Naval battle in history and was a decisive victory for the United States and their allies. Up next, six panelists participate in the 75th befallingy discussion the panel, a retired admiral discusses the legacy of the battle. All, i would like to put in a little plug for a marvelous new book written by our first speaker or edited, tom cutler has edited this retrospective published by the Naval Institute. Recently it was put out and in fact filled with interesting new and old assessments of the battle, including some japanese testimony. Also a number of the panelists have written for this as well. I wanted to at least give that a plug. Second, what i wanted to do was this,ould not resist namely for a couple of reasons. Thanks to wikipedia i discovered the fact that it has become the basic Foundation Source to go , which then says you cannot cite it. I did have one person who used it for his entire paper, which is another story. But i discovered some different points. If you search this battle, and then you go to wikipedia, you discover a series of things. The other part is they were to different entries, so i went to for you to them. One, i could not believe, it is called the world wonders. This message is completely written up, although not with the latest from naval history on the actual lieutenant, but the fact is we have that. That there is a wikipedia entry on the largest battle in naval history. Leyte gulf is the largest battle arguably, but wikipedia says , and then theyrs craddick credit based on displacement. What we are going to do today, we are going to have a distinguished panel that will talk about a range of issues. There short biographies are in your program, but for the sake of cspan, let me introduce each of them weekly. Trent, who will talk about the decision of halsey. Historian with many awards. We also have paul, who has been with the Naval Institute for years and has published multiple , aks on multiple subjects number of books on battleships and the oral history program. He will be talking also about some of the decisions relating to Admiral Halsey and admiral lee. We also have david kennedy,alking about the naval aviator movie and screenwriter and retired captain, and then finally andrew taylor, talking about his fathers experiences as a pilot in the fighting squadron who later went on to thatn squadron 20 and from point decided that when he was talking about building his essex wouldfigured not work but enterprise was probably a good name. We will start with trent. We had his lights . No slides. You are your own visual aid, sir. [laughter] thank you for that lovely introduction. About halseytalk and his decisions. The entire take third from the north . He does not need to. What is the backdrop . We can stand here 75 years away from that decision and say it was the wrong decision trade think it is valuable to look into how the decision was made, and thatd his staff eliminates some lessons in terms of how to make decisions under stress and uncertainty. It is important to understand some of the background. The Central Pacific campaign, which was illustrated earlier, engages and is driven by the granite campaign plan. First two emphases, the is there is an intent to keep pressure on the japanese. The pace of the offensive must be sustained to keep the enemy off balance. The second thing that the plan tries to do is to destroy the japanese fleet. These two are linked, if you destroyed the fleet, you create options to accelerate the pace of the offensive. Alluded to one factor, so in june there is this battle. This is now, we know, a significant victory because it japaneseoes to the airpower. It effectively destroys it. This was not known at the time. It was criticized for not being more aggressive and not destroying the fleet at an earlier date. Sonu instructions find their way into the third fleet operating starting in july of that year. If an opportunity of noises to destroy a major portion of the enemy fleet, that becomes the primary task. This is something that is in halseys instructions. If they come out, i need to go after them. Not only does he have that instruction, but he had a preconception towards aggressive action. If the japanese come out, how will he go after them . He will use the third fleet battle plan which he and his staff composed. Attributes. S two one is it seeks to achieve something that the navy had been practicing to do all through most of the interwar time, especially through the 1930s. They are trying to bring the enemy under the attack of carrier plans simultaneously. His plan assumes the task force 34, the commander the major group, would be attached to the forces during the approach at night so the japanese could be under the guns of the ships and attacked by carrier aircraft. That was one of the keys to the plan. The other is it emphasizes concentration, the use of the entire third fleet for this had been an emphasis of the doctrine for decades back to the early years of the 20th century, the composition of battle plan , and to assume that we have to operate as a single fleet. Halsey embraced those things. Atthe situation develops ,eyte, as carita approaches halseys text forces are distributed to the east of the islands, and he approaches. Kuritas forces, and he subjects the force to and then attack halsey not halsey. And appears around to be going away, and at about that time is when the Northern Attack on the 24th of october. So halsey assesses this and gets together they subset of his staff and tries to decide what 1950 decidesabout we will bring the entirety of the third fleet together, task force 38 together and head north. Now there were alternatives. Many of his subordinates were aware of them. Potentially Better Options. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] help that it would have been more appropriate to divide, to separate, send one force north, keep another force off of the exit to San Bernadino strait and deal with kurita and he especially thought this because about 15 minutes after halsey 2005,is decision, roughly carrier aircraft had noted it had turned around. It was coming back. So bogan works out a plan where two task force carrier groups would stay or would go north and then task force 34 and task group 38. 2 which he was part of would stay off San Bernadino strait. Bogan receives a dismissal either from halsey or from his staff, probably the staff at that point. No, were not going to do that. Were going north. And they thought ozawas force was a decoy. He had currently assessed the situation and sent visual signals to halseys flagship. Hey, i think thats a decoy. We should divide. And he acknowledges as i one is nd it the second one is not replied to. Paul will tell us more about that of his description of admiral lee. And the navys best tactician at the time, he is chief of staff to the commander of task force 38 by admiral marc mitscher. Birk and mitscher work out another approach to divide the group. The task that they were in is the one that is closest to ozawa. So rather than delaying its journey to the north, theyre thinking why dont we take our carrier group, go north, deal with ozawa and the other two carrier groups can stay off San Bernadino strait and deal with kurita now that he has reversed course. Birk is admit that Something Like this has to be done and he is arguing with mitscher. We need to tell halsey about this. We need to have an alternative plan. And mitschers reaction is very interesting. And one of the reasons why i chose to write about this is i was struck about what mitscher does. He says halsey wants my opinion, so he will ask for it. And its striking to me that mitscher who has no shortage of aggressiveness in other opportunities in another battles , his initiative has been so kur tailed. Why . A lot of it has to do with how halsey approaches decisionmaking and the context of the decisions that are made in this battle. So according to Thomas Alexander hughes who published the biography of halsey, his trusted group that he would work with and make decisions shrink. So he is not doing a good job at entertaining and alternatives and bringing diverse perspectives into his staff and of trying to understand what options are available. His intelligent officer wasnt even part of the decision discussion and decides to go south. Halsey dominant this inner circle of the staff and he carries his decision. They dont challenge his options. Now this is different. So as commander of the third fleet in South Pacific and commander of the South Pacific before that, halsey had commanded from shore. He had to. That is an effective way to operate. He had disperse task groups and he had to ensure that there was capacity for them to act on their own initiative on the circumstances that were emerging. But prior to that, halsey had been a Task Force Commander himself and one of the things that occurred is as halsey moves o command the third fleet at leyte gulf he returns the shipboard. And he slips back into patterns of decisionmaking habits that he had adopted when he was a Task Commander rather than fleet commander. When options are presented to us, when we can make decisions are heavily influenced by the circumstances in which we appear and the circumstances that we are in at the time. So i think halsey being aboard ship influenced his perspective. He slips more of the habit of being a Task Commander and less of a fleet commander and over the proceeding weeks, he had essentially pushed mitscher aside. He had not brought in his perspective. Halsey essentially assumed command of task 380 himself. And this is a significant factor in his decisionmaking. And finally i think its very important to note that halsey was tired. Hes been operating for weeks. Theres a very rapid pace of this offensive. There was a cost to that. So if the narratives of those who were there who were to believe if halsey made his decision, he retired. And i think the staff that worked with him were very hesitant even if the situation changed, and as new information came available, would wake him up to revise that division. So in conclusion for us is halseys decision is incorrect but there are lots of factors that are at work, complicated reasons, tom alluded to. Ive tried to draw up some of the reasons but one of the keys that we should take away is that Better Options were available. Better options were being entertained by a fairly senior navy officers. They had devised ideas for how to do it in a better way. And if halsey had retained focus on his responsibilities as fleet commander and not shifting into task force, made more use and groomed a more talented staff, then i think he might have overtchomed fatigue he was facing we wouldnt be discussing controversies related to padding of messages the world wonders and halsey might have secured a victory, not just over ozawas forces but kuritas as well. He had the capability with the forces that were available to do that. So these remarks kept relatively short. I hope i have simulated some of your thoughts and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. [applause] before i introduce Paul Stillwell, i am going to exercise one short bit of moderators discretion to provide some well, actually, old but new material that hasnt come out previously. Back in the 1980s, i was privileged to interview retired Commander Reserve e. Calvert chess on, philadelphia lawyer who happened to be mitschers Intelligence Officer and they were correcting the story, not anything substance tiff to what trent said that are worth it to note. As trent noted, halsey had bypassed mitscher completely during much of this time. Mitscher was hugely frustrated by the fact that halsey who had not commanded he commanded a fleet at shore but had not command. Lt sea since 1942. And the problem is whereas halsey still had the tendency to believe his aviators when they came back from strikes, mitscher had put in place with chess on with the lieutenant that could listen to japanese transmissions. They were checking on what the aviators were bringing back. And it was the grim reapers off the enterprise were the folks who were putting together this new approach. And cheston told a story that he was told to go down to wake mitscher up and bring him up. And mitscher grumbled. Mitscher was not was also very tired. He did have a heart attack from as much as everybody on the staff knew. He was not feeling well from this time. He had been through everything from march well, from february of 1944 on without a break. And on top of it, they had just been, you know, saved the cruisers off of taiwan and then lost the carrier princeton in the previous day. The first real loss since the solomons of an american Aircraft Carrier. And this had weighed heavily on mitscher as welch he comes up according to cheston in his pajamas but wearing his famous fishermans cap and said tell me what it is. They discuss it. And essentially what, he says is its not quite as simple as this. He says halsey has listened to a blank damn thing that i have said to him all this time. Im not going to raise this with him. So let this be the idea that information has me and it was the idea of mitscher was saying im not going to get through him navy. So our next speaker is Paul Stillwell to talk about force 4. Thank you. Half a world today was the climax of the battle. And top, im looking forward to the next book. I will be 100 at the time. [laughter] this league had to be one of the most frustrated naval officers in world war ii not have a chance at the japanese in this battle. Graduated in 1908 and all of his professional life had been preparing him to fight in this battle. He was a member of the gun club, most of whom were ordinance postgraduates. He was not. His postgraduate education and training came at sea. He was a master of tactics, unnery and use of radar, seamanship handling and very few of his contemporary flag officers did know how to use radar well. He had demonstrated that in the canal of the candle and his force sank the hiroshima and it was a turning point, the 1942. Of 1415, november, its been called the fork in the road. After that victory, the japanese began to give up their efforts to retake the canal. Tried and talk about the battle of the philippines sea. By 1944, the battleships, the cruisers, the destroyers were integrated into the Carrier Task Force which was the Striking Force the Island Hopping campaign. They did not have a chance to operate independently to practice tactics, to practice gunnery. And for that reason when admiral mitscher really pushed by commodore burk asked if he wanted to go after the japanese, he said no. We have not practiced at this. And the other factor was the japanese were retreating. It would have been a long tail chase, probably followed by a nighbeat in which the japanese had demonstrated a great deal of skill. Ut admiral nimitz wanted admiral lee out there the pacific. He did not get east of hawaii from the summer of 1942 till the spring of 1945. He was the man that the Pacific Fleet wanted in command for the expected great collision of the giant ships. Thomas told you about the threeprong approach. Kurita coming through the civilian sibuyan sea. Admiral bogan, commander of task oup 38. 2 said please, let us stay here and cover the heavy ships. Sorry, nope. The independence was light carrier. She had sent out patrols that night and as interpret has told us, they saw that the kuritas force was coming back east and a half investigation lights were on. And in the San Bernadino strait and so that the japanese could come east through there and see their way to go attack the transports that had unloaded at leyte. E had his staff believe that ozawa force was a decoy. They tried to communicate this. I interviewed gil earthson who is almost like a son to lee. And he saw the opportunity and lees flagship, sent a flashing light to halseys flagship and said these folks are coming east. Something to be concerned about. Who knows who initiated the response from the new jersey but it was a flashing light message also, said only roger, which means ok. Weve heard you. They got underway. Halsey took all these task forces task groups north with him. The aggressiveness to go after ozawa and lee was sort of a prisoner in this force that was going north. He tried going once more. Please, let us stay here. Let us guard the strait. Not even a courtesy of an answer that time. Halsey was so singleminded. So the ships went north. And then kinkaid intercepted the messages. He had been told or he had trent said he had read the mail halsey had at proposed contingency plans, setting up task force 34. He did not execute it but kinkaid did not realize that. The upshot was that kinkaid thought that lee and his battleships regarding San Bernadino strait. Halsey thought that kinkaids were. He said so well and cool handling. What we have here is a failure to communicate. And the results were disastrous. So kuritas force did break through. They started beating up on taffy 3. Kinkaid got those messages. And he started sending reports back, telling halsey hey, weve got a problem here. Hat about lee . And lee was so frustrated. I interviewed a man on his staff, communications officer, and he said they got these kinkaid reports and he took one of them to lee on the flag bridge and he said lee scholer just slumped. You might have seen a tear come down on his cheek. This was the battle that lee had been ready for and he was a prisoner in this group going north. Nd then came the message where is task force 34, the world wonders. Probably one of the two most famous and best remembered messages of world war ii in the pacific. Right up there with air raid pearl harbor. His is an old drill. Kinkaid by this time was getting frantic and he sent this message. Didnt bother to encode it. Just sent it right out. Where is lee . Send lee. Don rotate on the 25th. Edward ma