MacArthur, Kinkaid, and Halsey!

[Mil-tech Bard]

This thread over on the Combinedfleet.com's "Tullys Port Historical Naval Discussions forum" deals with the nuts and bolts of the Leyte Defense --

Defense of Leyte Gulf Invasion Fleet
http://propnturret.com/tully/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=827

This post San Bernardino Strait AP round census is from one of the posts there, with my inserting the ship gun sizes:

West Virginia (16-in) had the least AP and had 107 rounds of AP remaining

Maryland (16-in) had 192

California (14-in ) had 177

Tennessee (14-in ) had 327

Mississippi (14-in ) had 189

Pennsylvania (14-in ) had 360

None of the ships had fired even half of the AP shells they had, although they were not originally carrying a high proportion of AP shells, and had expended a lot of HC in shore bombardment. The WV and Maryland had 800 shell capacity and the rest had the capability to carry 1200. by that measure they were low on ammunition.

The West Virginia, California and Tennessee had the most advanced fire control radars. The other ships had the older Mark III fire control.

Maryland fired on the West Virginia's splashes at San Bernardino Strait while the Pennsylvania was either masked by other ships, or had a confused Mark III picture, and did not fire her main guns at all.

[Mil-tech Bard]

This is also of interest regards BB performance and ammo remaining after Surigao Strait


Performance of US Battleships at Surigao Strait
by Joseph Czarnecki
Updated 30 April 2002


http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-079.htm

Ship Capacity/Total On-Board/ AP /HC /Rounds Expended
(all AP)
West Virginia 800 /375 /200 /175 /93
Maryland 800 /685 /240 /445 /48
California 1200 /318 /240 /78 /63
Tennessee 1200 /664 /396 /268 /69
Mississippi 1200 /744 /201 /543 /12
Pennsylvania 1200 /453 /360 /93 /Did not fire

[Takao]

Given that Sprague had umpteen CVEs at his command & more carrier aircraft than the Japanese had at Pearl Harbor, about the only thing the old BBs will be doing is picking up the pieces.

IIRC they did not have many torpedoes and AP bombs, but I am sure that GP bombs would do a lot of damage topside and would be enough to sink a destroyer.

Mike

The CVEs were not carrying any AP bombs, that is true, although they were carrying many SAP 500 pounders. However, that the CVE's did not have many torpedoes is a myth. They did not have many torpedoes compared to the larger CVs(36), but they still carried more than enough to do the job(9-12)for a low-end grand total of roughly 150 torpedoes. Indeed, the CVEs were getting ready to launch an anti-shipping strike to mop-up the Japanese remnants of the Surigao Strait night action.

Neither Kinkaid nor Sprague gave aerial reconnaissance more than a perfunctory consideration. With the relative failure of Kinkaid's ordered night time reconnaissance of San Bernadino Strait, he ordered Sprague to carry out a dawn recon patrol of the area, but never followed through to see that it had been carried out. Sprague, for his part, let the matter slip when the USS Ommaney Bay ran into many problems with her launches, as a result the ordered air recon was launched almost two hours late. It reminds one of the problems the Japanese had with their reconnaissance at Midway, and the debacle that resulted there.

Had either the 3rd Fleet or 7th Fleet been "on top of their game", or for that matter, anywhere in the stadium, the the grievous losses to the Escort Carrier Group never would have occurred.

[Mil-tech Bard]

>>Neither Kinkaid nor Sprague gave aerial reconnaissance more than a perfunctory consideration.

The point Delta Tank has been making over and over again is that this had zip, zero, nothing to do with MacArthur's alledged interference in communications between Halsey and Kinkaid.

MacArthuir told the naval commanders involved -- Kinkaid & Halsey -- to work it out between themselves and give his landings support.

They didn't work it out.

Kinkaid & Halsey blew it by the numbers, making the sacrafice of the Taffy's and their escorts inevitable.

Kinkaid expected Halsey to be there.

Halsey didn't bother to inform Kinkaid he was not.

[steverodgers801]

I disagree as Mac pestered the navy through put the war to have naval forces under his control, especially a carrier force. King was adamant that a carrier force would never be under army control. He had a duty to ensure that his invasion force was taken care of as far as protection, especially since Kinkaid was under his command. Its pointless to blame one person, the whole chain of command failed.

[Delta Tank]

To all,

I thought I would put in some information from the book entitled "Kinkaid of the Seventh Fleet" by Gerald E. Wheeler.

Page 346 Kinkaid knew when he arraived in Brisbane that he would be wearing two hats. One hat would be that of Seventh Fleet commander and therefore under Admiral King's direct command. His other hat was that of MacArthur's naval commander, formally Commander Allied Naval Forces, Southwest Pacific Area.

Page 348-349 In all "MacArthur's Navy" was a good-size command for a vice admiral, but Kinkaid had two bosses. His operations orders came from General MacArthur, who was close at hand to see that they wee carried out. But Seventh Fleet's personnel and material, including ships, came from Admiral King in Washington. When he created the Seventh Fleet in February 1943, King kept it under his personal command as COMINCH, rather than adding it to Admiral Nimitz's Pacific Fleet. It is significant that Admiral King wrote Kinkaid's fitness reports, not MacArthur or Nimitz. It also significant that all admirals were assigned to their commands by King. In short the Seventh Fleet commander had two very difficult bosses to keep happy with his work in the SWPA.

Page 375 Admiral Kinkaid was sent to MacArthur's command with firm instructions to restore peace between the Army and Navy. He also knew that he had to uphold the Navy's interests, "not give away the shop," if he was going to satisfy Admirals KIng and NImitz. There were many issues that had contributed to poor Army-Navy relations in Brisbane, but Kinkaid only tried to correct those that he could influence. He recognized that there was little he could do to change Kenney's attitude toward the Navy.

Page 380 . . . On 17 September Vice Admiral Ping Wilkinson, Commander of Amphibious Forces, Third Fleet, arrived at Kinkaid's headquarters to participate in the planning. . . .He stayed for seventeen days

Page 382 Admiral King recognized what was bothering Nimitz, and on 17 August he proposed a solution to Kinkaid: "I assume that you will command, under MacArthur, all the Naval Forces involved directly in the operation, and that you will coordinate their activities with Admiral Halsey as Commander of the Third Fleet Covering Force."

Page 382 By the end of August, Kinkaid had made all command arrangements. Neither MacArthur nor Nimitz had objections. Kinkaid would be seeing Halsey in Manus on 4 September to work out their plans for coordinating activities and to borrow his Amphibious Force, including Wilkinson.

Mike

[Mil-tech Bard]

Delta Tank,

There was another MacArthur air search aircraft that spotted the Japanese fleet approaching Leyte from the south, besides the 7th Fleet/Section 22 PBY plane I mentioned earlier.

See:

"RADAR IN WORLD WAR 2"
by Henry Guerlac

Chapter 42
Page 1001

This passage --

"With the invasion of Leyte the latter part of October, the 868th shifted
operations to the inland Philippine waters, the Sulu Sea, and the waters
surrounding Palawan. The claim was made by the squadran that one of its
bombers, patrolling the Sulu Sea October 21, was the first to sight a large
Japanese convoy, and that in reporting it, gave the first warning of Japanese
naval opposition to our landings."

The 868th (H) was a B-24 squadron of the 13th Air Force equipped with the "Low Altitude Bombing" (LAB) microwave radar. It specialized in anti-shipping and "Snooper" (Radar Recce & Elint) missions.

So we have not one but two seperate searches by MacArthur's forces on the night of the 20/21st of October 1944 in the Sulu Sea that were ignored by the US Navy.

This is from my earlier PBY post up thread:

This powerful armada left Singapore two days earlier and put into Brunei to refuel, before moving on to engage the US fleet off the Philippines in what later became the Battle of the Leyte Gulf. As a result of that lapse, it was not until the morning of October 23, that Kurita's force -- by then off Palawan island and well on its way to the Philippines -- was finally reported by US submarines. Following subsequent investigations, the officer who had failed to pass on Heron's signal was relieved of his command.

For the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the US Navy was just not listening to anything that MacArthur's aerial search plan was telling them.

[Delta Tank]

To all,

I just finished a book entitled "The Battle for Leyte Gulf" written by C. Vann Woodward, published by The MacMillan Company in 1947. In that book there is mention of the divided command but no blame is placed on MacArthur for the Navy's communication set-up which we now know from some post above was solely devised by the US Navy.

It is a myth that General Douglas MacArthur forbade Admiral Kinkaid to talk to Admiral Halsey. It is also a myth that MacArthur insisted on the communications set-up that the US Navy devised for this operation. The near disaster that almost occurred at Leyte Gulf was the fault of the US Navy.

Mike

[Delta Tank]

To all,

Just wondering if anyone found any information to refute the "facts" I posted in this thread?

Mike

[OpanaPointer]

MacArthur was an ego with lots of braid.

[Delta Tank]

That is true, but that really has nothing to do with the myth/lie that has been created. So, I assume you have no "facts" to refute what this thread is about.

Mike

[OpanaPointer]

That is true, but that really has nothing to do with the myth/lie that has been created. So, I assume you have no "facts" to refute what this thread is about.

Mike

What's this thread about?

[Delta Tank]

Read the thread!

Mike

[OpanaPointer]

Nah, Power Rangers are on.

[steverodgers801]

To refute, since Kinkaid was placed under Mac's command it was required that h, Mac, be in the loop as to the useage of his force