Halsey had not even bothered to inform Kinkaid that he had left the strait. Before he ordered his forces north, he had signaled Nimitz that he intended to form three groups of his fast battleships into a new, powerful surface task force, Task Force 34. Kinkaid had intercepted the signal and assumed that the “three groups” were carrier groups that would be left behind to guard the strait. In fact, Halsey’s decision to attack the decoy force had preempted the formation of Task Force 34, and all the ships that would have constituted it were now steaming away from the strait.
As Kinkaid had expected, the Seventh Fleet’s cruisers, destroyers, and battleships quickly and effectively destroyed the Japanese Southern Force. But a few minutes after the last shots were fired, at dawn on October 25, Kurita’s ships began shelling one of the Seventh Fleet’s three escort carrier groups operating just north of the entrance to Leyte Gulf. This group, known by its radio call sign, “Taffy Three,” was seriously overmatched by the powerful enemy force now descending upon it. Nevertheless, the unit fought valiantly, losing one carrier, two destroyers, and one destroyer escort in the ensuing Battle of Samar Island.
As he raced toward the Northern Force, Halsey finally formed Task Force 34, and ordered the battleships to steam ahead of the carriers. Third Fleet aircraft began attacking the Japanese carriers at eight o’clock on the morning of the 25th, and continued until evening.
When the second strike of the day was under way, Halsey received an urgent message from Kinkaid informing him that the Seventh Fleet’s small carriers were under attack off Samar Island by a superior enemy force and pleading for assistance from Halsey’s carriers. Halsey ignored the message and continued north. He received several successive messages from Kinkaid, the last warning that Kinkaid’s battleships were running out of ammunition. At nine-thirty, Halsey signaled back, informing Kinkaid that my grandfather’s task group was on the way.
At ten o’clock, Halsey received a message from Admiral Nimitz: WHERE IS, REPEAT, WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR? THE WORLD WONDERS. The message infuriated Halsey, who interpreted the sentence “The world wonders” as an insulting rebuke. He threw his cap to the deck after reading it.
Clearly, Nimitz was alarmed about the Seventh Fleet’s precarious situation and wanted Halsey’s battleships to defend the battered escort carrier units off Samar Island and prevent the enemy from entering Leyte Gulf. The success of the invasion hung in the balance. But the message to Halsey had been a mistake. The last three words had been included as padding to confuse enemy decoders. The signal clerk who received the message before it was handed to Halsey should have deleted them. The irate Halsey considered his response for an hour before signaling Nimitz, I HAVE SENT MCCAIN.
My grandfather was already on the way before Halsey recalled him to the battle. He had intercepted Kinkaid’s messages to Halsey and had made the decision to render whatever assistance he could to the outgunned escort carriers without waiting for orders from the fleet commander. He turned his task group around and raced downwind at a speed of thirty knots toward the battle.
At the time, he had two squadrons of dive-bombers in the air that had not returned from scouting patrols. Carriers have to turn into the wind before aircraft can land on them. In order not to slow down the entire task group while the returning scouts landed, he ordered his carriers to race ahead of the rest of the task group at a top speed of thirty-three knots. When six or more of their planes returned they approached upwind to begin their landing patterns. The carriers whipped around into the wind and took them aboard. Once the planes landed, the carriers turned sharply downwind again and resumed their thirty-three knots until the next planes returned, and the maneuver was repeated. Thus, the carriers were able to take on their planes without impeding the forward movement of the entire task group, which maintained an overall speed of thirty knots. It was a very difficult maneuver that had never been attempted before, nor since to the best of my knowledge. It required split-second timing on the part of the carrier skippers and the returning pilots, and steel nerves on the part of the commander who ordered its execution.
Halsey had also dispatched his battleships and one of his carrier groups to join the fight. But Halsey’s response had come too late to inflict much additional damage on the main Japanese force.
My grandfather was now steaming toward the battle, but he was still nearly 350 miles to the east. He went to his cabin for a few minutes to consider the situation and decide what to do. A short time later, at ten-thirty, he emerged from his cabin, gave the order for his carriers to “turn into the wind,” and launched his aircraft. He knew that at such a distance from their targets, they would burn all their fuel reaching the battle and would have to land on other carriers or in the Philippines if they didn’t run out of fuel while striking the enemy force. It was a daring move, and one of the longest-range carrier strikes of the Pacific war.
By the time Task Force 34 and the accompanying carriers arrived off Samar Island, Kurita had broken off his attack and turned north, fearing that he faced a much larger fleet than the greatly outnumbered Taffy Three. At the time of his withdrawal, his ships were within forty miles of the invasion force. He initially intended to reassemble his disorganized force and resume the attack on Leyte Gulf. But the Japanese commander suddenly lost his nerve and made for the San Bernardino Strait. The commander of Taffy Three, Vice Admiral Clifton Sprague, who had commanded his ships with courage and resourcefulness during the fierce attack, credited the battle’s abrupt end to divine intervention.
John Thach credited Kurita’s unexpected retreat to intelligence the Japanese commander had received that warned him of the approaching strike from my grandfather’s planes. Thach had read an interview Kurita had given after the war. The old admiral explained his decision to withdraw from the battle by recalling information he had received of a large air strike coming from an unknown location. Kurita’s chief of staff gave the same explanation for the force’s withdrawal.
According to Thach, until Kurita received the intelligence that precipitated his decision to run, he “thought the whole task force was up there, and he didn’t know about McCain. As a matter of fact, neither did Halsey and Mitscher know what McCain was doing at the time.”
Kurita’s forces escaped through the strait, despite being harried by my grandfather’s planes. In several accounts of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, historians praised my grandfather for understanding the predicament confronting Kinkaid’s carriers and the stakes at risk in the battle better than had the other commanders of Task Force 38. They also judged him a much better tactician than his old friend and commander, Halsey.
Halsey had glimpsed the prospect of a moment of glory and hurried recklessly toward it. He had not fought at the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea, and he was hell-bent to seize this opportunity to destroy the last of the enemy’s once mighty carrier force. In fact, he managed to sink four carriers and one destroyer. But his disregard for the Seventh Fleet’s situation had jeopardized the entire invasion and had allowed the main Japanese battleship force to escape.
My grandfather, grasping the size of the threat that Halsey had so badly underestimated, had risked his planes in a desperate attempt to fill the gap left by Halsey’s run for glory.