I guess I never had any real intent to touch on the 11th simply because I didn't see much impact of the change. I will give it some thought based on your suggestion though.
marathag
Banned
Add these
available 1944, after USN tests of of Hypergolic liquid fuels was just too dangerous, so went with solid fuel, pretty much potassium perchlorate mixed with asphalt, with the high tech name of GALCIT58
Put a couple on a P-38
Using MacArthur as a solution is a bit like using malaria as a cure for plague. I don't suppose TTL Halsey could have a relapse of whatever sidelined him at Midway? (Yeah, that's a bit handwavy...)RATO's not a bad idea. I have a feeling it wouldn't be needed. (After all, if you can fly off a loaded B-25...) IMO, the problem at launch is wingspan. The bigger problem is recovery, & I doubt landing a P-38 even on a fleet carrier would pass the "Are you nuts?" test.
It does occur to me, with enough range, they might recover to Okinawa...& since they'd only need to carry a single VB-6 each, they might be able to lift enough fuel.That calls for champagne! And cake.
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At this point in the war (Late 1944) and beyond there is no longer a reason to consider launching AAF planes from An aircraft carrier for a combat mission. A carrier air wing of this period is more than capable of carrying out a precision strike. The air wings were also getting better. F4U Corsairs were starting to operate off carrier decks. Corsairs were damn good Fighter-bombers.
Why waste time loading up P-38s on an Essex class carrier when you can just send the Essex carrier with it’s air group already loaded? The best thing is your planes can return to the ship.
If you want you don’t even have to send a big deck. The Navy can send a bunch of escort carriers loaded with Marine aircraft like the proposed Project Danny in the ETO.
Admiral Byrd could take a F-5 recon bird with him to Antarctica postwar. The Navy launched C-47s from the deck of USS Philippine Sea in 1947 (with RATO) so a P-38 is not impossible.
Why waste time loading up P-38s on an Essex class carrier when you can just send the Essex carrier with it’s air group already loaded? The best thing is your planes can return to the ship.
If you want you don’t even have to send a big deck. The Navy can send a bunch of escort carriers loaded with Marine aircraft like the proposed Project Danny in the ETO.
Admiral Byrd could take a F-5 recon bird with him to Antarctica postwar. The Navy launched C-47s from the deck of USS Philippine Sea in 1947 (with RATO) so a P-38 is not impossible.
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Hey everyone!
Sorry for the long, unannounced hiatus--the holiday season was upon us and I had little time or energy to get the second half of Leyte completed and posted. Hopefully I can get it up for you within the next 10 days or so. After that, we'll revisit Europe, then likely jump into early 1945 with some testing and development.
Cheers, as always, and thanks for your patience with my ever slow pace.
E
Sorry for the long, unannounced hiatus--the holiday season was upon us and I had little time or energy to get the second half of Leyte completed and posted. Hopefully I can get it up for you within the next 10 days or so. After that, we'll revisit Europe, then likely jump into early 1945 with some testing and development.
Cheers, as always, and thanks for your patience with my ever slow pace.
E
What was the slogan? "We'll make no wine before its time"? The best stuff needs aging. So be it.
Good news, everybody!
The second part Leyte is 6600 words in and coming along nicely. I am sorry I wasn't able to fulfill the promise of getting it in "10 days" 54 days ago, but I am re-energized this week and hope to have something for you all soon.
Incidentally, the length of the piece means that it may end up being three parts instead of two, after all.
The second part Leyte is 6600 words in and coming along nicely. I am sorry I wasn't able to fulfill the promise of getting it in "10 days" 54 days ago, but I am re-energized this week and hope to have something for you all soon.
Incidentally, the length of the piece means that it may end up being three parts instead of two, after all.
Ch.38(b) - Leyte of the Night (24-25 Oct 1944)
24 October 1944
Commander THIRD Fleet
BB-62 New Jersey, BATDIV 7, TG 38.2
East of Luzon, Philippines
1640
New Jersey’s CIC had been abuzz all day. At 0810 search planes from Bunker Hill discovered two groups of Japanese warships transiting into the Sibuyan Sea and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey had immediately issues urgent orders to commence the attack. From then until about 1530 he had been directing a series of attacks against this group and another, smaller group, to the South discovered by Army P-38 southwest of Negros.
As the day wore on the picture of the enemy disposition started to come together: a fleet of two small groups in the Sulu Sea, reported to be older vessels and likely including Troop transports, were making steady progress toward the Bohol Sea; while a second fleet of two larger groups were in the Sibuyan Sea represented the bulk of Japanese surface power. What none of the aerial observations reported, however, were any Aircraft Carriers.
The last intelligence was that they were still in Imperial waters and none of the submarine pickets had reported their transit from Japan but given the strength represented in the two fleets already heading to Leyte Halsey knew the Carriers must be on their way as well.
Halsey wanted those Carriers.
Spruance missed an opportunity in June to put the Japanese carriers on the bottom, once and for all, and it was an opportunity Halsey would not pass up again. With the power arrayed in the three Task Groups still with him in Task Force 38—after sending away Vice Admiral McCain’s mighty TG 38.1 for refueling early in the day—he could crush all remaining Japanese Naval air opposition and own the waters of the Pacific from the Aleutians to New Zealand.
Even weakened by the absence of McCain’s three Fleet Carriers—Hornet, Wasp, and Hancock—and two escort carriers—Monterey and Cowpens—he had at his disposal nearly 400 Hellcats, 160 Helldivers, and 150 Avengers, plus a Radar equipped Night Air Group aboard Independence. This had been reduced by some losses through the day during the attacks on the Japanese fleet in the Sibuyan Sea and even more so by news of heavy damage to the Princeton at 0940.
The hits to Princeton had been devastating. Rear Admiral Sherman’s TG 38.3 had been delayed through most of the day dealing with aircraft launch and recovery and in attempts to save Princeton, leaving his Task Group unable to concentrate with TG 38.2 and 38.4 so far. The worst news had reached Halsey aboard New Jersey just an hour ago that Princeton had exploded, badly damaging Birmingham and causing additional damage to Gatling, Morrison, and Irwin helping from 38.4.
The operational loss of Princeton also cost his its Air Group of 25 Hellcats and 9 Avengers.
The news of the attacks on the main Japanese force, however, were resoundingly good. Returning pilots reported multiple torpedo and bomb hits on many of the Cruisers and Battleships, resulting in heavy damage to them with many of them left burning. Additionally, there were reports of at least one Destroyer possibly sinking and four or five having been torpedoed.
Just prior to the last attack taking place, at 1512, he had issued orders for a contingency plan should this force press on to San Bernardino Strait:
He was not yet willing to commit to that particular battle plan, at least not until he knew for certain that western force was indeed the enemy’s main effort. To know that, he had to know for certain whether the Jap Carriers were well clear of the area. Suspecting the enemy battlewagons were just diversions, he had ordered long-range patrols to north, hoping to confirm his view of the Japanese strategy and catch them by surprise.
At 1545 he had been handed a written intercept from one of the long-range patrols that they had spotted a Japanese fleet of three Battleships or Heavy Cruisers, three other Cruisers, and six Destroyers at 18-10’N 125-30E heading southwest at 15 knots. This was soon followed by a report at 1600 of two lone destroys about 75 nautical miles west-northwest of these. Knowing that these were likely a screen for the carriers, he moved over to the radio operators’ station in the CIC and switched on the speaker to listen.
So it was, just as he had monitored the VHF traffic in the morning during the first patrols, Admiral Halsey was once again actively listening in on the radio, waiting for some message from the northern patrol when the contact report came through.
“BLUE FIN—BLUE FIN, VICTOR Four. Positive SHARK Eighteen Twenty-Five North by One-Twenty-Five Twenty-Eight East. Course two-ten at fifteen. REPEAT—SHARK Eighteen Twenty-Five North by One-Twenty-Five Twenty-Eight East, two-ten at fifteen.”
“COPY, VICTOR Four. SHARK Eighteen Twenty-Five North by One-Twenty-Five Twenty-Eight East, Course Two-Ten at Fifteen. Can you identify?”
“ROGER, BLUE FIN. Three Charlie-Vic, three—correction—four Charlie-Love, and three Dogs. VICTOR Four.”
Halsey smiled. We got ‘em!
“ROGER, VICTOR Four.”
Halsey immediately went into action. First, he stepped to the right of the Radio Station to see them add the contact location to the VG plotting table. Seeing it on the map, he noted it was about 130 nautical miles east of Cape Engaño, only 300 miles north of his current position. Supposing the two destroyers were an anti-submarine screen on the Japanese Fleet’s flank, that left the main force composed to two groups—just like the Southern and Western Forces. Seeing all of the Japanese fleets on the map, he ordered them re-designated: those in the Sulu and Bohol Seas as Southern Force, those in the Sibuyan Sea as Center Force, and those just discovered with the Carriers as Northern Force.
If his aviators’ reports were correct, and he had no reason to doubt them, the Northern Force was at least three Fleet Carriers, three or four Battleships or Heavy Cruisers, seven or eight Light Cruisers, and nine Destroyers. That could be as many 24 enemy ships but it was too early to call that conclusively.
His next order of business was to get the Fighter Director to vector a few more search planes to the area to get confirmation and amplifying reports on the enemy disposition. If it was as big as the first reports made it sound he would need every ship he has available to engage with them.
The CIC Evaluator, the Officer in Charge of the Combat Information Center and his direct liaison to the room, gained Halsey’s attention.
“Admiral, Sir. A message just came over the I-Cas from Leyte.”
Halsey took the slip of paper from the man’s hand and unfolded it to read the teletype:
“Damn the Army!” Halsey raged. Leave it to the Army to completely mis-identify enemy ships and have a complete disregard for what a damaged vessel actually looks like. What frustrated him the most was that the recovery of the last strike aircraft was just completing, leaving him with nothing beyond the initial Flash Reports to go off of. Until their pilots and crew are debriefed this message from Army pilots exhausted by a 700 nautical mile flight from Morotai would be the best information he has.
“Sir?”
With Sherman’s group still running CAP to the west after fighting off planes from Luzon much of the day and Borgan’s group running long-range patrol to the North, that left only Davison’s CTG 38.4 Air Groups available. The trouble is that both Enterprise and Franklin were those involved in the last attack and would have full flight decks.
“What Air Groups have search planes ready?”
“Belleau Wood should be ready.” The man knew to keep it short when dealing with the inimitable fighting Admiral.
“Have her launch a patrol to these coordinates, immediately,” he handed the Commander the message, “I don’t want any ordnance on those planes and I want them back before dark. They are to search and report ONLY. I’m not wasting any more bombs on a diversionary force if I don’t have to, understood?”
“Aye-aye, Sir.”
With nothing else to do but wait for more intelligence from the air, he now had to face the unpleasantness of doing what must be done to insure his three Task Groups can properly consolidate—Sherman’s TG 38.3 was still too isolated to the northeast.
He wrote up the order to abandon Princeton and sink her so that the Group can make all speed to join 38.2 and 38.4.
1920
Continued patrol of the Southern Force by the Seventh Fleet confirmed they were transiting the Bohol Sea toward Surigao Strait and were expected to sortie the strait at some point in the night. Halsey would leave them to the Seventh Fleet. He could not be bothered to deal with antique battlewagons and transports when the cream of the Japanese carrier force was within spitting distance.
The amplifying reports from subsequent patrols of the Northern Force were able to get Halsey a clearer picture of its make-up. With the mixed damaged reports coming in on the Center Force he had been forced to station more aircraft over the two groups of the Northern Force long enough to get fully accurate counts of the ships within them to facilitate a decision. The most accurate, taken from two sources which spent nearly 45 minutes surveying the enemy were:
The trouble was, very little of that reported damage was supported by the HOBO report, which claimed only two ships were showing signs of damage, 1 BB and 1 CA or CL. Halsey had hoped the final patrol by Belleau Wood would settle the issue but it only left more questions: those aircraft had just recently sent over their full report which claimed the Japanese Fleet of 3 BB, 6 CA, 4 CL, and 12 DD had turned back toward Masbate Island at a steady 15 knots and in good order with no sign of damaged or sinking ships beyond some trailing oil.
Independence was already prepping her VF(N) squadron of Radar carrying Hellcats to continue tracking the forces in the darkness but Halsey knew any decision on how to proceed would need to be made soon.
If the latest report were correct, Halsey wondered if there was another Force of Jap ships in the Sibuyan Sea—that the attacks earlier in the day had concentrated on one group and the Army and Belleau Wood planes had been tracking a second (or third) group. The alternative was that they were seeing the same force which his planes had completely mauled but that they had affected temporary repairs sufficient to carry on their mission. Given the reported presence of not one but two Yamatos in the forces, he was prone to believe the latter situation was the correct one but the reported speed and disposition of the Force gave him some concern as to its condition.
Having made the judgement that Center Force was indeed only the single fleet and had been damaged, he now could see the full picture of the Japanese plan.
Three fleets were coming from three different directions, all heading deliberately and steadily to an undetermined point. Their courses and speeds indicated they were attempting to rendezvous somewhere in the vicinity of the American landing forces and supply ships in or near Leyte Gulf sometime during the early morning of the 25th. The makeup of the fleets suggested that the Center Force was a decoy fleet intended to tie Halsey’s Battle Line and Carriers down so that the main power of their attack, in the carriers, could surprise him when his Air Groups were busy with the Battleships. Meanwhile, the Southern Force would sneak through the Surigao Strait to his south and land reinforcements near the American beachhead and strike their flank to contain them.
With Oldendorf already preparing to stop the Southern Force, that left Halsey his three Task Groups to deal with the other two Japanese Forces.
He considered there to be three options:
Form TF 34 and leave them to intercept Center Force as it comes through San Bernardino Strait and send his CTGs to deal with the Northern Force
Remain with all of his forces where he was and intercept one or both enemy Forces as they move toward Leyte Gulf; or,
He could move with his entire force to intercept the Northern Force and leave the Center Force for the 7th to deal with, at least long enough for him to finish off the Japanese Carriers.
He looked to his Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Mick Carney, “what do you think, Mick?”
“Bill, you’re not going to get another chance at those carriers.”
Halsey considered it, and grunted. “What of their battle line in the Sibuyan?”
“Well,” Carney paused, “our own pilots say they mauled the living hell outta’ them. I don’t think the Army is in any place to question that. Even if they are still at eighty percent effectiveness, we have to consider that the Northern Force is untouched and still one-hundred percent.”
The discussion continued, with Carney echoing Halsey’s own thoughts on the matter and encouraging a move to attack the Carrier force as soon as possible.
The option of dividing his forces and leaving Lee behind with the Battle Line was quickly nixed. If they did that, Lee’s battleships would be without any air support and would be within range of the same land-based attackers that had hit Sherman’s group earlier.
That left the other two: wait for the enemy to come to him, or hunt down the carriers. Both Carney and Halsey himself thought the former option would be equivalent to surrendering the initiative to the enemy and could potentially leave Third Fleet fighting on two fronts. The decision, then, was plain—leave the battleships where they are amongst Task Force 38 and take the entire fleet north to catch the Northern Force at dawn.
Within an hour Halsey sent notice to Nimitz at CINCPAC in Hawai’i:
Of course, what Halsey did not know was that Nimitz and Kinkaid both thought Task Force 34 was already formed and waiting at the exit of San Bernardino.
25 October 1944
421 Night Fighter Squadron, V FC, 5 AF, USFEAF
Visayan Islands, Philippines
0030
Captain John L. Wright, Jr. was getting used to the new airplane. He had been certified in P-61s back in the States and came with the first batch of them to the 421st Night Fighter Squadron this past summer. He had flown night patrols with a Radar Operator and sometimes a Gunner over the past few months but had recently been certified to fly the P-38L all alone.
The P-38L was a modified single-seat P-38H fitted with a Navy AN/APS-6 Radar pod under the nose. The small 3 inch cathode ray tube indicator unit was mounted directly below the gunsight at the top of the instrument panel in its own little box bolted on to the dash. The main control box was mounted on top of the left bulkhead above the external stores control unit and just aft of the throttles. The Auxiliary control unit, with the switch to control whether the radar was in SEARCH or GUN AIM mode and a gain to suppress reflectivity off the water on the scope, was mounted on the yoke’s lower left arm.
Having been trained on the larger SCR-720A in the P-61, he was already familiar with the basics of Radar operation and the move to the AN/APS-6 was not overly difficult. What was daunting was managing the airplane while continuing the monitor the radar scope at the same time. Wright heard rumors that a two-seat P-38 with the SCR-720A was on its way but the 421st certainly had not received any yet.
The APS-6 radar itself was a fine unit and if asked he would be hard pressed to make a choice between it and the 720A. The 720A, with its longer wavelength, had the advantage of a likewise longer search range and—oddly—also a shorter minimum range in Gun Aim mode, 100 yards vs the 120 yard minimum of the APS-6. The range was likewise better for aircraft detection, with the 720A having a maximum range of up to 100 miles and was capable of positively identifying a lone bomber as far as 17,000 yards and a fighter at half that; whereas the APS-6 was limited to 65 miles and could only identify bombers at 10,000 yards and fighters at 8,000.
He also liked that the 720A rotated a full 360 degrees, although the airplane itself produced a shadow to the rear, giving it an effective 180° forward search sector. The APS-6 could only oscillate 60 degrees in any direction, scanning a spiral 120° cone.
That is where one of the biggest differences between the two became apparent and it reflected their branch of origin. The 720A was an Army Air Force radar, designed from the outset for scanning the sky for aircraft. This gave it a much better ability in that role verses the APS-6 which was designed for the Navy to accommodate both Sky and Surface search. The difference was not just in range but in elevation: the 720A could only scan a relatively narrow vertical line with four preset sectors: 0° to 0°, -5° to +5°, +5° to +20°, or +20° to +50° while the APS-6 was always scanning its 120° cone of 60° left, right, up, and down, which is why they needed the Sea Suppress gain control for the scope. Without it, or with the Sea Suppress turned down, the scope was filled with a necklace pattern of scraggly lines from where the radar was scattering off the water.
What Wright liked about the APS-6 was two-fold: simplicity and accuracy.
Although it would have been easier to have a dedicated Radar Operator to monitor the scope during search patterns, the APS-6 was simple enough and with an intuitive display which enabled him to keep an eye on it without having to constantly interpret arcane signal artifacts. The 720A used two different scopes—three if he were to include the Aim scope he used as a pilot—for the Operator to use, one for azimuth, one for range, and the pilot’s for Gun Aiming. The APS-6 used a single three-inch scope which combined all of the functions in an easy display.
When in Search mode, the scope displayed any returns as blips at the detected heading and range from Wright’s plane, with the bottom being 0 range and the top being the maximum set search range: 1, 5, 25, or 65 miles. Actual distance was estimated as a fraction of the selected scale on the screen and actual heading by a fraction distance from a vertical center line. So, if set for a 25 Mile Search range, a blip at 2/3 height on the screen and ½ the distance between the center line and the left edge of the scope would represent a return about 16 miles away and 30° left of his current heading. As he would close in, the blip would move lower on the screen.
The 25 and 65 mile ranges do not provide any altitude information and are really only useful for Surface scanning. Indeed, in the past week patrolling over the Philippines he had come to rely on the long search scales to locate and identify specific islands for navigation.
The short range search, 1 and 5 mile, adds elevation information to the scope by displaying a horizontal line on the scope representing its own altitude as calculated by the signal return from the surface. It then registers the vertical angle for any target detected on the return and represents the target’s altitude as a second blip above or below the altitude line to show the relative altitude of the target.
A radar operator to direct him to the target is then no longer needed. All he needs to do is steer the airplane until the target blip on the long range search is on the center line on scope and fly towards it. As it approaches he decreases the scale as appropriate and once it is within five miles he can get altitude information and adjust as needed.
The APS-6’s integrated IFF and Beacon receivers will help him identify whether the target is Friendly or a Bandit as he moves in. If it is an enemy, then he can gain position and flick the auxiliary control switch from SEARCH to GUN AIM; and then the real advantage of the APS-6 becomes clear.
The APS-6 operates at a 10,000 Mcs, using a 3.2cm wave for detection, which produces a far more accurate and reliable picture than the 720A’s 3,000 Mcs. 10cm wave. The wave being 1/3 the size may limit its effective range but when it is in the sweet spot it is like the difference between trying to use a sledge and a ball-peen hammer to drive a tack.
While both radars had approximately the same range reading accuracy of about 10% at 250 yards, the large wave of 720A resulted in vertical and horizontal accuracy of +/- three degrees in Gun Aim mode. Three degrees off center at 250 yards could mean that his fire would be missing by as much as 40 feet. It was an acceptable margin for the P-61 with its mass of firepower—four forward fixed AN/M2C 20mm Cannons and four A/N-M2 .50 Caliber Machine Guns in a radar directed turret with well over 4000 round of ammunition between the eight guns—which could fill the six degree cone with small movements of the turret; but in the narrow and forward fixed line of fire afforded by the P-38 it would all-but guarantee a clean miss against the small Japanese fighters.
Conversely, the AN/APS-6 with its minuscule wave size was accurate to within one-half a degree, or about six and a half feet at 250 yards—well within the “kill zone” of anything the Japs would have in the sky and allowing far more effective use of the P-38’s 2,150 rounds of mixed ammunition.
Mated with the P-38L, the AN/APS-6 resulted in an airplane that was faster, more maneuverable, less expensive, more accurate, easier to operate, and which exposed fewer crew to risk than the P-61. All of that in a package with comparable range using less fuel based on a platform easily modified in the field from day fighter airframes and the Fifth Air Force felt they had a winning combination for their area of operation.
Wright was one of eight 421st planes sent out this night to perform long range night patrol over the north western approaches to Leyte, on s staggered schedule. He and his wingman, 2Lt. Henry Fitzgerald were scheduled to patrol BAKER GREEN-2, the eastern side of the BAKER GREEN patrol area, covering the areas east and north of Masbate Island between it and Luzon and Samar from 2400 to 0130. The long loiter was made possible by the use of two 165 gallon drop tanks and by patrolling at 180 IAS under low RPM, high-boost engine settings—a profile recently developed by Lindberg to help the Lightning drivers extend their range. The total round-trip mission time from Morotai, including up to one-and-half hours of patrol: seven and one-half hours with a twenty minute reserve and five minutes of combat.
Half-an-hour into their patrol, with Fitz in a Combat Spread one mile to his left and about one-thousand feet higher, Wright led them to 320 degrees to come up between Ticao and Luzon at 14,000 feet when he heard the first squelch on the radar. A glance at his scope and he saw a hazy return, about ten degrees to his left and thirty nautical miles away just inside the surface return of Ticao Island itself.
“Blue Two, One. Possible contact, thirty miles out, minus ten degrees.”
“Roger, One,” Fitz paused his transmission before continuing, “I’m having some trouble with the radar. I can’t get a clear picture to the north and Queen Four looks blocked.”
Wright looked at his scope again and saw the same issues Fitz was reporting: the far side of Luzon was fuzzy and indistinct and San Bernardino Strait, the entrance of which was coded as QUEEN FOUR on their plots, was showing some sort of blockage. “Blue Two, I’m getting the same returns. Must be some sort of interference from the island. Can you confirm my contact?”
“Affirmative. Thirty miles, ten degrees left, northeast of Bell.”
“Blue Two, let’s log it as ‘BAKER-ONE’ and get a better look.” Wright turned on his cockpit spotlight, which he had mounted in its normal position to his left and aimed down at his lap, and noted the contact on his log.
IFF gave no indication if it was friendly but they had learned that IFF was not completely reliable, especially at longer ranges, so the 421st had developed a way of naming the contacts: ABLE--or Allied-- identifies friendly contacts, EASY for Enemy contacts, and BAKER for unknown Bogies. Flicking the light off, he continued on his current heading and kept an eye on the indistinct return to get an idea if it was moving and how fast. For all he knew it was a flock of birds or a false return from some atmospheric anomaly.
The blip on the scope shifted down and right, indicating the object was crossing toward the east in front of him. A quick estimation of his speed and the rate of drift on the return and Wright figured the contact was moving in excess of 200 mph in a roughly easterly direction. It was no flock of birds.
He turned the Main Control Unit’s Range knob one click counter-clockwise, to the 25nmi range setting, and the radar scope flickered as the tube adjusted its scale. It walked up in a series of lines as he turned the Receiver Gain to steady the image. Now the return was near the top of the scope, just within the 25 nmi range, and appeared to move across a little faster than it had before.
Wright adjusted his course to the right, plotting an intercept along the contact’s apparent course. He was still too far out to get any altitude information but assuming it was a formation of enemy aircraft he maintained 14,000 feet hoping the enemy would follow their normal low-level night-bombing profile.
He kept his Night Lightning in a steady but shallow right-hand turn, ensuring the contact stayed just left of his heading as it moved to the east. Experience had taught him that this would keep him in a slight lead pursuit and minimize any adjustments needed to fully intercept when the time came.
The blip moved ever lower on the screen, staying just right of the center until it passed the lower quarter. Now, Wright stopped his turn and allowed the contact to pass in front of him, just over five miles away. With his drop tanks just about empty he decided to get rid of them now, before moving in on the target. With the reassuring wiggle as the airplane lost the extra drag and weight of the tanks, he moved his mixtures up to AUTO RICH, increased his RPMs to 2000 and pushed his throttles to 33 inches, accelerating up past 215 IAS. IFF still had a negative return on the target.
Once within five nautical miles, he switched the scope once more, this time to the 5 Mile range. Once adjusted, the picture dramatically changed. The top screen was filled with the fuzzy necklace of the sea return with his radar altitude line showing the surface about 4 nmi in front of Wright’s position. The single blip of his mystery contact became two—the blip on the left representing the range to the target and the one on the right its relative elevation. The mid-point between the two was showing a little to the left of the center-line meaning the target was still a few degrees to Wright’s left and the right blip was quite a bit lower than the left, showing that the target was significantly lower than Wright’s 14,000 feet.
Using the distance between horizontal surface line and the left blip, which would match is own altitude, he estimated that the right blip—the target’s altitude—was at about 80% his own, or somewhere around 11,000 feet. He adjusted his angle to place one blip on either side of the center-line. With his earlier turn, Wright was now showing a heading of 97 degrees and was in a full pursuit position of the target.
Even as he watched the screen to maintain his position to its rear, he saw it occasionally flicker and randomly bounce around as the tube and radar would re-synchronize. It was as though the radar were beginning to have trouble differentiating the signal return from other returns—a sure sign that there were multiple targets ahead on him.
Pressing forward on the yoke, he dropped his airplane in a shallow dive until the two flickering blips were even. It took a few minutes and he was forced to pull his throttles back to 30 inches so that he could maintain a safe distance behind the target but when he leveled off his altimeter read just over 11,200 and the target was about three miles out and closing.
After taking a minute to check the night sky out his canopy, looking for the tell-tale flicker or exhaust or the glare of the quarter-moon on metal, he was assured that there were no other aircraft in his vicinity besides him, Fitz, and his target. Wright once more flicked on the cockpit light and jotted down an updated contact note.
With that done, he switched on his radio to the pre-set General Air Warning Circuit and called it in.
“TRINKET ONE, CINDER BLUE in BAKER GREEN TWO. SNOOP Report, Multiple contacts, Queen three to four at Angels Eleven.” A minute later, he repeated the same call, and again a minute after that before the ground finally copied his call back.
“CINDER BLUE, TRINKET ONE. Roger, Multiple SNOOP in Queen three to four at Eleven. Be advised I-F-F shows no other friendlies in the area.”
That was his call.
“Blue Two, Lead, re-designate Baker-One to Easy-One. Move in.”
Wright pulled his yoke, climbing a few hundred feet, as he accelerated the airplane to gain on the target. He had to fight his inclination to come in from below the enemy, as he would in a Black Widow, and instead come from above where the faint glow of his turbochargers would be hidden from the enemy.
Letting his Lightning have its legs for a few minutes, he quickly gained on the target, which was by now passing over map point Queen Four, the Island of Capul at the southern entrance of San Bernardino Strait. The two pips on the screen stayed steady on either side of the center line and drifted lower as he closed the distance. They fell below his altitude line as he came within two miles and were then closer to him than the ocean below.
When his radar was indicating the contact was within a mile, he started to take more time to visually scan the darkness for any sign of the airplane or airplanes. Below his nose, he was surprised to see the navigation lights turned on in the Strait, their soft beacon signals reflecting on the choppy waters between them.
He had no time to wonder at the presence of the bright channel lights, however, as a minute later and the blips dropped to the bottom of his radar scope. Wright moved his left hand down on the yoke, feeling for the radar Auxiliary Control unit clamped to it and flipped the Radar Mode switch on the from SEARCH to GUN AIM. The scope once more flickered and adjusted to the new sight picture, the antenna itself now in a rapid 7 1/2° oscillation instead of the normal 60 degrees, forming a 15° cone.
Instead of the rectangular representation of relative distance, now the entire three inch circle of the scope was lit, clearly backlighting the etched gun-sight in the glass. The indistinct blip was replaced by flickering images of several returns without getting a steady return on any single one. Wright adjusted the signal strength and gain, counting the different returns the screen showed and mentally noting their relative positions. The best he could tell, there were nine aircraft, stacked up in groups of three.
Wright turned down the signal as far as he could and turned up the gain to focus in on the closes return. The blurry blip became a crude representation of an airplane, having a small circle with a horizontal line through it. It was small at first, but has he closed to about 750 yards it became larger and more distinct.
The radar was telling him the target was at about 12:30 low, just below and slightly to the right of his nose. Wright looked out over the nose and there it was—little orange sparks flicking in the night sky—engine exhaust. Beyond it, down and left, he could more canopy reflection and the occasional spark of exhaust and further out he could just barely make out the second flight of enemy aircraft in front of him.
Wright armed his guns, turning on his Combat Switch, and turned on his regular gunsight.
He slid his Lightning to the right with a gentle touch of the rudders and pulled the throttles back again to slow his closing rate. The enemy gave no indication he knew Wright was there so—thankful for the quiet whine of the P-38’s exhaust instead of the radial clatter of the P-61—he was in no particular rush to force the attack just yet and took his time to set up it just right.
His visual of the enemy’s exhaust glow disappeared under the point of his P-38’s nose. A look to his radar and he saw it was still flying steady, now only about 350 yards away and just below him. Wright had never seen such a perfect picture before.
With his RPMs pushed up to 2600, he advanced his throttles to his Max. Continuous power at 44 inches and eased the nose down to bring the image up into the radar sight reticle. Wright saw it move up in the picture but kept it just below center to afford a little lead to his fire.
Looking up, he saw the flickering exhaust again, clearly disappearing under the wings of the airplane. Now he was close enough to see its outline silhouetted by the lights of San Bernardino Strait. At first he took it to be a Betty, noting the twin engines and the shape of its wings, but it seemed a little different—almost like a B-26.
Wright hesitated. He wanted to be certain it was not a friendly. Then he remembered where he was, well beyond the range of any B-26s. Whatever the airplanes were, they were not American.
He already had everything set, and he was now at less than 300 yards. All it took was a squeeze of his trigger and the nose of his P-38 exploded in blinding fire. The flash suppressors did little more than lessen the brilliance of the four .50-Caliber machine guns and they unloaded a two-second burst toward the enemy airplane, the cannon hidden beyond them.
He never used tracers at night so he could not be certain of his exact line of fire but he did see a few positive strikes on the right wing and saw a bright flash erupt from the top of the nacelle.
Wright pulled his P-38 up and right as he finished firing, forcing his RPMs to 3000 and gunning the throttles into Military Power at 54 inches. He peeled away from the Jap bomber, turning south to put distance between him and the bomber’s guns.
After only a few seconds he reversed back to his left and pulled this throttles back, setting himself 1000 yards or so off its right wing and he watched the engine he hit start to expand in flame. The fire lit the night sky, casting its evil glow onto the Jap plane and clearly highlighting the dark meatball near the tip.
Beyond the enemy formation he saw more flashes in the distance as Fitz cut across them from the north. His wingman had used the burning bomber as an aim point and after a series of bursts from the other Lightning, Wright watched as the entire center of the Jap plane collapsed into itself in great gouts of fire. As the fuselage rolled over he saw its payload was a single large torpedo.
The darkness was gone, replaced now by the second sun of the burning airplane as it fell from the formation. Its two partners, stacked in a descending echelon from Wright’s potion, were clearly lit by their stricken Tail-End Charlie and Wright noted the side blisters on each fuselage and the dorsal turret placed just aft the wings. He did not know what they were but saw he was in perfect position for a follow-up pass on both.
He accelerated back up to Military Power, the mighty Allisons pulling him along in a burst of acceleration. Once Fitz was clear below him and with the enemy at his eight-o’clock low, he executed a perfect rudder-assisted left-roll and turned back toward his targets.
Closing rapidly while bleeding off speed in his turn, he started to reverse the roll. Using his standard N-3B gunsight, he squeezed off his first burst at the second aircraft starting from 400 yards and 70 degrees deflection. The two second burst fell short, but his turn bled speed and allowed him to drift behind the two enemy aircraft.
The tail of the lead plane sparked to life as the gunner tried to train on Wright’s black-painted Lightning. The light from the burning airplane, now only a distant fireball, had all but faded, leaving very little for the gunners to focus on other the occasional flash of moonlight on the P-38.
Wright dipped below his new target where the only gun he would need to worry about was the tail and once more used his radar to line up on the bomber while rolling and sliding his airplane to throw off the tail-gunner’s aim.
With a good sight picture on the radar, the virtual wings filling the reticle, he made one final adjustment with his visual sight to focus on the left engine exhaust and let loose another burst of combined fire as he closed on the enemy.
Momentarily blinded by the muzzle-flash he did not see any good hits, so at point-blank range he fired more time into the left-engine before unloading forward and rolling away.
Over his shoulder he once more saw the angry fires of a burning engine.
The Jap formation was turning to the south, over Samar, whether in an attempt to evade the American hunters or to come at Leyte from the North, Wright could not know. The burning Jap tried to follow the turn but the engine fire was starting to burn completely out of control, dragging the entire airplane left and separating it from its fellows.
Wright slowed his engines again as he slowly circled over San Bernardino Strait and watched Fitz dive through for an ineffectual second pass at the last plane in the trailing flight. The burning airplane was left behind, its entire left wing quickly becoming fully consumed in the fire. Very soon, he started seeing smaller fireballs trailing off of the wreck as started to disintegrate at 9,000 feet.
He watched the bomber burn as it fell until it hit the surface in a mighty explosion.
Then he saw it.
The expanding fireball of the downed airplane lit the channel and Wright saw what was causing the odd return on their radars at Queen Four—an armada of massive Japanese warships were transiting the San Bernardino Strait.
COMSOWESPAC
Overall Commander, Operation King Two
CL-43 Nashville
Leyte Gulf, Philippines
0121
General Douglas MacArthur was roused from his bed at 0155. The news which prompted the OIC to wake the Commanding General was a visually confirmed SNOOP report from two of Kenney’s radar equipped P-38s shielding the northern approach to Leyte. Of less concern was the contact report of a small force of Japanese bombers approaching from the north; of greater concern was the report of a large convoy of Japanese warships making their way through San Bernardino Strait.
Of greatest concern was the report from the same P-38s—after prompting from the CIC to seek confirmation—that they had negative contact of any 3rd Fleet surface vessels to the east of the Strait.
The messages were relayed to Wasach from where Kinkaid was directing the 7th Fleet, hoping that the Navy would have more information. Kinkaid, who was already up and listening to the increasing contact reports from his southern screen in the Surigao Strait, was quick to respond, not wanting to tie up communications more than needed.
Mac ordered a terse response in-kind,
For the last thirteen minutes now there has been nothing but silence from the Navy. Now growing impatient, he ordered an MF message sent directly to Nimitz at Pearl.
After the coms added the appropriate padding and encoding the message was sent off.
With nothing more to do but wait for a moment, General MacArthur climbed to the bridge to watch the impending aerial attack.
Commander THIRD Fleet
BB-62 New Jersey, BATDIV 7, TG 38.2
East of Luzon, Philippines
0203
If the message had come from anyone else, they would not have woken the Admiral, but this was directly from CINCPAC in Pearl—Nimitz himself. Halsey read the message, already bereft its padding thanks to the proper diligence of the night watch radio operator.
Ten minutes later he was in New Jersey’s CIC, reviewing the current fleet position and disposition. He had left a standing order to separate Lee’s battle group from the Carriers and allow them to advance ahead as soon as a positive location of the Japanese Northern Force was re-established. Now, with Nimitz and that bastard MacArthur yelling at his back he would need to find a damned good reason not to send Lee back to San Bernardino.
The unanswered message from Nimitz was still clenched in his fist as all of the radio reports from the last few hours were read back to him. All of the reports, both from the Night Fighters of Independence and supported by the Army’s own Night Fighters all pointed to the same conclusion: the Center Force was pressing onward and would likely exit the San Bernardino Strait within the hour. His intel officers estimated the enemy could reach Leyte around dawn or mid-morning at the latest.
To complicate his decision, another search from Independence just established contact with the Northern Force at 0205, on course 110° at 15 knots, 85 miles away bearing 352°.
Halsey scribbled a quick note and passed it a Coms officer, “get this to Kinkaid, priority.”
The response from Kinkaid took only five minutes,
Damnit!
It took a good five minutes for his rage to calm, then he gave the most difficult order of his life—to form TF 34, to be constituted as per the message at 24/I 1512 with the addition of the rest of the Battleships and their escorts from TG 38.3.
If the cruisers and destroyers he was leaving in the Carrier Task Groups were too thin to protect his carriers, he would blame Nimitz and Mac for forcing his hand. It would not be his fault if a CV goes down.
COMSOWESPAC
Overall Commander, Operation King Two
CL-43 Nashville
Leyte Gulf, Philippines
0301
The air attack was a joke. A half dozen medium bombers came in low off of Samar and tried torpedoing the transport ships in the Gulf. The meager attack was easily beaten off by AA and thanks to the forewarning from the Lightnings none of the ships were caught unaware and cold.
Now, an hour later, Mac finally received a response from Nimitz.
Commander THIRD Fleet
BB-62 New Jersey, BATDIV 7, TG 38.2
East of Luzon, Philippines
1640
New Jersey’s CIC had been abuzz all day. At 0810 search planes from Bunker Hill discovered two groups of Japanese warships transiting into the Sibuyan Sea and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey had immediately issues urgent orders to commence the attack. From then until about 1530 he had been directing a series of attacks against this group and another, smaller group, to the South discovered by Army P-38 southwest of Negros.
As the day wore on the picture of the enemy disposition started to come together: a fleet of two small groups in the Sulu Sea, reported to be older vessels and likely including Troop transports, were making steady progress toward the Bohol Sea; while a second fleet of two larger groups were in the Sibuyan Sea represented the bulk of Japanese surface power. What none of the aerial observations reported, however, were any Aircraft Carriers.
The last intelligence was that they were still in Imperial waters and none of the submarine pickets had reported their transit from Japan but given the strength represented in the two fleets already heading to Leyte Halsey knew the Carriers must be on their way as well.
Halsey wanted those Carriers.
Spruance missed an opportunity in June to put the Japanese carriers on the bottom, once and for all, and it was an opportunity Halsey would not pass up again. With the power arrayed in the three Task Groups still with him in Task Force 38—after sending away Vice Admiral McCain’s mighty TG 38.1 for refueling early in the day—he could crush all remaining Japanese Naval air opposition and own the waters of the Pacific from the Aleutians to New Zealand.
Even weakened by the absence of McCain’s three Fleet Carriers—Hornet, Wasp, and Hancock—and two escort carriers—Monterey and Cowpens—he had at his disposal nearly 400 Hellcats, 160 Helldivers, and 150 Avengers, plus a Radar equipped Night Air Group aboard Independence. This had been reduced by some losses through the day during the attacks on the Japanese fleet in the Sibuyan Sea and even more so by news of heavy damage to the Princeton at 0940.
The hits to Princeton had been devastating. Rear Admiral Sherman’s TG 38.3 had been delayed through most of the day dealing with aircraft launch and recovery and in attempts to save Princeton, leaving his Task Group unable to concentrate with TG 38.2 and 38.4 so far. The worst news had reached Halsey aboard New Jersey just an hour ago that Princeton had exploded, badly damaging Birmingham and causing additional damage to Gatling, Morrison, and Irwin helping from 38.4.
The operational loss of Princeton also cost his its Air Group of 25 Hellcats and 9 Avengers.
The news of the attacks on the main Japanese force, however, were resoundingly good. Returning pilots reported multiple torpedo and bomb hits on many of the Cruisers and Battleships, resulting in heavy damage to them with many of them left burning. Additionally, there were reports of at least one Destroyer possibly sinking and four or five having been torpedoed.
Just prior to the last attack taking place, at 1512, he had issued orders for a contingency plan should this force press on to San Bernardino Strait:
”COM THIRD FLEET 24/I 1512” said:
He was not yet willing to commit to that particular battle plan, at least not until he knew for certain that western force was indeed the enemy’s main effort. To know that, he had to know for certain whether the Jap Carriers were well clear of the area. Suspecting the enemy battlewagons were just diversions, he had ordered long-range patrols to north, hoping to confirm his view of the Japanese strategy and catch them by surprise.
At 1545 he had been handed a written intercept from one of the long-range patrols that they had spotted a Japanese fleet of three Battleships or Heavy Cruisers, three other Cruisers, and six Destroyers at 18-10’N 125-30E heading southwest at 15 knots. This was soon followed by a report at 1600 of two lone destroys about 75 nautical miles west-northwest of these. Knowing that these were likely a screen for the carriers, he moved over to the radio operators’ station in the CIC and switched on the speaker to listen.
So it was, just as he had monitored the VHF traffic in the morning during the first patrols, Admiral Halsey was once again actively listening in on the radio, waiting for some message from the northern patrol when the contact report came through.
“BLUE FIN—BLUE FIN, VICTOR Four. Positive SHARK Eighteen Twenty-Five North by One-Twenty-Five Twenty-Eight East. Course two-ten at fifteen. REPEAT—SHARK Eighteen Twenty-Five North by One-Twenty-Five Twenty-Eight East, two-ten at fifteen.”
“COPY, VICTOR Four. SHARK Eighteen Twenty-Five North by One-Twenty-Five Twenty-Eight East, Course Two-Ten at Fifteen. Can you identify?”
“ROGER, BLUE FIN. Three Charlie-Vic, three—correction—four Charlie-Love, and three Dogs. VICTOR Four.”
Halsey smiled. We got ‘em!
“ROGER, VICTOR Four.”
Halsey immediately went into action. First, he stepped to the right of the Radio Station to see them add the contact location to the VG plotting table. Seeing it on the map, he noted it was about 130 nautical miles east of Cape Engaño, only 300 miles north of his current position. Supposing the two destroyers were an anti-submarine screen on the Japanese Fleet’s flank, that left the main force composed to two groups—just like the Southern and Western Forces. Seeing all of the Japanese fleets on the map, he ordered them re-designated: those in the Sulu and Bohol Seas as Southern Force, those in the Sibuyan Sea as Center Force, and those just discovered with the Carriers as Northern Force.
If his aviators’ reports were correct, and he had no reason to doubt them, the Northern Force was at least three Fleet Carriers, three or four Battleships or Heavy Cruisers, seven or eight Light Cruisers, and nine Destroyers. That could be as many 24 enemy ships but it was too early to call that conclusively.
His next order of business was to get the Fighter Director to vector a few more search planes to the area to get confirmation and amplifying reports on the enemy disposition. If it was as big as the first reports made it sound he would need every ship he has available to engage with them.
The CIC Evaluator, the Officer in Charge of the Combat Information Center and his direct liaison to the room, gained Halsey’s attention.
“Admiral, Sir. A message just came over the I-Cas from Leyte.”
Halsey took the slip of paper from the man’s hand and unfolded it to read the teletype:
“Damn the Army!” Halsey raged. Leave it to the Army to completely mis-identify enemy ships and have a complete disregard for what a damaged vessel actually looks like. What frustrated him the most was that the recovery of the last strike aircraft was just completing, leaving him with nothing beyond the initial Flash Reports to go off of. Until their pilots and crew are debriefed this message from Army pilots exhausted by a 700 nautical mile flight from Morotai would be the best information he has.
“Sir?”
With Sherman’s group still running CAP to the west after fighting off planes from Luzon much of the day and Borgan’s group running long-range patrol to the North, that left only Davison’s CTG 38.4 Air Groups available. The trouble is that both Enterprise and Franklin were those involved in the last attack and would have full flight decks.
“What Air Groups have search planes ready?”
“Belleau Wood should be ready.” The man knew to keep it short when dealing with the inimitable fighting Admiral.
“Have her launch a patrol to these coordinates, immediately,” he handed the Commander the message, “I don’t want any ordnance on those planes and I want them back before dark. They are to search and report ONLY. I’m not wasting any more bombs on a diversionary force if I don’t have to, understood?”
“Aye-aye, Sir.”
With nothing else to do but wait for more intelligence from the air, he now had to face the unpleasantness of doing what must be done to insure his three Task Groups can properly consolidate—Sherman’s TG 38.3 was still too isolated to the northeast.
He wrote up the order to abandon Princeton and sink her so that the Group can make all speed to join 38.2 and 38.4.
1920
Continued patrol of the Southern Force by the Seventh Fleet confirmed they were transiting the Bohol Sea toward Surigao Strait and were expected to sortie the strait at some point in the night. Halsey would leave them to the Seventh Fleet. He could not be bothered to deal with antique battlewagons and transports when the cream of the Japanese carrier force was within spitting distance.
The amplifying reports from subsequent patrols of the Northern Force were able to get Halsey a clearer picture of its make-up. With the mixed damaged reports coming in on the Center Force he had been forced to station more aircraft over the two groups of the Northern Force long enough to get fully accurate counts of the ships within them to facilitate a decision. The most accurate, taken from two sources which spent nearly 45 minutes surveying the enemy were:
- 1 Zuikaku class CV
- 2 Chitose class CVL
- 1 Zuiho class CVL
- 2 Ise class XCV (battleships with flight deck aft)
- 1 unidentified CA
- 1 Oyodo or Agano class CL
- 2 Natori class CL's
- 1 unidentified CL
- 6 DD
The trouble was, very little of that reported damage was supported by the HOBO report, which claimed only two ships were showing signs of damage, 1 BB and 1 CA or CL. Halsey had hoped the final patrol by Belleau Wood would settle the issue but it only left more questions: those aircraft had just recently sent over their full report which claimed the Japanese Fleet of 3 BB, 6 CA, 4 CL, and 12 DD had turned back toward Masbate Island at a steady 15 knots and in good order with no sign of damaged or sinking ships beyond some trailing oil.
Independence was already prepping her VF(N) squadron of Radar carrying Hellcats to continue tracking the forces in the darkness but Halsey knew any decision on how to proceed would need to be made soon.
If the latest report were correct, Halsey wondered if there was another Force of Jap ships in the Sibuyan Sea—that the attacks earlier in the day had concentrated on one group and the Army and Belleau Wood planes had been tracking a second (or third) group. The alternative was that they were seeing the same force which his planes had completely mauled but that they had affected temporary repairs sufficient to carry on their mission. Given the reported presence of not one but two Yamatos in the forces, he was prone to believe the latter situation was the correct one but the reported speed and disposition of the Force gave him some concern as to its condition.
Having made the judgement that Center Force was indeed only the single fleet and had been damaged, he now could see the full picture of the Japanese plan.
Three fleets were coming from three different directions, all heading deliberately and steadily to an undetermined point. Their courses and speeds indicated they were attempting to rendezvous somewhere in the vicinity of the American landing forces and supply ships in or near Leyte Gulf sometime during the early morning of the 25th. The makeup of the fleets suggested that the Center Force was a decoy fleet intended to tie Halsey’s Battle Line and Carriers down so that the main power of their attack, in the carriers, could surprise him when his Air Groups were busy with the Battleships. Meanwhile, the Southern Force would sneak through the Surigao Strait to his south and land reinforcements near the American beachhead and strike their flank to contain them.
With Oldendorf already preparing to stop the Southern Force, that left Halsey his three Task Groups to deal with the other two Japanese Forces.
He considered there to be three options:
Form TF 34 and leave them to intercept Center Force as it comes through San Bernardino Strait and send his CTGs to deal with the Northern Force
Remain with all of his forces where he was and intercept one or both enemy Forces as they move toward Leyte Gulf; or,
He could move with his entire force to intercept the Northern Force and leave the Center Force for the 7th to deal with, at least long enough for him to finish off the Japanese Carriers.
He looked to his Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Mick Carney, “what do you think, Mick?”
“Bill, you’re not going to get another chance at those carriers.”
Halsey considered it, and grunted. “What of their battle line in the Sibuyan?”
“Well,” Carney paused, “our own pilots say they mauled the living hell outta’ them. I don’t think the Army is in any place to question that. Even if they are still at eighty percent effectiveness, we have to consider that the Northern Force is untouched and still one-hundred percent.”
The discussion continued, with Carney echoing Halsey’s own thoughts on the matter and encouraging a move to attack the Carrier force as soon as possible.
The option of dividing his forces and leaving Lee behind with the Battle Line was quickly nixed. If they did that, Lee’s battleships would be without any air support and would be within range of the same land-based attackers that had hit Sherman’s group earlier.
That left the other two: wait for the enemy to come to him, or hunt down the carriers. Both Carney and Halsey himself thought the former option would be equivalent to surrendering the initiative to the enemy and could potentially leave Third Fleet fighting on two fronts. The decision, then, was plain—leave the battleships where they are amongst Task Force 38 and take the entire fleet north to catch the Northern Force at dawn.
Within an hour Halsey sent notice to Nimitz at CINCPAC in Hawai’i:
Of course, what Halsey did not know was that Nimitz and Kinkaid both thought Task Force 34 was already formed and waiting at the exit of San Bernardino.
25 October 1944
421 Night Fighter Squadron, V FC, 5 AF, USFEAF
Visayan Islands, Philippines
0030
Captain John L. Wright, Jr. was getting used to the new airplane. He had been certified in P-61s back in the States and came with the first batch of them to the 421st Night Fighter Squadron this past summer. He had flown night patrols with a Radar Operator and sometimes a Gunner over the past few months but had recently been certified to fly the P-38L all alone.
The P-38L was a modified single-seat P-38H fitted with a Navy AN/APS-6 Radar pod under the nose. The small 3 inch cathode ray tube indicator unit was mounted directly below the gunsight at the top of the instrument panel in its own little box bolted on to the dash. The main control box was mounted on top of the left bulkhead above the external stores control unit and just aft of the throttles. The Auxiliary control unit, with the switch to control whether the radar was in SEARCH or GUN AIM mode and a gain to suppress reflectivity off the water on the scope, was mounted on the yoke’s lower left arm.
Having been trained on the larger SCR-720A in the P-61, he was already familiar with the basics of Radar operation and the move to the AN/APS-6 was not overly difficult. What was daunting was managing the airplane while continuing the monitor the radar scope at the same time. Wright heard rumors that a two-seat P-38 with the SCR-720A was on its way but the 421st certainly had not received any yet.
The APS-6 radar itself was a fine unit and if asked he would be hard pressed to make a choice between it and the 720A. The 720A, with its longer wavelength, had the advantage of a likewise longer search range and—oddly—also a shorter minimum range in Gun Aim mode, 100 yards vs the 120 yard minimum of the APS-6. The range was likewise better for aircraft detection, with the 720A having a maximum range of up to 100 miles and was capable of positively identifying a lone bomber as far as 17,000 yards and a fighter at half that; whereas the APS-6 was limited to 65 miles and could only identify bombers at 10,000 yards and fighters at 8,000.
He also liked that the 720A rotated a full 360 degrees, although the airplane itself produced a shadow to the rear, giving it an effective 180° forward search sector. The APS-6 could only oscillate 60 degrees in any direction, scanning a spiral 120° cone.
That is where one of the biggest differences between the two became apparent and it reflected their branch of origin. The 720A was an Army Air Force radar, designed from the outset for scanning the sky for aircraft. This gave it a much better ability in that role verses the APS-6 which was designed for the Navy to accommodate both Sky and Surface search. The difference was not just in range but in elevation: the 720A could only scan a relatively narrow vertical line with four preset sectors: 0° to 0°, -5° to +5°, +5° to +20°, or +20° to +50° while the APS-6 was always scanning its 120° cone of 60° left, right, up, and down, which is why they needed the Sea Suppress gain control for the scope. Without it, or with the Sea Suppress turned down, the scope was filled with a necklace pattern of scraggly lines from where the radar was scattering off the water.
What Wright liked about the APS-6 was two-fold: simplicity and accuracy.
Although it would have been easier to have a dedicated Radar Operator to monitor the scope during search patterns, the APS-6 was simple enough and with an intuitive display which enabled him to keep an eye on it without having to constantly interpret arcane signal artifacts. The 720A used two different scopes—three if he were to include the Aim scope he used as a pilot—for the Operator to use, one for azimuth, one for range, and the pilot’s for Gun Aiming. The APS-6 used a single three-inch scope which combined all of the functions in an easy display.
When in Search mode, the scope displayed any returns as blips at the detected heading and range from Wright’s plane, with the bottom being 0 range and the top being the maximum set search range: 1, 5, 25, or 65 miles. Actual distance was estimated as a fraction of the selected scale on the screen and actual heading by a fraction distance from a vertical center line. So, if set for a 25 Mile Search range, a blip at 2/3 height on the screen and ½ the distance between the center line and the left edge of the scope would represent a return about 16 miles away and 30° left of his current heading. As he would close in, the blip would move lower on the screen.
The 25 and 65 mile ranges do not provide any altitude information and are really only useful for Surface scanning. Indeed, in the past week patrolling over the Philippines he had come to rely on the long search scales to locate and identify specific islands for navigation.
The short range search, 1 and 5 mile, adds elevation information to the scope by displaying a horizontal line on the scope representing its own altitude as calculated by the signal return from the surface. It then registers the vertical angle for any target detected on the return and represents the target’s altitude as a second blip above or below the altitude line to show the relative altitude of the target.
A radar operator to direct him to the target is then no longer needed. All he needs to do is steer the airplane until the target blip on the long range search is on the center line on scope and fly towards it. As it approaches he decreases the scale as appropriate and once it is within five miles he can get altitude information and adjust as needed.
The APS-6’s integrated IFF and Beacon receivers will help him identify whether the target is Friendly or a Bandit as he moves in. If it is an enemy, then he can gain position and flick the auxiliary control switch from SEARCH to GUN AIM; and then the real advantage of the APS-6 becomes clear.
The APS-6 operates at a 10,000 Mcs, using a 3.2cm wave for detection, which produces a far more accurate and reliable picture than the 720A’s 3,000 Mcs. 10cm wave. The wave being 1/3 the size may limit its effective range but when it is in the sweet spot it is like the difference between trying to use a sledge and a ball-peen hammer to drive a tack.
While both radars had approximately the same range reading accuracy of about 10% at 250 yards, the large wave of 720A resulted in vertical and horizontal accuracy of +/- three degrees in Gun Aim mode. Three degrees off center at 250 yards could mean that his fire would be missing by as much as 40 feet. It was an acceptable margin for the P-61 with its mass of firepower—four forward fixed AN/M2C 20mm Cannons and four A/N-M2 .50 Caliber Machine Guns in a radar directed turret with well over 4000 round of ammunition between the eight guns—which could fill the six degree cone with small movements of the turret; but in the narrow and forward fixed line of fire afforded by the P-38 it would all-but guarantee a clean miss against the small Japanese fighters.
Conversely, the AN/APS-6 with its minuscule wave size was accurate to within one-half a degree, or about six and a half feet at 250 yards—well within the “kill zone” of anything the Japs would have in the sky and allowing far more effective use of the P-38’s 2,150 rounds of mixed ammunition.
Mated with the P-38L, the AN/APS-6 resulted in an airplane that was faster, more maneuverable, less expensive, more accurate, easier to operate, and which exposed fewer crew to risk than the P-61. All of that in a package with comparable range using less fuel based on a platform easily modified in the field from day fighter airframes and the Fifth Air Force felt they had a winning combination for their area of operation.
Wright was one of eight 421st planes sent out this night to perform long range night patrol over the north western approaches to Leyte, on s staggered schedule. He and his wingman, 2Lt. Henry Fitzgerald were scheduled to patrol BAKER GREEN-2, the eastern side of the BAKER GREEN patrol area, covering the areas east and north of Masbate Island between it and Luzon and Samar from 2400 to 0130. The long loiter was made possible by the use of two 165 gallon drop tanks and by patrolling at 180 IAS under low RPM, high-boost engine settings—a profile recently developed by Lindberg to help the Lightning drivers extend their range. The total round-trip mission time from Morotai, including up to one-and-half hours of patrol: seven and one-half hours with a twenty minute reserve and five minutes of combat.
Half-an-hour into their patrol, with Fitz in a Combat Spread one mile to his left and about one-thousand feet higher, Wright led them to 320 degrees to come up between Ticao and Luzon at 14,000 feet when he heard the first squelch on the radar. A glance at his scope and he saw a hazy return, about ten degrees to his left and thirty nautical miles away just inside the surface return of Ticao Island itself.
“Blue Two, One. Possible contact, thirty miles out, minus ten degrees.”
“Roger, One,” Fitz paused his transmission before continuing, “I’m having some trouble with the radar. I can’t get a clear picture to the north and Queen Four looks blocked.”
Wright looked at his scope again and saw the same issues Fitz was reporting: the far side of Luzon was fuzzy and indistinct and San Bernardino Strait, the entrance of which was coded as QUEEN FOUR on their plots, was showing some sort of blockage. “Blue Two, I’m getting the same returns. Must be some sort of interference from the island. Can you confirm my contact?”
“Affirmative. Thirty miles, ten degrees left, northeast of Bell.”
“Blue Two, let’s log it as ‘BAKER-ONE’ and get a better look.” Wright turned on his cockpit spotlight, which he had mounted in its normal position to his left and aimed down at his lap, and noted the contact on his log.
IFF gave no indication if it was friendly but they had learned that IFF was not completely reliable, especially at longer ranges, so the 421st had developed a way of naming the contacts: ABLE--or Allied-- identifies friendly contacts, EASY for Enemy contacts, and BAKER for unknown Bogies. Flicking the light off, he continued on his current heading and kept an eye on the indistinct return to get an idea if it was moving and how fast. For all he knew it was a flock of birds or a false return from some atmospheric anomaly.
The blip on the scope shifted down and right, indicating the object was crossing toward the east in front of him. A quick estimation of his speed and the rate of drift on the return and Wright figured the contact was moving in excess of 200 mph in a roughly easterly direction. It was no flock of birds.
He turned the Main Control Unit’s Range knob one click counter-clockwise, to the 25nmi range setting, and the radar scope flickered as the tube adjusted its scale. It walked up in a series of lines as he turned the Receiver Gain to steady the image. Now the return was near the top of the scope, just within the 25 nmi range, and appeared to move across a little faster than it had before.
Wright adjusted his course to the right, plotting an intercept along the contact’s apparent course. He was still too far out to get any altitude information but assuming it was a formation of enemy aircraft he maintained 14,000 feet hoping the enemy would follow their normal low-level night-bombing profile.
He kept his Night Lightning in a steady but shallow right-hand turn, ensuring the contact stayed just left of his heading as it moved to the east. Experience had taught him that this would keep him in a slight lead pursuit and minimize any adjustments needed to fully intercept when the time came.
The blip moved ever lower on the screen, staying just right of the center until it passed the lower quarter. Now, Wright stopped his turn and allowed the contact to pass in front of him, just over five miles away. With his drop tanks just about empty he decided to get rid of them now, before moving in on the target. With the reassuring wiggle as the airplane lost the extra drag and weight of the tanks, he moved his mixtures up to AUTO RICH, increased his RPMs to 2000 and pushed his throttles to 33 inches, accelerating up past 215 IAS. IFF still had a negative return on the target.
Once within five nautical miles, he switched the scope once more, this time to the 5 Mile range. Once adjusted, the picture dramatically changed. The top screen was filled with the fuzzy necklace of the sea return with his radar altitude line showing the surface about 4 nmi in front of Wright’s position. The single blip of his mystery contact became two—the blip on the left representing the range to the target and the one on the right its relative elevation. The mid-point between the two was showing a little to the left of the center-line meaning the target was still a few degrees to Wright’s left and the right blip was quite a bit lower than the left, showing that the target was significantly lower than Wright’s 14,000 feet.
Using the distance between horizontal surface line and the left blip, which would match is own altitude, he estimated that the right blip—the target’s altitude—was at about 80% his own, or somewhere around 11,000 feet. He adjusted his angle to place one blip on either side of the center-line. With his earlier turn, Wright was now showing a heading of 97 degrees and was in a full pursuit position of the target.
Even as he watched the screen to maintain his position to its rear, he saw it occasionally flicker and randomly bounce around as the tube and radar would re-synchronize. It was as though the radar were beginning to have trouble differentiating the signal return from other returns—a sure sign that there were multiple targets ahead on him.
Pressing forward on the yoke, he dropped his airplane in a shallow dive until the two flickering blips were even. It took a few minutes and he was forced to pull his throttles back to 30 inches so that he could maintain a safe distance behind the target but when he leveled off his altimeter read just over 11,200 and the target was about three miles out and closing.
After taking a minute to check the night sky out his canopy, looking for the tell-tale flicker or exhaust or the glare of the quarter-moon on metal, he was assured that there were no other aircraft in his vicinity besides him, Fitz, and his target. Wright once more flicked on the cockpit light and jotted down an updated contact note.
With that done, he switched on his radio to the pre-set General Air Warning Circuit and called it in.
“TRINKET ONE, CINDER BLUE in BAKER GREEN TWO. SNOOP Report, Multiple contacts, Queen three to four at Angels Eleven.” A minute later, he repeated the same call, and again a minute after that before the ground finally copied his call back.
“CINDER BLUE, TRINKET ONE. Roger, Multiple SNOOP in Queen three to four at Eleven. Be advised I-F-F shows no other friendlies in the area.”
That was his call.
“Blue Two, Lead, re-designate Baker-One to Easy-One. Move in.”
Wright pulled his yoke, climbing a few hundred feet, as he accelerated the airplane to gain on the target. He had to fight his inclination to come in from below the enemy, as he would in a Black Widow, and instead come from above where the faint glow of his turbochargers would be hidden from the enemy.
Letting his Lightning have its legs for a few minutes, he quickly gained on the target, which was by now passing over map point Queen Four, the Island of Capul at the southern entrance of San Bernardino Strait. The two pips on the screen stayed steady on either side of the center line and drifted lower as he closed the distance. They fell below his altitude line as he came within two miles and were then closer to him than the ocean below.
When his radar was indicating the contact was within a mile, he started to take more time to visually scan the darkness for any sign of the airplane or airplanes. Below his nose, he was surprised to see the navigation lights turned on in the Strait, their soft beacon signals reflecting on the choppy waters between them.
He had no time to wonder at the presence of the bright channel lights, however, as a minute later and the blips dropped to the bottom of his radar scope. Wright moved his left hand down on the yoke, feeling for the radar Auxiliary Control unit clamped to it and flipped the Radar Mode switch on the from SEARCH to GUN AIM. The scope once more flickered and adjusted to the new sight picture, the antenna itself now in a rapid 7 1/2° oscillation instead of the normal 60 degrees, forming a 15° cone.
Instead of the rectangular representation of relative distance, now the entire three inch circle of the scope was lit, clearly backlighting the etched gun-sight in the glass. The indistinct blip was replaced by flickering images of several returns without getting a steady return on any single one. Wright adjusted the signal strength and gain, counting the different returns the screen showed and mentally noting their relative positions. The best he could tell, there were nine aircraft, stacked up in groups of three.
Wright turned down the signal as far as he could and turned up the gain to focus in on the closes return. The blurry blip became a crude representation of an airplane, having a small circle with a horizontal line through it. It was small at first, but has he closed to about 750 yards it became larger and more distinct.
The radar was telling him the target was at about 12:30 low, just below and slightly to the right of his nose. Wright looked out over the nose and there it was—little orange sparks flicking in the night sky—engine exhaust. Beyond it, down and left, he could more canopy reflection and the occasional spark of exhaust and further out he could just barely make out the second flight of enemy aircraft in front of him.
Wright armed his guns, turning on his Combat Switch, and turned on his regular gunsight.
He slid his Lightning to the right with a gentle touch of the rudders and pulled the throttles back again to slow his closing rate. The enemy gave no indication he knew Wright was there so—thankful for the quiet whine of the P-38’s exhaust instead of the radial clatter of the P-61—he was in no particular rush to force the attack just yet and took his time to set up it just right.
His visual of the enemy’s exhaust glow disappeared under the point of his P-38’s nose. A look to his radar and he saw it was still flying steady, now only about 350 yards away and just below him. Wright had never seen such a perfect picture before.
With his RPMs pushed up to 2600, he advanced his throttles to his Max. Continuous power at 44 inches and eased the nose down to bring the image up into the radar sight reticle. Wright saw it move up in the picture but kept it just below center to afford a little lead to his fire.
Looking up, he saw the flickering exhaust again, clearly disappearing under the wings of the airplane. Now he was close enough to see its outline silhouetted by the lights of San Bernardino Strait. At first he took it to be a Betty, noting the twin engines and the shape of its wings, but it seemed a little different—almost like a B-26.
Wright hesitated. He wanted to be certain it was not a friendly. Then he remembered where he was, well beyond the range of any B-26s. Whatever the airplanes were, they were not American.
He already had everything set, and he was now at less than 300 yards. All it took was a squeeze of his trigger and the nose of his P-38 exploded in blinding fire. The flash suppressors did little more than lessen the brilliance of the four .50-Caliber machine guns and they unloaded a two-second burst toward the enemy airplane, the cannon hidden beyond them.
He never used tracers at night so he could not be certain of his exact line of fire but he did see a few positive strikes on the right wing and saw a bright flash erupt from the top of the nacelle.
Wright pulled his P-38 up and right as he finished firing, forcing his RPMs to 3000 and gunning the throttles into Military Power at 54 inches. He peeled away from the Jap bomber, turning south to put distance between him and the bomber’s guns.
After only a few seconds he reversed back to his left and pulled this throttles back, setting himself 1000 yards or so off its right wing and he watched the engine he hit start to expand in flame. The fire lit the night sky, casting its evil glow onto the Jap plane and clearly highlighting the dark meatball near the tip.
Beyond the enemy formation he saw more flashes in the distance as Fitz cut across them from the north. His wingman had used the burning bomber as an aim point and after a series of bursts from the other Lightning, Wright watched as the entire center of the Jap plane collapsed into itself in great gouts of fire. As the fuselage rolled over he saw its payload was a single large torpedo.
The darkness was gone, replaced now by the second sun of the burning airplane as it fell from the formation. Its two partners, stacked in a descending echelon from Wright’s potion, were clearly lit by their stricken Tail-End Charlie and Wright noted the side blisters on each fuselage and the dorsal turret placed just aft the wings. He did not know what they were but saw he was in perfect position for a follow-up pass on both.
He accelerated back up to Military Power, the mighty Allisons pulling him along in a burst of acceleration. Once Fitz was clear below him and with the enemy at his eight-o’clock low, he executed a perfect rudder-assisted left-roll and turned back toward his targets.
Closing rapidly while bleeding off speed in his turn, he started to reverse the roll. Using his standard N-3B gunsight, he squeezed off his first burst at the second aircraft starting from 400 yards and 70 degrees deflection. The two second burst fell short, but his turn bled speed and allowed him to drift behind the two enemy aircraft.
The tail of the lead plane sparked to life as the gunner tried to train on Wright’s black-painted Lightning. The light from the burning airplane, now only a distant fireball, had all but faded, leaving very little for the gunners to focus on other the occasional flash of moonlight on the P-38.
Wright dipped below his new target where the only gun he would need to worry about was the tail and once more used his radar to line up on the bomber while rolling and sliding his airplane to throw off the tail-gunner’s aim.
With a good sight picture on the radar, the virtual wings filling the reticle, he made one final adjustment with his visual sight to focus on the left engine exhaust and let loose another burst of combined fire as he closed on the enemy.
Momentarily blinded by the muzzle-flash he did not see any good hits, so at point-blank range he fired more time into the left-engine before unloading forward and rolling away.
Over his shoulder he once more saw the angry fires of a burning engine.
The Jap formation was turning to the south, over Samar, whether in an attempt to evade the American hunters or to come at Leyte from the North, Wright could not know. The burning Jap tried to follow the turn but the engine fire was starting to burn completely out of control, dragging the entire airplane left and separating it from its fellows.
Wright slowed his engines again as he slowly circled over San Bernardino Strait and watched Fitz dive through for an ineffectual second pass at the last plane in the trailing flight. The burning airplane was left behind, its entire left wing quickly becoming fully consumed in the fire. Very soon, he started seeing smaller fireballs trailing off of the wreck as started to disintegrate at 9,000 feet.
He watched the bomber burn as it fell until it hit the surface in a mighty explosion.
Then he saw it.
The expanding fireball of the downed airplane lit the channel and Wright saw what was causing the odd return on their radars at Queen Four—an armada of massive Japanese warships were transiting the San Bernardino Strait.
COMSOWESPAC
Overall Commander, Operation King Two
CL-43 Nashville
Leyte Gulf, Philippines
0121
General Douglas MacArthur was roused from his bed at 0155. The news which prompted the OIC to wake the Commanding General was a visually confirmed SNOOP report from two of Kenney’s radar equipped P-38s shielding the northern approach to Leyte. Of less concern was the contact report of a small force of Japanese bombers approaching from the north; of greater concern was the report of a large convoy of Japanese warships making their way through San Bernardino Strait.
Of greatest concern was the report from the same P-38s—after prompting from the CIC to seek confirmation—that they had negative contact of any 3rd Fleet surface vessels to the east of the Strait.
The messages were relayed to Wasach from where Kinkaid was directing the 7th Fleet, hoping that the Navy would have more information. Kinkaid, who was already up and listening to the increasing contact reports from his southern screen in the Surigao Strait, was quick to respond, not wanting to tie up communications more than needed.
Mac ordered a terse response in-kind,
For the last thirteen minutes now there has been nothing but silence from the Navy. Now growing impatient, he ordered an MF message sent directly to Nimitz at Pearl.
After the coms added the appropriate padding and encoding the message was sent off.
With nothing more to do but wait for a moment, General MacArthur climbed to the bridge to watch the impending aerial attack.
Commander THIRD Fleet
BB-62 New Jersey, BATDIV 7, TG 38.2
East of Luzon, Philippines
0203
If the message had come from anyone else, they would not have woken the Admiral, but this was directly from CINCPAC in Pearl—Nimitz himself. Halsey read the message, already bereft its padding thanks to the proper diligence of the night watch radio operator.
Ten minutes later he was in New Jersey’s CIC, reviewing the current fleet position and disposition. He had left a standing order to separate Lee’s battle group from the Carriers and allow them to advance ahead as soon as a positive location of the Japanese Northern Force was re-established. Now, with Nimitz and that bastard MacArthur yelling at his back he would need to find a damned good reason not to send Lee back to San Bernardino.
The unanswered message from Nimitz was still clenched in his fist as all of the radio reports from the last few hours were read back to him. All of the reports, both from the Night Fighters of Independence and supported by the Army’s own Night Fighters all pointed to the same conclusion: the Center Force was pressing onward and would likely exit the San Bernardino Strait within the hour. His intel officers estimated the enemy could reach Leyte around dawn or mid-morning at the latest.
To complicate his decision, another search from Independence just established contact with the Northern Force at 0205, on course 110° at 15 knots, 85 miles away bearing 352°.
Halsey scribbled a quick note and passed it a Coms officer, “get this to Kinkaid, priority.”
The response from Kinkaid took only five minutes,
Damnit!
It took a good five minutes for his rage to calm, then he gave the most difficult order of his life—to form TF 34, to be constituted as per the message at 24/I 1512 with the addition of the rest of the Battleships and their escorts from TG 38.3.
If the cruisers and destroyers he was leaving in the Carrier Task Groups were too thin to protect his carriers, he would blame Nimitz and Mac for forcing his hand. It would not be his fault if a CV goes down.
COMSOWESPAC
Overall Commander, Operation King Two
CL-43 Nashville
Leyte Gulf, Philippines
0301
The air attack was a joke. A half dozen medium bombers came in low off of Samar and tried torpedoing the transport ships in the Gulf. The meager attack was easily beaten off by AA and thanks to the forewarning from the Lightnings none of the ships were caught unaware and cold.
Now, an hour later, Mac finally received a response from Nimitz.
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Out of curiosity, how do you mean?
Also, given the amount of information all of us have disseminated through this thread alone--much less the entire forum--calling this one superlative is high praise indeed!
Description on how the radar and radar-assisted intercept worked was both excellent and easy to understand. Oh, yes, and the exchange of messages betwen the higher ups.
Ah, thank you. I had to teach myself how it all worked and the learn the differences between the different Radars. Fascinating stuff, truth be told. Below is a site which goes into a little detail on some of early US Airborne Radars, including a link to the Pilot's Operating Manual for the AN/APS-6, which I found to be an invaluable reference.
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/NightFighterRadars/index.html
@phx1138 , if memory serves, you tend to have problems following many of the links I provide so if you (or anyone else having trouble with the above link) want to find it, a web search for "US night fighter radars of wwii" should go right to that page (at least in Google it does, I haven't tested other engines).
So...I was hoping to ride the momentum and get Part 3 up ASAP, but my lung just collapsed (don't worry, it happens...been happening for nigh 20 years) and I think I am going to finally go get it fixed once and for all (minorly invasive, thorascopic pleuradesis not a huge deal) as of tomorrow expect 3-4 days of silence from me. I'm not ignoring you all, and once I am back I'll be sure to respond to any questions and comments.