About the time of Evans’ suicidal lone wolf attack against the two lead Japanese cruisers, aircraft from Taffy 1 and Taffy 2 entered the fray. Ships of Taffy 2 were briefly sighted by Japanese destroyers far to the south, but were lost when the sighting destroyer division moved to escort their battleships on the far side of the formation. (Kurita’s attack in place order only applied the cruisers and battleships. The destroyers were still expected to escort their charges. This blind obedience to orders caused the Japanese closest to the Taffy’s 2 and 3 to actually move away from the Americans, caused a significant amount of confusion, and inadvertently put the Americans outside of the dreaded “Long Lance” torpedo range.) Soon, the American planes swarmed about the Center Force like angry hornets. They still lacked proper armor piercing bombs and torpedoes, but the exposed parts of the Japanese ships took a pounding. Every busted gunwale, every strafed bridge, every officer that dove for cover, every turn to avoid a dive bomber, every conflagration started by napalm, and every observer mesmerized by a flurry of propaganda leaflets bought Ziggy Sprague and Taffy 3 precious seconds to escape.

With the Johnston already in the attack, Sprague ordered the rest of Taffy 3’s escorts at the Japanese, “big boys on the right, little fellas on the left, prepare for torpedo runs.”

After the Johnston’s successful run which destroyed the Kumano, Evan’s turned around and headed back toward the rest of Taffy 3 to take up his escort position and provide smoke for the carriers. At that moment the Johnston was struck by numerous 8”, 14” and 16” shells from two different cruisers and the battleships Kongo and Nagato. Because the Japanese were still using armored piercing rounds, only one exploded when it hit the engine, the rest passed clean through the ship. Nonetheless, the Johnston was reduced to 17 knots and the ship was severely damaged when it entered its own smoke screen.

Also pumping out smoke were the destroyers USS Heerman and USS Hoel, followed by the plucky little destroyer escort USS Samuel B Roberts, who didn’t want to wait for the other “little fellas” on the far side of Taffy 3. In any other navy in the world the Roberts would be known as a frigate. Uniquely suited for anti-submarine warfare, destroyer escorts only had two 5” guns and a single triple turret of torpedo tubes for surface action. Nevertheless, the Samuel B Robert’s skipper, LtCdr Robert Copeland, put out on the ship’s loudspeaker, “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.” And he pulled in behind the Hoel and Heerman.

The three ships were heading forward as they passed the Johnston heading back.

One third of the Johnston’s crew was dead or wounded. She had just taken on two cruisers, both three times her size, and sank one and severely damaged the other. She had only one engine, no electrical power, and she was listing to port because the pumps couldn’t keep up with the numerous holes in her belly.

But the Johnston had five working turrets and plenty of ammunition.

Evans hoisted his giant sack, turned the Johnston around and followed the other ships back into harm’s way.

By 0800 the other Japanese cruisers were dangerously close to the jeep carriers. So close that the Gambier Bay was on fire and engaging them with her own single stern mounted 5” gun. The Farshaw Bay and White Plains were taking a steady stream of hits.

Their aircraft were causing some damage and quite a bit of confusion but only the torpedoes of the destroyers and destroyer escorts would send Japanese iron to the bottom of the sea.

The Samuel B Roberts launched herself at the two cruisers nearest the Gambier Bay, the Tone and Chikuma.

Evan’s did a quick gun run through the smoke on the lead battleship, the Kongo (he couldn’t miss) and then positioned the Johnston to cross the “T” of an approaching light cruiser and five Japanese destroyers.

The Hoel began her torpedo run against the next pair of cruisers, the Chukai and Haguro.

And the Heerman charged forward at 36 knots… straight at Kurita’s four battleships — the Kongo and her sister ship the Haruna, the Nagato, and the mighty Yamato.

To be continued.

The first indications for most of the sailors of Rear Admiral Clifton “Ziggy” Sprague’s Task Force 77.4.3, that “Taffy 3” was under attack were the sound of hurtling trains, followed by splashes that shook the small jeep carriers and knocked sailors off their feet and out of their bunks. Because the Japanese still used visual fire control techniques each of the splashes were color coded so the observers high in the “pagoda”, as the Allies called the tall Japanese superstructures, could adjust their ship’s fire. The Haruna’s green shells, the Kongo’s yellow, Nagato’s orange, and the Yamato’s distinctive red splashes fell among the jeep carriers and escorts. Each red dyed splash caused by the Yamato indicated a near miss from a 3,200 lbs shell. In fact, the Yamato displaced more tonnage by itself than the combined weight of Taffy 3. And so did the next largest ship, the Nagato.

Within minutes the Japanese were registering hits, but the Americans only saving grace was the armored piercing rounds didn’t hit anything substantial enough for the fuses to ignite, so they passed right through their ships. Kurita’s initial assessment that he faced the six fleet carriers, four battleships, and three cruisers of Mitscher’s TF 38 was wrong. What he actually faced were the six smaller escort or “jeep” carriers, four destroyers and four smaller destroyer escorts of Taffy 3. Kurita, who would have been astonished to know how close he was to the Americans, thought he was further away than he was, and thus the ships bigger than they actually were.

The Americans were clearly surprised and Kurita hoped to overwhelm them before they could organize a coherent defensive formation. His own ships were in the midst of changing formation from a nighttime cruise to a daytime anti-aircraft formation, and his order to immediately attack at all speed no matter a ship’s position caused some confusion among the Japanese captains. Nonetheless, Kurita was convinced this maritime banzai would overpower the American surface ships and he could exact revenge on the hated American aircraft carriers before they could launch a strike.

Ziggy Sprague was under no illusions about what he faced. The most powerful independent surface action fleet in the history of mankind was speeding straight at him. And Halsey’s TF 34 was nowhere to seen. All he could do was make a run for nearest rain squall to hide. With that in mind, it wasn’t Kurita’s four battleships that were the most immediate concern but the eight Japanese cruisers. Sprague’s jeep carriers were only slightly slower than the battleships, but the Japanese cruisers had a 13 knot advantage. They had to be slowed down. Sprague did the only thing he could do: he launched all of his aircraft at Kurita, no matter their fuel or weapon status. During the short 15 mile trip to the Japanese, the aviators were surprised to see a single destroyer, the USS Johnston by herself, laying a smoke screen and charging directly at Kurita’s Center Force.

Commander Ernst E Evans, the Cherokee-American captain of the USS Johnston and veteran of the defeats of the Bismarck Sea and the naval battles in Solomon’s, knew exactly what was happening as soon as heard the first telltale train engine sound of the large battleship caliber shells streaking overhead. Evans, with the closest destroyer to the Japanese, without orders turned the Johnston around, moved to flank speed, attacked, and made smoke to obscure his charges. The problem with making smoke on a destroyer is that it billows behind the ship: it doesn’t obscure the destroyer making the smoke, it highlights it. This is what the flyers saw as Evans desperately tried to close the distance to engage.

Taffy 3’s pilots attacked with whatever ordinance they were carrying: anti-personnel bombs, napalm, rockets, .50 cal machine guns, and the gunner’s stern mounted .30 cals. There was even a recorded instance of an Avenger flying past the astonished bridge crew of the battleship Kongo with his canopy open and the pilot firing his pistol at them. And when they ran out of bombs and ammunition, the flyers continued making attacks: for every Japanese gunner who was shooting at them was one that wasn’t shooting at someone who could do some damage.

The Japanese swerved to avoid the attacks: some real, some imaginary. And every turn slowed them down.

At 10,000 yards, the Johnston was miraculously not hit. Like the Death Star’s turbo lasers, the Japanese gunners were under compensating for the small and fast target. The Johnston’s guns had no such problem: her five 5” guns swung into action guided by radar and the new Mark 1A firing computer. She put 43 rds into the lead cruiser, and 34 into the second cruiser, setting them on fire.

At 4,000 yrds, she launched all eight of her torpedoes.

Three hit the lead heavy cruiser, the Kumano, and it was dead in the water.

To be continued.

On 24 October 1944, Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf’s Task Force 77.2, the 7th Fleet Support Force, i.e “MacArthur’s Navy”, fired its last few high explosive shells at Japanese positions on Leyte and then steamed south. A sharp eyed observer on a PBY flying boat spotted Japanese battleships in the Sulu Sea off the Philippine island of Negros. The only place Admiral Nishimura could enter the Leyte Gulf was the Surigao Strait, and Oldendorf planned on meeting him there.

Oldendorf’s battleships were, no pun intended, old. They were all commissioned during the First World War and they were the backbone of the US Navy prior to World War Two. They were the centerpiece of War Plan Orange, America’s interwar contingency plan in case of hostilities with Japan. War Plan Orange was scrapped after Pearl Harbor because the Japanese targeted these battleships to deadly effect: The Arizona and Oklahoma were total losses, the West Virginia and California were sunk, and the Maryland, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania were badly damaged. Only the Wisconsin escaped damage that day. For the next six months, maintenance, recovery, and salvage crews worked frantically to get them battle ready as the carriers held the line at Coral Sea and Midway. Once America counterattacked, the carriers were now the premier platform of sea power, but the big, slow, resurrected battleships of Battleship Row found their place again: this time as mobile fire support platforms.

Oldendorf’s battleships shelled every island the marines or soldiers landed on for the last two years, from Guadalcanal to Leyte. But they had never fired their armored piercing shells in anger. In the early morning of 25 October 1944, they would.

At 0200, Nishimura’s Southern Force of two battleships, six cruisers and ten destroyers slipped into the confined waters of the Surigao Strait. For the next two hours, 32 American PT boats harassed the formation causing much confusion. Then, in a prelude to what would happen the next day, Oldendorf’s destroyers made torpedo runs that disoriented the Japanese formation and destroyed the battleship Fuso. The Fuso didn’t sink… but she broke in half and the two pieces floated around the strait for two days, burning. When Nishimura exited the Surigao Strait into the Leyte Gulf, Oldendorf and his old battlewagons were waiting. Nishimura’s “T” was crossed in a fashion that would have made Lord Nelson proud. Oldendorf’s six battleships and four cruisers pummeled Nishimura’s remaining ships. None escaped. It was the last time in history battleships would fire their guns at another ship. It was the end of an era.

Just west of the San Bernardino Strait off the island of Samar, Rear Admiral Thomas Sprague’s Task Force 77.4 Escort Carrier Group prepared for another day in support of the soldiers and guerrillas fighting the Japanese on Leyte. On the USS Gambier Bay, the USS St Lo and the four other small escort carriers of Rear Admiral Ziggy Sprague’s (No relation) Task Force 77.4.3, “Taffy 3”, the crews readied their aircraft for close air support of MacArthur: attaching rockets, napalm canisters, fragmentation bombs, and even some canisters filled with leaflets that a PSYOP officer needed dropped. The crews of the USS Hoel, USS Johnston, USS Samuel B Roberts, and Sprague’s other destroyers and destroyer escorts huddled around their radios listening to “The Big Game” going on between the battleships.

It seemed the naval Battle of Leyte Gulf was over. It was time to get on with MacArthur’s land Battle of Leyte. Taffy 3’s escort carriers launched their first close air support missions at dawn.

Thirty miles to the west, Adm Kurita’s massive Center Force of four battleships, eight cruisers, and eleven destroyers slipped unimpeded through the San Bernardino Strait separating the big island of Luzon and the island of Samar. As Adm Kurita looked east into the rising sun, he thought he saw Halsey’s six fleet carriers, three battleships and four cruisers of TF 38. He actually saw the six jeep carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts of Ziggy Sprague’s Taffy 3.

Kurita immediately ordered the mighty Yamato, and the rest of the Center Force, to attack.

On the morning of 24 October 1944, the Japanese Operation Sho-Go I was already falling apart. The one Japanese Task Force that needed to be spotted by the Americans, Adm Ozawa’s decoy Northern Force, was the only task force that was not spotted by the Americans. Ozawa needed to lure Halsey away from the Philippines, but despite his best efforts to be detected, the Americans had no idea his four carriers were closing in from the north. (Ozawa commented later that if he had planes and trained pilots, he would have destroyed the entirety of TF 38, so ignorant the Americans were of his location.)

Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Americans knew the precise locations of both the Center and Southern Forces. On 23 October, Adm Nishimura’s Southern Force was spotted by a PBY flying boat and the Americans planned to ambush the Southern Force in the Surgiao Strait. There they would be met by Vice Adm Jesse Oldendorf’s battleships. Oldendorf’s Task Force consisted of the venerable battlewagons that were sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor, and then resurrected and repaired. They were thought to be worthless for anything except pre-invasion bombardments and fire support for MacArthur’s troops. His six pre-World War Two Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Colorado class battleships sailed south to the Surigao Strait. There they would get their revenge.

Also on 23 October, two American submarines, the USS Darter and USS Dace, ambushed Adm Kurita’s Center Force that night in the Palawan Strait. They sank two heavy cruisers, including Kurita’s flagship, and damaged a third which was escorted back to Borneo by two destroyers. Kurita was pulled out of the water and transferred his flag. He was under no illusions about what was going to happen to him in the morning.

Once Kurita was spotted by the submarines and had not received any reports that the Northern Force was detected, he knew Halsey’s carriers were going to destroy him. On the morning of 24 October, when Kurita was in the Sibuyan Sea short of the San Bernardino Strait, Halsey’s fighters and dive bombers attacked. All day, wave after wave of TF 38’s planes bombed and strafed the massive Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers. In the late afternoon, the Musashi, one of the two largest battleships on the planet, was sunk after she was hit by 47 torpedoes and 500 lbs bombs. With many of his other ships damaged, Kurita turned around, accepting defeat. The Americans had “won” the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea.

Then a miracle happened for the Japanese: one of Halsey’s reconnaissance planes finally spotted Ozawa’s Northern Force. The air attacks immediately stopped. To Halsey, the Center Force was defeated and now he got to do what God placed him on this earth to do: sink Jap carriers. He made a plan to create TF 34 with TF 38’s accompanying fast North Carolina and Iowa class battleships to cover the San Bernardino Strait, but once the matador Ozawa waved his red cape, Bull Halsey charged north with everything he had, including the battleships.

Kurita, with eleven remaining destroyers, eight cruisers, and four battleships, including Musashi’s sister ship — the mighty Yamato, turned his Center Force back around and resumed his course toward the now undefended San Bernardino strait off the Philippine Island of Samar.

They would be able to engage the troop transports, supply ships, and the escorting destroyers, and small “jeep” carriers of MacArthur’s invasion fleet at dawn the next morning.

The capture of the Philippines by the Americans would ring the death knell for the Imperial Japanese Navy. The shipping lanes to Java and the Dutch East Indies, already under constant air and submarine attack, would be finally and definitively cut. All of Japan’s remaining naval strength would be committed to the coming battle. They had no choice: any ships remaining north of the Philippines would be without fuel, and because naval shells were only manufactured in Japan, any ships remaining south of the Philippines would be without ammunition.

Coordinating the far flung Japanese naval task forces necessitated a complex plan, named Sho Go I by the Imperial Japanese General Staff. (Operation Sho-Go I was a branch of Operation Sho-Go, the defense of the Home Islands.) Though complicated, if Sho-Go I was successful, the American 7th Fleet would be destroyed, the 3rd Fleet would be hamstrung, and MacArthur’s forces would be thrown back into the sea. America would suffer a huge strategic loss and (it was thought) be compelled to come to a negotiated cease fire. The importance of Sho-Go I was not lost on the Japanese Navy’s bitterest rival, the Japanese Army. In a rare moment of interservice cooperation, Sho-Go I was made even more complicated by including the Japanese Army on Leyte and Luzon. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the commander and governor of the Japanese occupied Philippines, reinforced Leyte with every aircraft he had left, and enough troops to drive the Americans back into the sea after they lost their supporting ships offshore.

The Americans were convinced that carriers were the key to naval warfare (they were) but in the narrow confines of the Philippine archipelago, the Japanese could use their remaining battleships to force this Kantai Kessen, or decisive battle to end the war. But the battleships had to get there first and America’s carriers were in the way. The key to Sho-Go I was Admiral Marc Mitscher’s powerful Task Force 38 which consisted of all of America’s big fleet carriers. It was this TF that smashed Japan’s remaining carrier airpower at the Battle of the Philippine Sea aka The Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot. For the Japanese plan to have any success, TF 38 had to be neutralized.

Lacking any carrier air power at all, the Japanese chose to neutralize TF 38 through deception. The Japanese Northern Force consisted of their remaining four carriers, but almost no planes, and definitely no trained carrier pilots. But it would be a target the carrier-mad Americans could not resist. The Northern Force was the bait to lure TF 38 away from the Philippines. Once they were spotted, the Northern Force would race back north, away from the Philippines, with TF 38 in pursuit.

Once TF 38 was gone, the Southern Force, steaming north from Java would enter the Leyte Gulf via the Surigao Strait. At the same time, the powerful Center Force under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, consisting of eight battleships, including the super battleships Yamato and Musashi, was steaming east from Formosa, and it would enter the Leyte Gulf via the San Bernardino Strait off the island of Samar. Together they would smash MacArthur’s invasion fleet. Yamashita would then be free to destroy an outnumbered and cut off US Sixth Army on Leyte. On 22 October 1944, all three Japanese task forces were converging on Leyte. They were under radio silence, and the plan could not be altered.

TF 38 had to take the bait for Sho-Go I to work. The fate of the entire Imperial Japanese Navy depended on it. Luckily for the Japanese, sailing with TF 38 was the key to any success they would have in the upcoming operation: American Admiral Bull Halsey. Bull Halsey was America’s greatest carrier admiral, but he was proud, and his lack of any big Jap fleet carrier kills was a sore point in the wardroom. He always seemed to just miss them: He and his carriers were too far away to intervene at Pearl Harbor. Though Coral Sea was a victory, his carriers only sank one small escort carrier. Halsey missed Midway because he was in the hospital with a bad skin rash. The Japanese carriers were not an important target with all the important Japanese bases in the Solomon’s. And finally, he was away from TF 38 during the Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot. The Northern Force was the last opportunity for Halsey to sink a Japanese carrier in the war. The Japanese were convinced Halsey would not pass it up and based their entire plan on it.

They were right.

Just after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines and overran the islands by April, 1942. In March 1942, FDR ordered the Commander of the Philippine Department and Field Marshal of the Army of the Philippines Gen. Douglas MacArthur to Australia in order to prevent his capture by the Japanese. Upon arriving in Australia he said, “I came through and I shall return”.

Over two years later on 20 October 1944, Gen Krueger’s US Sixth Army splashed ashore on the Philippine Island of Leyte and linked up with Col Ruberto Kangleon’s various American and Filipino guerilla organizations. Later that afternoon, MacArthur staged a dramatic and meticulously scripted personal landing on Leyte, where he announced, “People of the Philippines, I have returned! By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil.”

Taking advantage of the bad October weather, Gen Tomoyuki Yamashita, the commander of all Japanese forces in the Philippines, heavily reinforced Leyte, and planned on making a fight of the island in order to force MacArthur’s invasion fleet, and the US Fifth and Seventh Fleets to concentrate. In the coming days, the still powerful and numerous battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy used the cover of the monsoon to try and close with and destroy the US ships in the close waters of the Leyte Gulf. Operation Sho I was the Imperial Japanese General Staff’s last chance at Kantai Kessen, or the final decisive battle to end the war on terms favorable to the Japanese.

In September and October 1944, Field Marshall Walter Model, commander of German Army Group B, caused General Eisenhower no shortage of headaches. After the 20 July failed plot to kill Hitler and the rout of the German Army in the West after the fall of Paris, Hitler ordered Model to prevent the Allies from advancing into Germany at all costs. And for almost four months, against overwhelming Allied air and material superiority and constant tactical interference from Hitler, Model, the monocle wearing son of a music teacher from Saxony, did exactly that.

In the north, Model rallied the defeated Wehrmacht in the west and every Allied misstep was exploited. He deftly extricated the 15th Army from certain doom at Antwerp and bludgeoned the Allies with it in the Netherlands for the rest of the year. With the 15th Army and his reconstituted reserve, the II SS Panzer Corps, Model defeated Montgomery in the battles for the Dutch bridges in September (Operation Market Garden) and removed the Allied capability to conduct airborne operations for the foreseeable future. The Allies did not cross the Rhine at Arnhem until January, 1945, nor conduct another airborne operation until Operation Varsity in March, 1945.

In the south, Model’s First Army stopped Patton cold in Lorraine. On 18 September, the day after Operation Market Garden began, Model’s Fifth Panzer Army, led by Gen Hasso Von Manteuffel, counterattacked MG John S Wood’s 4th Armored Division resulting in the Battle of Arracourt, the largest tank battle on the Western Front up to that time. Patton’s famous “dash across France” lasted exactly 49 days. Around Arracourt, American crew quality, mechanical reliability, agile leadership, and responsive fire support defeated German technical and material superiority after 11 days of constant fighting. The Battle of Arracourt, Patton’s Pyrrhic victory, is virtually unknown today because of Patton hagiography and the more famous concurrent battle further north in Holland.

Nonetheless, Patton’s advance was stopped, not by Eisenhower as the famous books and movies like to trumpet, but by the Germans. Popular history likes to blame Patton’s delay on Eisenhower’s decision to prioritize supplies to the British, but that decision didn’t come until the 23rd of September, a week after Market Garden began, not before. And it was only in response to unexpected German resistance in Holland. (Patton’s fuel was briefly curtailed in late August, simply because it was more efficient at the time to prioritize Montgomery and Hodges, who were both closer to Normandy than Patton and within striking distance of V2 sites. Patton’s fuel resumed his fair share shortly thereafter on 4 September, almost two weeks before Market Garden. Patton was slowed more by the “250 mile” tank maintenance rule than by fuel. ) Patton had enough fuel to continue the attack but defeating Manteuffel’s counteroffensive drank fuel at a prodigious rate. Eisenhower’s 23 Sep decision didn’t stop Patton, Manteuffel did that, but it did prevent Patton from regaining his momentum. Mantueffel bought just enough time for the newly formed but static Volksgrenadier Divisions to dig in. For the next two months, famed tanker and maneuver warfare expert George Patton was forced to slug it out in battles that resembled the First World War twenty five years prior, and those against second and third rate German troops. The gateway city and ancient fortress of Metz, and the surrounding fortifications, particularly Ft Driant, didn’t capitulate until early December.

In the center, General Omar Bradley’s 12th Army Group closed in on the German frontier. Model reinforced the old Siegfried line defenses, and combined with Allied supply difficulties caused by his orders to destroy all French port facilities, forced Bradley to a standstill. Despite this, Eisenhower ordered the capture of Aachen, a German city on the border with Belgium. Aachen was of no special military or industrial value, but it was of immense propaganda value: It was the first German city threatened with capture by the Allies and it was the historic capital of Charlemagne’s “First Reich”. Model turned Aachen into a fortress and its defense made Eisenhower’s decision one of his few regrets as Supreme Allied Commander. Model’s defense of Aachen and the Huertgen Forest to the city’s immediate south delayed Bradley for three months. The Americans only captured Aachen in mid-November. Even worse, US troops only secured the town of Schmidt, the initial (September) objective in the Huertgen Forest operations, in January 1945. Model embroiled Bradley in vicious street fighting in Aachen and lured him into the near perfect defensive terrain in the Huertgen Forest for what were America’s worst defeats of the war. Although Model lost Aachen, he caused Bradley 45,000 casualties in the process and wrecked the American 12th Army Group. Model obliged Bradley to stop his offensives, reinforce his depleted divisions, and train the tens of thousands of new replacements that were required to advance into Germany any further.

In particular, the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard earned its nickname “The Bloody Bucket” in these battles, and the veteran US 1st Infantry Division, “The Big Red One” took 70% casualties at Aachen and Huertgen. In early December, these two divisions were so maimed that they were assigned a quiet sector of the front to rest and recuperate: the Ardennes Forest.

The Ardennes was directly in the path of Model’s December offensive to restore stability on the Western Front, Unternehmen Wacht am Rhine, “Operation Watch on the Rhine” more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge.