The Third Fleet with its large aircraft carriers was nearly sixty miles off the Leyte coast. This was the force commanded by Admiral Halsey from his flagship, the carrier USS Enterprise.
Perhaps the Japanese understood Halsey too well. They knew that he was a proud and pugilistic commander known for his personal motto, “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.” Perhaps it was thus no surprise that they seemed to know that Halsey would be unable to resist turning all his attention to the force of aircraft carriers leaving Japan.
But the Japanese had a trick up the sleeves of their kimonos.
Little did Halsey know that the carriers were almost empty, their decks bare, most of their planes gone.
The carrier fleet was being used as bait.
The trap had been set.
Admiral Halsey fell into it, rushing his Third Fleet even farther from Leyte to meet the carrier fleet head-on. He couldn’t wait to unleash his Curtiss Helldivers, which moved at 294 miles per hour, against the Japanese, delivering a knockout punch.
Operations on Leyte would be left without vital air support as a result. Defense of the waters around Leyte would be left up to the aging “second-rate” ships of the Seventh Fleet.
Meanwhile, withdrawing from Singapore, the Japanese battleship fleet began to move north toward the Philippines, intending to strike a crushing blow against the workhorse Seventh Fleet and the US landing forces.
This force represented much of the remaining might of the Japanese Navy: thirteen destroyers, one light cruiser, seven heavy cruisers, and five battleships — including the mighty Yamato and Musashi.
The two battleships on their own may have been enough to sink the Seventh Fleet. They were massive, approaching nine hundred feet long and two hundred feet wide, with several eighteen-inch guns — the largest ever used in naval combat.
In comparison, USS Kalinin Bay was equipped with a single five-inch gun.
The Japanese force split in two to come at the Seventh Fleet in a pincer movement. Half the force steamed through Sulu Sea and Surigao Strait toward Leyte Gulf. The other half of the enemy fleet moved through the tangled islands of the Sibuyan Sea and then into San Bernardino Strait.
It was shaping up to be an epic naval battle — or a slaughter.
Captain Oatmire had finished up his medicinal scotch and received a tour of the Kalinin Bay courtesy of Lieutenant Commander O’Connell. He watched a couple of planes take off and land, which was something of a novelty to see up close. The trio of planes had launched to scout Japanese positions on Leyte. The ship was too far out to sea to offer any glimpse of land, but it was just a hop, skip, and a jump for aircraft to get there.
“They’ll drop some bombs while they’re at it and give the Japanese a headache,” O’Connell commented.
It was approaching sunset, the sun giving a golden glow to the sea, when the planes returned. They were just in time — the fighters did not typically fly at night.
Watching the landings gave Oatmire new respect for naval aviators. It nearly boggled the imagination to think about landing a plane on the deck of a ship that would be little more than a speck in a very large ocean. He was reminded that every soldier, sailor, marine, submariner, and aviator in the US armed forces thought that he had it tough — and he often did — until he took a moment to think about the job that the other guy was doing.
“Here they come,” O’Connell said. “Looks like they all made it back. Thank God for that.”
Oatmire watched the plane grow from a dot on the horizon to an aircraft swooping down onto the deck and shook his head. Damn, that was something to see.
Not long after sunset, Oatmire was only too happy to adjourn to the bunk that he had been assigned in the junior officers’ quarters. It wasn’t much space, but he was already used to that from USS Nashville. He read for a bit from a paperback copy of Last Laugh, Mr. Moto, a detective story by John P. Marquand. Oddly enough, the popular series featured a Japanese detective. Marquand had written the book before Pearl Harbor, so its publication had been up in the air until government officials had determined that the detective was sufficiently bumbling to allow continued publication of the series.
The pages were only a little waterlogged from his trip across on the launch. He’d managed to get through only a page or two, and then he’d fallen into a deep sleep.
Early-morning daylight was coming through the single porthole, open to the sea breeze to keep the tropical heat at bay in the cramped quarters. Despite the morning cool, the porthole was failing miserably at its job.
But it had not been the morning light or the heat that had awakened Oatmire; rather, it had been the klaxon calling the crew to general quarters.
“Here we go again,” he muttered, sitting up and promptly banging his head on the bottom of the bunk above him.
Aboard the Nashville, he had experienced more than one general quarters. Those alarms had always been due to air raids. Usually they hadn’t amounted to much. General MacArthur’s staff found those alarms to be little more than an annoying interruption of their work.
Oatmire figured that it would be more of the same here on Kalinin Bay.
The other officers he’d been bunking with scrambled to get dressed.
Oatmire rubbed his head and took his time getting his pants on. As a visiting army officer, he had no real duties on the ship. Eventually, he followed the others up on deck.
O’Connell was waiting to shove a helmet and life vest at him. The serious look on the normally jovial Boston Irishman’s face told Oatmire that something was going on even before O’Connell explained.
“We have Japanese ships on the horizon,” O’Connell said.
“Anybody have binoculars?” Oatmire asked, some boyish part of him not a little excited. He had yet to see a Japanese ship.
“You don’t need binoculars,” O’Connell said, pointing.
Oatmire looked in that direction and saw not a lone ship, but several. “It looks like an entire Japanese fleet!”
“This is one time I wouldn’t argue with a ground pounder,” O’Connell said. “That definitely looks like a Japanese fleet.”
“Where the hell did they come from?”
“Sneaked right up on us from the other side of Leyte. I’ll tell you one thing, that took some sailing.”
“Damn” was all Oatmire could manage in response. Even from this distance, he could see the telltale Japanese pagoda silhouettes of the ships and even a glimpse of the Rising Sun flag.
Water foamed at the bows of the enemy ships. They were headed right for the US task force.
“Better get that helmet on. Maybe put your fingers in your ears.”
“What—”
Oatmire was suddenly deafened by the firing of the Jeep carrier’s five-inch gun. A jet of flame shot out toward the enemy fleet.
He could feel the ship turning under his feet, struggling to make itself a more difficult target. But a big, floating shoebox like Kalinin Bay was not nimble. It did its best.
He soon understood why. There was a roaring sound like a freight train or maybe a tornado, and then an enormous geyser erupted off the stern of the ship. That was soon followed by more roaring and splashes as an entire Japanese salvo arrived. Oatmire suspected that if the ship hadn’t managed to maneuver, those shells might have turned the carrier into swiss cheese.