A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy (9 page)

Officially, these diminutive floating airfields were “escort carriers,” but they had many unofficial names as well. To the men in the fleet the CVEs were frequently referred to as “baby flattops,” “Kaiser coffins” (because many were built by Henry Kaiser's shipyards), “tomato cans,” “jeep carriers” (because they often were used to transport vehicles and aircraft to forward bases), and “wind wagons.” Some Sailors had informed their awed civilian friends that the CVE stood for “combustible, vulnerable, and expendable.” They were what the Sailors called “thin-skinned,” meaning they had no double hulls, no armor, no torpedo blisters for defense. They were also very slow. During the war, Captain Walter Karig aptly described their speed capabilities when he wrote, “In a calm sea and with a following breeze these little ships might make eighteen knots provided the engineering officer had been leading a good life.”

Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. “Ziggy” Sprague was the commander of Taffy 3 and had his flag in USS
Fanshaw Bay,
one of the so-called baby flattops. At daybreak, Sprague watched from her bridge as planes took off from the short flight deck, some loaded with depth charges in case any Japanese submarines appeared in the area, and others carrying antipersonnel bombs and strafing ammunition for use against targets on Leyte Island.

At 0637, one of the men who had been monitoring the interfighter director net from the
Fanshaw Bay
's CIC began to hear voices speaking in what sounded like Japanese. He turned to the man next to him and said, “What do you make of that?” The second man listened for a moment and then replied, “Somebody's playing a joke.” The first man shrugged and said: “Yeah, maybe. Or it could be long-range jamming.” Taffy 3 continued the morning's routine.

Sprague looked out the bridge windows at the sea, now quite bright in the morning light. Ahead of
Fanshaw Bay
were the other CVEs under his command:
Kalinin Bay, White Plains, Saint Lo, Kitkun Bay,
and
Gambier Bay,
all launching aircraft as the group headed northeast into the light morning wind. Screening the carriers were the destroyers
Johnston, Hoel,
and
Heerman,
and the destroyer escorts
Samuel B. Roberts, Dennis, Raymond,
and
John C. Butler.

At about 0745, an excited voice called from CIC, reporting that one of the pilots had spotted an enemy surface force of four battleships, seven cruisers, and eleven destroyers just twenty miles northwest of the task group and closing at thirty knots. Sprague leaned over the “squawk box” and pressed the lever. “Air plot, tell that pilot to check his identification.” Sprague's voice reflected the irritation he felt. The last thing he needed was for some overzealous aviator to get everybody excited by a misidentification of an American task group.

USS
Fanshaw Bay
(CVE 70), one of the many “baby flattops” that played many important roles in World War II. Sailors often told their awed civilian friends that “CVE” stood for “combustible, vulnerable, expendable.”
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

A moment later, air plot called the bridge. “The pilot insists that these ships are Japanese. He says they have pagoda masts!” This was a sure sign that these were enemy ships. Japanese warships had distinctive, unusually formed masts that were indeed reminiscent of pagodas.

Sprague looked northwest and could see puffs of antiaircraft fire above the horizon. There was no denying it: a major Japanese fleet had come to contest the landings at Leyte. “Come to course zero-niner-zero,” Sprague barked. “Flank speed. Launch all aircraft.” Taffy 3 turned due east in response, and puffs of black smoke from the CVE stacks signaled their increase in speed.

Away to the northwest, the pilot who had spotted the Japanese fleet dove in on the nearest enemy cruiser and released his weapons. They were depth charges meant for submarine targets, but they were all he had.

A few minutes later, the Japanese ships had closed to within eighteen miles of Taffy 3, and several geysers appeared within two thousand yards of the fleeing carriers. The next salvo fell even closer. It seemed simply a matter of time before these deadly projectiles would find their mark. Closer still, the rounds walked in, and Admiral Sprague wondered what he could possibly do to save his task group.

Aboard the destroyer
Johnston,
Commander Ernest E. Evans ordered general quarters. Evans was a short, barrel-chested man with a booming voice whom nearly everyone described as a born leader. At the commissioning ceremony for USS
Johnston
on 27 October 1943, Evans told the crew and assembled guests that when war had broken out in the Pacific, he had been serving in an old World War I–vintage destroyer, USS
Alden,
in the Java Sea near the Dutch East Indies. He explained that after the Japanese navy had sunk the heavy cruisers
Houston
and
Marblehead
and the situation had become hopeless for the remnants of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet,
Alden
had been forced to beat a hasty retreat out of the Java Sea. Indicating the bunting-draped
Johnston
and recalling the words of John Paul Jones, Evans said, “Now that I have a modern, fighting ship, I intend to go in harm's way.” Then, speaking with a conviction that many of the crew sensed was sincere and irrevocable, Evans declared, “I will never again retreat from an enemy force.”

Almost a year to the day from that moment, Evans was about to get the chance to prove just how sincere he had been when making that promise. With Japanese ships closing on Taffy 3 and USS
Johnston
directly in their path, his moment had come.

Just below the bridge on the port side, Bill Mercer, who routinely worked in the ship's laundry, sat at his battle station as trainer for one of the twin 40-mm gun mounts. From that position he could hear the captain giving orders up on the bridge. Having seen the masts of Japanese ships poking above the horizon off
Johnston
's port quarter when he first arrived at his station, Mercer was most gratified to hear the captain order, “All engines ahead flank.” Heading away from the enemy as fast as possible seemed like an excellent idea to the eighteen-year-old Mercer. His happiness was short-lived, however. Before long, he heard the captain's booming voice order, “Left full rudder,” and Mercer watched with dismay and mounting concern as
Johnston
's bow swung rapidly around
toward
the Japanese ships. He quickly began strapping on his life jacket. Evans was clearly taking his ship “in harm's way.”

“Taffy 3” escorts laying a smoke screen during the Battle of Samar.
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

Captain Evans started zigzagging between the Japanese ships and the fleeing carriers. Intent upon obscuring the CVEs from Japanese view, he ordered the engineers to make black funnel smoke while the ship's smoke generator detail began producing cottony white clouds that seemed to cling to the sea like a heavy fog. At the captain's order, the crews manning the 5-inch guns commenced firing on the nearest Japanese cruiser. Soon Mercer could see hits registering on the enemy cruiser's superstructure, which prompted the Japanese to retaliate. Giant splashes rose from the ocean's surface close to
Johnston
. Evans “chased the splashes” by steering the ship toward the last shot to fall, a tactic based on the theory that the shooting ship will correct a missed shot, making the site of the last shot a relatively safe place to be.

Quartermaster-striker Robert M. Billie watched the geysers leaping out of the sea from his lookout station on the port side of the flying bridge and felt the ship heeling over from one side to the other as she veered rapidly about in pursuit of the last enemy shell bursts. It was the only time he could remember wanting to dig a foxhole.

As most of the carriers disappeared from view behind the smoke curtain laid down by
Johnston
and the other escorts, more of the Japanese ships turned their guns on
Johnston
in frustration. Billie listened in awe as battleship rounds passed overhead, sounding like fast-moving freight trains as they roared by. It seemed to him that the destroyer's chances of survival were poor at best and rapidly diminishing.

The splashes began closing in on the destroyer from all sides, and Evans too must have been thinking of the ship's demise, for he turned to Officer of the Deck Lieutenant Ed Digardi and said, “We can't go down with our fish aboard.” True to his commissioning day promise, Evans ordered, “Stand by for a torpedo attack.” He then told Digardi to head right for the formation of cruisers still bearing down from the northwest. As the ship came about, guns still firing at a furious rate, Digardi could clearly see the massive cruisers ahead, their dull gray forms highlighted by the flashes of gunfire. Beyond them he could make out the ominous forms of an echelon of battleships. This was sheer madness! One tiny destroyer charging an armada of such formidable firepower.

Once the ship had fired her torpedoes, Digardi steered
Johnston
into her own smoke screen to gain some respite from the cascading Japanese gunfire. Moments later, the sound of distant underwater explosions indicated that some of the torpedoes had found their mark. As
Johnston
emerged from the smoke screen, those crew members who could look were treated to the welcome sight of flames burning brightly on the fantail of the nearest Japanese cruiser.

Any elation the crew felt at that moment was quickly extinguished, however, as
Johnston
's phenomenal luck ran out. Three 14-inch shells slammed into the destroyer's after engine and fire rooms, followed by a 6-inch salvo that struck
Johnston
's port bridge wing and penetrated her 40-mm magazine. The ship immediately lost steering control and all power to her after gun mounts.

On the flying bridge, a piece of shrapnel struck the mouthpiece of Robert Billie's sound-powered phone set, shattering the instrument and filling the young Sailor's mouth with blood and broken teeth. A subsequent explosion lifted Billie into the air and slammed him down on the steel deck, knocking him unconscious. Upon reviving a few seconds later, he saw his shoes lying next to his head, still neatly tied.

A few minutes after the rounds had hit, Bill Mercer heard someone above him call, “Stand by below.” Mercer watched as a pair of khaki-clad legs dangled into view. Someone on the bridge was lowering one of the officers to the main deck. As the khaki shirt appeared, Mercer could see that it was covered with blood. Then the lowering paused for a moment,
and Mercer saw, to his dismay and horror, that the officer's body had no head.

The decapitated officer was not the only victim on the bridge. Lieutenant Digardi had rushed out of the pilothouse to the port bridge wing right after the shells had crashed into the ship. There he found terrible carnage. Besides the headless officer, Digardi discovered that the torpedo officer had lost a leg and a signalman had been blown to bits. The captain was still alive but bleeding from shrapnel wounds to his neck, chest, and hand.

On the flying bridge one deck up, Robert Billie discovered that he was bleeding from every limb and that he could only move his left arm. In a state of shock, he again lost consciousness.

As Mercer looked about the mangled ship, trying to forget the image of the headless body that had dangled in front of him, he saw that Mount 52, one of the forward 5-inch gun mounts, was still firing at a furious rate, but the deck around the mount was filling up with expended brass shell casings that threatened to inhibit the mount's rotation. Mercer and another 40-mm gunner, J. B. Strickland, ran forward and began jettisoning the brass casings as fast as they could. When they had cleared most of the brass from the deck, Mercer and Strickland returned to their guns. Almost immediately after their departure from the Mount 52 area, the gun took a direct hit.