Down to the Sea (49 page)

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The Battle of Leyte Gulf consisted of four sea battles fought between October 23 and 26, 1944: the Battle of Sibuyan Sea, the Battle of Surigao Strait, the Battle of Cape Engano, and the Battle of Samar. In all, the Japanese lost at Leyte four aircraft carriers, three battleships, ten cruisers, nine destroyers, and more than 10,000 men.

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In 1943, Lieutenant ( j.g.) John F. Kennedy stood at the rail of a ship, preparing to disembark in the Solomon Islands after a month at sea. On orders from Halsey, a large sign had been erected on a hillside near the entrance to Purvis Bay. Kennedy, like every other newcomer to the theater of operations, reflected on its bellicose welcoming message: “Kill Japs! Kill Japs! Kill more Japs! If you do your job well, you will help to kill the little yellow bastards. Halsey.”

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Another Third Fleet officer who thought they were chasing decoys was Captain Arleigh Burke, then chief of staff to one of Halsey's carrier task force commanders, Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. Burke, the former Little Beavers squadron leader, tried convincing Mitscher that since the Japanese could “not bomb the Third Fleet out of the way,” they might well be trying to “bait” a trap to “draw it away.” Mitscher thought Burke might be right, but concluded there was “nothing worse than having a subordinate butt in and criticize a plan that was being executed,” and decided not “to bother” Halsey on his flagship. “He's busy enough. He's got a lot of things on his mind.”

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Nimitz's short message was not solely informational in nature. Although “strongly opposed to interfering with a commander at the scene of action,” Nimitz sent the message only after it became clear that Halsey's force was “nowhere near” San Bernardino Strait. He meant the message “as a nudge” to Halsey to make the “wisest use” of his firepower. In such “extraordinary circumstances,” Nimitz felt justified in “interfering with the man on the scene.”

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Four of the six U.S. ships sunk at the Battle of Leyte Gulf were lost as a result of Halsey “leaving the straight unguarded.” Those ships were the escort carrier
Gambier Bay
(CVE-73), the
Fletcher
-class destroyers
Johnston
(DD-557) and
Hoel
(DD-533), and the destroyer escort
Samuel B. Roberts
(DE-413). American casualties at Leyte totaled 2,800 killed, wounded, or missing. Halsey's failure to block the San Bernardino Strait also permitted the Japanese force that had sailed through the unguarded strait to escape by the same route.

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In the days prior to the landings at Mindoro, MacArthur's invasion convoy was attacked by numerous Japanese suicide planes from bases on Formosa and south of Mindoro. The cruiser
Nashville
was hit, killing 133 men and injuring 190, and a destroyer was severely damaged, causing both ships to return to Leyte. After the assault troops landed on the beach, a handful of kamikazes destroyed two tank-landing ships. What the toll in casualties and ships would have been had the hundreds of enemy planes on Luzon not been covered by “a huge aerial umbrella” unfolded by the Third Fleet is “impossible to define,” but military historians agree it would have been much higher.

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The Army Air Corps weather facility at Saipan soon became the first to assign women's names to typhoons. Bryson and his fellow meteorologists had “all read” the 1941 novel
Storm,
by George Rippey Stewart, about a violent storm affectionately known as Maria that sweeps through California and changes the lives of many in its path. They eventually began naming the storms after their wives and girlfriends. Bryson irritated his wife, Frannie, “to no end” when he named a typhoon for her that soon “fizzled out.” From 1950 to 1952, typhoons were identified by the phonetic alphabet (Able being the first storm of the season, Baker the second, etc.). In 1953, the U.S. Weather Bureau switched to women's names; since 1979, a list that also includes men's names has been used.

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According to later testimony by Captain Wilbur M. Lockhart, the senior aerology officer of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in “hindsight” this was a crucial moment and key mistake. Had the Third Fleet turned to the south or southwest at this time and proceeded at “10 knots or more,” the assembled ships would have been “clear of the high winds” and the storm center would have been “at least 100 miles to the north” by the following morning (December 18, 1944). However, it was not the only ill-advised course change the fleet would make over the next eighteen hours.

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One aerologist who took part in the radio conference and did forecast an approaching typhoon was Lieutenant Daniel F. Rex, aboard the carrier
Horne
t (CV-12). So certain was Rex that he joined aerologists from other carriers in sending a direct message to Halsey soon after the conference. The weathermen warned if the fleet did not clear the area immediately, they would rendezvous “in about eight hours” with a typhoon. After the war, Rex became a prominent meteorologist—studying under the renowned Carl-Gustav Rossby at the University of Stockholm, where he received a Ph.D.—and serving as commander of the Naval Weather Research Facility prior to his retirement from the Navy in 1962 as a captain. Halsey was inclined “not to believe aerologists,” Rex later explained.

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In all likelihood, this ship-to-ship Morse code message was the departing
Dewey
signaling
Tabberer.

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Nimitz received his fifth star on December 19, one day after the typhoon struck the Third Fleet. Promoted days ahead of him were Admirals William D. Leahy (December 15), President Roosevelt's senior military advisor and in effect the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ernest King (December 17), the chief of naval operations.

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The battle near Savo Island was fought on August 8 and 9, 1942. A Japanese task force surprised and routed a larger Allied naval force, sinking three U.S. cruisers and one Australian cruiser while incurring only moderate damage to three ships. A total of 1,077 Allied seamen were killed, with Japanese losses reported as 58 killed.

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Carney, a future four-star admiral and chief of naval operations (1953–55), had more to say about the typhoon years later in his oral history. “MacArthur was counting on Halsey's carrier air support…. Halsey could have deserted MacArthur and we could have headed south for a hundred miles or so. Then we'd have bypassed [the typhoon]. But Halsey felt that we had to stay until the last minute. This was his decision and nobody was disposed to argue with it. So the enemy in this case was the typhoon, and it inflicted serious damage on us. It was a terrible tragedy.”

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A total of 146 Third Fleet aircraft were lost or damaged beyond repair by the typhoon.

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The storm damage to
Dewey
, which Mercer had been concerned about aggravating in pounding seas when he directed that the destroyer not assist
Tabberer
in search operations, took six weeks to repair. With no major structural or hull damage,
Dewey
's repairs were completed alongside a tender at Ulithi. The “most critical” deficiency was the construction of a new forward stack. Repairs were also made to the 5-inch gun director, internal communications circuits, steering control, and radar. Ironically, the damage to
Tabberer
proved more extensive, requiring the destroyer escort's return to the fleet repair facilities at Pearl Harbor.

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Tabberer
officer Howard Korth, winner of the Navy–Marine Corps Medal for Heroism for his own participation in the rescue operations, wrote in his diary about a December 29 press conference with war correspondents at which Preston Mercer “held the limelight describing the activities of
Dewey
and how he saved her. She is the ship that ran off and left us all alone searching for survivors—she doesn't rate very high in our book nor does Capt. Mercer after yesterday.”

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Sixty-two
Hull
crew members survived the typhoon. In addition to the forty-one men picked up by
Tabberer
and the thirteen men rescued by
Brown,
four other
Hull
survivors were pulled from the water by the destroyer escort
Robert E. Keller
(DE-419), three by the destroyer
Knapp
(DD-653), and one by the destroyer
Cogswell
(DD-651).

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Archival records searched for the period between World War I and World War II, and in the years thereafter, show no instance of a court-martial for mutiny resulting from the relief of a Navy captain at sea. After the publication of the novel
The Caine Mutiny
(1951), concerning the court-martial of an executive officer who relieved an incompetent destroyer captain during a typhoon in order to save the ship, Halsey was asked by a correspondent how he would have handled such an incident had it happened under his command. “I would have sent a senior officer with long destroyer experience over to investigate. I would have hoped, and feel quite confident, I could have settled the question very quickly.” Presumably, Halsey was suggesting handling such an instance without filing charges.

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Recently, Keith N. Abbott, of Whittier, California, has represented himself as a seventh
Monaghan
survivor, claiming in a 2007 nonfiction book,
Halsey's Typhoon
, that he had “never told a soul, not even his spouse,” until 2004, when he and his wife were on a South Pacific cruise with other World War II veterans. Abbott, a radar repair expert in the Navy, claimed to have been assigned to
Monaghan
for temporary duty and to have been on the bridge of the destroyer when it sank during the typhoon. Abbott's military personnel records, however, tell a different story. The Utah native served temporary duty on
Monaghan
from May 19 to August 8, 1944, at which time he was transferred off
Monaghan
at Pearl Harbor to attend Radar Material School. Following completion of the specialty school, Abbott returned to his original assignment on the destroyer escort
Emery
(DE-28), boarding her on September 18, 1944, at Purvis Bay. He remained on
Emery
through December 1944. On December 18, 1944,
Emery,
with Keith Abbott aboard, according to crew muster rolls, was anchored at Saipan, some 1,200 miles east of the typhoon that sank
Monaghan
. “There's only ever been six of us,” says Evan Fenn, eighty-four, of Saint David, Arizona, today the sole living survivor of
Monaghan
.

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Of the twenty-four
Spence
survivors, fourteen men were picked up by
Tabberer,
nine men by
Swearer,
and one man by the destroyer
Gatlin
(DD-671).

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U.S. Army Air Corps Captain Reid Bryson, the meteorologist stationed on Saipan who sent the teletyped message on the morning of December 17 to the local Navy weather office warning of a typhoon on a track toward the Third Fleet and was dismissed with the reply, “We don't believe you,” heard “six or seven years after the war” from the Navy radioman who received his message. By then teaching meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, Bryson was in his office when the phone rang. The voice on the other end asked, “Are you the Bryson who was on Saipan in 1944?” Yes, said Bryson. “Did you send a message to the Fleet Weather Central [on Saipan] about a typhoon?” Yes again. “Well, I was the Navy radio operator who received your message, and I passed it on. I just wanted you to know that it didn't stop with me.” Reports Bryson, today emeritus professor of meteorology, geology, and environmental studies at Wisconsin: “All those years later, and it was still on his conscience that something could have been done about those dead seamen and was not. And it is still on mine, too. Somehow we could not get across that the presence of the typhoon was not a guess. It was not some vague anticipation of the future. It was a scientific observation on the spot. Ignoring science cost a lot of American lives.”