The Battle For Leyte Gulf by C. Vann Woodward

Author:C. Vann Woodward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

IV

THE BATTLE OFF CAPE ENGAÑO

Vice Admiral Ozawa, commander of the Japanese Northern Force of carriers, entered the Battle for Leyte Gulf expecting, he said, the “complete destruction” of his fleet. In that expectation he was not to be disappointed, at least in so far as his carriers were concerned. His attitude, however, was dictated neither by the Shinto Code nor by Oriental fatalism, but by a deliberate plan. Under interrogation in Tokyo after the war, Ozawa fully confirmed the purpose of his mission as it was indicated in the plans for the Sho Operation. When asked to characterize the primary purpose of his mission, the admiral replied without hesitation:

“A decoy, that was our first primary mission, to act as a decoy. My fleet could not very well give direct protection to Kurita’s force because we were very weak, so I tried to attack as many American carriers as possible, and to be the decoy or target for your attack. I tried to let Kurita’s fleet have little attack from you. The main mission was all sacrifice. An attack with a very weak force of planes comes under the heading of sacrifice of planes and ships.” Ozawa gave Admiral Toyoda credit for originating this plan.

Deliberate sacrifice of the remaining Japanese naval air power, while undoubtedly a desperate measure, was not so desperate and revolutionary as it might at first appear. The sacrifice had, in effect, already been made by Toyoda when he stripped Ozawa’s carriers of more than half their planes for the defense of Formosa. Already seriously depleted and unable to rebuild their strength in time for the defense of the Philippines, the Japanese carrier air groups were ordered to give up 150 of their planes. For the Sho Operation the plan was to rely mainly upon land-based air power. Ozawa entered the action with only 110 planes (only twenty more planes than the normal complement of one of our CV’s), none at all for the flight decks of the converted battleships and less than thirty apiece for the carriers; about eighty of the 110 planes were fighters, the remaining ones bombers and torpedo planes. The Japanese pilots are reported to have had only eighty hours of flight experience. Since it had been decided to commit the remaining carriers in this action anyway, it is difficult to see how they could have been employed more effectively than they were.

The fleet under the command of Admiral Ozawa, identified by the Japanese as the “Main Body” and referred to here as the Northern Force, was composed of one large and three light carriers, two converted battleship-carriers, three light cruisers, and ten destroyers, six of them of the heavy Terutsuki class. These units were organized as follows:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.