The change of command went smoothly and quite quickly because of the rapid departure of Captain Beck. My executive officer, recently promoted Commander Ward Thompson, had been well prepared to brief me on the operations of the ship. It was a pleasant surprise to find one of my old shipmates from the Oklahoma, Chuck Lewis, who had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander and was the air defense officer. Also I had a marine detachment on board, which was being commanded by a Guadalcanal veteran, Major Alex Johnson. It was a good thing to know at least several of my key officers had prior combat experience. And the major came with an extra bonus. He was an expert in the Japanese language and culture.
Normally, I would have been happy and proud to assume command of a vessel like this. As a career officer, it was a wonderful opportunity to prove myself, but I could not help resenting her somewhat. Finally, I assumed the attitude that it wasn’t the ship itself; it was simply pointed in the wrong direction. I wanted to go home, even for a short time, to my wife and kids. This ship, pointed west toward the Japanese, and standing in Pearl Harbor, where it all began, brought the sting of it to me more than anything else. And I thought to myself it was the Japanese that brought all of this to me, and I hated them even more for it as I looked across the harbor to the dead and rusted hulk of the Oklahoma. The only thing I could do about it was kill all of them as fast as I could in the hope that eventually I would be able to go home.
After a few days of filling the ship to capacity with ammunition, supplies, and fuel, we pulled out and set course, along with the rest of the ships in our task force, for the Philippine islands. The Japanese were about to be run over by an angry Buffalo.
Along the way, I got permission from the admiral to do a kind of mini-shakedown on the Buffalo. How fast would she go from full speed to full stop or from full stop to full speed? How quickly would she turn at different speeds? How far would she roll in sharp turns at different speeds? And for the crew: how quickly could we get to battle stations, and how would they perform when they got there? I would give the orders when the crew least expected it. I needed to see what she and the crew could do.
When people talk of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, they often bring up the special significance of the battleships that were at Pearl Harbor. History often mentions five of the six battleships that participated in the action at Surigao Straight were either damaged or sunk at Pearl, and now those ships had a chance to pay the Japs back in spades. The same meaning applied to me, the commanding officer of the light cruiser Buffalo. And pay them back we did.
We knew they were coming. We knew there would be a big fight there. We didn’t know exactly when, but a large force of the Japs had to come through Surigao Straight if they wanted to disrupt the landings at Leyte Gulf. We had time to set up, so nothing could possibly get through and live to tell about it.
On one end of the narrow straight was the moderate force of Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, pretty much in single file. On the other end was the almost-perfect death trap set by the Seventh Fleet waiting for them: six battleships, nine cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers and several torpedo-equipped PT boat squadrons.
It should have been, and in a lot of ways was, a classic battle-line surface-to-surface engagement, at least as far as the actual naval battle was concerned. But the Japanese had a new trick up their sleeve.
The battle happened on the night of the twenty-fifth of October of ’44. We were part of a large formation of ships in the battle line just aft of the Shropshire and on the side of the battleships closest to the Japanese.
Messages of contacts with the enemy had begun coming in from the patrol boat squadrons earlier in the evening and increased as the night wore on. The PT boats and destroyers continued to do their jobs, harassing the enemy until the enemy got within firing range of the American cruisers and battleships. Then all hell broke loose.
We picked a target in the Japanese formation, using our radar, and I gave the order to commence firing after the obligatory check to make sure my forty-five was ready. At about the same time, the battleships began to fire as well. Flashes of fire lit up the horizon all around us as large shells from the battle wagons whistled in the air directly above our heads and landed on the enemy formation.
They could only fire half as much back at us because they were on the approach and could only use their forward guns, whereas we were almost stationary and could deliver full broadsides from all of our guns.
And it was, for me, an awesome sight to see, remembering a morning several years earlier being in the water of Pearl Harbor, watching five of these very same battleships sinking or in flames around me. And I knew a lot of Japs were dying. I could just feel in my mind their horror as their lives slipped away into the darkness of the night in the waters of Surigao Straight.
It was great, as far as I was concerned, and I reveled in it.
After the attack, the fleet that ambushed the Japanese at Surigao Straight began to break up into smaller units. We still had to be sure the marines of the invasion force were covered, as well as be sure the Japanese didn’t have some other unknown force for us to deal with, but a lot of the smaller ships were sweeping for mines, submarines, and aircraft and picking up survivors of the ships that got sunk.
When you are picking up survivors from an enemy ship, you are basically on an intelligence-gathering mission. Sometimes, you might even get a Japanese captain or admiral; you never know.
The man put in charge of our particular task force, which consisted of two cruisers and three screening destroyers, was Rear Admiral Kriston, who put his flag on the Buffalo.
One of the things nobody expected was what happened the day after the battle when we started picking up the survivors from the ships we sunk.
“Sir,” the major said, “we’ve gotten several out of the water but most are refusing rescue and trying to swim away.”
Just then, there was a small explosion near where the rescue operation was happening. I turned to the bridge phone talker and said, “Report!”
“Repeat your last?” he said into the phone then listened to the answer.
After a few seconds, he turned to me and told me, “Sir, it seems one of the Nips they just pulled out of the water was rigged with a grenade and blew himself up.” There were five men down, not counting the one that just blew himself up. Medics were already on the scene to patch up the injured Japs that were being pulled out of the water, so help for the injured marines was right there.
It seemed like a waste of perfectly good medical supplies to take care of injured Japanese, but orders are orders.
“How badly are they hurt?” I asked, noticing the major’s concerned expression.
“Two marines dead, three injured and being taken to medical,” was the report.