Chapter 91 Chapter Ninety

It was still midnight in Wright Bay, and it was broad daylight in Washington with the sun high in the sky.Nearby halfway between the two is Pearl Harbor.Chester.From there Nimitz was relaying the events at Wright Gulf to Oster at Washington Headquarters.gold.Of course, the Tokyo Naval Command is also watching the gradual development of this battle at this moment. With such great advances in communication technology, with such high effectiveness of transmitters, with such rapidity in translating codes, and with fleets traveling at twenty to twenty-five knots over long distances, their actions are So stable, that the supreme command, so far apart, can fly over the sky like Homer's god, or like Napoleon watching the whole battle situation from a hill in Austerlitz.The Battle of Leyte Gulf, not only was the greatest naval battle ever fought, but it was also unprecedented in two respects: there were people watching from such a distance; The machine sends out a large number of them.

So now here's the funny thing: No one, either those who were there, or those who were scattered around the world, really knew what was going on.Never before has a war been shrouded in such a thick fog, and all those delicate communication devices only spread and deepen the fog. Halsey completely confused them all.In an urgent and extremely brief telegram he notified Kincaid, who was then in the bay to the south, that he had decided to leave the San Bernardino Strait undefended, and informed Nimitz of the fact. He Jin: According to the attack report, I have severely damaged the Central Fleet.He is now leading three fleet groups northward, attacking the aircraft carrier fleet at dawn.

That's all coverage.Kincaid explained that this meant that Halsey was heading north with his three carrier groups, leaving Task Force 34, including the battleships, to defend the Channel.Nimitz explained it this way.Kim explains it this way.Mitchell explained it in the same way.In the eyes of several of them, this urgent telegram could not have other meanings, because it is unimaginable to open the strait to the enemy.Yet it was also clear to Halsey and his staff that since he had not ordered the plan of operations to be carried out, there was no formation of battleships.So, San Bernardino is defenseless.So Kincaid had been warned in time.So Kincaid will try to watch out for himself, for that beachhead. 'And at Pearl Harbor, when the urgent telegram came, Raymond.Spruance, who was standing next to Nimitz in front of the chart deck, said quietly, "If I were there, I'd leave my fleet here," putting one hand on the St. Out there in Bernardino Strait.But he was referring to aircraft carriers, too; it had never occurred to him that Halsey would move battleships.

Halsey waited until after dark and then made a sudden rush north, which confused the Japanese.So, Kurita guessed, his main fleet would run head-on into the Third Fleet as it advanced.Ozawa, who commanded those aircraft carriers to lure the enemy, was even more confused; he had learned that Kurita was turning west, but hadn't known that Kurita had turned around and headed for the San Bernardino Strait, so he didn't know that "One" Whether the battle plan was being carried out, or had been canceled; it was not known whether his ploy to lure Halsey had failed or succeeded.He first fled north, then, under orders "by the protection of the gods," turned south, resumed his role as bait, and finally sailed north again.As for the Japanese commanders in Manila and Tokyo, they have completely lost their minds about this.

However, the generals who marched north with Halsey knew it well. From time to time Pug went to the combat control room, hoping to get new orders from Halsey.For a long and sad time there was a deathly silence in the transmitter, while the unguarded strait fell farther and farther behind the fleet.This is how the same thing?Could it be that Halsey had not been informed that the Central Fleet was moving back toward Leyte Gulf? Suddenly, the intercom began to rattle, and only Pug's task force leader, General Bogan, and the colonel of the aircraft carrier "Independence" carrying the night reconnaissance plane were nervously asking and answering.Pug could still make out the general's accent over the distorted clucking of the radio.Are the reports on the location of the fleet at sea in Sibuyan accurate?Did the colonel question the pilot carefully?Quite accurately, replied the Colonel.Those Japanese ships were moving fast, there can be no doubt about that.That's right, a scout pilot out in search just reported that the navigation lights in the San Bernardino Strait are brightly lit.

Pug heard the general's voice yell, "Jesus Christ!" A moment later, Bogen called "Jolly Roger Hear It Yourself" on the intercom, which was Admiral Halsey's intership callsign.It was a little rash, but it turned out to be useless.It was not Jolly Roger who answered, but another man whose voice was unidentifiable.Borgen repeated the news that the Channel Lights had come on, his urgent, tense voice emphasizing the seriousness of the matter.You can hear the other party reply wearily: "Yes, yes, we have obtained that information." Then, there was silence for a long while.Pug was beginning to get nervous and was about to say over the intercom his opinion—even if it was mild—that the situation in San Bernardino was becoming more and more critical, when Willis.Lee had preempted him by calling Halsey on the phone, saying he was sure Center Fleet was going into the San Bernardino Strait in the dark.Pug heard another weary "Got it" from the other side, and then fell silent.In this way, Pug didn't want to be pushed back in the same way again.

After the battle, it was not known until much later that both Bogen and Lee were trying to persuade Halsey to return the battleship to the Channel.But after hearing the indifferent and perfunctory tone of the unknown person, neither of them said anything.It turned out later that even talking to Halsey at that time was of no avail.The old man has made up his mind to go after the Japanese aircraft carrier.He had stopped his staff from continuing the debate and had gone to sleep.Then I found out, Mark.Mitchell's chief of staff, the combat-loving man nicknamed "Thirty-One Nautical Mile" Burke, had woken Mitchell in the middle of the night and begged him to call Halsey to get the battleship back.Mitchell's answer became a famous quote. "If you want to listen to my idea, he will come to ask me." After saying this, he turned over on the bunk.

So that powerful fleet sailed north lazily like that, at a leisurely pace, sometimes changing its speed a little, but there was no intention of hurrying, because Halsey didn't want to miss the most escaped Japanese ships in the dark.Halsey's generals had different opinions, were more or less worried and irritated, but no one said anything.The time passed from midnight on the 24th of October to the 25th of October; the day of the decisive battle at Leyte Gulf was, as it happened, the ninetieth anniversary of the charge of the Hussars. On October 25th, the invasion of the three-pronged "Number One" operation plan triggered three battles at once.The battle on the Sibuyan Sea on the 24th was intertwined with these three battles, so the Battle of Leyte Gulf was called "a battle of four confrontations".

The vast and quiet sea separated the three battles on the 25th from each other.Those battles were tactically unconnected.None of the commanders on both sides made overall arrangements and did not grasp the entire situation of the battle.Fights break out and end at different times.Any one of the three battles can be called the Great Battle of Wright Gulf in history, even if the other two battles did not take place.In military history, they have been combined into a very complex naval battle.Each of the three battles needs to be written into a great book to detail the thrilling story filled with gunpowder.The following are the three famous fierce battles that took place across six nautical miles on October 25, each with a brief description: In the battle of the Surigao Strait to the south, the fighting began in the darkness before dawn and lasted By the end of dawn, the U.S. military had won a complete victory.

In the battle outside Luzon in the north, Mitchell's planes bombarded Ozawa's aircraft carrier and his support fleet all day long. The aircraft carrier was sunk, but most of the support fleet escaped. In the battle off Central Samar, the escorting small aircraft carriers of the Seventh Fleet scrambled at dawn to match the Kurita fleet speeding towards Leyte Gulf.In this encounter, the strengths and weaknesses of the two sides happened to be the opposite of the above situation, and this time the Japanese had the upper hand.On the way to the beachhead, the mighty main fleet just fired a few volleys of guns casually, and inadvertently won an easy victory: the opponents were six slow-moving, short and broad-looking small aircraft carriers, and A handful of destroyers and escorts, all armed with only five-inch guns.

It was here that the decisive battle to attack and defend Wright Bay began. But the most shocking battle was fought on the south side in the dark: the T-tactic was used in that battle, the first naval battle since Jutland, and it must be the last that the world has seen. The Japanese fleet, which was diverting the offensive, ignored Kurita's order to suspend its advance, and sailed into the Surigao Strait, the entrance to the south of Wright Gulf, just after midnight.All the gunboats of the Kincaid Seventh Fleet were already waiting there, and the battleships were arranged in the battle formation in the general military book: the two sides had a total of forty-two battleships against eight battleships, and six battleships against two battleships. The Japanese warships formed a column and advanced blindly and boldly. They were first attacked by thirty-nine torpedo boats on both sides, so they used searchlights and auxiliary artillery fire to repel these speedboats.Then they were again besieged by destroyers; row after row of destroyers, as in a fleet maneuver, sailed by in neat rows, firing row upon row of torpedoes that shot through the dark sky for miles and miles. underwater.It blew up a battleship, pierced another, the flagship of the fleet, sank a destroyer, and damaged two others.The poor few surviving battleships staggered back towards the strait and were intercepted by T-shaped tactics: one battleship, one cruiser and one destroyer were all injured.The battle fleet blasted them all with artillery.Until the sky was bright, they were still chasing the ships that had suffered heavy damage and retreated.Only one destroyer escaped and returned to Japan to report the fiasco in the Surigao Strait. A second mixed fleet of Japanese cruisers and destroyers sailed south from Japan to join the Southern Offensive, but arrived too late to catch up with the carnage.They arrived on the battlefield before dawn, only to see the burning hulls floating in the sea, only to hear the wrecking radio messages exchanged by the sinking ships, and then a cruiser was hit by a torpedo by a torpedo boat, The commander ordered the ship to turn around and leave.Was it a cowardly or prudent move?Everyone will judge this prudence in war differently. Regardless, the Battle of Surigao Strait was brutal and entertaining for American servicemen.They have taken risks many times and suffered some counterattacks, but they finally carried out a massacre that will be recorded in history.Afterwards people described the fiery scenes of this last battle of the battleships: how they waited for a long time in the warm night, on the calm sea when the moon was sinking; how their nerves gradually became tense; Illuminated by flares during the search of searchlights, facing those heavy warships under the red arched lines drawn by tracer bombs in the air, I felt the only excitement in my life; how to hold my breath, waiting for the torpedoes to find them in the dark night The target; how the battleship exploded and burned in the sea; how the bluish-white searchlights dazzled the dark water; how the cannons fired row after row.Only one of the Japanese fleet survived, the rest of the ships were sunk, and thousands of officers and soldiers died in battle.Only thirty-nine people were killed in the United States, and not a single ship was lost. Thus, the southward side of Wright Gulf was safe.But what about the north side?At about four o'clock in the morning, when the naval battle was going well, Kincaid, in order to save himself from further worries, decided to ask Halsey directly whether Task Force 34 was defending St. Bernard. Dino Strait.The urgent call was sent out immediately.By then Kurita was making his way toward the bay, and the distance between Halsey and Kurita had gradually grown to two hundred miles. Victor.Henry hadn't gone to bed yet, he was pacing back and forth on the bridge of the USS Iowa.He knew perfectly well that he should now go to his cabin and rest for a while before the battle began.But every time he tried to lie down, the miles would tick in his head like the gauges on a car, and he would think of the hourly cost of driving back to Wright Sound.Blockade the San Bernardino Strait, T-intercept the Center Fleet: Well, look at these shattered dreams!At this moment, the Japanese fleet must have crossed the strait and rushed to the beachhead.When will the first distress telegram be received?The sooner the better, thought Pug: something greater than the historic infamy of Pearl Harbor was brewing, and the few hours that could be used to undo it were passing. The fleet advanced slowly and mightily, the sea was calm, and the sky was full of stars.In the extremely low place below, the dark current rippled along the hull of the "Iowa", causing a slight rattling sound.The back of the ship hung high above the horizon, and the cross glowed.Pug would appreciate the sweet night sky, the brilliant stars, the mysterious solemnity of the dark sea.He tried his best to distract his thoughts from thinking about the predicament the fleet was in now.Why should he pretend to be smart and be tortured by these unnecessary troubles?In any case, why should he ask his superiors?Perhaps Halsey had been given top-secret instructions and was doing exactly what he was supposed to do?Maybe the order or information was sent through the command intelligence system. Doesn't the Battleship Seventh Squadron know that password? His duty officer spoke in the dark. "Is it the general? The commander of the Third Fleet has sent an urgent call." Pug hurried to the smoky, red-lighted combat control room, where a few sailors, as tired as those on duty, pulled themselves together and sat in front of the radar.There was the urgent telegram on the chart table.As soon as his eyes touched those words, he felt pain and joy at the same time, and his heart jumped eagerly. The battleships are in battle formation. Now, Halsey finally ordered the thirty-fourth task force to dispatch!But, too bad, instead of heading south, the fleet headed in the opposite direction.The six fast battleships, accompanied by cruisers and destroyers, would press forward and continue north; if the Japanese aircraft carriers came within range of artillery fire after daylight, we would intercept them.Otherwise Mitchell's aircraft carriers would attack them, and the battle fleet would have to chase and destroy the damaged ships.And so the hopes that Pug had so quickly kindled quickly dimmed. It was a dreary and onerous task indeed to mobilize those six black behemoths from a fleet of more than sixty ships by the faint light of the stars.Pug.Henry was so tired that he almost collapsed, but he still couldn't rest. He paced back and forth in the command room and on the bridge, trying to eat something, but couldn't, so he just smoked and drank coffee. Jumping so hard, he knew he had to relax.For the time being he had nothing to do, the ship was under the care of the captain.It was broad daylight, and the battleship arrived at the designated sea area, ten nautical miles north of the aircraft carrier, and made waves on the sunlit sea.Several aviation squadrons roared overhead to bomb the target of revenge that the reconnaissance plane had spotted a hundred and fifty nautical miles away. Pug had ordered his communications officer to intercept every decipherable telegram between Kincaid and Halsey, so he was now beginning to look at another folder concerning the Center Fleet.Urgent telegrams that cause danger, pay attention to the time of dispatch of each dispatch he reads.There were three telegrams in that folder by now: 6:50.Kincaid to Halsey.It is in fierce battle with the enemy surface fleet in the Surigao Strait.Q: Is Task Force 34 currently defending the San Bernardino Strait? Seven thirty.Halsey to Kincaid.no.Now lead our aircraft carrier to attack the enemy aircraft carrier. Pug thought sadly that the surprised expression on General Kincaid's face when he read the urgent telegram far to the south in Wright Bay was quite interesting.Eight twenty-five.Kincaid to Halsey.Enemy ships retreat from Surigao Strait.My light fast ship is in pursuit. It was the last mildly worded telegram.Here again, here was the distress call that Pug had both dreaded and hoped for: 8:37.Kincaid to Halsey.Enemy battleships and cruisers were reported to be bombarding Task Force 77.4.3 fifteen nautical miles behind the ship. The officer who deciphered the code noted on it: "This telegram code is sent."I use plain English!In order to communicate quickly, Kincaid did not use codes regardless of the interception by the Japanese. This incident itself explained his meaning more sharply than the telegram. Pug hurried to the thick stack of operational orders to find out who was in command of Task Force 77.4.3.Ah, my God!Ziggy.All the officers and men of Sprague's escort small aircraft carrier ran into a brigade of damn Japanese battleships.clifton.Sprague was his old friend, a shrewd classmate of the 18th class. He joined the Air Corps very early and became an admiral in the navy earlier than many seniors like Pug.Now, God bless Ziggy, God bless his matchbox-like ships! Pug sat across from Bradford at a table in the combat control room.At this time, the telegrams in his folder were piling up, and since the battle was about to start, things in the combat control room were chaotic.Eight forty.Kincaid to Halsey.Desperately needing a fast battleship, sail immediately to Leyte Gulf. "Immediately, huh?" muttered Pug, measuring the distance of the battleship to Wright Gulf: two hundred and twenty-five nautical miles.At full speed, it takes nine hours to sail, and you can get there at sunset.It was too late to save Qi Ji.Sprague's squad and landing force saved them from a massacre; but if Halsey acted immediately, ordering the battleships back, they might be able to cut off the pirate ships' retreat and sink them . However, Halsey issued only one order to Carrier Group IV, which was now returning from Ulysses: 8:55.Halsey to McCain.Advance at maximum speed and attack the enemy near latitude 11-20 degrees north and longitude 127 degrees east. Pug looked at the route of McCain's fleet he had drawn, and found that McCain was more than 300 nautical miles away from Wright Gulf.Even if he moved immediately and sent planes, they would take hours to reach the battlefield, and then what would be left of Ziggy's ships? At this time, the battle reports of the pilots going to the north for air strikes came in one after another.The sailors pasted the victory numbers written in thick ink strokes on the plexiglass board, and cheers resounded through the combat control room.Halsey was already chalking up his glorious victories: one aircraft carrier sunk, two aircraft carriers and one cruiser "badly damaged", only one escaped aircraft carrier was not injured; the first battle was a complete victory! "The enemy has almost no resistance", this article is written in big orange characters.Apparently there wasn't much left for the battle fleet to do here.Mitchell's 400 planes will wipe out this damaged and useless fleet.Although the complete victory of this battle cannot be compared with the Battle of Midway in terms of significance, the number of ships sunk is not less than it. Pug heard the captain's voice droning from the bridge as he cheered the news.In the combat control room, there were rumors of exciting victories, and there was a lot of excitement everywhere.Only Victor.Henry sat there by himself, worrying.The victory report was still written on the plexiglass board, but a second lieutenant in the coding room handed him several telegrams from Kincaid.Telegrams are coming more often now! Ten past nine.Kincaid to Halsey.My escort aircraft carrier is now under attack by four battleships, eight cruisers and other ships.Please order Lee to sail to Wright Gulf at full speed for cover.And please send fast aircraft carriers to counterattack immediately. Nine fourteen.Kincaid to Halsey.Urgent need for heavy warship rescue. Nine twenty-five.Kincaid to Halsey.The situation is critical, and battleships and fast aircraft carriers are needed to prevent enemy ships from breaking into Leyte Gulf. For goodness sake, look how long Halsey will drag on?Telegrams came like snowflakes.It seems that some big mistakes have been made in the dispatch work.However, the meaning of the telegram is still clear.Now Nimitz must have been listening to the terrifying telegrams from the Seventh Fleet commander's powerful transmitter, so he passed them on to King.Now, Pug thought, Halsey's future was in jeopardy; not only had he lost the battle this time, but these telegrams would bring him to court-martial. Nine thirty.Kincaid to Halsey.The 77.4.3 Task Force was attacked by cruisers and battleships at 7 o'clock.Please send air force to attack immediately.And send heavy warships to support.My old battleship is low on ammo. At last the telegram was answered. Nine forty.Halsey to Kincaid.I'm still in a pitched battle with an enemy aircraft carrier.McCain has been ordered to lead five aircraft carriers and four heavy cruisers to immediately support your army. It was then that Halsey for the first time stated his own degrees of latitude and longitude.It was only then that Kincaid learned all the bad news, and knew that the battle fleet was about ten hours away from Wright Gulf.What Kinkaid didn't know now was that the battleship was still heading in the other direction at full speed. Ten past five.Kincaid to Halsey.where is liSend Lee here. The decoding officer also noted: "This telegram code is sent." What a cry of pain, in plain English, and let the Japanese eavesdrop! Pug's phone buzzed.The decoding officer said with a trembling voice: "General, we are translating a telegram from Nimitz." Pug rushed to the small top-secret room, through the smoke of cigarettes, from the translator who was typing on the keyboard. The yardman looked over his shoulder.The telegram snaked out of the machine and was printed on a strip of paper: ten o'clock.Nimitz to Halsey.Do a turkey dance to the water's edge. Where is GG Task Force Thirty-fourth now, where is it now. RR surprised everyone. It is a coding routine to use two identical letters to separate the inexplicably mixed codes before and after.However, the quote from "The Charge of the Hussars" that "the world was amazed" (although Pug did not realize that the day was a memorial day) could not be more appropriate to describe the situation at that time. up!Well, Pug thought, that's enough for him; it was the first time Nimitz had uttered such a rebuke in combat, and it was sharp enough to pierce the skin of a dinosaur, so we Always act.He strode up to the bridge, thinking with confidence that in a few moments he would see the colorful signal pennant flying from the USS New Jersey, ordering the battleship to turn around: a one-eighty turn. Ten minutes passed, then a quarter of an hour, then half an hour. is one hour. The battle fleet continued to head for the sea further away from Wright Gulf at a speed of 25 knots per hour.