The Mosquito Fleet

9.
I Shall Return:
Round Trip by PT

With the whole of New Guinea and the island base at Morotai in Allied hands, the Philippine Islands were within reach of Allied fighter planes and it was time for General MacArthur to make good his promise.

There was a lot of mopping up to do around Morotai, however, because the taking of the island had been a typical MacArthur leapfrog job. Morotai was a small and lightly defended island, but twelve miles away was the big island of Halmahera, defended by 40,000 Japanese. MacArthur had jumped over it to continue his successful New Guinea policy of seizing bases between the Japanese and their home, then isolating the by-passed garrison with a naval blockade.

The best way to bottle up the Halmahera garrison was to call on the PT veterans of the New Guinea blockade, so the day after the landings on Morotai, September 16, 1944, the tenders Oyster Bay and Mobjack, with the boats of Squadrons Ten, Twelve, Eighteen, and Thirty-three, dropped anchor in Morotai roadstead. The first adventure of the Morotai PTs was the rescue, on the very day of their arrival, of a wounded Navy fighter pilot. (A full account of this is given at the end of [Chapter 5].)

PT sailors sometimes wondered what the Stone Age people of Halmahera, people who fought with barbed ironwood spears, made of the strange war being fought in their waters by the white and yellow intruders from the twentieth century. Lieut. (jg) Roger M. Jones, skipper of PT 163, tells about an encounter that has probably entered the mythology of these pagan people.

In October 1944, Lieut. Jones’s boat and the 171 left Morotai for a routine patrol to keep the bypassed Japanese of Halmahera from crossing to Morotai. In the six weeks since the landings, PTs had already sunk fifty Japanese barges, schooners, and luggers carrying troops and supplies.

During the New Guinea campaign, as the use of torpedoes shriveled for lack of suitable targets, the 163 had mounted an awesome battery of ten 50-caliber machine guns in twin mounts, two 20-mm., a 37-mm., a 40-mm. autocannon, and a 60-mm. mortar.

The night’s problem was simple. Intelligence had told the PT skippers that there would be no friendlies in the patrol area on the west coast of Halmahera—no friendlies at all. “Shoot anything that moves.”

LUZON

MACARTHUR MAKES ROUND TRIP TO CORREGIDOR BY PT

MINDORO

PT 233 SINKS DESTROYER KIYOSHIMO

LANDING BEACHES

KAMIKAZES STRIKE AT PTs

BRESTES HIT

SAMAR

TRACK OF CENTRAL STRIKING FORCE

BATTLE OFF SAMAR WITH CENTRAL STRIKING FORCE

PTs SINK SC 53, PC 105 and UZUKI

LEYTE

BATTLE OF SURIGAO STRAITS

PT 493 LOST HERE

MINDANAO

TRACK OF SOUTHERN STRIKING FORCE

1st PT SIGHTING OF JAPANESE FLEET

To make a coordinated attack, the two PTs hardly needed to communicate. They had gone through the motions so many times that they performed the maneuver like a reflex. The drill was to close a radar target slowly and silently to 200 yards, fire a mortar flare, and open fire with every gun that would bear instantly as the flare burst to smother the surprised Japanese before they could answer.

That split-second timing, the business of opening fire simultaneously with the bursting of the star-shell, was drilled into gunners repeatedly by dummy attacks on floating logs.

Twenty-five miles short of the patrol area, the radar man found a target five miles off the beach. The two skippers were jubilant; here was a target made to order—too far out to sea to run for the beach, out of the range of protecting shore batteries, in water deep enough for a high-speed strafing run by the PTs, with no chance of hitting a rock. The boats went to general quarters and closed the target.

Lieut. Jones took the unnecessary precaution of warning his gunners. “Look alive, now—open fire the instant the flare goes off.”

At 200 yards the skippers could make out a dim shape, but details of the target were hidden in the darkness. Lieut. Jones gave a last warning to gunners to be quick on the trigger, and fired his flare. Twenty-four gun barrels swung to bear on target.

The flare burst.

Lieut. Jones continues:

“There was the perfect target, a Jap barge loaded with troops—you could see their heads sticking up over the gunwale.

“Open fire! Open fire! I screamed in my mind, but no words came out of my mouth.

“What was the matter? Why weren’t the guns firing? Thousands of tracers should be pouring into that enemy craft, but no gun on either PT fired. The flare died and I ordered another.

“Why was I doing this? Why wasn’t the barge sinking now, holed by hundreds of shells? Why hadn’t the gunners opened fire as ordered when the flare went off? And what was the matter on the Jap barge? Why weren’t they tearing us up with their guns, for the flare lit us up as brightly as it illuminated them?

“We closed to 75 yards, still frozen in that strange paralysis under the glare of the dying starshell.

“My helmsman spoke up. ‘They’re not Japs, sir, they’re natives.’

“I flipped on the searchlight, and our two boats circled the canoe, searchlights blazing, guns trained. That eerie scene will remain in my memory as long as I live. Thirty natives—some of them boys—sat rigidly still, staring forward unblinkingly. I don’t know if it was native discipline or sheer terror that held them. Even the children didn’t blink an eye or twitch a finger.

“We shouted to them that we were Americans, but we gave up trying to get through to them, for they refused to answer or even to turn their heads and look at us. We left them rigidly motionless and staring straight ahead at nothing.

“Back at the base we discussed our strange paralysis. Everybody agreed he had first thought it was a Jap barge when the flare burst, and nobody could give a reason for not shooting instantly. If even one gunner had fired, the whole weight of our broadside would have come down on that canoe.

“We’ll never understand it, but we are all grateful to Whoever or Whatever it was that held our hands that night and spared those poor natives. And what woolly stories those Halmaherans must be telling their children about that night. I’ll bet by now we are part of the sacred tribal legends of the whole Moluccan Archipelago.”

Almost from the beginning of the return trip to the Philippines two years before, General MacArthur had had his eye on Mindanao, the southernmost large island of the group and hence the closest to Morotai. It was on Mindanao that he planned to land first, and from there he could advance up the island chain.

Before daring to venture into the Philippines, however, the Allied High Command wanted to make more landings—one at Yap Island, northeast of Palau (where Marines had landed the same day as the Morotai invasion), and another at Talaud Island, another steppingstone, about halfway between Morotai and Mindanao.

While the Palau and Morotai landings were going on—indeed a few days before they started, but too late to stop them—Admiral Halsey made a bold proposal to cancel all intermediate landings and take the biggest jump of all, completely over Talaud, over Yap, even over Mindanao itself, all the way to Leyte in the Central Philippines.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of all the Allies, then at a conference in Quebec, swiftly accepted the recommendation and set October 20th as target date, chopping two months (and nobody will ever know how many casualties) off the life of the Pacific war.

In a wild flurry of activity, planners concentrated the preparations of three months into a month, diverted the forces for the other landings into Leyte force, and made bold carrier strikes at Formosa, in preparation for the landings in the Central Philippines.

An example of the incurable tendency of high-level Japanese officers to believe in their own foolish propaganda is the fact that on the very eve of the Leyte landings the Japanese defenders of the Philippines relaxed their guard, because they thought the Third Fleet had been wiped out.

American carriers had been roving the waters off Formosa during the week before the landings, and carrier planes had chewed up enemy airpower. Japanese Intelligence officers, however, believed the fantasies told them by their pilots returning from attacks on the American fleet. Radio Tokyo solemnly announced that the Third Fleet had been annihilated with the loss of 11 carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and one destroyer.

The Japanese public went wild with enthusiasm. The Emperor made a special announcement of felicitation to his people, and victory celebrations were held at army and navy headquarters in the Philippines.

The Third Fleet had actually suffered two cruisers damaged.

The first American troops—a scouting force—landed on October 17th on Dinegat and Suluan islands, across the gulf from Leyte. Minesweepers swept the gulf and frogmen poked about the shoreline. Bombardment ships pounded the beaches, and carrier planes blasted enemy airfields. Ships of the attack landing forces entered Leyte Gulf during the night of October 19th, and next morning troops went ashore on four beaches on the west side of Leyte Gulf and on both sides of Panoan Strait, to the south.

PTs were rushed up from New Guinea, 1,200 miles away. Forty-five of the boats, under the tactical command of Lieut. Commander Robert Leeson, made the trip on their own power with a stop-over for rest of a sort in Palau and a refueling at sea, so as to arrive with enough gas to start patrols immediately. They arrived in the combat zone on the morning of October 21st, and began prowling that same night.

Times were lively in Surigao Strait, and the PTs had good hunting, but nothing compared to what was coming.

Since a series of stinging setbacks from America’s carrier planes during operations in the Central Pacific, the main body of the Japanese fleet—still a formidable host—had held back from fighting American ships in strength. Landings in the Philippines were too much to put up with, however—too close to the beloved homeland; His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s ships had to fight now, no matter how desperate the situation—or rather because the situation was so desperate.

The Japanese executed a plan long held in readiness for just this event—the Sho plan, or Plan of Victory, as it was hopefully called, though the Japanese navy’s chief of staff more realistically called it “Our last line of home defense.”

The stage was set for the greatest naval battle of all time, the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

The naval lineup on the eve of battle—greatly simplified, perhaps oversimplified—was as follows:

U. S. Navy

Seventh Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Thomas Kincaid:

This slow but powerful force included six over-age battleships, 18 small, slow escort carriers, five heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, 86 destroyers, 25 destroyer escorts, 11 frigates, and the usual gunboats, supply train and landing craft for an amphibious operation—plus all the PTs on the scene, the 45 veterans of the New Guinea blockade. Mission of the Seventh Fleet was close support of the Sixth Army landing force.

Third Fleet, under Admiral William Halsey:

This fast and mighty force had six new fast battleships, 16 fast carriers, six heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers and 58 destroyers. Mission of the Third Fleet was to prowl the waters north of the landings on the lookout for a chance to destroy once and for all the main Japanese battle fleet, especially its remaining carriers.

Japanese Navy

Northern Decoy Force, under Vice-Admiral Ozawa:

Four fat carriers, prime targets for the aggressive Halsey, were screened by eight destroyers and one light cruiser. Mission of the force was suicidal. Without enough planes to make a serious fight, Admiral Ozawa nevertheless hoped to lure Halsey’s powerful Third Fleet away from the landing beach, thus exposing American transports to attack by two powerful Japanese surface striking forces that were to sneak into Leyte Gulf through the back door, or rather two back doors at San Bernardino and Surigao Straits, north and south of Leyte Island.

Central Striking Force, under Vice-Admiral Kurita:

Five battleships, ten heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and 15 destroyers. Admiral Kurita was to take this formidable surface fleet through San Bernardino Straits, at the northern tip of Samar, to come down on the transports “like a wolf on the fold” while Halsey’s force was wasting time on the sacrificial carrier decoy in the north.

Southern Striking Force, under Vice-Admiral Shima:

Formed of two task units—a vanguard under Admiral Nishima of two battleships, one heavy cruiser and four destroyers, plus a second section under Admiral Shima of two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and four destroyers. These two southern forces were to come up from the East Indies and pass through Surigao Straits—happy hunting grounds of the PTs—to join with the Central Striking Force in Leyte Gulf for the unopposed and leisurely destruction of the Sixth Army.

The Japanese apparently could not believe that the U.S. Navy—once Halsey had been suckered into chasing off after the decoy carriers—had enough ships left afloat to resist the two striking forces. Had not the entire Japanese nation just celebrated an Imperial proclamation of the near annihilation of the American fleet?

All three Japanese forces converged on the Philippines simultaneously. By October 24th, the three forces had been spotted and reported by Allied scouts. Torpedoes and bombs from planes and submarines had made punishing hits on the advancing Central and Southern Striking Forces, but the ships kept plodding on toward the straits north and south of Leyte.

And Admiral Halsey snapped at the bait dangled by Admiral Ozuma’s carriers. For a man of Admiral Halsey’s temperament, the reported sighting of the northern carrier group was too much to resist. He lit out to get them all—leaving unguarded the Strait of San Bernardino, back gate into Leyte Gulf and the transport area.

For once, an American command staff had fallen into the chronic error of the Japanese. Admiral Halsey apparently believed the exaggerated claims of his pilots and thought that the Central Striking Force had been decimated and the remnants driven off. The Japanese had actually lost only three cruisers to submarines and a battleship to aircraft. After a short retreat, Admiral Kurita reconsidered and turned back during the night to resume the transit of San Bernardino Strait. His powerful fleet was steaming toward the transport area at 20 knots.

Admiral Kincaid misinterpreted a message from Admiral Halsey and thought a part of his Third Fleet was still on station, corking up San Bernardino, so Kincaid dismissed the central force from his mind and turned his attention to the southern force heading for Surigao Strait. Not even a scout submarine was watching the northern pass into Leyte Gulf.

Shortly after noon of October 24th, Admiral Kincaid notified his entire command to prepare for a battle that night. He cleared Surigao Strait of all unnecessary traffic, and gave Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf the job of not only stopping but destroying the enemy column.

Admiral Oldendorf had been commanding the bombardment and support forces, and had in his control all the heavy guns of the Seventh Fleet. In a phrase which infuriated the Japanese when they heard it, Oldendorf said that he deployed his forces according to the professional gambler’s code: “Never give a sucker a chance.”

Surigao Strait is a narrow strip of water about thirty-five miles long, running almost north-south between Leyte and Dinegat islands. By its shape and location, the strait was going to force the Southern Striking Force to approach Leyte Gulf in a long, narrow column. Admiral Oldendorf deployed his ancient but still hard-punching battleships in a line across the mouth of the strait where it opens into Leyte Gulf. Thus, without further maneuver, Oldendorf was certain to open fire with his battle line already crossing the T of the Japanese column. His fleet could swing its entire broadside to bear simultaneously; the enemy could fire only the forward turrets on the lead ship.

Admiral Oldendorf was not satisfied with depending entirely on this setup, murderous as it was, so he deployed every other fighting ship in his command to work maximum destruction on the Japanese. He posted cruisers and destroyers between the battleships and the mouth of the straits, as a combined screen and supplementary battle line. Other destroyer squadrons were posted near the strait, so that they could launch torpedoes and then get out of the way during the gunfire phase of the battle.

Admiral Oldendorf’s position was good—except for one thing. The warships had fired off most of their ammunition in beach bombardment, and magazine stocks were low, especially in the armor-piercing shells needed for fighting heavy battleships. Oldendorf ordered the battleships to hold their fire until they were sure of making hits—and he ordered maximum use of torpedoes.

That meant torpedo boats, so 39 of Commander Selman Bowling’s PTs were deployed in 13 sections of three boats each along the shores of Surigao Strait, and also along the coasts of Mindanao and Bohol islands, far into the Mindanao Sea on the other end of Surigao Strait. The farthest PTs were stationed 100 miles from the battleline.

The Seventh Fleet had no night scouting planes, so Admiral Oldendorf informed the PTs that their primary mission was scouting. The boats were to patrol the approaches to the strait and to hide along the wooded shores fringing the coming scene of battle. They were to relay radio contact reports as the Japanese passed their station.

Then they were to attack and do all the torpedo damage possible before the Japanese came within gunshot of the Seventh Fleet battleline.

The PTs took up their stations during the night, and all hands topside peered out to sea, watching for the telltale white bow wave of the first Japanese ship.

The torpedo boat actions that followed are often hard to understand. PTs, by the nature of their attack, provoke wild melees, and survivors of melees rarely remember precisely what happened. What they do claim to remember is usually faulty and contradicted by circumstantial evidence. PT skippers kept only sketchy logs, and those entries giving the time an action took place are often especially inaccurate. As nearly as a historian can tell, however, here is what happened to the PTs.

At 10:15 P.M. Ensign Peter B. Gadd, skipper of PT 131, on station 18 miles south of Bohol Island almost exactly in the middle of the Mindanao Sea and 100 miles from Admiral Oldendorf, picked up two targets on his radar screen. They were between the three-boat section commanded by Lieut. W. C. Pullen, and Bohol Island to the north. Lieut. Pullen tried to reach Admiral Oldendorf by radio, but failed, so he led the PTs 152, 130 and 131, in a torpedo approach.

The radar pips broke into five separate targets, and when a light haze lifted, the skippers clearly saw what they thought were two battleships, two cruisers and a destroyer. The enemy opened fire at three-mile range, with his biggest batteries. Starshells burst overhead and the PTs tore away through a ghastly glare that made them feel naked under the rain of high explosive.

An eight-inch shell hit a torpedo of 130 smack on the warhead and tore through the bow. Miraculously, there was no explosion.

The 152 was hit by a 4.7-incher, probably from a destroyer that was closing fast, with searchlight blazing. (This destroyer, the Shigure, was the only ship of the Japanese van to survive the coming massacre.) The explosion tore away the 37-mm. cannon, killed the gunner, stunned the loader, and wounded three sailors. The boat was afire.

Aboard the stricken 152, Lieut. (jg) Joseph Eddins dumped two shallow-set depth charges into his wake and pumped 40-mm. shells at the pursuing destroyer.

“Our 40 mm. made the enemy reluctant to continue the use of the searchlight,” said Lieut Eddins.

The destroyer snapped off the light and sheered away from the geysers of exploding depth charges.

The fight had lasted 23 minutes. Now there were two more targets on the radar screen and the PT sailors were frantic to get their radio report through to the waiting battleline.

Lieut. (jg) Ian D. Malcolm of 130 ran south until he found Lieut. (jg) John A. Cady’s section near Camiguin Island. He boarded PT 127 and borrowed its radio. Just after midnight on October 25th, Lieut. Malcolm made the first contact report of the position, course, and speed of the enemy. It was the first word of the enemy received by Admiral Oldendorf in fourteen hours.

Aboard the 152, the crew put out the fire, and the skipper gave the boat a little test run. The bow was stove in, but the plucky boat could still make 24 knots, so Lieut. Pullen ordered a stern chase of the disappearing Japanese. He had to abandon the attack, however, because the Japanese were too fast for him to catch. There is something touching and ludicrous in the picture of the tiny, bashed-up PT trying to catch the mammoth Japanese battleline.

Lieut. (jg) Dwight H. Owen, in charge of a section near Limasawa Island next picked up signs of the approaching fleet. He tells how it looked:

“The prologue began just before midnight. Off to the southwest over the horizon we saw distant flashes of gunfire, starshells bursting and far-off sweep of searchlights. The display continued about fifteen minutes, then blacked out. Squalls came and went. One moment the moon shone bright as day, and the next you couldn’t make out the bow of your boat. Then the radar developed the sort of pips you read about.”

Lieut. Owen jumped for the radio, but the enemy was jamming the circuit and he could not get his report off. He did the next best thing—he attacked.

At 1,800 yards, the cruiser Mogami snapped on its searchlight and probed for the boats. PT 146 (Ensign B. M. Grosscup), and 150 (Ensign J. M. Ladd), fired one fish each, but missed. The destroyer Yumagumo caught the 151 and the 190 in a searchlight beam, but the boats raked the destroyer with 40-mm. fire and knocked out the lights. The boats zigzagged away behind smoke.

Admiral Nishimura, commanding this van force of the two-section Southern Striking Force, was delighted with himself at this point, and sent a message to Admiral Shima, congratulating himself on having sunk several torpedo boats.

At the southern entrance to Surigao Strait, Lieut. Commander Robert Leeson, on PT 134, commanded the section posted on the western shore. The boat crews saw flashes of the battle with Lieut. Owen’s boats, and half an hour later picked up radar pips ten miles away. Leeson promptly passed the radar sighting to Admiral Oldendorf, and then—the milder duty done—led a torpedo attack.

Lieut. (jg) Edmund F. Wakelin’s 134 was caught by a searchlight while still 3,000 yards from the two battleships. Shells fell close aboard on both sides, splashing water over the boat, and shrapnel from air bursts banged against the deck, but the skipper bore in another 500 yards to launch his fish. The boat escaped from the Japanese and hid in the shadow of Panaon Island, where later in the night the sailors fumed helplessly as four Japanese ships steamed, “fat, dumb, and happy,” past their empty torpedo tubes at 1,000-yard range.

All the torpedo tubes of the section were not empty, however, for Lieut. (jg) I. M. Kovar, in 137, at 3:55 A.M., picked up an enemy formation at the southern end of the strait and attacked. He had no way of knowing it, but this was Admiral Shima’s second section, coming up to the relief of Admiral Nishimura’s van that had already entered the strait, and indeed had at that very moment been shattered by a vicious American destroyer-torpedo attack.

Lieut. Kovar crept up on a Japanese destroyer, maneuvering to take station at the rear of the enemy column. He let fly at the can and had the incredible good luck to miss his target entirely and smack a light cruiser he hadn’t even seen. Aboard the cruiser Abukuma, the explosion killed thirty sailors, destroyed the radio shack and slowed the cruiser to ten knots, forcing it to fall out of formation.

The crippled Abukuma was caught and polished off by Army bombers the next day. It was the only victim of Army aviation in this battle and the only positively verified victim of PT torpedoes, though there is some evidence that a PT may have made one of the hits claimed by American destroyers.

The rest of Admiral Shima’s formation sailed majestically up the strait, fired a spread of torpedoes at two small islands it mistook for American warships, and managed somehow to collide with the fiercely burning cruiser Mogami, only survivor—except for the destroyer Shigure—of the vanguard’s slaughter by the torpedoes and guns of the Seventh Fleet.

Gathering in the two surviving ships, Admiral Shima led a retreat down the strait. At the moment Shigure joined the formation, Lieut. C. T. Gleason’s section attacked, and the Japanese destroyer, which was doing some remarkably able shooting, hit Ensign L. E. Thomas’ 321.

Most sorely hit of the torpedo boats, however, was Lieut. (jg) R. W. Brown’s 493, which had had John F. Kennedy aboard, as an instructor, for a month in Miami. The crew had named the boat the Carole Baby after the skipper’s daughter, who, incidentally, was celebrating her first birthday the night of the Battle of Surigao Strait.

Lieut. Brown tells the Carole Baby’s story:

“I was assigned a division of boats to take position directly down the middle of the strait between Panaon and Dinegat.

“While we were under way to take station, the moon was out but heavy overcast on the horizon threatened to bring complete darkness later. We spotted an occasional light on the beach and we passed an occasional native sailing craft, so the crew’s light mood changed to tension, because they thought we were being spied on.

“When we were on station, strung out across the channel so that the Japs couldn’t get by without our seeing them, I stretched out on the dayroom deck for a little relaxation, but the radio crackled the report that the first PT patrols had made contact.

“‘All hands to General Quarters,’ I ordered. ‘Take echelon formation and prepare to attack.’

“The radarman called up ‘Skipper, eight targets distant twelve miles, estimated speed 28 knots.’

“We closed to three miles, and seconds later my number two boat reported its four torpedoes were in the water. Number Three reported two more fish off and running. I had been maneuvered out of firing position and hadn’t launched any torpedoes yet, so I came around for another attack and was separated from the rest of the section.

“Powerful searchlights pinpointed the two other boats, and starshells lit up the night with their ugly green glare. The two other boats shot up the enemy can and knocked out two of the lights. I didn’t open fire, because the Japs hadn’t seen the Carole Baby yet and I wanted to shoot my fish before they found me.

“At about 500 yards, I fired two and opened up with my guns. The enemy fired starshells and turned on the searchlights. At this close range we could see Japanese sailors scrambling about the ship, and we poured it into them, but the concussion of their exploding shells was creeping steadily closer, so I ordered my executive officer, Nick Carter, to come hard left, open the throttles and GET OUT!

“I went aft to release smoke for a screen so we could return to fire our remaining torpedoes, but we had penetrated an outer destroyer screen without knowing it and had Japs all around us. Eight searchlights pinned us down like a bug on a needle.

“It’s a funny thing how the mind works. I took time at that moment to notice that all those searchlights were turning the sea about us to a beautiful phosphorescent green.

“Our guns blew up two of the searchlights, but we were being hit hard. A. W. Brunelle reported from the engine room that the boat was badly holed at the waterline. I found out later that he took off his kapok life jacket and stuffed it into the hole as the only cork he could find right at hand.

“A blinding flash and terrific concussion threw me out of the cockpit. Stunned, I reeled forward to find that most of the chartroom had been blown away.

“I told Nick to head the Carole Baby for the Island of Panaon, and we limped off with the Jap cans chasing us. When we were out of torpedo range of the capital ships, they turned back but kept throwing shells at us to be sure we didn’t return to attack.

“Return to attack! We weren’t even sure we could stay afloat. The engines were almost completely underwater and though they were still working, they couldn’t chug along forever with water steadily rising in the hold.

“The last destroyer left us just as the bow of the Carole Baby scraped on a coral reef one hundred yards off the beach at Panaon.

“When the shooting stopped, a weird silence settled over us. I went over the boat to see what condition we were in. We were in bad condition. The Carole Baby had been hit by five shells. Two of them had passed clean through us without exploding, but the one that had exploded in the charthouse had killed two and wounded nine of my crew.

“And that isn’t all. We were high on a reef, within rock-throwing distance of an enemy shore. I had to know if those lights we could see came from a Japanese camp, so I armed ten of us with machine guns and grenades and we slipped over the side.

“We found a little village. Somebody had been there, but had run off as we approached, so we decided to search farther. This type of warfare was different from the one the crew was used to, and everybody was ill at ease.”

It is interesting to note that by inference the sailors were not “ill at ease” in the type of warfare they had just been subjected to.

“One of the sailors was almost strangled by what he thought was a low-hanging vine, but we found it was a telephone wire leading to a small hut. We crept close to the hut and listened. No good. Japanese!

“We cut the wire and returned to the safety of our reef.”

Again, consider the character of sailors who talk about the “safety” of a shattered boat, filled with dead and wounded shipmates, stranded on a rock in the midst of history’s greatest naval battle and within pistol range of an enemy shore.

“We expected that wire-cutting bit would stir up some Jap patrols, so we made ourselves into a Little Gibraltar with all the weapons we could scrape together—and on a PT boat that is plenty of weapons.”

Lieut. Brown tells of settling down to enjoy the unaccustomed role of spectator at a battle. Through the night the crew watched the flash and glare of gunfire and exploding ships up the straits.

“We couldn’t tell who was faring best. Through binoculars we could see ships afire and sinking, but we couldn’t tell if they were Japanese or American. Long before dawn the eastern sky looked like sunrise, because of the orange glow of burning ships.

“When day did break we saw natives creeping back to their village, so we waved and yelled ‘Americanos’ and ‘Amigos’ and friendly stuff like that. They finally believed us and waded out to our boat where the sailors set about their eternal bargaining for souvenirs. I believe an American sailor would bargain with a cannibal tribe while they’re putting him into the pot.

“One of the crew yelled and pointed out to sea. Three PTs were roaring up the straits in broad daylight and we could see what they were after—it was the crippled cruiser Mogami, trying to limp home after the fight.

“I watched one of the PTs fire two fish and then race toward us when the cruiser fired at her. We were glad to see her coming, but then we realized with horror that the skipper thought our poor beat-up old Carole Baby was a Japanese barge, and he was getting ready to make a strafing run on us. We jumped up and down and waved our arms and yelled like crazy, even though we knew they couldn’t hear us.

“Just before they got to the spot where I would have opened fire if I had been skipper, we saw the gunners relax and point those gun muzzles away as they recognized us. It was PT 491 that came to our rescue.

“We tried to pull the Carole Baby off the reef, but she was too far gone. She went down in deep water—the only American ship, incidentally, lost in the Battle of Surigao Strait.”

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz radioed from Hawaii:

THE SKILL, DETERMINATION AND COURAGE DISPLAYED BY THE PERSONNEL OF THESE SMALL BOATS IS WORTHY OF THE HIGHEST PRAISE.... THE PT ACTION VERY PROBABLY THREW THE JAPANESE COMMAND OFF BALANCE AND CONTRIBUTED TO THE COMPLETENESS OF THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEFEAT.

By contrast to the corking of Surigao Strait, at the unguarded San Bernardino Strait, the powerful Central Striking Force that morning passed unopposed into Leyte Gulf and jumped the escort carriers and their screen. Something close to worldwide panic broke out in American command centers when the brass realized that the Central Striking Force was already in the gulf and Admiral Halsey’s force was off chasing the carrier decoy—too far off to engage Kurita’s fleet.

A handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts of the screen threw themselves between the Japanese wolf and the transport sheep. Planes from the escort carriers made real and dummy bombing runs on Kurita’s ships. Between them the desperate escort forces—planes and destroyers—battled Kurita to a standstill in the most spectacular show of sheer fighting courage in all of naval history.

Incredibly, Admiral Kurita, with a victory as great as Pearl Harbor within his grasp—the very victory that the northern decoy carrier force was being sacrificed to buy—turned his mighty fleet about and steamed back through San Bernardino Strait, content with sinking two of the escort carriers and three of the screen ships whose gallant skippers had put their destroyers between the enemy and the helpless transport fleet.

Admiral Halsey sank all four carriers, three destroyers, one light cruiser and a fleet oiler of the decoy force.

The Sho plan had worked almost perfectly for the Japanese—but with an unexpected outcome; the Japanese surface fleet, instead of wiping out the American transport fleet, was shattered. Its carrier force virtually vanished. His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s navy could never mount a major attack again.

With the main battleline of the Japanese fleet driven from the scene, the PTs were right back where they had been in New Guinea and Guadalcanal—busting barges and derailing the Tokyo Express.

On the far side of Leyte Island the waters are reef filled, the channels shallow and tortuous. The Japanese were using the dangerous waters of the Camotes Sea and Ormoc Bay to land supplies at night behind their lines. A familiar enough situation for the PT sailors, so the skippers took their shallow-draft torpedo boats into Ormoc Bay, looking for trouble.

On the night between November 28th and 29th, Lieut. Roger H. Hallowell took PTs 127, 331, 128, and 191 around the tip of Leyte and headed up the western shore for Ormoc Bay in the first combat patrol of these waters.

PTs 127 and 331 entered the bay while the other two boats patrolled the islands outside. In the light of a tropical moon, the skippers inside saw a subchaser and crept to within 800 yards before the Japanese opened fire. The two boats launched eight torpedoes and a ripple of rockets (enough explosive to tear a battleship in two, much less a little patrol craft). The retiring PT skippers reported the usual loud explosion, indicating a torpedo hit, which virtually all retiring torpedo-boat captains always reported. This time, however, they were right. The Japanese themselves later admitted the loss of the subchaser SC 53.

The two retiring boats, all their torpedoes spent, met the 128 and 191 at the entrance to the bay, and Lieut. Hallowell “transferred his flag” to the 128 to lead the two still-armed boats in a second attack.

All four boats went in, the two boats with spent tubes planning to give gunfire support to the armed duo. All hands searched for the original target, but could not find it—for the good reason that it was on the bottom.

Lieut. Hallowell saw what he thought was a freighter tied to a dock, so the two skippers, ignoring fire from the beach, launched all torpedoes.

Ten days later, when the Army had landed at Ormoc and taken over the harbor, the PTs promptly moved in and discovered that Lieut. Hallowell’s “freighter” was the Japanese PC 105, clearly visible at the dock, sitting on the bottom with a fatal gash in her side.

Lieut. Melvin W. Haines, early on the morning of December 12th, led PTs 492 and 490 in a classic attack on a convoy in Ormoc Bay. The PTs stalked silently to close range, launched torpedoes, and retired zigzagging behind smoke in a maneuver right out of the PT textbook. They were rewarded by a great stab of light behind them. One of the boats, or perhaps both, had hit the destroyer Uzuki, which went up in a great column of orange flame.

This kind of night warfare was only too tediously familiar to PT sailors, but right then the war took a nasty new turn for them—indeed for the whole Pacific Fleet.

Desperate because of the swift deterioration of their position, the Japanese switched from all reasonable kinds of warfare—if there are such—and developed the suicidal kamikaze tactic.

Through the war, Japanese fliers—and Americans, too, for that matter—already hit and doomed, often tried to crash-land on ships under attack, to take the enemy down to death with them.

During the Leyte surface-air battles, however, many of the Japanese were dedicated, with great ceremony, to making deliberate suicide dives into American ships, as a kind of human bomb. The toll was already frightening to American naval men, and threatened to get worse.

In mid-December two kamikaze planes crashed into the 323 in Surigao Strait, and destroyed it utterly so that the PTs crews were served notice that they were not too small a prize to merit attention from the sinister new air fleet.

MacArthur had returned, all right, when he went ashore at Leyte, but it was only a kind of tentative return—a one-foot-in-the-door return. Until he landed on Corregidor in Luzon, he wouldn’t really be back where he started. Luzon was the goal.

Just across the narrow Verde Island Passage from Luzon is the island of Mindoro, and MacArthur’s air commanders sorely coveted that piece of real estate for airstrips so that they could bring Luzon under the gunsights of their fighters before the Luzon landings began.

On December 12th MTB Squadrons Thirteen and Sixteen, plus PTs 227 and 230, left Leyte Gulf in a convoy with the Eighth Army’s Visayan Task Force to invade Mindoro Bay, 300 miles to the northwest. Because of the sharply mounting kamikaze attacks, the Navy did not want to risk a tender in Mindoro waters, so the squadrons, with the help of the ingenious Seabees, planned to set up a base of sorts on an LST.

During the afternoon of December 13th, a kamikaze slipped through the air cover and crashed into the portside of the invasion force flagship, the cruiser Nashville. The pilot carried two bombs, and their explosion touched off five-inch and 40-mm. ammunition in the ready lockers topside. The shattering blast killed 133 officers and men, including both the Army and Navy chiefs of staff and the colonel commanding the bombardment wing. The Nashville had to return to Leyte Gulf.

Later, ten more Japanese planes attacked and one got through to the destroyer Haraden. The explosion killed 14 sailors and the destroyer had to go back to Leyte. The PTs huddled close to the rest of the convoy, to add their batteries to the curtain of fire.

Troops went ashore on Mindoro at 7 A.M. on December 15th, and met little opposition. Half an hour later, PTs were operating in the harbor. The infantry quickly set up a perimeter defense, pushing back the small Japanese garrison to make room for an airfield at San Jose. As they had at Bougainville, American planners wanted only enough room on Mindoro to establish and protect a fighter base. It was not Mindoro but Luzon that was the basic goal.

The Japanese didn’t intend to let the Americans have even that much land, however, without lashing back furiously at the invaders of this island almost within sight of the city of Manila.