The Battle of Samar: Why did Admiral Kurita Turn Away?

[sandy1000]

In the Battle off Samar, Admiral Kurita's fleet, including the flagship Yamato, was well positioned to inflict a major defeat on the USN. But, just at the point where the Japanese ships were likely to commmence systematically sinking American ships, including a number of escort carriers (they did sink Gambier Bay) Kurita turned his fleet away and headed back to safer waters. The reasons given have included the impact of the heroic and skillful defence by the American destroyers involved and the increasing air attacks by the USN and US Army aircraft. But these reasons do not seem quite convincing. The Japanese way was to push on regardless and to have a weak American fleet (in terms of the Americans not having any battleships or cruisers present), at their mercy and not make the most of their opportunity makes me think that perhaps there are other reasons.

I have long been curious about the effects of the blast of large guns firing on those who are doing the firing. Anyone who has fired a 84mm medium antitank gun, the Carl Gustav, or who has been standing by a Centurion tank when it fires canister rounds, or has been nearby when an 8 inch howitzer has fired will know what I am talking about. In WW2 the Australians lightened a 25 pounder field gun for use in the jungle and this included shortening the barrel and taking off the blast shield. This resulted in the crew being concussed when the gun was fired. Blast from guns can have devastating effects on the firers.

All of these examples would be as nothing when compared to a modern battleship firing it's main guns. What it must have been like when the Yamato fired continuing salvos of all of it's nine 18 inch guns is possibly unimaginable.

So I am wondering whether Admiral Kurita, who had been in action for several days and nights, with all of the resultant stress and anxiety of command was just worn out and his mind simply could not cope with the blast of the colossal guns of the Yamato and he just turned away dazed and confused.

Admittedly he would have been in an enclosed bridge but would that have been enough to protect him?

[Don Boyer]

To be honest, ever since I was a lad starting out in naval history reading, particularly WWII in the Pacific, I have wondered at the turn away at Leyte. Of all the battles, this was the one where they were supposed to make that all out decisive battle effort the Imperial Navy had been on about since Tsushima. It was about the only tactic they could come up with.

Then, after years of reading, it became apparent that Leyte was only one of many examples of turning away from battle when the going got rough and in at least one case, when the Japanese actually had the battle in the bag with NO damage to any of their ships (Savo).

Regardless of the mind-set of the commanding admirals in these battles, I came to the conclusion that there had been a conservative streak in the Japanese Imperial command structure that tilted to trying to preserve ships in a navy that had very limited chances of replacing the losses of big ships (for example, they completed NO heavy cruisers during the war whereas, the US replaced every loss in this class at least twice over.)

It's not the entire reason, but it is a big part of their tendency to turn away from battle rather than fully commit and risking their entire fleet. It was a fatal flaw, for sure.

I can't find a single case of the US turning away from battle intentionally, unless ships were too damaged to fight. Chicago at Savo might be the one exception, and her commanding officer later committed suicide.

War is a strange brew, for sure.

[scjon]

Don has excellent points as usual, especially about the inability to replace ships.
I know that the blast effects from Yamato's guns were quite severe. They had to enclose all of the AA guns on the ship. Whether or not this played into Kurita's mind or not I don't know. He had been swimming the night before when his flagship was torpedoed by US submarines Darter and Dace, and was also on a ship that had another admiral (Ugaki) already on board. So I am sure everything was not going according to the plan in his mind. He also thought he was attacking Halsey's 3rd fleet, with the US battleships somewhere near as well as the rest of the carriers. AND he also knew he had not heard from Shima or Nishimura from the night before leaving him to correctly assume destruction at the hands of Oldendorf in Surigao. All added up it probably seemed an unfavorable situation and he just decided to get out it. He had already lost several heavy cruisers at that point to the planes of the escort carriers.

[Don Boyer]

Scjon brings up another very big point as to Kurita's turn away at Leyte Gulf. In addition to all the problems enumerated in the conduct of the battle, the fact that Kurita's fleet was slowly being pounded to junk by aircraft probably had considerable immediate influence on his decision. Aircraft were coming at him from all directions all the time once battle commenced, and unnerving situation, particularly if you are worried these are units from the fleet carriers.

Had Halsey and his staff not been so obdurately focused on the northern carrier force and distributed their fleet units properly, Kurita's entire fleet would have been destroyed. Postwar, Halsey huffed and puffed in his autobiography on the subject and elsewhere too, but it is obvious that he and his staff muffed the play big time. (It is said that Admiral Spruance, then at Pearl Harbor and following the battle by the radio transmissions, pointed to the vicinity of San Bernardino Strait on the map and said "I'd keep the fleet right there," meaning he would have had his battle groups disposed to deal with anything coming out of the strait, although obviously the carriers would have been at a safe distance.)

"Concentration of force" has always been given as the major reason for taking TF 34 north as a unit, including all the battleships. This is supposedly a rule of naval warfare that you violate at your peril, and essentially it was always true.

However, it never seemed to have occurred to any but a few of the more junior admirals that proper disposition of the fleet units at hand, especially the fleet carriers, would have given you superior force AT EVERY POINT OF CONTACT WITH THE JAPANESE FLEET, INCLUDING OFF SAMAR. This is due to the fact that the fleet carriers, with the huge range of their aircraft could have covered everybody all the time had they been positioned properly. All the worry about "end arounds" or "splitting of forces for a flank attack" or even how powerful that northern Japanese carrier group actually was was specious, as you can't end around with a surface battle group on an alert carrier force with it's scouts out. Furthermore, the supply units -- the fleet train of oilers and support ships -- could have been ordered to close the area as well, yet remain beyond Japanese notice.

The US fleet had become so large and powerful that it could have been split up quite safely. This is not to say that we might not have lost a battleship or heavy cruiser while in contact with Kurita's Main Body, but that we could have fought it out with them with superior force on the surface, backed up by carrier air. That would have been a rumble to rival Jutland, but of course all of this is hindsight.

Postwar, Kurita never offered a satisfactory explanation as to his conduct of the battle, not to American researchers and not to Japanese contemporaries. His silence on the subject pretty much speaks for itself.

[John Odom]

I know many will disagree, and I don't want to start a flame war, BUT I believe it was Divine Providence. I think it is clear, to believers at least, that God favored the Allies at many crucial times in WWII. There were too many times we seemed to be "lucky." I don't believe in Luck.

[sandy1000]

Originally Posted by John Odom

I know many will disagree, and I don't want to start a flame war, BUT I believe it was Divine Providence. I think it is clear, to believers at least, that God favored the Allies at many crucial times in WWII. There were too many times we seemed to be "lucky." I don't believe in Luck.

In general terms I don't believe in Divine Providence, having seen too many situations where there should have been some supernatural intervention in the interests of mercy and pity and yet this has not occured. However when looking at the Battle of Midway you would have to think that something beyond luck, careful planning and superior tactics was involved, Magic/Ultra notwithstanding. To think that the Japanese had destroyed the British army in Malaysia, the Americans in the Philippines, the Dutch in Indonesia and had sunk 2 allied aircraft carriers, 3 battleships and a battlecruiser, 4 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers and numerous destroyers, sloops etc, all with only the loss of one light aircraft carrier and yet in the space of a couple of hours on one bright afternoon off Midway they lost the war with their 4 big fleet carriers all sunk. A miracle if ever there was one.

[nigelweysom]

Originally Posted by John Odom

I know many will disagree, and I don't want to start a flame war, BUT I believe it was Divine Providence. I think it is clear, to believers at least, that God favored the Allies at many crucial times in WWII. There were too many times we seemed to be "lucky." I don't believe in Luck.

i don't believe in luck either , i do however believe in Divine Providence , and i also don't want to start a war ,
Nigel

[scjon]

I will stay out of the divine providence debate! Hopefully the flames too!
But I think there were so many factors that went into Kurita's decision that it becomes difficult to even assess what the may have been thinking. He had been bombed by third fleet and seen Musashi go down, he had been attacked by US Submarines losing three cruisers including his flagship, had heard nothing from the other three forces regarding their positions, had no idea who he was attacking, where the rest of the US forces were, and if there was even a point to what he was doing. I'm certain that he may have just decided it wasn't worth it as well. It would have been better had he spoken about though and given us some clue.
Don you are right about Spruance's comment, he made it to Nimitz at Pearl Harbor. But would the Japanese have used this tactic with Spruance in command? He had been wary of it in the Phillipine Sea and made the fateful decision to wait on the Japanese, earning himself a load of criticism. But as he stated his mission was to protect the invasion force, NOT chase the Mobile Fleet. Halsey's orders were different. He (Halsey) also pretty much turned Mitscher into an passenger, thus eliminating one of the best minds available to him. He ignored Mitscher and Lee and went charging on up north. The best admiral in that entire battle (other than Oldendorf) was actually Ozawa, who executed his orders to a tee.

[Don Boyer]

One can talk about luck or Divine Providence in warfare and not start a flame war. After all, Clifton Sprague himself, in delineating the reasons for his improbable victory listed "..the definite partiality of Almighty God." I cannot fault him for that one.

Things work in mysterious ways. Where was the "definite partiality of Almighty God" for those troops who died or ended up in prison camps on Bataan? Probably not too visible there, one would have to admit.

But on the other hand, that enormous sacrifice made on Bataan and Corregidor screwed up the Japanese timetable for conquest, got them flustered and in a hurry, and helped create the crucible out of which Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal emerged with victory going to the "righteous" at a time when we DID NOT have that huge materiel superiority that everyone is always on about as the major factor in victory in the Pacific.

This is especially a mea culpa of Japanese authors. We kicked their tails with what we had available at the time when it counted early in the war, and they refuse to admit it. They whine on and on about our huge materiel superiority winning the war and of course the nasty atomic bombs.

One has to admit, however, for the battles like Pelilieu, Iwo and Okinawa, where the Japanese started fighting smarter, we needed every ounce of that superiority to win and then some. They were a mighty tough opponent.

[Tank668]

There were a number of factors that lead to Kurita turning away. First, Japan was trying to win this battle, which meant that they needed a navy after the battle. If they lost the Philippines, they could no longer protect their supply line, if they keep the Philippines, they still needed a fleet to protect them again.
Kurita didn't know the situation around him. He was heading to Leyte Gulf, and was changing formation from night submarine defense to day air defense when he ran into Taffy 3. He thought this was part of Halsey's 3rd fleet, so the carriers would be fast carriers. This was his major mistake.
He had 2 options. Continue to Leyte and risk air attack, or attack Taffy 3. His decision was to attack the carriers, but just to knock out the flight decks so he could continue to Leyte. Fast carriers are faster then much of his force. If he spent time organizing his fleet into a battle line, the carriers would be gone. So he ordered his forces to attack from where they were. He knew he and his 2 battleships would fall behind, but thought that his 2 battlecruisers and 6 heavy cruisers would damage the carriers quickly, and they could continue on to Leyte. This decision came back to haunt him when the battle did not end quickly.
The carriers were able to launch their aircraft, and now Kurita was fighting an air and surface engagement. This type of fight had never occurred before. For accurate surface gunfire, the ships must travel in a fairly steady course. To avoid air attack, they must turn wildly. The ships were not in protective groups, so they were falling prey to either the American aircraft or surface combatants. Kurita had lost 1 battleship and 4 heavy cruisers prior to this engagement. As the engagement went on, he lost 3 more heavy cruisers and 1 disabled. If he continued this fight, he would have nothing left afterward. He was down to 2 heavy cruisers. Being left behind, he had little idea on what was happening and why it was taking so long. His only recourse was to disengage and reorganize. Once he disengaged, his only options were to continue to Leyte or leave. If he went to Leyte, he would face the same fight again, against a superior (to Taffy 3) surface force, as well as air attack. He would be unlikely to survive. So he chose the only option left, he withdrew.

[Tiornu]

Here's my take on this subject, and you all can decide if I'm full of it....
The CinC of the fleet (Toyoda) gave his orders to Kurita for a suicidal charge into Leyte Gulf, and then went home for tea (metaphorically speaking). This was troubling to a number of IJN officers who understood that, if it truly was a last-ditch suicidal mission, Toyoda should have been there. Mixed messages are not a good thing.
Among Kurita's staff, there was a catch phrase associated with the mission--Never die among empty ships. They understood that there was no strategic gain in attacking the invasion fleet which would have had plenty of time to land most of their materiel. In this they were correct. I believe this is the key to understanding Kurita's decision. He knew there was nothing worthwhile to accomplish in Leyte Gulf.
It's highly possible that Kurita confronted Toyoda immediately upon receiving his orders and told him that he would not blindly follow pointless orders that got his fleet and men sunk. If there was any strategic target to be found near Leyte, it was Halsey's fleet. A decisive smashing of Halsey was the one act that could have had an effect on the subsequent course of the war.
Kurita's decision to turn away from the Taffies, after he realized they weren't TF 38, supposedly came after he received word of Halsey's presence at another location (which turned out to be inaccurate). When it became apparent that no showdown would be possible that day, Kurita ordered a withdrawl.
There is no explanation that provides tidy explanations for all the considerations and questions we could raise. Kurita deepened the muddle with various contradictory postwar remarks. So we'll never know. But I think my version here offers a fairly coherent interpretation that doesn't belittle or patronize Kurita. I go under the assumption he was an intelligent man, flawed but not without his senses in Oct 1944.

[jainso31]

The way I see it; was that Taffy3's DD's and DE's were fanatically brave,they
had inflicted appreciable pain on the Japanese, despite losses of two DD's and one DE.and had Kurita thinking that he was up against American Fleet
carriers with cruiser escorts,etc. US aircraft continued to harry him and forced him to turn away from the battle area several times in Yamato to avoid torpedo attacks; and ultimately he turned for home.


jainso31

[BlackBat242]

Originally Posted by Don Boyer

Postwar, Kurita never offered a satisfactory explanation as to his conduct of the battle, not to American researchers and not to Japanese contemporaries. His silence on the subject pretty much speaks for itself.

Not quite correct... see below.

Originally Posted by Tiornu

statement

Tiornu, nice to see you here.

It sounds like you, too have read The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy by Masanori Ito.

Ito was journalist in Japan during the war... highly-placed enough to have had conversations with Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto after Yamamoto had been named Commander-in-Chief Combined Fleet, and to have been confided in by a member of the Supreme War Council that they had given Yamamoto that position to insure that the "pro-war faction" would not be able to assassinate him for his "anti-war" stance.

Ito wrote the book in 1956 (translated into English in 1962). Among other sources, Ito examined diaries and logbooks from Japanese officers, as well as interviewing them (including Kurita) personally.

His conclusion was derived from many facts, including several previous incidents in Kurita's career, and is that Kurita refused suicide missions... always insisting that there be some possibility of survival for his men, however small.

It was Kurita who commanded the task force with Kongo and Haruna to bombard Henderson Field in October 1942, and he refused to sail unless his crews were equipped with helmets, rifles, hand grenades, and machine guns... so that if the ships were sunk they would have some way of fighting through to join the Japanese Army, rather than become prisoners.

In early-1943 he had turned around from a mission to Bougainville when the air support he had insisted on as a precondition to the mission failed to appear and his ships were severely damaged by American planes.

In the battle of Leyte Gulf he had tried to convince Nishimura to not hit the US fleet protecting the landing area from attack from the south (Nishimura had radioed that he would attack at 0400), but to swing well east after passing through Surigao Strait and meet Kurita's force at 1100 before attacking.

All in all, this was not a commander to needlessly waste his men or ships in either hopeless attacks against a strongly superior force or in attacks on "empty ships".


Then we get to the actual decision. Specifically, when he ordered the turn away from Taffy 3, his wording was "We will seek out and engage the enemy task force which is in position bearing 5 degrees, distant 113 miles from Suluan lighthouse". While there was no US task force there, this WAS almost directly towards Halsey & Lee's ships!

Here was no collection of "empty ships", but rather the main body of the US fleet. Attacking here would not trap his ships between the fast battleships and fleet carriers on the north and the old battleships and escort carriers on the south, but would give him the chance to hit and still have a line of retreat if necessary. Even if his fleet was destroyed, they would have died attacking the enemy's warships, not empty transports.

40 minutes later, the first of 4 waves of USN planes attacked his fleet... coming from the north-north-east. Obviously, these were from the US fleet carriers, which had either completely destroyed Ozawa's fleet and were returning, or had never gone that far out of the area to begin with. In either case, here was a repeat of the pounding his fleet had received the day before. The great battleship Musashi had been sunk by those attacks, and his ships were now even more damaged and less able to defend themselves.

Kurita now realized that the rest of his fleet was likely to be sunk at sea without being able to even fire their guns at an American ship again, and he decided that the only rational course was to turn west and retreat back through San Bernardino straight.


Ito says that there were then two schools of thought in the Japanese Navy: the first says that "When one does not know whether to go to the right or to the left, he should head in the direction of death"... and the second says that "one should be cautious in order to make death as meaningful as possible". He holds that Kurita was of the second school, and taken in that light his decision makes perfect sense.


Ito gives more than a full page to his interview with Kurita, and the Admiral cites several factors in his decision to turn away from Leyte Gulf and head north:
1. He believed Halsey's fleet was close at hand (he admits this was an incorrect belief)
2. He believed that he would be able to close to gun range before too many of his ships were sunk.
3. He admits to "a personal obsession with destroying the American carriers".

As to the later decision to turn west and escape, rather than turn back south and head for Leyte again, he says "My head was then filed with thoughts of air attack and our fuel state". He does admit that his decisions saved a lot of Japanese sailor's lives and concedes that this was "fortunate".


In addition, to confirm sandy1000's question and theory, Kurita specifically says"

Originally Posted by Admiral Kurita

As I consider it now, my judgment does not seem to have been been sound. Then the decision seemed right, but my mind was extremely fatigued. It probably should be called a "judgment of extreme exhaustion". I did not feel tired at the time but, under great strain and without sleep for three days and nights, I was exhausted both physically and mentally.

[Don Boyer]

H.P. Wilmott in his "The Battle of Leyte Gulf" doesn't think much more of Kurita's statements post war regarding his battle decisions than I do. Exhausted and beleaguered, no doubt, but he had a staff of experts with him for just such jolly occasions. Had he stayed in Leyte Gulf to the bitter end, he would have destroyed a lot of ships, and lost probably all his own as well. It was what the Imperial command sent him out there to do; although that wasn't a particularly bright thing to do, it was the only thing they could do and have any credibility at all left. Instead, he left right when he was about to get some return on the investment made in the attack.

Absolutely no scenario the Japanese could have come up with would have salvaged anything in this battle. Had they actually penetrated the gulf, sunk everything in sight, and kept on going, it would not have changed the outcome of anything later on down the road. The only bright spot in the whole scenario for the Japanese was Halsey's inability to think about how to deploy a massive fleet to put superior force at all points of contact with the Japanese. He just wasn't that smart.

[designeraccd]

And let's NOT forget the contribution made by the CO, who earned his MEDAL OF HONOR the hard way, of the USS Johnston, along with many other brave USN personnel who charged into the guns of the Main IJN Force........DFO



http://www.bosamar.com/bios/evans_bio.html

[John Odom]

This one has been studied and speculated to death. I don't think we will ever know. Like Don, I don't value Kurita's post war statements very highly.

Don is right. If he had proceeded it would have cost a lot of lives on both sides, but not changed the outcome.

[BlackBat242]

Originally Posted by John Odom

This one has been studied and speculated to death. I don't think we will ever know. Like Don, I don't value Kurita's post war statements very highly.

Don is right. If he had proceeded it would have cost a lot of lives on both sides, but not changed the outcome.

And you don't think that that very fact might well have been part of his thought processes?


It seems to me that the near-automatic dismissal of what the man said, and of what someone who knew him personally said about his character, shows a continuance of the "they are all alike, and they all think this way" attitude that led to the mis-appraisal of Japanese tactics, capabilities, and intentions in 1941.

No, Kurita doesn't fit the stereotype of unquestioning obedience to orders and cultural willingness to die with or without orders that many assume every Japanese soldier or sailor embodied.

The very idea that a Japanese admiral might think for himself, care for the well-being of his men, and be willing to abandon a mission when it becomes senseless to continue is inconceivable to some.

[Don Boyer]

Actually, I don't find it hard to believe that Kurita was quite capable of realizing the situation he was in, taking in to account the lives of his crews and deciding it was a lost cause. My problem is he never came out and clearly said so, deciding instead to be reticent and diffuse post war with his comments, probably to avoid casting a poor light on his superiors among other reasons, of which his post-war reputation was probably the last thing on his mind. Fifty years of association with Japanese culture has provided a bit of insight in that respect.

Masanori Ito was a respected writer of his time, but a newspaperman at heart, not a historian or for that matter a military tactician. His intimate knowledge, based on personal experience, is very valuable in judging the men of his time, but is not the only source of value by any means.

The entire Leyte Gulf plan of action was "senseless" in light of the opposition the Japanese would face, but the IJN, being warriors first and foremost, were not going to sit around without responding to the decisive fatal blow that would severe their empire irrevocably. For one thing, with the Army committed to mortal combat ashore, for the navy to not be there was absolutely unthinkable. They could have come up with a better plan of attack, no doubt, but the outcome, regardless of losses and casualties to the American side would have been the same. They would have been almost entirely destroyed. Had Halsey's staff had the lights on regarding intelligence matters and fleet dispositions, things would have been far worse for Kurita.

My comments on Kurita et al are never based on some "automatic dismissal" of anything, particularly the character of the Japanese themselves. Despite a great deal of military-generated national conformity during the period from the Meiji Restoration to the end of WWII, the character of the men involved spanned the full gamut, just like in every other nation involved in the war. On one end of the scale, you have your Masanobu Tsuji's, on the other your Yamamoto's, Yonai's and Kurita's. Generic assumptions buy one nothing in warfare or in discussions of warfare for that matter.

[jainso31]

As a neutral looking in on this complex debate; and which I have carefully read.
I can see the usual division-those who are not against Kurita versus those who are;although it is blurred at times.
Personally I think #10 and 11 speak dispassionate volumes. on this tendentious
subject and proffer a more balanced view- IMO.
I am sure many of the participants are right in their conclusions that; in this case -the absolute truth may never be Known.

jainso31