulf—a plan known as Shō-Go 1—called for Vice Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa's Northern Force to lure the American Third Fleet away from the Allied landings on Leyte, using an apparently vulnerable force of Japanese carriers as bait. The landing forces, stripped of air cover by the Third Fleet, would then be attacked from the west and south by Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force, and Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura's Southern Force. Kurita's Center Force consisted of five battleships, including and, the largest battleships afloat, escorted by cruisers and destroyers. Nishimura's flotilla included two battleships and would be followed by Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima's cruisers and destroyers.On the night of October 23, the American submarines and detected Center Force entering the Palawan Passage along the northwest coast of Palawan Island. After alerting Halsey, the submarines torpedoed and sank two cruisers, while crippling a third and forcing it to withdraw. One of the cruisers lost was Admiral Kurita's flagship Atago, but he was rescued and transferred his flag to Yamato.
Subsequently, the carriers of the Third Fleet launched a series of air strikes against Kurita's forces in the Sibuyan Sea, damaging several vessels and sinking Musashi, initially forcing Kurita to retreat. At the same time, the Third Fleet light carrier was sunk by a Japanese bomb, with secondary explosions causing damage to a cruiser assisting alongside.
In the Battle of Surigao Strait, Nishimura's ships entered a deadly trap. Outmatched by the U.S. Seventh Fleet Support Force, they were devastated, running a gauntlet of torpedoes from 39 PT boats and 22 destroyers before coming under accurate radar-directed gunfire from six battleships and seven cruisers. As Shima's force encountered what was left of Nishimura's ships, he decided to retreat, stating "If we continued dashing further north, it was quite clear that we should only fall into a ready trap."
At the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, Halsey's Third Fleet savaged the Center Force, which had been detected on its way to landing forces from the north. Center Force lacked any air cover to defend against the 259 sorties from the five fleet carriers Intrepid, Essex, Lexington, Enterprise, and Franklin, and light carrier Cabot, the combination of which sank the massive battleship Musashi with 17 bombs and 19 torpedoes.
Halsey's Third Fleet, having spotted Japanese carriers, engaged them in the Battle off Cape Engaño. Although ordered to destroy enemy forces threatening the Philippine invasion area, Halsey was also ordered by Nimitz to destroy a major portion of the Japanese fleet if the opportunity arose.
Forces
The Japanese Center Force now consisted of the battleships Yamato,,, and ; heavy cruisers,,,,, ; light cruisers, and ; and 11 destroyers; Yahagi led,,, and ; while Noshiro led,,,,, and. operated independently, but was overloaded with survivors and did not see action. The battleships carried a minimum of guns, firing shells over a range of more than. The heavy cruisers carried batteries plus torpedo tubes, and were capable of. The Japanese destroyers outnumbered Sprague's eleven to three.Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague's Task Unit 77.4.3 consisted of,,,, and. Screening for Taffy 3 were the destroyers, and, and destroyer escorts,,, and. These six escort carriers carried about 165 aircraft, equivalent to two fleet carriers. Each carrier had a squadron composed of twelve to fourteen FM-2 Wildcat fighters and an equivalent number of Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers. The carriers had a top speed of only 18 knots, far lower than the 30-knot Japanese cruisers and destroyers. None of his ships had a gun larger than, whose shells were unable to penetrate Japanese cruiser or battleship armor, and had a range of just.
Battle
Kurita's force passed through San Bernardino Strait at 03:00 on October 25, 1944, and steamed southwards along the coast of Samar, hoping that Halsey had taken the bait and moved most of his fleet away as he had in fact done. Kurita had been advised that Nishimura's Southern Force had been destroyed at Surigao Strait and would not be joining his force at Leyte Gulf. However, Kurita did not receive the transmission from the Northern Force that they had successfully lured away Halsey's Third Fleet of battleships and fleet carriers. Through most of the battle, Kurita would be haunted by doubts about Halsey's actual location. The wind was from the North-Northeast and visibility was approximately with a low overcast and occasional heavy rain squalls which the U.S. forces would exploit for concealment in the battle to come.Taffy 3 comes under attack
Steaming about east of Samar before dawn on October 25, St. Lo launched a four-plane antisubmarine patrol while the remaining carriers of Taffy 3 prepared for the day's air strikes against the landing beaches. At 06:37, Ensign William C. Brooks, flying a Grumman TBF Avenger from St. Lo, sighted a number of ships expected to be from Halsey's Third Fleet, but they appeared to be Japanese. When he was notified, Admiral Sprague was incredulous, and he demanded positive identification. Flying in for an even closer look, Brooks reported, "I can see pagoda masts. I see the biggest meatball flag on the biggest battleship I ever saw!" Yamato alone displaced as much as all units of Taffy 3 combined. Brooks had spotted the largest of the three attacking Japanese forces, consisting of four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eleven destroyers.They were approaching from the west-northwest only away, and they were already well within gun and visual range of the closest task group, Taffy 3. Armed only with depth charges in case of an encounter with enemy submarines, the aviators nevertheless carried out the first attack of the battle, dropping several depth charges which just bounced off the bow of a cruiser.
The lookouts of Taffy 3 spotted the anti-aircraft fire to the north. The Japanese came upon Taffy 3 at 06:45, achieving complete tactical surprise. At about the same time, others in Taffy 3 had picked up targets from surface radar and Japanese radio traffic. At about 07:00, Yamato opened fire at a range of. Lacking the Americans' gunnery radars and Ford Mark I Fire Control Computer, which provided co-ordinated automatic firing solutions as long as the gun director was pointed at the target, Japanese fire control relied on a mechanical calculator for ballistics and another for own and target course and speed, fed by optical rangefinders. Color-coded dye loads were used in the battleships' armor-piercing shells so that the spotters of each ship could identify its own fall of shot, a common practice for the capital ships of many navies. The Americans, unfamiliar with battleship combat, were soon astonished by the spectacle of colorful geysers as the first volleys of shellfire found their range. Nagato used a brilliant pink; Haruna used a greenish-yellow variously described as green or yellow by the Americans; and Kongō used a blood-red dye which could appear red, purple, or even blue in some circumstances. Yamato used no dye loads, so her shell splashes appeared white.
Not finding the silhouettes of the tiny escort carriers in his identification manuals, Kurita mistook them for large fleet carriers and assumed that he had a task group of the Third Fleet under his guns. His first priority was to eliminate the carrier threat, ordering a "General Attack": rather than a carefully orchestrated effort, each division in his task force was to attack separately. The Japanese had just changed to a circular anti-aircraft formation, and the order caused some confusion, allowing Sprague to lead the Japanese into a stern chase, which restricted the Japanese to using only their forward guns, and restricted their anti-aircraft gunnery. Sprague's ships would not lose as much of their firepower in a stern chase, as their stern chase weapons were more numerous than their forward guns, and his carriers would still be able to operate aircraft.