Between 1941 and 1945, the United States built 78 escort carriers. These vessels, known as “jeep carriers,” were designed for, as the designation suggests, escorting convoys and supporting landing zones by providing air cover. Several variants were built but a typical escort carrier displaced 7,800 tons, was a little over 500 feet long, 65 feet wide, and had a top speed of just 18 knots. It could accommodate up to 28 aircraft. Unlike Halsey’s fleet and light carriers, the escorts had no armor below decks. Their designation was CVE, which the crews quipped stood for “Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable.” The 18 jeep carriers in Adm. Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet, all concentrated in Thomas Sprague’s TG-77.4, were armed with 235 older model F4F Wildcat fighters and 143 Avenger torpedo bombers…about the strength of one of Halsey’s carrier groups. TG-77.4 was further subdivided into three groups call signed “Taffy.” Taffy 3, 2, and 1 were arrayed north-to-south respectively in the waters outside the gulf some 10-20 miles apart and equidistant to the island land battle they supported.
At dawn on October 25, 1944, with a stiff morning breeze and wisps of rain as the only disturbance on deck, the sailors and airmen of Taffy 3’s jeep carriers went about their routine preparations to support the Army land forces fighting on Leyte. If they expected to see any ships at all other than their own, it would have been elements of Task Force 34 which was supposedly out there guarding the San Bernardino Strait. This all changed when at 0647 some twenty miles to the north, Ens. Bill Brooks flying an Avenger of the CVE St.Loon anti-submarine patrol suddenly beheld a sight that took is breath away. He quickly reported back to the fleet what he saw: a substantial force of enemy warships was steaming down the east coast of Samar and closing fast on Taffy 3. At first his report was greeted with incredulity until he insisted: “I can see the biggest meatball flag on the biggest battleship I ever saw!”
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