Leyte Gulf: Armada in the Pacific by Macintyre Donald

Author:Macintyre, Donald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2025-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

THE BATTLE OFF SAMAR

Since the American invasion force had swarmed ashore on Leyte five days earlier, its air support, both defensive in the form of fighter cover against enemy bomber attacks and offensive in the shape of ground attack operations, had been largely supplied by the force of sixteen escort carriers (CVE) of Task Group 77.4 operating in the Philippine Sea under the command of Rear-Admiral Thomas L Sprague flying his flag in the Sangamon. The air complement of each of these ships was twelve to eighteen Wildcats (a few had Hellcats) and eleven or twelve Avenger torpedo-bomber planes, the latter being employed on anti-submarine patrol duties as well as attack missions. None were trained for night flying operations.

Airfields ashore at Dulag and Tacloban had been captured but by 25th October they were still only fit for use as emergency landing strips.

The Group was divided into three self-contained units: 77.4.1, 77.4.2, 77.4.3, familiarly known as Taffy 1, 2 and 3, respectively, their voice radio callsigns.

Taffy 1, under Thomas Sprague himself, occupying the most southerly operations area of the three — off Mindanao — was composed of four CVE’s. Off the entrance to the Gulf of Leyte was Taffy 2, six CVE’s under Rear-Admiral F B Stump in the Natona Bay, while off the east coast of Samar was Taffy 3, six CVE’s under Rear-Admiral Clifton Sprague with his flag in the Fanshaw Bay, the other five being the St Lo, White Plains, Kalinin Bay, Kitkun Bay (flagship of Rear-Admiral R A Ofstie) and Gambier Bay. Each unit had its screen of three destroyers (DD) and four destroyer-escorts (DE), the former armed with five 5-inch guns and ten torpedoes, the latter with two 5-inch guns and three torpedoes.

Major fleet actions were not normally the concern of CVE’s. Their eighteen knot speed and main gun armament of only one 5-inch disqualified them. The events of 24th October in the Sibuyan Sea and of the following night in the Surigao Strait had been of only indirect interest to them. Except for the strike planes launched at daybreak from Taffy 1 in pursuit of Japanese survivors of the Surigao Strait encounter (planes which were eventually to end the harassed career of the Mogami), and orders from Kinkaid for Taffy 2 to mount a dawn search to the northward which was delegated to the Ommaney Bay, the 25th opened with what had become routine flying operations to provide fighter cover and anti-submarine patrols.

Even the search mission was little less routine than the dawn General Quarters, a customary precaution against being surprised by an enemy at that most dangerous moment of the day. No particular urgency seems to have been attached to the search by the Ommaney Bay and it was not until 0658, nearly half an hour after the sun had risen over a calm sea, lightly ruffled by a northeasterly breeze, with scattered tropical rain squalls sweeping slowly across it, that the last of the ten reconnaissance planes was airborne.

One minute later Clifton Sprague

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