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SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte: Part 6 – Decoy

   DailyWire.com
Aircraft are prepared for a morning sortie on the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Zuikaku, east of the Solomon Islands, on May 5, 1942.
Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Vice Adm. Ozawa Jisaburo stood an imposing six-foot-seven inches and had a taut face that showed the years of strain at being at the forefront of naval combat throughout the war. His stony countenance earned him the nickname “The Gargoyle.”  He was, along with the deceased admirals Yamamoto Isoruku (shot down over the Solomons) and Yamaguchi Tamon (who went down with his carrier Hiryu at Midway), perhaps the most respected sailor in the Combined Fleet.  He’d commanded naval forces in the South China Sea, and then at the Philippine Sea.

Now stooped in the bridge of his flagship, the fleet carrier Zuikaku—the only carrier from the original Pearl Harbor attack force still afloat—he must have felt both anguish and resignation at what he knew the next few days would bring. Having sailed from Japan and shadowed Halsey’s task force as it left Formosan waters, his Decoy Force (technically Third Mobile Fleet) was now cruising in an area of sea called Cape Engaño off the northeast tip of Luzon.   Although the highest ranking admiral in the Sho-Go1 operation, Ozawa had accepted this selfless role for the better good of Japan.  He would knowingly sacrifice his mobile fleet by luring Halsey’s fast battleships and carriers away from the waters off Leyte, clearing a path for Kurita’s Center Force.

By 1130 on October 24 First Air Fleet and Ozawa’s scouts had located Halsey’s fleet east of Luzon as they were attacking Kurita in the Sibuyan Sea.  The Gargoyle gave the order to launch aircraft, some 76 in all. Watching his brave but hopelessly outclassed young aviators leap off the decks into the humid air, the admiral must have felt saddened at sending them to their likely dooms.  He also had to realize that he was watching the last carrier-born attack carried out by the IJN in the war.  But he had to get Halsey’s attention, and so be it.

Ozawa’s strike force was picked up by U.S.  radar while still well away from Task Force 38 and soon the ubiquitous Hellcats were on them. All but a handful were shot out of the sky by CAP fighters or sent spiraling in flames into the sea by accurate anti-aircraft.  No hits were scored and the few survivors landed on Luzon as ordered.  The fabled Japanese Kido-Butai, the carrier force that once ruled the waters of the Pacific like its private lagoon, had passed into history.

His appetite whetted, Halsey now made his prime mission to “find the enemy carriers.”  Ozawa obliged him by flooding the airwaves with bogus radio traffic and sending a small detachment of ships directly at the Americans.  They were soon picked up prompting more intensive air searches. At 1640 a Lexington scout plane found Ozawa’s main force 190 miles northeast of Cape Engaño.

As Vice Adm. Mitscher stood against the rail of the Lexington watching through binoculars the Princeton’s painful end, he received the urgent bulletin reporting the presence of a carrier fleet off to the northeast.  Halsey received the same sighting and it was electrifying to him.  Throughout the battle the Third Fleet commander found it odd that the Japanese would attack in such a scale without carriers.  In fact, it was by this point in the war accepted doctrine that the greatest naval threat was carrier aircraft.  Here at last was confirmation that the real prize  was out there.  He had no idea that Ozawa’s carrier fleet was, in fact, a spent force.  A shiny lure dangled before him, daring him to take a bite.

Not everyone shared Halsey’s enthusiasm.  Lt. Mike Cox of the intelligence team thought the appearance of carriers in the opposite direction of the incoming Japanese surface fleet was suspect and he raised the matter with chief intel officer Capt. Mike Cheek.  In fact, over the past months their team of spooks had pieced together through analyzing documents captured on the Marianas that a new Japanese tactic, called the “Z” plan,  might be at work here: going for transports.  This indicated this could very well be a decoy to lure the U.S.  fleet away from Leyte.   Cheek approached Halsey’s chief-of-staff, Rear Adm. Robert “Mick” Carney, and, speaking of Kurita’s fleet, he insisted: “They’re coming through, I know it. I’ve played poker with them in Tokyo.”   After some prodding Carney gave Cheek leave to approach the admiral, but offered it would do little good.  Halsey’s blood was up.  This was just too tempting a target to ignore, especially the fleet carrier Zuikaku, whose sinking would make Pearl Harbor’s vengeance complete.  And so Cheek desisted.

Mitscher, too, had his suspicions which had been raised by his chief-of-staff, Commodore Alrleigh Burke. Burke believed that the IJN carrier fleet was now so weak these ships had to be a diversion.  “I think you’re right,” said Mitscher.  “But I don’t know you’re right.  I don’t think we should bother Halsey.  He’s busy enough.  He’s got a lot of things on his mind.”  The sickly Mitscher instead went to bed, having figured Halsey had taken over tactical control at this point anyway.  (One cannot help think that, deep down, Mitscher, who’d missed taking out many of the carriers in the Philippine Sea due to darkness falling, wanted to finish off what he’d started and so relented.)

Although his mission was to cover the landings on Leyte, Halsey had also been given a directive by Nimitz himself which read: “In case opportunity for destruction of major portion of the enemy fleet is offered or can be created, such destruction becomes the primary task.”   And now just such a “major force” was in his sights.  And so, Halsey stormed into the New Jersey’s flagplot room and jabbed his finger at Ozawa’s position on a map while announcing to Carney: “Here’s where we’re going, Mick.  Start them north!”  Halsey had taken the bait.

As the blood-red tropical sun dipped below the horizon, its brilliance silhouetting Kurita’s ships that had come about and were now chugging towards undefended San Bernardino Strait, all of Task Force 38 was steaming away to the north.   Meanwhile, MacArthur, Nimitz, Kinkaid, and the entire American landing force currently engaged in heavy combat on the island remained dangerously unaware of the convoy of Japanese warships bearing down on them.

But even as matters near the San Bernardino Strait were deteriorating, on the southern approach to Leyte Gulf, a far more favorable situation was developing.

Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel Of Another Time And Place.

 

 

 

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