The Twilight Warriors (8 page)

They took the Americans by surprise. Kurita’s warships poured fire into the hapless escort carriers, sinking the escort carrier
Gambier Bay
and three destroyers. Then the Japanese admiral made his own critical misjudgment. Thinking that he was engaging the main American carrier force, Kurita ordered a retreat. With a stunning victory in his grasp, he cut his losses and withdrew to the north.

It still wasn’t over. Passing back through the San Bernardino Strait and into the Sibuyan Sea, Kurita’s fleet again came under attack from U.S. carrier planes. Though his warships took more damage, Kurita managed to escape with most of his fleet intact.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a crushing defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Conventional weapons and tactics had failed to inflict serious damage on the American fleet. But on the morning of October 25, 1944, while Kurita’s warships were in full retreat,
Lieutenant Seki’s unconventional weapons were headed for their targets.

T
his time Seki was determined that he would not return. His five bomb-laden Zero
tokko
aircraft were escorted by four conventional fighters. They would comb the ocean to the east of the Philippines, and if they failed to find the carriers, they would strike at the flotilla of enemy supply and amphibious vessels supporting the landings on Leyte. These ships were nowhere near the value of enemy carriers, but they would be convenient targets.

It was midmorning when Seki spotted what he was looking for. Down below in the gray seas off the coast of Samar were the telltale flat-topped shapes of aircraft carriers. What he didn’t know was that these were the escort carriers of the Taffy Fleet, still recovering from their surprise battle that morning with Kurita’s fleet.

Each of the five
tokko
pilots selected a target. On Seki’s signal, they began their attacks.

K
amikaze
. It was a new word to Rear Adm. Tom Sprague. Like most of the men aboard his flagship, the escort carrier USS
Sangamon
, Sprague had never seen a kamikaze. He was the commander of Task Unit 77.1, known as “Taffy One,” and had overall command of the three escort carrier units.

Sprague’s carriers had already had a close call that morning. Their only losses from the Japanese battleships and cruisers were Taffy Three’s
Gambier Bay
as well as two screening destroyers and a destroyer escort. Now that the Japanese had withdrawn, Sprague had given the order to stand down.

Suddenly, a new threat: from out of the gray sky appeared a Zero, weaving through a belated storm of antiaircraft fire. As Sprague watched, the Zero dove toward USS
Santee
, one of the Taffy One escort carriers. The Zero’s 20-millimeter cannons opened fire, spraying the flight deck.

Every observer, from Sprague to the lookouts on
Santee
, knew
what would happen next: the Zero’s pilot would release his bomb and pull out of the dive.

He didn’t. Without wavering from the dive, the Japanese plane plunged straight into
Santee
’s deck. The bomb crashed through the wooden deck and exploded on the hangar deck below. In the ensuing carnage, sixteen men were killed and dozens more wounded.

The attack astonished the men of the Taffy Fleet, but no one attached special significance to it. Japanese planes had been known to crash into their targets, especially after they were already hit.

And then, minutes later, it happened again. Another Zero dove into the deck of the escort carrier
Suwannee
.

The attacks continued. In quick succession, Japanese planes dove into the escort carriers
Kalinin Bay, Kitkun Bay
, and
White Plains
.

By now it was clear: the Japanese had launched a wave of suicide attacks.

At 1051, a low-flying Zero roared toward the stern of the escort carrier
St. Lo
. A half mile astern, the Zero pulled up, rolled inverted, and dove straight into the carrier’s flight deck.

Just as with
Santee
, the kamikaze plane penetrated the thin wooden deck and exploded in the confined hangar bay, but the crash on
St. Lo
was even deadlier. A compartment of torpedoes and bombs exploded, ripping through the bowels of the carrier, sending an aircraft elevator and flaming hunks of metal and bodies a thousand feet into the sky.

St. Lo
was doomed. Within half an hour the carrier had sunk and 143 crewmen were dead or dying.

Tom Sprague and the men of the Taffy Fleet were bewildered. They were among the first to witness a terrifying new weapon. How did you defend yourself against an enemy who was determined to die?

A
t Mabalacat, there was jubilation. Seki’s mission had succeeded beyond their dreams. Not only did all five of the
tokko
planes succeed in hitting enemy ships, but some of the fighter escorts had chosen to join them. A Japanese ace named Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, who witnessed the attacks, thought it was Seki who had dived on the
St. Lo
. If so, Yukio Seki would enter history as the first kamikaze to sink a major enemy ship.

The
tokko
warriors provided the only bright moment in a disastrous week. In the four engagements that became known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost three battleships, ten cruisers, thirteen destroyers, and five submarines. U.S. losses amounted to one light carrier, USS
Princeton
, the Jeep carriers
St. Lo
and
Gambier Bay
, and two destroyers and a destroyer escort. For the Americans, whose fleet now commanded the Pacific, it was a pinprick. For the Japanese, it was a blow from which they would never recover.

But the success of Seki’s kamikazes sent a thrill of pride through the demoralized Japanese forces. In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the little cadre of
tokko
warriors—Ohnishi’s young gods—had caused more destruction to the enemy than all the navy’s battleships and cruisers.

Now, more than ever, they wanted to continue the hunt. Waiting for them off the eastern shore of the Philippines were the real trophies—the big Essex-class aircraft carriers.

T
he bullhorn blared in every compartment aboard
Intrepid:
“General quarters! All hands man your battle stations!”

The announcement was becoming routine. Since midmorning on November 25, Japanese snooper planes had been probing the carrier group’s defenses. Each time the ship’s crew had gone running to general quarters.

Intrepid
was the flagship of Task Group 38.2, under Rear Adm. Gerald Bogan. In the group were
Intrepid
’s sister ship
Hancock
, the light carriers
Cabot
and
Independence
, the battleships
Iowa
and
New Jersey
, the light cruisers
Biloxi, Miami
, and
Vincennes
, and seventeen destroyers.

The antiaircraft guns were firing again. On the flight deck, pilots waiting to take off were peering nervously into the sky. They had become unwilling spectators to the show over their heads.

A kamikaze was diving on
Intrepid
. The Japanese fighter took a hit from a 40-millimeter round and crashed into the sea off
Intrepid
’s starboard side. Behind it came another, a Zero fighter-bomber, weaving through the tracers and mushroom bursts of gunfire, coming almost straight down. Less than a mile away was
Hancock. Hancock
’s pilots, just like those on
Intrepid
, were watching the descending apparition.
Which carrier is he going for?
In a few seconds, they had the answer.

At the last instant, the Zero disintegrated, but its flaming hulk crashed onto
Hancock
’s flight deck. Amazingly, the only casualty was the kamikaze pilot, Flying Petty Officer 1st Class Isamu Kamitake, whose remains were still in the wreckage of his airplane.

More kamikazes were inbound. The antiaircraft bursts closed in on a low-flying Zero, exploding it 1,500 yards astern. Another appeared, and it too went into the water close to the stern.

Then came a third Zero, flying low from astern. Every aft and starboard gun on
Intrepid
was blazing away, tracers converging on the low-flying Zero. Somehow the Zero kept coming. The sky behind
Intrepid
roiled with black smoke and explosions. The surface of the sea frothed from the hail of spent ordnance.

As he came closer, the kamikaze pilot pulled up in a steep climb, then rolled over and dove toward
Intrepid
. By now every eye on
Intrepid
’s topside area, including the admiral’s, was riveted on the incoming Zero.
The kamikaze and its bomb exploded into the flight deck aft of the island, a few feet forward of the mid-deck number three elevator. The mass of the wrecked fighter punched through the wooden deck, penetrating the gallery deck suspended beneath the flight deck, spewing flame and shrapnel into the hangar deck below.

In Ready Room 4, on the gallery deck beneath where the kamikaze first struck, death came instantly for thirty-two sailors, most of
them radarmen waiting to start their duty shift. On the flame-filled hangar deck, armed and fueled airplanes were exploding. Firefighting crews rushed to the scene of the worst conflagration. The ship’s fire marshal, Lt. Don DiMarzo, reported to the captain that the damage was bad, but he would get it under control.

And he might have if it hadn’t been for what happened three minutes later.

T
he pilot’s name was Kohichi Nunoda. Even at this low altitude, less than a hundred feet off the water, Nunoda had no trouble spotting his target. A thick column of black smoke was rising from the enemy carrier’s flight deck where it had been crashed into minutes earlier by Nunoda’s squadronmate Suehiro Ikeda.

Today was the most concentrated
tokko
raid to date—125 dedicated pilots plus their accompanying reconnaissance and fighter escorts. Not since the Leyte Gulf battle a month earlier had so many Japanese warplanes been launched against the U.S. fleet.

As the ship swelled in his windshield, Nunoda hauled the nose of the Zero into a steep climb, rolled up on a wing, judged his dive angle, then plunged downward. He aimed for the middle of the flight deck, which was already ablaze from Ikeda’s attack.

Nunoda was taking no chances that his mission might fail. With the deck of the carrier rising to meet him, he released his bomb. Then he opened fire with his 20-millimeter cannons. Nunoda’s guns were still firing when his Zero crashed into the ship.

The devastation was immediate and spectacular. The bomb drilled straight through
Intrepid
’s wooden flight deck. It ricocheted off the armored base of the hangar deck, then hurtled forward to explode where the firefighters were still battling the blaze from the first kamikaze.

Lieutenant DiMarzo and his firefighters were blown away like chaff. Nearly every airplane on the hangar deck burst into flame. Secondary explosions from airplane ordnance turned the cavernous hangar bay into a maelstrom of fire and shrapnel.

The worst killer was the smoke. It gushed into passageways and filled compartments, trapping men on the shattered gallery deck with no route of escape. The smoke billowed into the sky through the open holes in the flight deck. Firefighting crews manned hoses on the open deck, trying to keep the flames from spreading to more airplanes and ammunition stores. The debris of the wrecked Zero—the second kamikaze—still smoldered on the forward deck. In the wreckage someone discovered the mostly intact body of the pilot, Kohichi Nunoda. His remains were given an unceremonious burial at sea.

The second kamikaze strike jammed the ship’s sky-search radar. Sailors were drafted as lookouts, their eyeballs serving as
Intrepid
’s primary warning system. The towering column of smoke was a beacon for more kamikazes. “For God’s sake,” said a gunnery officer, “are we the only ship in the ocean?”

They weren’t. The massed wave of
tokko
aircraft had fanned out to other targets. At 1254, another pair of Zeroes dove on the light carrier
Cabot
. The first crashed into the forward flight deck among a pack of launching airplanes. Less than a minute later, a second Zero attacked from nearly straight ahead. At the last second, the gunners put enough rounds into the plane that the Zero veered off course and crashed into the port side at the waterline. Still, the intense shower of flame and debris wiped out the gun crews on
Cabot
’s exposed port rail. By the time the flames were extinguished, the toll of
Cabot
’s dead and missing, mostly men of the gun crews, had swelled to thirty-five, with another seventeen seriously injured.

While
Intrepid
and
Cabot
were fighting their fires, yet another carrier in the same task group, USS
Essex
, was under siege. At 1256, an Asahi D4Y “Judy” dive-bomber, a sleeker replacement for the fixed-gear D3A “Val” bomber, flown by a young man named Yoshinori Yamaguchi, came slanting out of the sky toward
Essex
. Trailing a dense stream of smoke from its burning left wing, the kamikaze dove straight and true into
Essex
’s port deck edge. A geyser
of fire and smoke leaped into the sky and enveloped the carrier’s flight deck.