I should tell you about Operation Victory One, too. I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t witness all of these events directly.
Around the same time that Shikishima Unit was repeatedly sortieing, the Central Force led by Admiral Kurita, on its way to Leyte, came under heavy fire from carrier-based enemy aircraft in the Sibuyan Sea. The Americans attacked in waves that resulted in damage to many ships, but they mostly focused on the battleship Musashi. The Musashi, sister ship to the famous Yamato, was the world’s largest battleship and widely considered to be unsinkable. But after repeated attacks from hundreds of American aircraft, even the great Musashi was ready to rest in peace.
Meanwhile, the Northern Force comprised of aircraft carriers led by Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa headed south towards Leyte in order to redirect the American mobile task force’s attacks away from Kurita Fleet. Our carriers sent out a deluge of wireless messages to draw the enemy’s attention and launched many recon planes.
Ozawa Fleet finally located its counterpart and sent out an attack force. It was not a “special” attack per se, but in essence very similar, as they would not be able to return. The carriers were lures, destined to be sunk, and the planes would be bereft of home ships. The pilots were instructed to go to various bases located in the Philippines if returning to the carriers proved too difficult in the aftermath of the attack, but this was a tall order for young aircrew unused to navigating over the vast Pacific. Besides, their surviving an onslaught of hostile interceptors from the mighty American carrier fleet was highly unlikely.
Indeed, most of the attack force was shot down by enemy fighters.
Yet Fleet Commander Ozawa’s desperate operation accomplished its objective. The American carriers led by Halsey discovered Ozawa Fleet and mistook it for the main threat.
At that point, Kurita Fleet had made a temporary about-face, convincing Halsey that severe losses had forced it to retreat. Halsey chose not to pursue and instead headed in full force towards Ozawa Fleet.
Judging that it had been spotted by Halsey, Ozawa Fleet promptly turned north to lure Halsey away. Intent on striking the Japanese Mobile Force, Halsey gave chase.
He made the obvious choice. Ever since Pearl Harbor, the key players of most battles on the Pacific were aircraft carriers. In addition, Ozawa Fleet had the Zuikaku, the Combined Fleet’s largest carrier. After achieving great military gains in the attack on Pearl Harbor, she had gone on to sink two U.S. carriers. To the Americans, the Zuikaku was a fearsome ship that had tormented them for the past three years.
I’ve heard that the American task force’s assault was ferocious. Most of Ozawa Fleet went down, barely able to put up a fight. That storied ship in service since Pearl Harbor, until then the Combined Fleet’s most blessed in battle, the Zuikaku, also sank at last, off Cape Engaño.
Yet Fleet Commander Ozawa’s grand, daredevil operation was a success. Halsey was wholly taken in by the ploy and lured away, leaving the seas near Leyte wide open.
That is to say, freed from enemy aerial attacks, Kurita Fleet had turned back towards Leyte. Kurita Fleet had lost some ships, including the Musashi, to aerial and submarine attacks, and those that remained were damaged as well, but the world’s most powerful ship, the Yamato, was still going strong, and a good number of other ships were still battle-worthy, too.
The American forces there, which consisted of six small escort carriers and seven destroyers, were thoroughly shocked when a Japanese fleet appeared off the coast of Samar Island. Throwing up a smokescreen, the destroyers launching torpedoes, they desperately tried to get away. Ozawa Fleet had managed to lure away the trusty Mobile Task Force, and the Americans who remained were prepared for utter annihilation, they say.
At last, the Japanese Navy’s desperate plan to offer up flesh in order to sunder the enemy’s bones bore fruit…
But then a miracle occurred for the Americans. Kurita Fleet abruptly reversed course.
This is the infamous incident that went down in history as “Kurita Fleet’s mysterious about-face.”
What on earth made Kurita Fleet reverse course? Various theories were postulated in later years, but the fleet commander himself passed away after the war without ever giving one word of explanation or justification.
What we do know is that he was unaware of the fact that Ozawa Fleet had successfully lured Halsey’s task force far to the north of the Philippines. Perhaps the intensity of the aerial attacks made him think that the Americans were close at hand. Perhaps he assumed that if he were to charge into the Gulf of Leyte, his entire fleet would be destroyed.
There are no “ifs” in history. But it is pretty certain that if Kurita Fleet had pressed on, he could have wiped out the Americans’ totally naked and defenseless transport convoy. There’s no doubt their invasion of the Philippines would have suffered a massive setback. Heavy losses in both personnel and materiel might have forced them to spend more than a year restructuring their operation. At the very least, it would have thwarted the deaths of tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers in the following land battle on Leyte.
Kurita Fleet’s withdrawal, however, wasted our final chance to deal a blow against the American forces. Ozawa Fleet’s officers and sailors had died in vain. The Musashi, which had valiantly borne the brunt of the assault from U.S. attack aircraft, had sunk in Surigao Strait for nothing.
The Shikishima Unit’s special attack came on the day after Kurita Fleet reversed course. But there was no chance for victory by then.
At first, the special attacks were meant to be specific to Operation Victory One at Leyte. In order to support Kurita Fleet’s advance into the gulf, pilots would daringly hurl themselves at American aircraft carriers’ flight decks, render them inoperable, and prevent the enemy from launching attack planes—as a tactic exclusive to Leyte.
Yet even after Kurita Fleet’s retreat and the failure of Operation Victory One, the special attacks didn’t end.
They assumed a life of their own. Had our commanders gone insane?
Day after day special attack units took off from Mabalacat. For some reason or other, I was never called up to become a kamikaze and instead tasked as part of their fighter escort. Perhaps it was because I was one of the precious few veteran pilots, but even this was very dangerous. Baptized by the Japanese military’s lethal tactic, the Americans cranked up their interception posture to frightening levels. There was no way an escort of a few fighters could fend off dozens of high-performance enemy planes lying in wait to pick off the kamikazes. Many of us died defending the kamikaze units. Even the veteran pilot Ensign Yoshimi Minami, who had served since the Sino-Japanese War, failed to return from one such mission.
Ensign Minami was a pilot with a long military career who had fought in many naval battles since the attack on Pearl Harbor. You could say he was the crown jewel of our navy’s air corps. He climbed the ranks from NCO and was a wonderful human being, too. Kind and soft-spoken, he’d taught me the ropes in Shanghai. He’d been assigned to a carrier at Leyte Gulf, but having lost his mothership and after a hairbreadth escape, he made it back to the Philippines. From there his luck ran out, though, and he died escorting a kamikaze unit.