At 1714, 24 October 1944, Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita turned his fleet east and headed toward San Bernardino Strait to resume his mission. He would then pass down the east coast of the island of Samar on his way to Leyte Gulf where U.S. forces had established a beachhead to re-take the Philippine Islands. Japan’s SHO plan already had fallen into disarray. Vice Admiral Ozawa’s carrier force, intended to be detected by the Americans on 23 October to lure the U.S. Third Fleet north and away from the central Philippines, had been discovered only at 1540 the next day; this left over 250 U.S. carrier aircraft free to concentrate on Kurita’s Second Fleet. They sank one of his battleships, Musashi. Several other ships including his flagship Yamato also suffered damage, and the heavy cruiser Myoko was forced to withdraw after a torpedo hit. This, added to the torpedoing of three heavy cruisers on 23 October in Palawan Passage, had reduced his heavy cruiser strength by 40%. To transit San Bernardino Strait his fleet would have to form a single column that would stretch thirteen miles, surely suicidal while under the threat of additional U.S. air attack, so he had turned west at 1600 until the air attacks had ceased.
When his staff informed him that they had not heard from Admiral Toyoda in response to Kurita’s message explaining his temporary withdraw he replied, “That’s okay, let’s go.”[1] This maneuver may have saved his fleet, but it also broke any coordination with Vice Admiral Nishimura’s and Vice Admiral Shima’s task forces attempting to break into Leyte Gulf from the south through Surigao Strait. This coordination was critical for the double penetration strategy to be effective. As the sun set, the men of Kurita’s Second Fleet sailed toward their destiny not knowing what to expect.
On board the New Jersey, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey reviewed the day’s results from his strikes against Kurita’s fleet. He was about to make the most important decision in his career. Three Japanese task forces (identified by the Americans simply as the Southern, Central, and Northern forces) were approaching Leyte Gulf simultaneously. Which of these enemy forces represented the greatest threat to the invasion, and how should he distribute his own forces to stop them? He had issued a preliminary order for concentrating his battleships into a single force, TF 34, capable of meeting Kurita in a gun duel; however, developments led him toward a different plan. In Halsey’s own words, “Although the Center Force [Kurita’s Second Fleet] continued to move forward, the Commander Third Fleet decided that this enemy force must be blindly obeying an Imperial command to do or die, but with battle efficiency greatly impaired by torpedo hits, bomb hits, top side damage, fires, and casualties.
[1] Ito, Masanori. The End of the Japanese Navy, W. W. Norton & Company, 1956, p 132.
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