The Fuso Mysteries -- What happened to the Fuso? -- UPDATED

(The fourth of a four-part series)

© 2007 Jeffrey R. Cox

The final fate of the Fuso has always been more of an assumption that anything else. She took a torpedo, it started a fire, the fire detonated her magazines, which blew the ship in half. Not much to tell, so the story goes, anyway.

Tully is the first historian I have seen anywhere to take a closer look at the Fuso. The disaster that befell her does seem to have been neglected. Many a ship suffered a magazine explosion, many a ship was blown in two, several suffered from both. Why is Fuso unique?

Willmott points out that the fact that Fuso was hit by one torpedo and blown in half with both halves set completely afire is “somewhat surprising and apparently without parallel in the Second World War.” It may have been two hits, as the Melvin would argue, but the real fascination here is that both halves remained afloat. Tully lists several instances where ships were blown into two sections and remained afloat for a period to time, but his list notwithstanding, Fuso seems to stand out both for the fire and the hint that one or both halves could have continued floating but for intervention by US forces. There is even a suggestion that the stern half may have retained propulsive power and the surviving crew may have tried to beach her.

Oldendorf's pursuit down the Surigao Strait the morning of October 25, 1944. The ships in the foreground (light cruiser Denver) and right center (destroyer) are US. Notations are written on the original photo. Notation at right center reads, "Enemy DD under fire." It points to the Japanese destroyer Asagumo, barely visible at right center just left of the US destroyer. Notation at far right reads, "Burning enemy ships." Beneath that notation at far right can be seen three plumes of smoke from burning Japanese ships. Those plumes would be from the heavy aircraft cruiser Mogami and the two halves of the battleship Fuso. The Mogami is probably the source of the plume on the far right.

The question of the fate of the Fuso was examined by the Navy’s Bureau of Ships. The War College Analysis contains this note from Rear Admiral Albert G. Mumma:

It is our conclusion that it is well nigh impossible for the Fuso to have broken into two nearly equal parts because of her very rugged and damage resistant structure. The USS Arizona did not show any evidence of hull failure in the area enclosed by the armor belt, even though a massive magazine explosion had occurred.

It is however considered possible that the Fuso may have lost her bow as a result of torpedo damage. Although our war experience does not include this type of failure in battleships, several cases exist where cruisers suffered this type of damage. In the case of the USS Helena (CL-50) the bow section remained afloat for more than twelve hours.

It is probable therefore that if other evidence indicates the presence of two floating bodies this can best be explained by the separation of the bow from the main hull of the battleship.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Mumma actually used the term “well nigh” in a sentence in 20th century America, his stated conclusion seems to be more assumption than anything else, an assumption that does not withstand scrutiny well. Let’s return to the evidence. Without the wreck of the Fuso or her log available, the only evidence we have is eyewitness testimony – the most unreliable evidence, as any investigator or trial lawyer will attest, but it is all we have.

1. Fuso is hit at 3:09 am.

The Mogami observed, “Direct torpedo hit on starboard side of Fuso amidships […]”
The Melvin reports “0309: Approximate time that our torpedoes crossed enemy track, two large and separate explosions seen.”

Piecing together the reports from the Mogami and the Melvin, at 3:09 am the Fuso was hit by one or two torpedoes from the Melvin. The hits were on the starboard side, probably amidships.

2. Fuso begins to list and lose speed.

Again, Mogami said the torpedo hit(s) “caus[ed] [the Fuso] to list to starboard and lose speed.”

3. No communications received from Fuso.

The record indicates no communications were received from the Fuso after she was hit at 3:09.

4. Fuso sheers out of formation.

Again from Mogami, after the torpedo hit(s), “Fuso fell back, and Mogami moved on behind Yamashiro.” The US warships tracked her sheering out to starboard. After she was torpedoed, the Fuso sheered to starboard to clear the formation and prevent the Mogami behind her from running into her stern.

5. Fuso turns around at 3:32 am.

Slowed down by the torpedo damage, the Fuso initially continued going northward, toward the US battle line, but at 3:23 the US PT boats tracked her turning around and heading back southward.

6. Shigure sights the Fuso at around 3:30 am.

Shigure had turned around at 3:25 to look for the Yamashiro, believing she was the battleship that had dropped out. Nishino later reported, “While searching […] the lookout informed me he had sighted what he thought was the Yamashiro sinking.” If they indeed saw a battleship, this would have been the Fuso, not the Yamashiro. Shigure turned around to resume her northward course at 3:30,

6. A series of detonations begins at 3:38 am, culminating in the massive 3:45 am explosion of the Fuso.

At 3:38 am the Hutchins reported three detonations – “two faint and a loud snap” – from the Fuso. The PTs shadowing the Fuso reported that she suddenly “burst into flames about [3:45 am].” The explosion was witnessed as far away as the US battle line, where the battleship Mississippi saw the ship enveloped in flames from the waterline to the mastheads.

7. At 3:50 am, the Fuso breaks into two sections.

At 3:50, the US radar tracked the pip from the Fuso splitting into two.

8. The two sections of the Fuso separate.

According to Tully, American radar tracks show the stern section of the Fuso swinging to port, to the southeast, on a diverging line from the other half. By 4:00 am this section had opened the range between the pieces to 2,000 yards – more than a mile – after which its position remained fairly constant relative to the bow.

9. The PT boats’ descriptions of the Fuso after 3:50 am

The PT boats tracking the remnants of the Fuso described her two sections as “burning furiously.”

10. The Second Striking Force’s description of the Fuso at around 4:05 am.

According to Mori, Shima’s force sighted the remnants of the Fuso at around 3:30 am. This is obviously not correct, as the Fuso had not yet exploded. Judging by their having sighted “three fires” – the Mogami and the two halves of the Fuso – and the collision with the Mogami taking place at 4:30 am, they probably sighted the Fuso somewhere around 4:00 am. The War College puts it at 4:05.

Shima himself said the Fuso’s fires were burning “like steel-mill flames.” Mori said he “saw two fires, two ships burning, very big ships.” He went on to say:

When we first saw that fire, I judged it was about 20,000 meters from their position. Although we knew they were Japanese vessels on fire we did not bother with them, just progressed. […] We thought it was two battleships, but when we arrived at Manila we heard that it was one battleship (Yamashiro) and three destroyers close together instead of two battleships.

11. Louisville’s description of the Fuso at 5:31 am.

At 5:31, the Louisville opened fire on “what seems to have been the bow” of the Fuso. Louisville described Fuso as large but “no course, speed zero. Very large fire burning.”

12. The Kanihaan PT’s description of the Fuso at 6:52 am.

At 6:52 am, PT’s 495, 489 and 492 closed to within 700 yards of the Fuso’s position and found the fire still burning, but no ship left.

These puzzle pieces, unfortunately, only outline the picture, but leave very large gaps and consequently do not solve it. Only the broad outlines can be agreed upon:

1. Fuso was torpedoed.

2. Fuso sheered out of line and slowed down.

3. Fuso turned around.

4. Fuso exploded and broke into two pieces.

5. Both pieces burned with a very notable fury.

6. Both pieces floated for an extended period before sinking.

That’s it. We know little about what the Fuso’s damage was, or why she exploded, or what shape she was in after the explosion (although, obviously, she was not in ship shape, so to speak ....)

It is at this point that some conjecture must enter. Tully’s description of the probable damage to the Fuso as a result of the torpedo(es) can be used as a baseline:

As for the hit or hits, a likely outcome of strikes amidships would have been flooded boiler and/or machinery spaces, as well as the possibility of starting a fire near the amidships magazines. The blows likely killed communications, and possibly knocked out all the starboard machinery, thereby cutting the battleship's speed drastically. Ban Masami swung his vessel out of line, probably to clear the formation to prevent a collision as a result of his sudden loss of speed.

These are reasonable assumptions, based upon the evidence, but these are likely the only assumptions we can make here.

Remember the generally accepted narrative here is that the explosion was caused by a detonation of the Fuso’s midships magazines. This was likely caused by a fire, and, to be sure, there is evidence of induced explosions, as the Hutchins’ report of three detonations – “two faint and a loud snap” – suggests. The vast majority of the published histories of the Battle of Surigao Strait give this version of events.

But it is important to note that this version of events is itself based on an assumption – that there was a fire on the Fuso caused by the torpedo it. We’ll call it the “Fire Scenario.” Aside from the explosion itself, however, there is no evidence of a fire. The Mogami’s account of the torpedo hit gives no indication of a fire. The PT boats’ account of the explosion say she “burst into flames,” which suggests she was not already in flames, or at least not visibly in flames.

To be sure, fire aboard a ship is not always visible to the outside, but even if the fire is below decks, there are usually noticeable signs. Damage control will often open vents, with the goals of clearing the smoke (it could choke crewmen and damage control below decks) and lowering the temperature (if the temperature gets too high, injuries could mount and combustible materials ignite). Smoke can be seen even at night, as the reports of the smoke pouring forth from the Asagumo after she was torpedoed suggest.

If we go strictly on the available evidence, and try to minimize assumptions, two other scenarios emerge that might actually fit the evidence better than the Fire Scenario does.

The Barham Scenario

This scenario comes from the sinking of the British battleship Barham on November 25, 1941 by the German U-boat U-331 in the Mediterranean off Cyrenaica. Basically, the Barham was torpedoed, quickly took a severe list and exploded. Queen Elizabeth Class Battleship by Alan Raven and John Roberts was quoted describing the incident and its aftermath:

At 16.00 on 24 November 1941, the [battleships] Queen Elizabeth, Barham and Valiant, escorted by eight destroyers, sailed from Alexandria to cover cruiser operations against two enemy convoys reported to be making for Benghazi. On the following day the fleet ran straight into U331 which passed through the screen without being detected. From the center of the fleet the submarine fired four torpedoes at the second ship in the line, the Barham. Firing disturbed the submarine's stability and her conning tower broke surface. For several seconds this remained visible and after passing close down the side of the Valiant she disappeared beneath the sea and eventually escaped unharmed. Three of the torpedoes struck the Barham on the port side between Y turret and the funnel. She immediately took on a heavy list and after a pause at 40° this continued to increase until after four minutes she was on her beam ends. At this moment the after magazines exploded and vented through the starboard side and the upper deck. The ship disappeared from view in an enormous cloud of smoke and when this cleared she was gone. Captain G.C. Cooke and 861 officers and men were lost with the ship. Vice-Admiral Pridham-Wippell and 395 members of the crew were rescued.

Due to the rapidity of her loss the Board of Inquiry were unable to establish the reason for the explosion but it was thought that it might have been due to a fire in the port 4-inch magazines spreading to the main magazines. After the torpedoes struck the internal lightning and communication systems failed rapidly and no general orders were heard probably due to the failure of the broadcasting system. She was operating the correct degree of water-tight sub-division for cruising but the rapid increase in heel prevented any effective counter-measures to save the ship.

The Royal Navy battleship Barham sinking in the Mediterranean off Cyrenaica on November 25, 1941 after being torpedoed by the German U-boat U-331. The magazines of the Barham exploded seconds later. A British review panel attributed the explosion to a fire in the secondary magazines that spread to the main magazines.

I have not been able to find the report on-line, so it is difficult to say for sure, but it seems that the Board of Inquiry wasn’t too sure about this whole fire thing. There is no visual evidence of a fire; the smoke seen in the photograph comes from the stack. The accounts I have read of her sinking do not mention a fire. I do not know what evidence the Board of Inquiry saw without having the report in hand, but they may have assumed that since her magazines exploded, there must have been a fire. Which is what we have with the Fuso. In fairness to the Board of Inquiry, however, they may not have had much to go on, since the Barham sank within a matter of minutes.

While an exploding battleship like the Barham was not an everyday occurrence, it was not an isolated incident either. Wikipedia even has an entry on “exploding warships.” (Their take was that most of the incidents of exploding warships involved British cordite. It is unlikely that at this point in their war against the US and Britain, the Japanese were using British cordite.)

The Japanese seemed to be particularly vulnerable to the phenomenon. Tully documents what he calls the “HMS Barham at night.” This would be the sinking of the Japanese battleship Kongo. At about 3:01 am on November 21, 1944, the Kongo took two torpedoes from the US submarine Sealion. Unable to reduce her speed for damage control purposes because of the lurking submarine, Kongo lingered on for about three hours of progressive flooding, ultimately trying to make port for emergency repairs, before stopping and exploding just before dawn. Tully goes to some lengths to describe the battleship's ordeal. Kongo was in a convoy at the time, with Yamato and Nagato. She never reported a fire, only flooding. There is no evidence of a fire, aside from the detonation itself, which was apparently of the main ammunition magazines.

These would have been two instances where a battleship already heeling over and sinking exploded, for no apparent reason. Nihon Kaigun also had an incident all its own, where a battleship exploded without apparent reason or warning. That would be the Mutsu.

On June 8, 1943, the Mutsu’s No. 3 turret magazine exploded while the battleship was at anchor in Hashirajima. The detonation broke the ship in two. Though she sank in a rather shallow harbor, the battleship could not be salvaged.

There was a major inquiry as to why the Mutsu exploded. The mystery was never really solved. Initial suspicion that the blast was caused by the sanshiki-dan incendiary shells proved unfounded. According to CombinedFleet.com, after two months of work:

The investigation concludes that the explosion was "most likely caused by human interference". Some investigators think there was a ring of saboteurs, but the principal suspect is a disgruntled seaman gunner of turret No. 3 who had brooded over theft charges and was killed in the blast. The divers search for his body but it is never found. During the war, the belief persists that, somehow, he managed to escape.

Ultimately, the Japanese decided to revise their procedures for handling explosives on their ships.

What does this have to do with Fuso? There is a hint that she may have been another “HMS Barham at night,” to use Tully’s phrase.

In Nishino’s account, he was informed by a lookout at a little before 3:30 am that they thought they spotted the Yamashiro “sinking.” As noted earlier, this would not have been the Yamashiro, but the Fuso. “Sinking” can mean any number of things, all related to a critical, irrecoverable loss of buoyancy.

It could have meant the Fuso’s explosion, except that the Fuso would not start exploding for at least another nine minutes. According to Mogami, the Fuso was listing to starboard after her torpedo hit(s).

Did Shigure see Fuso start to capsize to starboard? Could that have been a prelude to a catastrophic explosion like the Barham and the Kongo? If this was the case, could the Fuso share a common, as-yet-undetermined cause to her explosion as the Barham and Kongo? Maybe the munitions bouncing around as the ship rolled over? Maybe the same munitions issue that destroyed the Mutsu?

The problem with this theory is that the inherent unreliability of eyewitness testimony rears its ugly head. Nishino says his lookouts spotted what was actually the Fuso “sinking.” If Fuso was indeed “sinking,” as in rolling over to starboard, why did the Mississippi later see her fires blazing above her mastheads? Why was Shima’s force able to identify (or misidentify) the two haves of the wrecks as battleships? The implication in their statements (particularly that of the Mississippi) is that the pagoda was upright, that they at least gave the impression of a battleship.
How would the Fuso return to an upright position after exploding when she was already capsizing?

Further, how would the Fuso remain afloat after exploding and breaking into two pieces?

The only logical way to interpret these statements is to discount Nishino’s statement. Shigure did not see Fuso “sinking,” only at most listing, which is what Mogami described.

This leaves one possibility that has intrigued me for some time.

The Fuel-Air Scenario

On their way from Lingga Roads near Singapore to their destiny in the Sho operation, Kurita’s First Striking Force put in at Brunei, on the northwest corner of Borneo. Somewhat strangely, Kurita had taken tankers with him to refuel his ships. Borneo was one of the gems of the Southern Resources Area because of its oilfields, particularly those on the island of Tarakan, just off the northeast coast of Borneo, so this was like visiting Saudi Arabia and bringing your own gasoline. It doesn’t make much sense on its face, particularly given their severe shortage of tankers. Why would the Japanese do this?

Because they had been burned.

Four months earlier, Nihon Kaigun had deployed its entire carrier force to defend the Mariana Islands – Saipan, Tinian and Guam. The result was what Americans know as the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The alternate name is the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” because of the slaughter of Japanese pilots by American air forces. The battle was an unmitigated disaster for Japan, even causing the fall of the Tojo government (not that all Japanese or even perhaps a majority of them considered this was a bad thing …) But the abysmal performance of Japanese pilots and the brutal efficiency of American air defense were not the only causes of this debacle.

Nihon Kaigun had sent its biggest, best carriers – Taiho, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Junyo, Hiyo – and a handful of smaller carriers – nine in all – into this battle. Taiho was supposed to be the best of them.

Brand new and considered to be “unsinkable” – where have you heard that one before? – Taiho was chosen by Admiral Ozawa as his flagship for the upcoming battle. She had an enclosed hurricane bow, an armored flight deck and other improvements. The Taiho incorporated many of the lessons Nihon Kaigun had learned from Midway, with one notable exception.

The US submarine Albacore had infiltrated the Japanese anti-submarine defenses and, after a fashion, managed to hit the Taiho with a torpedo at 8:10 am on June 19, 1944. CombinedFleet.com describes the damage:

The impact punches a hole in the hull which floods the forward elevator well and gives the Taiho a 1.5 meter trim by the bow, but she maintains speed at 26 knots. The forward elevator, which was raised for launching operations is jarred loose and falls two meters, disrupting take-off operations and the torpedo hit cracks the av-gas tanks underneath it as well. As a result, free gasoline mixes with the water flooding the forward elevator well and av-gas [aviation gasoline for the aircraft] vapor builds up in the space. Within a half-hour damage control has planked over the settled No.1 elevator and the remaining planes were launched.

Historian William Y’Blood:

This torpedo, the only one to hit, struck the Taiho’s starboard side near the forward gasoline tanks. The ship’s forward elevator jammed and gasoline and oil lines ruptured. But the carrier’s sped slackened only one knot and no fires broke out. To the ship’s damage control officer the damage was only minor and repairs would be quickly accomplished.

At least that was the plan.

[...] But now she was a time bomb waiting for the moment to go off.

Clumsy attempts to ruptured fuel and oil lines and to pump overboard the fuel in damaged tanks had been made by the ship’s damage control parties. Large quantities of gas were spilled on the hangar deck as it was being pumped over the side. Then, an inexperienced damage control officer made a disastrous decision. In an effort to dissipate the fumes seeping from the tanks, he ordered the ventilating ducts opened. The effect was just the opposite of what he had planned; it only spread the volatile Tarakan petroleum fumes, and the equally dangerous avgas, fumes throughout the ship.

CombinedFleet.com adds some details and perhaps a clarification:

[T]he gas vapor builds in the closed hanger and enclosed bow area and becomes serious. Efforts to free the mounting vapor by knocking holes in the ship's side or to ventilate the hangar are made. ("ventilate may not refer to the actual ventilation system, but just the d/c efforts). At 1350 CarDiv 1's [Carrier Division 1 consisted of Taiho, Shokaku and Zuikaku) strike wave begins to return. With Shokaku ablaze and bow awash, all planes must land on either Zuikaku or Taiho. The gas vapor danger aboard Taiho is so great that most opt for Zuikaku; the terrible losses attacking TF 58 [US Task Force 58: the US carriers] having left the space to be accomodated. Possibly a few planes of Shokaku's as well as some of Taiho’s do land on her.

The enclosed hangar – with no openings for ventilation or disposal of combustibles in an emergency – had been a problem for the Japanese carriers at Midway. It would prove to be a problem now.

At 2:32 pm (Y’Blood says 3:32; I have gone with CombinedFleet.com), the Taiho suffered a cataclysmic explosion. A spark somewhere in the ship had detonated the fumes. The armored flight deck was split open and blown upward like a mountain top. The hull was breached below the waterline. All power was lost and she went dead in the water. The sides were blown out of the hangar deck. She had ventilation now.

Fires raged out of control and explosions continued. No rescue vessels could get close to her. Oil from the ruptured tanks covered the water near the blazing Taiho and caught fire itself. Ozawa was forced to abandon ship and Taiho sank. Y’Blood and CombinedFleet.com disagree on the time, with the former going for 4:28 pm and the latter going for 6:28 pm.

Meanwhile, eerily similarly calamitous things were happening to one of Ozawa’s other carriers, the Shokaku.

At 11:22 am (Y’Blood says 12:20 pm), Shokaku was hit by four torpedoes from the US submarine Cavalla. Again, Y’Blood describes the damage:

[F]our torpedoes had actually slammed into the Shokaku at 1220.The big carrier slowed and fell out of formation. Flames raged through the ship and explosions tore her apart. The Shokaku's damage control personnel were better than the Taiho's and got many of the fires under control, but they could not contain them all. And all the while, the deadly fumes from ruptured gas tanks, and tanks carrying the Tarakan petroleum, were seeping throughout the ship.

CombinedFleet.com:

[…] [A]t 1122 hit by three torpedoes [actually four] fired from USS Cavalla (SS-244) in the starboard side; two forward near the switchboard and generator room, and and one amidships. Large fuel fires are ignited in the hangar and No.1 boiler room goes off line. Carrier begins to list to starboard, and counterflooding to port is carried out, but overcompensates, giving her a port list. Meanwhile Shokaku continues to settle forward. Though damage control initially hoped to save her, the flooding forward and the fires intensify in the following hours. By 1210 has come to a halt when fires detonate an aerial bomb on the hangar, setting off volatile gases from a cracked forward tank. Large induced explosions wrack the carrier, and hope begins to fade.

Tully, Parshall and Richard Wolff, in their determination that Shokaku was actually struck by four torpedoes, quote from NavTechJap Article S-06-3 dated January 1946:

Shokaku (CV-6) - Shokaku Class. Sunk 19 June 1944 during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. 1100 (approx.) She was west of the Marianas when struck by not more than three submarine torpedoes. One was close to the forward bomb magazines. Gasoline tanks were ruptured, and there was a fire of undetermined proportions. The fire was extinguished promptly, according to survivors, by closing all access to the spaces surrounding the gasoline tanks. Gasoline fumes, however, began to seep throughout the ship. Several hours later an enormous explosion caused her to disintegrate. It may have been her bomb magazines.

Whether Shokaku was sunk by three or four torpedoes is irrelevant to the pattern that is emerging here.

The next day, a late afternoon US airstrike caught the remaining Japanese carriers barely able to defend themselves, so badly had their air groups been depleted. The carrier Hiyo was one of the targets hit. CombinedFleet.com tells her often-overlooked story:

One small bomb dropped by a plane from USS Lexington's Air Group 16 graze the foremast and exploded above the top of the bridge, showering it with fragments. […] Another bomb is repoted to have exploded on the flight deck. Just afterward six torpedo planes from USS Belleau Wood Air Group 24 drove in for an attack (U.S. records say it was four planes led by Lt (jg) George Brown). Two were shot down, and three dropped their weapons too far away, but one badly hit and burning TBF "courageously closed to most favorable angle and range" and dropped his torpedo which struck the starboard engine room. The burning plane then hurtled by the island and crashed into the sea. [footnote omitted.] With the starboard engine flooding, white steam belched out of Hiyo's funnel and she began to lose speed rapidly, but continued to steam on her port shaft. Her sister carrier Junyo closed for a brief time, but was urged to proceed on. Fires had broken out, but were believed to be under control and the list checked. The original course was resumed and the Hiyo commenced to retire with the others. However, nearly two hours after the initial hit, there was tremendous explosion that erupted from the port quarter. A torpedo from an enemy submarine was believed responsible. (Note 2). This explosion damaged the main switchboard panel and stopped all power generation. Leaking gas was set off and flames engulfed the whole rear of the ship. […] The Hiyo began to settle by the stern and list to port, which was indicative of the force of the major explosion that had ripped through her earlier. (emphasis in original)

They note:

To date, this Japanese claim of a submarine torpedo hit on Hiyo had been confusing, and imagined perhaps to be the result of the traumatic experience of the sinking of both Taiho and Shokaku by submarine just the day before. However, IJN official sources always credited a submarine torpedo […] Instead, what clearly happened was a massive induced explosion that doomed salvage efforts and fatally wounded the vessel. This makes Hiyo one of three Japanese fleet carriers sunk by the same combination of petrol tank vapor and induced explosion within a 48 hour period.

Let’s restate that: in two days Nihon Kaigun had lost three irreplaceable, top-of-the-line aircraft carriers to fuel-air explosions – fumes given off by ruptured oil and gasoline receptacles that were detonated by a spark or an existing fire.

The Japanese believed that the oil from Tarakan was the prime factor in these explosions, that but for the vapors given off by this brand of oil, these ships could have been saved. To be sure, not all crude oil is alike – for instance, Saudi crude oil is easier to refine that oil from the North Sea or Venezuela. The Japanese in a do-or-die operation did not want to risk using the Tarakan fuel or anything from Borneo, so they brought fuel from points south.

What does this have to do with the Fuso? A fuel-air explosion as the cause for the battleship’s catastrophic explosion is more consistent with the available visual evidence than either the Fire Scenario or the Barham Scenario.

What could have happened with the Fuso is the torpedo hit knocked out the starboard machinery – the engines on the starboard side. It could have caused a leak of fuel oil in the area. So busy was damage control trying to control the flooding or repair the engines that the vapors may have taken a lower priority on their to-do list. But a spark – somewhere, not seen by the Mogami or anyone on the outside – set off the gases. The resulting explosion could have been small, but started enough of a fire to detonate the main ammunition magazines.

But hadn’t the Japanese taken this into account when they refused to take on the Tarakan fuel at Brunei? They had tried, but Tarakan fuel is not the only fuel that can give rise to fuel-air explosions. The aircraft carrier USS Lexington, for example, was lost at the Battle of the Coral Sea because accumulated fuel vapors were detonated below decks.

The US aircraft carrier Lexington sufferes a fuel-air explosion at the Battle of the Coral Sea, May 8, 1942. The carrier had suffered damage from Japanese air attacks earlier in the day. The damage was under control, but ruptured fuel tanks led to the buildup of vapors below decks that were ignited by a spark of unknown origin. The explosion reignited the fires and led to the loss of the carrier.

Unfortunately, while I believe this scenario fits the available evidence very well, it remains largely conjecture. The evidence to support it is slim at best and based on interpretation. The Hutchins reported three detonations – “two faint and a loud snap.” The faint explosions may not have been ammunition cooking off, but fuel-air explosions setting of a fire, which ultimately did set off the ammunition. The PT boats said the Fuso "burst into flames [about 3:45 am]." But “bursting into flames” is not necessarily an explosion, and could suggest a chemical element to it. The sheer fury of the fires that engulfed the remnants of the Fuso also suggest a chemical element. Finally, the Kanihaan PT’s went to the position of the Fuso’s stern and found no ship left, only fires, give a strong indication of burning fuel on the water, but it gives no indication of when or how this fuel was spilled.

So, it is nothing but a supposition that happens to fit the evidence. But it is a theory that I would hope someone with more expertise than myself could explore.

That leaves but one more loose end to tie up here, at least as much as it can be tied.

Did the Fuso break in half?

It may sound somewhat obvious to say that a ship breaking into two pieces breaks in half. One can say that people are symmetrical by nature. That was my first assumption when I read about the Fuso. That is actually what I believe now. Admiral Mumma’s assumption was the opposite. Let’s repeat what he said:

It is our conclusion that it is well nigh impossible for the Fuso to have broken into two nearly equal parts because of her very rugged and damage resistant structure. The USS Arizona did not show any evidence of hull failure in the area enclosed by the armor belt, even though a massive magazine explosion had occurred.

It is however considered possible that the Fuso may have lost her bow as a result of torpedo damage. Although our war experience does not include this type of failure in battleships, several cases exist where cruisers suffered this type of damage. In the case of the USS Helena (CL-50) the bow section remained afloat for more than twelve hours.

It is probable therefore that if other evidence indicates the presence of two floating bodies this can best be explained by the separation of the bow from the main hull of the battleship.

I am singularly unimpressed by this statement. In fairness to Mumma, as Tully points out, he was going by what they knew back then. Research over the years since then has revealed much more. Willmott calls the Fuso-class battleships “poorly compartmentalized,” which suggests even the armor belt (a heavily armored portion of the lower hull that does not usually include the bow or the stern) could have been vulnerable here.

Mumma’s theory requires a very strained interpretation of the evidence:

1. The movement of the Fuso’s stern

According to Tully, American radar tracks show the stern section of the Fuso swinging to port, to the southeast, on a diverging line from the other half. By 4:00 am this section had opened the range between the pieces to 2,000 yards – more than a mile – after which its position remained fairly constant relative to the bow.

If the stern retained propulsive power, it hints that the break was further forward, possibly only including the bow. But Tully pooh-poohs the theory that the stern retained propulsive power. I tend to believe it, but I am a romantic at heart.

2. Shima’s force misinterpreted what they saw.

Remember that Shima’s torpedo officer, Mori said he “saw two fires, two ships burning, very big ships,” and went on to say:

When we first saw that fire, I judged it was about 20,000 meters from their position. Although we knew they were Japanese vessels on fire we did not bother with them, just progressed. […] We thought it was two battleships, but when we arrived at Manila we heard that it was one battleship (Yamashiro) and three destroyers close together instead of two battleships.

Now, granted, Shima’s force did misinterpret what they saw: they thought the two halves of the Fuso were two separate battleships, but that is far more understandable under the circumstances than mistaking a bow for a complete ship.

For Mumma’s theory to be true, Mori and his shipmates must have been using the size of the fires, the distance between the two halves of the Fuso (over a mile) and his knowledge that Nishimura had two battleships to determine that what he saw were two separate battleships. While the fires could definitely have made the hulls in question seem larger, that is simply too many misinterpretations for experienced seamen to make.

Shima’s forces, the Louisville and PT-323 made distinctions between the fires and the remnants of the Fuso itself. Mori called the ships “very big” and identified them as “battleships.” Louisville fired on "what seems to have been the bow" of the Fuso, but said it was large, which hints it was more than just the bow. Mississippi’s report strongly suggests that the Fuso was upright immediately after the explosion. Mori and his comrades must have seen something – the pagoda? The stack? The mainmast? – that suggested what they were seeing was a battleship. The fires could have masked what remained of the hull, but the identification as a battleship – one of their own battleships that they should have easily been able to recognize – is a major indication that features distinctive to Japanese battleships (as opposed to Japanese cruisers or destroyers) such as the pagoda superstructure were recognizable.

On top of that, it defies logic and basic physics to suggest a torpedo hit amidships could by itself lead to the loss of the bow, not when you have an ammunition magazine in the area, between the area of the hit and the forward turret magazines.

That said, while I believe Mumma’s theory is extremely unlikely, it cannot be ruled out. So much was misinterpreted on this night – see.,e.g, Nishino, Shigeru.

Unfortunately, only a dive to the wreck of the Fuso could help provide insight, and given the shape the wreck must be in after fires that evoked images of a blast furnace, maybe not even that could solve these riddles of history.

But even without the knowledge that it will answer the questions – any of these questions – such an effort is worth doing.

As the World War II generation draws to a close, such an effort can only serve to remember and illuminate the sacrifices made by the servicemen of both the United States of America and Japan.

UPDATE -- Ship in foreground of Surigao Strait picture has been identified as light cruier USS Denver.

Previous:
Part One: The Battle of Surigao Strait
Part Two: Was the Fuso the battleship that was torpedoed and dropped out?
Part Three: Why did Nishino believe the Yamashiro had dropped out instead of the Fuso?

The Fuso Mysteries -- Why did Nishino believe the Yamashiro had dropped out instead of the Fuso?

(The third of a four-part series)

© 2007 Jeffrey R. Cox

The Japanese battleship Fuso (foreground) and heavy aircraft cruiser Mogami under air attack in the Sulu Sea October 24, 1944 by aricraft from the carrier Franklin. Fuso has a fire on her stern as a result of a bomb hit.

The claim that the Yamashiro dropped out and the Fuso continued onward simply does not stand up in the face of the evidence. Yet the claim has endured and even reasserted itself in recent years. How did it get started in the first place?

As you may have guessed, Commander Nishino is not one of my favorite figures from World War II, but he was an able and competent officer. He must have had reason to believe that the Yamashiro had been torpedoed and fallen out of line. So I will try to reconstruct the battle from Nishino’s perspective. Perhaps in finding out why he believed as he did we can shed more light on the fate of the Fuso and Yamashiro.

Go back for a moment to 3:09 am, when the Fuso was torpedoed. Mogami saw the Fuso torpedoed on the starboard side, apparently amidships. Melvin saw "two large and separate explosions." Nishino obviously did not see this. And perhaps he could not.

At 3:09 am, Nishino’s Shigure was transitioning from approach formation to battle formation. In the approach formation, Shigure was two kilometers off Yamashiro’s port bow. She would be moving into a column directly in front of the Yamashiro, but she was not there yet.

Melvin reported two large and distinct “explosions” as her torpedoes hit the Fuso. Remember, though, that these were torpedoes striking below the waterline. Underwater torpedo explosions usually produce big splashes, but don’t always produce a lot of light. It is not clear to me if Melvin is referring to just a large splash or a large splash coupled with a flash of light.

Assume for the sake of argument that we have a large splash coupled with a flash of light. How could Shigure miss that? Fuso was hit on the starboard side, the side away from the Shigure. Nishino's ship could have been screened from any visible sign of the explosions by the massive pagoda of the Fuso. Moreover, her view is likely to have been blocked by bulk of the Yamashiro, particularly if she was in transit from approach to battle formation, as Yamashiro would in effect be crossing her field of view. If the timing was just right, Fuso could also have been sheering out of line as Yamshiro crossed Shigure’s field of view, and the bulk of the Yamashiro would have again prevented her from seeing it.

Assuming, again, she had her lookouts working that night. Certainly someone would have been watching the flagship for visual commands. But the flagship was not the Fuso. A case can be made that Shigure not only did not see the Fuso torpedoed, but maybe could not have seen it.

Fast forward to about 3:18 am. Yamashiro takes a torpedo hit from the Monssen. What did Nishino see?

I did not see the hit which registered on Yamashiro but those who did told me she received a torpedo hit amidships, which side is not known, evidently it hit the magazine and the ship exploded and broke in half. No damage was inflicted on Fuso and Mogami.

It is important to note that Nishino states he did not personally see the Yamashiro get hit, but apparently his lookouts did and reported it to him. So he was told that Yamashiro was torpedoed.

Nishino tried to take stock of the situation from the bridge of the Shigure. Earlier, we gave Mogami’s description of the atmosphere in the after math of the destroyer attacks:

Because of the torpedo attacks it was almost completely impossible to fire on the enemy ships and it became difficult to distinguish our own ships from those of the enemy as a result of evasive action.

Add to this the dark, the smoke and the dazzle from gunfire. Visibility was an issue. But even in this atmosphere the towering pagodas of the battleships stood out among the little destroyers and the one sleek cruiser. Nishino knew his force was supposed to have two battleships. As he looked over his force, he could see only one battleship, so one battleship had therefore dropped out. The remaining battleship did not appear to be damaged. He knew that one battleship – the Yamashiro – had been torpedoed. Consequently, he assumed the Yamashiro was the battleship that had dropped out.

Not an irrational calculus by any means, just one that ended up incorrect because he Nishino completely missed the torpedoing of the Fuso.

Continuing onward, Nishino had the Shigure turn around at 3:25 am. The War College criticizes his decision, but if one continues on this line of thought his decision may not be as bad as it seemed to the War College. When Shigure turned around, five to seven minutes had passed since the Yamashiro had been torpedoed. If she had indeed dropped out, she couldn’t be far away. But when Nishino looked for her, he did not find a battleship where he thought she would be. He eventually did find one, much further off, that his lookouts described as “sinking.” Not much incentive to continue, so he turned back.

Mori’s statement that he learned in Manila that the burning ships he had seen were the Yamashiro and the three destroyers close together also fits with Nishino’s narrative, as he had indeed explained it to Shima and his staff in Manila. The Yamashiro was torpedoed at the same time and place as the destroyers; it would make sense that Nishino would believe their wrecks would be together.

Nishino’s statement that he was able to maintain communication with the Fuso is curious given that Shigure’s radio log shows a continuous series of hails to “Fuso” with no reply, but the War College offers a probable solution. During this time period, Shigure continued to receive orders. Nishino apparently took those orders to have been from Ban in the Fuso, though not directly since he never spoke to Ban at any time. In reality, those orders came from Battleship Division Two, operating on the Yamashiro subordinate to Nishimura.

And once Nishino got the scenario in his head that Yamashiro was done for, it became very difficult to shake, even when he could hear Nishimura’s voice over the radio. Nishimura’s irritated 3:31 am message became a final order, his 3:52 message a request for assistance.

All because Nishino had missed, possibly understandably, the torpedoing of the Fuso. Context can be everything.

That leaves one last vexing question.

Tomorrow: What happened to the Fuso?


Part One: The Battle of Surigao Strait

Part Two: Was the Fuso the battleship that was torpedoed and dropped out?

Part Four: What happened to the Fuso?

The Fuso Mysteries -- Was the Fuso the battleship that was torpedoed and dropped out?

(The second of a four-part series)

© 2007 Jeffrey R. Cox

The end of the Battle of Surigao Strait left many questions, some bigger than others, unanswered: Why did Nishimura and Shima not link up? What was the beef (if any) between Nishimura and Shima? What happened to the Michishio? Why did Nishino tell Shima nothing about the battle? But the most prominent and most vexing of the mysteries surround the battleship Fuso, as described earlier, and it is now that those questions will be addressed.

The Japanese battleship Fuso under air attack by aircraft from the Franklin in the Sulu Sea on October 24, 1944, shortly before the Battle of Surigao Strait. This picture is sometimes identified as her sister ship Yamashiro, but the battleship in this picture shows evidence of a fire on the stern. During this air attack, the Yamashiro was not damaged, but the Fuso suffered a bomb hit on her stern that started a fire that destroyed all her floatplanes.

Was the Fuso the battleship that was torpedoed and dropped out?
As you can probably tell by the narrative of the engagement, I am firmly in the camp that it was the Fuso who was torpedoed and dropped out of formation, to later explode and break in two under rather mysterious circumstances. I pretty much always had thought this was the case. Tully has set the gold standard in addressing this particular question (as he and co-author Jonathan Parshall have set the gold standard with their work on the Battle of Midway), and I have no intention of critiquing his work. Rather, I will condense what I consider to be the probative evidence, both cited by Tully and elsewhere, that collectively in my opinion settle the question decisively.

1. Third Section’s formation had the Fuso as the second battleship in the column.

Nishimura’s force was in the middle of transitioning from an approach formation to a column formation more suited for giving battle at night. The only change in the formations would be the positioning of the Japanese destroyers. The position of the larger ships – Yamashiro, Fuso and Mogami – would not change. Both Japanese and American sources agree that these ships were in a line with the Yamashiro in front, followed by the Fuso at an interval of one kilometer, followed by the Mogami at an interval of one kilometer bringing up the rear.

2. Melvin fired at and hit the second battleship in the column.

The War College reports that the destroyer Melvin aimed her torpedoes at the second battleship in the column. Based on the Japanese reports of their own formation, this would be the Fuso. Melvin reported “0309: Approximate time that our torpedoes crossed enemy track, two large and separate explosions seen.”

3. Mogami saw the Fuso hit by a torpedo and sheer out of line.

The heavy aircraft cruiser Mogami, just behind the Fuso at an interval of one kilometer – and in the best position of the Japanese ships to see the Fuso – reported “Direct torpedo hit on starboard side of Fuso amidships, causing ship to list to starboard and lose speed. Fuso fell back, and Mogami moved on behind Yamashiro.” Mogami was in danger of colliding with the Fuso due to her sudden loss of speed and was forced to take evasive action. Something clearly happened to the Fuso here. Not the Yamashiro, who was one battleship ahead, so to speak. Mogami had clearly distinguished between the two battleships.

Right now, if this were a court of law we would have enough to get the question of which battleship was torpedoed and dropped out to the jury. But there is more. Much more.

4. No assumption of command.

Normally when an officer in tactical command is rendered unable to lead his formation, there is a change of command to the next highest ranking surviving officer. Sometimes, the commander will give last orders if he knows he will be unable to lead his troops much longer. An example would be the actions of the Dutch Admiral Doorman at the Battle of the Java Sea, ordering the surviving Allied ships to flee rather than attempt to rescue him or his crew. Sometimes there is an inquiry from the troops as to who is in charge. There is usually an acknowledgment from the second-in-command to the effect that he is assuming command and that orders should now come from him. There is no evidence whatsoever that Ban tried to assume command or that Nishimura prepared for a change in command, at least anywhere near the proximate time the Fuso was torpedoed. No messages appear on record from Ban or the Fuso. Nishino did try to hail the Fuso assuming there had been a change in command, but never received a reply.

5. Nishimura’s 3:30 am message.

At 3:30 am, Nishimura sent the following message to Kurita:

Enemy destroyers and torpedo boats disposed on both sides of north entrance to Surigao Straits. 2 of our destroyers have received torpedo hits and are out of control; the Yamashiro received one torpedo hit but her battle cruising is unhampered.

If the Yamashiro had just lost speed and sheered out of line, more than likely Nishimura would not have told his superior officer and every nearby Japanese ship with a functioning radio that "her battle cruising is unhampered.” If the damage the Fuso suffered as a result of the torpedo hits is any indication, Nishimura may not have been able to send a message at all.

6. Mogami saw the Yamashiro torpedoed.

In her after action account Mogami states, “Direct torpedo hit observed on Yamashiro [apparently near the bow].” Again, Mogami has clearly distinguished between the two battleships. According to Tully, this is a reference to the second torpedo hit the Yamashiro received. The torpedoing of the Yamashiro at this stage of the battle is not disputed.

7. Nishimura’s 3:31 am message.

The timing of this next message is not certain, largely because the Mogami and the War College do not agree on the timing of the second torpedo hit on Yamashiro, but shortly after this hit, which caused the battleship to lose speed, Nishimura came to the radiophone “with irritation” and said to his other ships, “We have received a torpedo attack. You are to proceed and attack all ships!” This could have been an attempt at giving a final order, as referenced earlier, just in case he was unable to continue in command because of the difficulties of the Yamashiro. Some accounts have interpreted it in just this way, but garbled the timing, and believe it was the final order from Nishimura as Yamashiro dropped out and the Fuso continued on, but the timeline simply does not support this.

8. Shigure constantly hailed “Fuso” and received no reply.

Apparently seeking to get orders from the person he believed to be his new commanding officer, Commander Nishino tried to get in touch with Admiral Ban on the Fuso. Tully reports that the radio log of the Shigure shows a series of hails to “Fuso” that never received a response. Shigure even tried to tell the Fuso that she was following the battleship. Again, no reply.

9. Nishimura’s 3:52 am message.

At 3:52 am, just as he was beginning to engage the battle line, Nishimura himself came to the radiophone (evidently the only functioning communication left on the Yamashiro, according to Izaki) and called out to the Fuso, “Notify your maximum speed!”

If Nishimura had been on the battleship that had exploded a few minutes earlier, he clearly would have been in no position to personally send this message. And, as Tully points out, the context of the message strongly suggests that Nishimura was in the head of the formation, which he indeed was, if at that point it could still be called a formation.

10. The location of the rescue of the survivors of the Yamashiro.

I must defer to Tully on this one:

The sinking position was 10-22'2 N, 125-21'3 E. Subsequently, at 0557 the destroyer USS Claxton rescued [Lt.] Izaki and a few others at position 10-20'N, 125-23'E, roughly due west of Eschonchada Point. This is perfectly consistent with the southeasterly current and the time lapse. The closeness of this position to the sinking position is crucial and helps clinch the identify of the north [battleship] sunk as Yamashiro.

11. The intermingling of the survivors of the Asagumo and the Fuso.

Again, according to Tully, some of the survivors from the Asagumo claimed to have talked to one or more survivors from the Fuso. The Asagumo, when she sank, was close to the battleship that had exploded and split in two.

To my way of thinking, these factors are dispositive in determining that the Fuso was torpedoed and dropped out and the Yamashiro continued onward. But this is not the last of the questions.

Part One: The Battle of Surigao Strait

Part Three: Why did Nishino believe the Yamashiro had dropped out instead of the Fuso?

Part Four: What happened to the Fuso?

The Fuso Mysteries -- The Battle of Surigao Strait

(The first of a four-part series)

© 2007 Jeffrey R. Cox

We have just passed the 63rd anniversary of the last major naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Battle of Leyte Gulf was comprised of four or five separate naval actions, none of which actually took place in Leyte Gulf. But it was the principle of the thing. The battle has always fascinated me, particularly one of its component naval actions called the Battle of Surigao Strait, which took place on the night of October 24-25, 1944.

Surigao is a very intriguing battle, largely because it spawned one of the enduring mysteries of World War II. This mystery was addressed far more capably than I could ever hope to by Anthony Tully on CombinedFleet.com with his piece “Shell Game at Surigao: The entangled fates of battleships Fuso and Yamashiro.” The gist of this mystery of Surigao is that the fates of the sister battleships Fuso and Yamashiro have often been reversed. One version says that the Fuso was torpedoed early in the battle and dropped out, only to later explode and sink, with the Yamashiro continuing onward to engage the US battle line of battleships and cruisers and ultimately sunk. The other version holds the exact opposite, that Yamashiro was torpedoed early in the battle and it was Fuso who went onward to be sunk by the battle line.

The mystery is enduring because to this day no one has been able to say conclusively which version of events is correct. The original version, apparently put forth by Lieutenant Commander Nishino Shigeru, captain of the destroyer Shigure which took part in the battle, was that Yamashiro was torpedoed and dropped out and Fuso continued onward. A later after-action report by the redoubtable heavy cruiser Mogami, which was sunk, said the opposite – that Fuso was torpedoed and Yamashiro went onward. A US Naval War College analysis sided with the version of events put forth by the Mogami. But Nishino’s version has endured, and has been repeated in some of the more recent works on the battle. Records pertaining to the action are few, since the sinking of the Fuso and Yamashiro left a grand total of ten survivors (all from the Yamashiro), all of the Japanese ships in the action were sunk except the Shigure, and all the lost ships took their records with them except the Mogami. Naval archaeology has not yet solved the dispute, with an attempt to confirm the identity of the wreck believed to be the Yamashiro and examine its wreck apparently ending inconclusively. So the dispute continues.

But this is but one of the mysteries of Surigao, all of which concern the fate of the battleship Fuso. It is this little-known ship and the debate she has spawned that make this battle so endearing. So please join me, won’t you, for a discussion of what I call “the Fuso Mysteries.”


The Japanese battleship Fuso, showing off her towering "pagoda mast," actually the ship's superstructure, which contains the bridge, fire control, lookout posts and other facilities, in the spot where the foremast would normally stand.

Prelude to Leyte Gulf

The Battle of Leyte Gulf overall was one of the more bizarre battles of World War II and, indeed, of military history, with more than its share of controversy. It was probably inevitable given the sheer scope of the battle. A full discussion of the battle is beyond the scope of this piece, but a brief explanation of its preliminaries will help set up the Surigao Strait action.

Put simply, in October 1944 Imperial Japan was in deep trouble. She had entered the war to gain the so-called “Southern Resources Area” (present-day Indonesia), which would keep her supplied with oil and raw materials to enable her to become self-sufficient, at least in relation to the European powers and the US. She wasn’t actually self-sufficient, in that she depended on convoys from this area back to the home islands – convoys that ran right by the Philippine Islands. US submarines had slashed viciously and effectively at this lifeline, so much so that there were serious shortages in the homeland, particularly of fuel. Losing the Philippines would effectively cut off Japan from her source of raw materials. Game. Set. Match.

For that reason, Nihon Kaigun could not let the Philippines fall to the Allies. So after losing the Marianas to the US in June, the Japanese began preparing defense plans. The result was the four plans called “Sho Go” (“Victory Plan”). The only one which concerns us here was the plan for defense of the Philippines, Sho-Ichi-Go, or Sho 1. Sho-Ichi called for the navy to sortie once the US had taken action in the Philippines, fight through to the invasion anchorages in Leyte Gulf and destroy the landing ships and unloaded supplies on the beaches. Sounds simple.

But it would not stay simple. The fuel shortages had resulted in a division of the Japanese fleet. Most of the surface fleet had to stay in Singapore, near fuel sources in the Southern Resources Area, so they could train. But the carriers needed to train new air groups, and they could only do that in the home islands. So the two major elements of Nihon Kaigun’s fighting ships were separated by thousands of miles.

Further complicating matters was the US choice of landing sites – the island of Leyte, in the Visayans. The choice of Leyte was a masterstroke for the US. Invasion beaches on the east side of Leyte were shielded from the west by the bulk of the island. To approach the invasion beaches, a fleet approaching from the west would have to traverse either the San Bernardino Strait in the north between Luzon and Samar or the Surigao Strait in the south. Both straits could be easily blocked, and were – or were supposed to be – by the US Third Fleet and the US Seventh Fleet, respectively. So to send the fleet in from the west and give it a chance to advance to the invasion beaches, the Japanese needed to get the Pacific Fleet to abandon its blocking position. This is where the Japanese aircraft carriers came in.

Sho-Ichi-Go called for the main Japanese surface fleet (designated the “First Striking Force” or “Center Force”) under Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo, centered on the super battleships Yamato and Musashi and battleships Nagato, Kongo, Haruna, Fuso and Yamashiro; to advance through the San Bernardino Strait, while the Third Fleet would be lured north from its blocking position by aircraft carriers under Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo coming down from Japan (they were designated either “Main Body” or “Northern Force”). While the carriers looked dangerous, they were almost devoid of combat power due to a complete lack of trained pilots.

So, Ozawa lures the Pacific Fleet north, Kurita slips through the San Bernardino and destroys the invasion. Still sounds simple in concept, but from here it became almost laughable in its ungovernable monstrosity.

First, the inclusion of the World War I-vintage Fuso and Yamashiro in this operation is indicative of the desperation of the Japanese at this point in the war. Due to their age and slow speed, both of the battleships had spent most of the war conducting training cruises in the Inland Sea, with one notable exception. That exception was during the Battle of Midway, when the two battleships were used in the Aleutians operation to provide distant support, though the emphasis seemed to be more on the “distant” part of the equation. Yamashiro was also hit by a dud torpedo once, while the Fuso was next to the battleship Mutsu when the latter exploded and sank in Hashirajima anchorage in 1943 for reasons that remain vague. But such was the state of the war effort at this point that it was felt the 12 14-inch guns each possessed were necessary.

At some point Kurita decided that Fuso and Yamashiro (who together formed the unit Battleship Division Two) were too slow to operate with Kurita’s Force, so they were detached, along with the heavy cruiser Mogami and four destroyers, to take the shorter route through the Surigao Strait to Leyte Gulf. The warships in Kurita’s force were organizationally divided into three sections. Fuso and Yamashiro were in what was designated the Third Section. Historians referring to this force either use the name “Third Section” or “Force C.” It was commanded by Vice Admiral Nishimura Shoji, a veteran if unimaginative seagoing admiral, who flew his flag in the Yamashiro.

Historians have pondered why Third Section was detached in this way, since the Fuso was not that much slower than the Nagato and the route through Surigao Strait wasn’t that much shorter, but there was a certain logic to it. US naval forces – the Seventh Fleet -- were known to be blocking the Surigao Strait. If Nishimura could try to force the strait against them, it would probably be a suicide mission, but he would at least pin down the Seventh Fleet and prevent them from attempting to help secure the San Bernardino Strait against Kurita’s advance. So, though this move further complicated an already complex operation, it was defensible. But what follows was not.

At the last minute, Combined Fleet decided to throw a group of ships under Vice Admiral Shima Kiyohide into the mix. This force consisted of five cruisers and seven destroyers, but they were scattered. One group, with the heavy cruiser Aoba, light cruiser Kinu and a destroyer, was actually with Kurita. This group was sent to escort troop reinforcements to Leyte, and took no part in the battle (unless you count Aoba getting herself torpedoed by a submarine), which, historian Edwin Hoyt suggests, was a source of disgust to Shima. Another two destroyers were picked off for escort duties. Shima’s remaining force, designated the “Second Striking Force,” consisted of the heavy cruisers Nachi (Shima’s flagship) and Ashigara, light cruiser Abukuma and four destroyers. It was to come down from Mako and enter Leyte Gulf through Surigao Strait and “support” Nishimura, whatever that means. Together, Third Section and Second Striking Force are often called the “Southern Force.”

The problem here, basically, is that Shima’s force (as passionately explained by Japanese wartime journalist Ito Masanori) should not have been used in this operation without being attached to a larger force, and nothing was done to combine Shima’s force with Nishimura’s force, which would have quite obviously improved its effectiveness. Shima’s force was outside the nominal command arrangement for the Leyte operation, so while Nishimura was answerable to Kurita, Shima was answerable only to Tokyo. Worse, Shima’s orders were so vague that he could interpret them basically however hew wished, and his actions during this battle would demonstrate that he intended to keep it that way, due in part, perhaps (according to Ito and historian John Prados), to the prior misuse of his force by Imperial General Headquarters.

For reasons that remain disputed, Shima’s force and Nishimura’s force never linked up. There is talk of personal antipathy between the two officers. Shima was senior to Nishimura, despite Nishimura’s far greater seagoing experience, which led to personal bitterness. There was also talk of a “certain incident” between the two that contributed to the atmosphere. The events of the coming action did nothing to disprove this theory. For Shima’s part, many believe he wanted nothing to do with Nishimura’s force because Nishimura knew the plan for Sho-Ichi-Go and Shima, thrown in at the last minute, did not, and his involvement with Nishimura would only have complicated Nishimura’s operation. To make matters worse, Shima had little if any knowledge of the area in which his ships were to operate. Ultimately, this – another one of the mysteries of Leyte Gulf – must remain a mystery. Whatever the reason, the two forces did not link up, and remained just out of reach of each other.

This lack of coordination and communication between Nishimura and Shima was symptomatic of the problems with the entire Sho operation. At this point in the war, Nihon Kaigun was simply incapable of the coordination to pull off this type of operation. Part and parcel of this deficiency was the failure of Japanese communications. During the Leyte Gulf operation, the Japanese were plagued time and again by communications breakdowns. While such breakdowns are an inevitable part of war that can not be completely eliminated, only minimized, it was so bad for Kurita, Nishimura and Shima during the Sho operation that their respective forces ended up operating independently in the dark, with little if any information about the enemy or even the dispositions of their own forces. These breakdowns contributed in no small measure to the disaster that followed.

The major – and most famous – deficiency saddling Nihon Kaigun at Leyte Gulf was an almost complete lack of effective airpower. The navy’s air units were almost completely depleted after being chewed up by earlier US air raids on Formosa. How much they had available is disputed, but Samuel Eliot Morison says the First and Second Air Fleets, assigned to the Philippines, did not have even 200 operational aircraft when the Sho operation began. That number is probably the low side, and H.P. Willmott (The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last Fleet Action) says that the two air fleets had a combined 800 aircraft – on paper. Actual strength, he says, was at least one third lower and serviceability rates were lower still.

To make matters worse, the Japanese preferred to protect the naval units by launching strikes on enemy carriers, instead of simply providing air cover. The effectiveness of this strategy can be seen by the nightmarish day-long series of US air attacks on Kurita’s Center Force on October 24, which sank the battleship Musashi, and damaged the battleships Yamato and Nagato and the heavy cruiser Myoko, the latter so badly she had to retire.

By contrast, Nishimura received one air attack, from the aircraft carrier Franklin, at 9:18 am on October 24 while Third Section was in transit through the Sulu Sea. Fuso suffered a bomb hit on her quarterdeck that set her aviation fuel tanks on fire, destroying all her float planes, but the fire was put out within an hour. The large aircraft deck on Mogami was strafed, spawning talk among the Japanese that the US was deliberately targeting the Japanese float planes. Shigure suffered a bomb hit on her No. 1 5-inch turret, which killed the crew but left the gun functional.

That was all Nishimura faced that day. But if he thought he was coming in unnoticed, or that the Americans were too preoccupied with Kurita and Ozawa to notice him, he was to be disappointed. Blocking the Surigao Strait as in enters into Leyte Gulf was the battle line of the US Seventh Fleet under Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf with six battleships (many of which had been salvaged from the mud at Pearl Harbor), eight cruisers and ten destroyers. With this force alone, Nishimura was badly outnumbered, but just to get to this force he would have to first run a gauntlet of 45 PT boats (divided into 13 sections) guarding the Mindanao Sea and southern entrance to the strait, then another gauntlet of 18 destroyers.

Nishimura was well aware of the odds he faced. At 12:35 pm, a scout plane reported sighting four battleships, two cruisers, four destroyers, 15 aircraft carriers, 14 PT boats and 80 transports in Leyte Gulf. The plane had sighted part of Oldendorf’s battle line and, to the north in Leyte Gulf, the little escort carriers whose moment of fame was less than 24 hours away.

This scouting report was symbolic of what the Japanese had to overcome in the upcoming battle. The massive numbers of enemy ships reported is obvious, but this was also the only air scouting report the Japanese received during the Battle of Leyte Gulf that gave then any hint of what they were facing. Furthermore, the scout plane was from the cruiser Mogami. The Mogami, after sustaining severe damage at Midway, had undergone a lengthy conversion to an aircraft cruiser, like the Tone and Chikuma, that would be capable of carrying 11 float planes. For this battle on which the fate of her nation depended, she carried only one.

Night descended, and Nishimura continued onward. In all probability, given his inferior forces, his lack of air cover and the traditional Japanese superiority in night fighting, he probably figured it was his best – or only – chance.

The Battle of Surigao Strait

Like Tully, I have found describing the Surigao Strait action in terms that maintain a sense of impartiality in examining its mysteries to play havoc with readability for the uninitiated. For that reason, I will give a somewhat limited description of the action in the Surigao Strait first, pointing out the sources of controversy, before going back and examining those controversies in detail. Furthermore, for the militarily uninitiated, I will use civilian terminology for times and dates instead of military terminology, and explain certain military practices where appropriate. Much of the timeline used here is based on Tully (who reviewed the original Japanese and US documents), the Naval War College Analysis (made available online by the Hyperwar Foundation) and its narration in Samuel Eliot Morison’s History of United States Naval Operations in World War II “Leyte” volume; The Battle of Leyte Gulf by Hoyt (who quotes extensively from both Japanese and US accounts); and The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945, by John Toland.

Nishimura split his little force into two groups. He kept his two battleships together with the destroyer Shigure while sending the Mogami ahead with destroyers Asagumo, Yamagumo and Michishio to reconnoiter. The Battle of Surigao Strait “officially” began at 10:36 pm on October 24, when one of Oldendorf’s PT boats, PT –131, operating off the island of Bohol, picked up Nishimura’s battleships on radar. The Mogami group managed to pass the first echelon of PT boats unnoticed, but was sighted by the second at 11:50 pm.

Oldendorf’s instructions to the PT boats were twofold: report and attack, in that order. They were to report their contacts to Oldendorf and then attack them with torpedoes. The PT’s themselves, chomping at the bit after years of relative inaction to get in their own licks in retribution for Pearl Harbor, preferred to reverse the equation. Generally, they would harass Nishimura through the Mindanao Sea and up to the southern entrance to Surigao Strait, fire their torpedoes which would miss their targets, be illuminated by Japanese searchlights, be subject to inaccurate lower caliber shellfire from the destroyers’ 5-inch guns, and speed off. Their engagement in combat made their job of reporting the contact more difficult, complicated further by Japanese jamming of their radio transmissions. PT-130, its own radio knocked out by a Japanese shell, had to run to the closest PT boats to get off her contact report by voice. PT-127 relayed it to her tender at 12:10 am on October 25. Oldendorf received it – the first report of contact with Nishimura – at 12:26 am.

Nishimura successfully weathered the first PT boat storm, such as it was, and reunited Third Section, forming it into an approach formation at 1:00 am. In the lead was destroyer Michishio followed by the Asagumo. Yamashiro followed the Asagumo at an interval of two to four kilometers. Fuso and Mogami followed Yamashiro at one-kilometer intervals. Shigure was two kilometers off Yamashiro’s port (left) bow and Yamagumo was two kilometers off Yamashiro’s starboard (right) bow. Nishimura’s ships then spent the next 75 minutes chasing off successive PT boat attacks, all in the pattern described above. The PT attacks stopped at this point, but the lull was misleading. One last PT boat section, consisting of PT’s 495, 489, and 492, continued to track Nishimura’s battleships. Worse for the Japanese, the first of Oldendorf’s destroyer echelons was preparing to attack.

This was Destroyer Squadron 54 (DesRon 54), commanded by Captain Jesse G. Coward. He commanded a force of five destroyers: Remey, McGowan, Melvin, McDermut and Monssen. Coward planned an ambush of the first magnitude for his Japanese adversaries with his destroyers’ torpedoes.

Evading torpedoes, particularly when you didn’t know precisely where they were, often called for what was known as “combing” the torpedo spread. “Combing” consisted of turning the ship to a parallel course with that of the torpedoes, which in the absence of seeing the torpedoes themselves could be determined by the bearing of the attacker. By “combing,” the ship presented a narrow, head-on profile (or occasionally stern-on profile) to the torpedoes, thus making the ship a smaller target and minimizing the chance for a hit.

Coward’s plan called for dividing his force into two groups, one under his own command on the eastern side of the strait consisting of the Remey, McGowan and Melvin; the other on the western side consisting of the McDermut and Monssen under the command of Commander Richard H. Phillips, to execute a “hammer and anvil” (or more simply “anvil”) attack on Nishimura’s force. In the “anvil” attack, to use Coward’s plan as an example, both of Coward’s groups of destroyers would fire torpedoes at Nishimura’s force from opposite sides of the strait and at almost right angles to each other. If Nishimura tried to comb the torpedoes fired by Coward’s destroyers, he would minimize his chances of being hit by Coward’s torpedoes, but then give a broadside angle to Phillips’ torpedoes, thus maximizing their chance for a hit. And vice versa. It was a standard tactic for torpedo attack, albeit one the US had not executed with much success during the war.

To complicate matters for the Japanese, both of Coward’s destroyer groups would hug the coastlines, making it difficult to spot by eyesight and masking themselves for Japanese radar, the technology for which at this point in the war was about three years behind that of the Americans. Coward’s groups would also use torpedoes only and not gunfire, which could reveal their positions with gun flashes. The Japanese had established their reputation for superiority in night fighting using all of these tactics earlier in the war in the Solomon Islands. The US Navy had paid dearly for these lessons in night combat, but they would now get the chance to return the favor.

This is where the Battle of the Surigao Strait starts to get interesting, and, for the historians, confusing.

Somewhere around 2:45 am, Nishimura’s ships began to change formation from the approach formation described above to a column formation more appropriate for battle. This column formation would have the Michishio in the lead, followed by the Asagumo, Yamagumo and Shigure, in that order. Yamashiro followed the Shigure, with Fuso and Mogami following, again at one kilometer intervals. At 2:56, while still trying to complete the maneuver, Shigure still on Nishimura’s port wing spotted Coward’s three destroyers at a distance of 8 kilometers. At 2:59, Coward’s destroyers began firing their torpedoes at estimated ranges of 8200 to 9300 yards. In an age of Star Trek, with its fast-traveling photon and quantum torpedoes; and Star Wars, with its proton torpedoes, it might seem amazing that it would take Coward’s torpedoes some ten minutes to reach their targets.

It might seem even more amazing that Nishimura took absolutely no evasive action. Even though American destroyers had been seen in a position to launch torpedoes, Third Section made no effort to comb the torpedoes that should probably have been expected. Coward’s destroyers were spotted, Nishimura’s ships opened fire to drive them off and Coward’s destroyers sped away under the cover of smokescreens. Hoyt opines that Nishino in the Shigure could have sworn the Americans had just turned tail and fled. Nishimura may have thought the same thing.

What happens next is where the controversy begins.

The War College reports that the destroyer Melvin fired at the second battleship in the column, at a range of 11,800 yards. Tully, who reviewed the original after action reports, concurs. Hoyt concurs as well, and quotes extensively from the Melvin’s report, but the quoted passages do not give any specifics as to the target.

But all concur as to the results, which the Melvin reports rather laconically: “0309: Approximate time that our torpedoes crossed enemy track, two large and separate explosions seen.”

The report of the cruiser Mogami, gives more in the way of specifics: “Direct torpedo hit on starboard side of Fuso amidships, causing ship to list to starboard and lose speed. Fuso fell back, and Mogami moved on behind Yamashiro.”

It would appear that one or two torpedoes had struck the Fuso from the starboard side amidships. Again, with no records available from the Fuso, one can only speculate about damage, but Tully concurs with the War College analysis:

As for the hit or hits, a likely outcome of strikes amidships would have been flooded boiler and/or machinery spaces, as well as the possibility of starting a fire near the amidships magazines. The blows likely killed communications, and possibly knocked out all the starboard machinery, thereby cutting the battleship's speed drastically. [Fuso commanding officer Rear Admiral] Ban Masami swung his vessel out of line, probably to clear the formation to prevent a collision as a result of his sudden loss of speed.

The War College analysis indicates no further communication is recorded from the Fuso, not even a distress call, either by radio or blinker. Her speed cut from 20 knots to about 12, Ban saw the need to swing his ship out of line to prevent the Mogami following her from plowing into her stern. Mogami, under the command of Captain Toma Ryo, cleared Fuso and tried to close up ranks with the Yamashiro. Apparently unable to keep up because of her damage, the Fuso was left behind by Third Section.

And the controversy begins, because aside from the Mogami no one on the Japanese side saw the Fuso torpedoed and drop out of line. Or if they did so, as the Mogami certainly did, they did not report it to Nishimura. There was some speculation that no one wanted to tell him for reasons that are never specified.

US radar tracked the stricken battleship continuing northward until about 3:20, when she turned around and began making her way south, away from battle. PT boats continued to shadow her.

Third Section went onward and apparently managed to complete its column formation, sans Fuso, at 3:10. One minute later, Shigure reported dark objects to port. These were Phillips’ destroyers, who were at that time firing their own torpedoes – twenty of them, to be precise. The timing of the anvil attack was off – it should have been simultaneous with Coward’s attack – but the results from an American perspective could have hardly been any better.

Nishimura apparently guessed what was happening and took evasive action in the form of two emergency right angle turns, the first to the right, the second to the left, roughly his original course. The object of such a tactic would have been to outrun the incoming torpedoes, except the War College states that Nishimura returned to his original course too soon. The effect was to place his screen of destroyers right in the path of Phillips’ torpedoes, with disastrous results.

At 3:20 am, in what was probably the most effective US torpedo attack of the entire war, the Michishio, Asagumo and Yamagumo were all struck by torpedoes from the destroyer McDermut to port. In an explosion so brilliant it was seen by the US battle line, the Yamagumo sank immediately with all hands. Michishio took a torpedo in her engine room and lost propulsive power. Asagumo had her bow blown off and was reduced to nine knots.

Monssen drew blood as well, putting a torpedo into the Yamashiro, port side aft, at about 3:20 (War College says 3:18). The hit apparently threatened to detonate the Yamashiro’s ammunition magazines, which would have caused a catastrophic explosion. Her skipper, Rear Admiral Shinoda Katsukiyo ordered the magazines for the No. 5 and No. 6 turrets (the aft turrets) flooded. With no ammunition available for those turrets as a result of flooding , those turrets would now be useless for battle, but it was better than having the magazines explode, as subsequent events would suggest.

The flagship‘s speed was also temporarily cut to ten knots, but her battle integrity was maintained and she was able to resume 18 knots shortly thereafter.

Mogami described the situation thusly:

Because of the torpedo attacks it was almost completely impossible to fire on the enemy ships and it became difficult to distinguish our own ships from those of the enemy as a result of evasive action.

If one factors in the smoke from the US destroyers, the dazzle of the guns and the dark land helping to mask ship silhouettes, perhaps Nishino’s account then has some perspective:

[… ] Torpedo attack was received from both port and starboard sides […] The Shigure took evasive action and avoided all torpedoes. This was comparatively easy for Shigure, since at the moment of attack we were still heading northeast in the transition from approach to battle disposition. […] I did not see the hit which registered on Yamashiro but those who did told me she received a torpedo hit amidships, which side is not known, evidently it hit the magazine and the ship exploded and broke in half. No damage was inflicted on Fuso and Mogami.

So the first of the Fuso Mysteries, to be addressed at length later on, is: Was the Fuso the battleship that was torpedoed and dropped out?

The attacks launched by DesRon 54 effectively destroyed Third Section as a fighting unit. Nishimura continued to give orders, but each ship only generally obeyed them and basically acted independently of each other. For confusion was supreme. There were still two undamaged Japanese ships, Mogami and Shigure. Flagship Yamashiro was damaged but available for combat. Fuso and Asagumo were damaged and unfit for combat, but were still operational.

And only one of these ships – Mogami – had anything resembling an accurate idea of what was going on. And, for whatever reason, she wasn’t telling anybody.

Nishino, leading the formation, such as it was, in Shigure, saw the Japanese formation was missing a battleship. He became convinced the missing battleship was the Yamashiro. At 3:25, he turned his ship around to check on the whereabouts of the flagship.

The second of the Fuso Mysteries: why did Nishino believe the Yamashiro had dropped out instead of the Fuso?

At 3:30 am, Nishimura sent a battle report to Kurita:

Enemy destroyers and torpedo boats disposed on both sides of north entrance to Surigao Straits. 2 of our destroyers have received torpedo hits and are out of control; the Yamashiro received one torpedo hit but her battle cruising is unhampered.

This single message shows the confusion in the Japanese command. Nishimura had evidently neither noticed nor been told that about half of his combat power had been torpedoed and dropped out of formation about 20 minutes earlier. The War College was kind to write this off as not uncommon in battles in general (using Jutland as an example) or particularly night battles (citing the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal).

Nishimura also made no reference to the fate of the Yamagumo, which had sunk almost immediately. He may have mistaken it for something else, if the difficulty Mogami expressed in telling friend from foe is any indication. Furthermore, it would seem that the Yamagumo, like the Fuso, had not gotten off a distress call.

Nevertheless, it has merited some comment. From this writer’s perspective, it seems that the Japanese lookouts in Third Section did not live up to the standards they had set for themselves in the Solomons campaign, where time and again US forces, feeling overconfident with their radar, were ambushed by Japanese who had no radar, only specially-trained lookouts with really big binoculars. It would be ironic if the Japanese, with radar of their own in 1944, fell victim to the same malady.

Tully suggests that the lookouts on the Yamashiro mistook the Mogami astern in the night for the Fuso. That could very well be true – if the lookouts could not tell the difference between the distinctive-looking Fuso with its towering pagoda superstructure from the much shorter and sleeker Mogami. This would again not speak well of the Japanese lookouts.

In all probability, the lookouts were not paying much attention to their rear. Tully also suggests that the torpedoing of the three Japanese destroyers distracted the lookouts from the plight of the Fuso. This is probably not literally true because the destroyers were torpedoed ten minutes after the Fuso, but it is likely true in the sense that the Japanese were focused forward on Coward’s fleeing destroyers and Phillips’ incoming destroyers. Put simply, the lookouts may have been looking the wrong way, as happened to the US at Savo Island. Furthermore, Third Section’s formation, while correct, hints that Nishimura may not have cared all that much about what happened behind him, as the last ship in his formation was the heavy aircraft cruiser Mogami, whose aft turrets had been removed and consequently could not fire at targets directly behind her.

Be that as it may, Shigure’s search for the Yamashiro did not get very far. While heading south, she passed the Yamashiro, thinking she was the Fuso, and the Mogami headed in the opposite direction. As Nishino stated in his post-war interview:

I went back to find out what had happened to Yamashiro and to get orders if possible, then made a second turn and proceeded north again. Mogami and Fuso were still continuing north at this time and […] I gave up the search for the Yamashiro which had been for the possibility of finding out what had happened to the flagship and also of the possibility of transferring the flag to my ship. […] [I] decided to go to the [front] of the force; we were unable to make telephone communication with Yamashiro. While searching […] the lookout informed me he had sighted what he thought was the Yamashiro sinking. I did not attempt to pick up survivors but shortly after this information proceeded to continue the battle. I was able to maintain communication with the Fuso.

Or so he thought. Tully reveals that the destroyer’s message log shows a series of attempts to hail the Fuso, with no reply. The Shigure turned around and resumed its northward course at 3:30.

Into this confusion came the second wave of US destroyers. This was DesRon 24 under Captain K.M. McManes. Like Coward before him, he would attack in two sections – one consisting of the US destroyers Hutchins (flagship), Daly and Bache, the other the Australian destroyer Arunta and the US destroyers Killen and Beale – and hug the coastline on the western side of the strait. The second group headed by the Arunta began firing their torpedoes at 3:25.

Mogami recorded, “Direct torpedo hit observed on Yamashiro (apparently near the bow).” Mogami puts the hit at 3:40 am. The War College puts the time of the hit – from the Killen – at 3:31.

Tully quotes extensively from Lieutenant Izaki Sato, a surviving officer of the Yamashiro. Izaki was the chief of the accounting section and was in the bridge area during the battle. (If you’re wondering what an accountant would be doing on the bridge of a battleship in combat, it is likely his duty station in combat was located there.) Izaki indicates that this hit severely disrupted communications on the flagship.

US forces also tracked the Yamashiro slowing down to five knots after this hit. As Tully describes it:

It appears that Mogami and Shigure may have paused in their advance as well, for Nishimura subsequently came on the radiophone with irritation: “We have received a torpedo attack. You are to proceed and attack all ships!”

It is not uncommon for a flag officer in distress to order his command to proceed on without him – the Dutch Admiral Karel Doorman did as much at the Battle of the Java Sea, for instance – but this message had the effect of basically telling the Captain Toma of the cruiser Mogami to attack the six battleships, eight cruisers and ten destroyers of the US Seventh Fleet battle line basically by himself. Lucky him.

For what it was worth, though, it never came to that, as within five minutes the Yamashiro had effected repairs and was able to make 18 knots for battle.

Meanwhile, the attack of US DesRon 24 continued. Mogami lost her No. 3 main 8-inch turret to gunfire. The Hutchins group started taking the damaged Asagumo and Michishio under shellfire, but were driven off by the secondary 6-inch batteries of the Yamashiro. Two Japanese torpedoes crossed the bow of the Daly and just missed; it is believed they came from the Asagumo.

McManes’ group was ordered to retire to prevent their fouling the field of fire for the battle line, about to engage Nishimura. As he turned away, at 3:49 he let loose with a spread of torpedoes at the troublesome Asagumo. They sped by the Asagumo, leaving her unhurt (or at least not hurt further), but hit the drifting Michishio beyond her at 3:58. The detonation sank her almost immediately.

The fate of the Michishio is another little mystery of the Surigao Strait action, but probably an intractable one. Willmott points out that the Michishio was torpedoed initially at 3:20 am. The torpedo hit her engine room and left her without propulsive power. Nishimura, in his message of 3:30 am, says two of his destroyers were “out of control,” a reference to the Michishio and the Asagumo. Yet, if the accounts are to be believed, Michishio met her fate at the hands of the Hutchins while disabled and drifting southward with the current ten miles north of her initial torpedoing. Historians must plead the Chewbacca Defense on this one.

In the interim, calamitous things were happening nine miles to the south in Surigao Strait. At 3:38 am the Hutchins reported three detonations – “two faint and a loud snap” – from the battleship that had dropped out of Nishimura’s formation, the Fuso. This was apparently a part of a series of detonations.

At 3:45 am, a huge flare and fireball lit up the strait. The PT's shadowing the slowly-retiring battleship reported that she suddenly “burst into flames about [3:45 am].” The explosion was witnessed as far away as the US battle line, where the battleship Mississippi, as reported by the War College, saw the ship enveloped in flames from the waterline to the mastheads. At 3:50, the US radar return, called “the pip,” from the Fuso split into two. The battleship had been blown into two sections; the PT boats described them as “burning furiously.” According to Tully, American radar tracks show the stern section of the Fuso swinging to port, to the southeast, on a diverging line from the other half. By 4:00 am this section had opened the range between the pieces to 2,000 yards – more than a mile – after which its position remained fairly constant relative to the bow.

The explosion was so large that practically everyone involved in the battle saw it, it would seem – except, once again, Admiral Nishimura. In fairness to him, he had his hands full with the attacks on and damage to the Yamashiro and was struggling to keep his force together.

This, then, is the third of the Fuso Mysteries: what happened to the Fuso?

Nishimura’s battered and fragmented command, now reduced to the Yamashiro, Mogami (both of which were damaged) and the Shigure staggered onward almost as if dazed by what had befallen them. Nishimura efforts at keeping them on track were hampered by the crippled communications of Yamashiro, his own inadequate intelligence on the dispositions of the enemy and his own forces and finally the overwhelming forces arrayed against him.

In perfect position. For Oldendorf had “crossed the T.” Nishimura was heading straight into the middle of the US battle line, forming the vertical of the “T.” The US battleships and cruisers and attendant destroyers were almost perfectly perpendicular to Nishimura’s ships, forming the horizontal of the “T.” This was a time-honored naval tactic that allowed forces in the horizontal to use both their fore and aft guns to fire on ships in the vertical, who could only fire their forward guns. Chances to actually use this tactic were few, because naval commanders were aware of it and worked to avoid being placed in the position of the vertical. But such was the geography of the strait and Oldendorf’s position that there was no chance for Nishimura to avoid it.

Oldendorf’s cruisers formed two groups. The so-called right flank cruisers, guarding the west side of the Surigao Strait and its entrance into Leyte Gulf, consisted of the Australian heavy cruiser Shropshire and the US light cruisers Phoenix and Boise. The left flank cruisers, guarding the east side of the strait consisted of the heavy cruisers Louisville (Oldendorf’s flagship), Portland and Minneapolis; and the light cruisers Denver and Columbia.

Behind them were the battleships: Mississippi, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, California and Pennsylvania. They were old, but had been heavily modernized, as all but the Mississippi had been raised from the mud at Pearl Harbor. Their chance for retribution was at hand.

And the seemingly never-ending waves of US destroyers still had one more – DesRon 56 under the command Captain Roland N. Smoot, with nine destroyers divided into three sections. One, consisting of the Albert W. Grant, Richard P. Leary and Newcomb, under himself. The other two sections, one with the Bryant, Halford and Robinson, the other with the Bennion, Leutze and Heywood L. Edwards, under the command of Captain T.F Conley and Commander J.W. Boulware, respectively. They would attack under the guns of the bigger ships behind them.

Nishimura’s ships were struggling to get into combat position. The War College analysis reveals that at 3:48 am Shigure sent a message to the Fuso to the effect that the destroyer was following the battleship. Indeed, Shigure was following a battleship, but she received no reply to her message.

At 3:51 am, Oldendorf’s cruisers opened fire on the Yamashiro. The US battleships opened fire at 3:53. Yamashiro replied with both forward dual 14-inch main turrets. The party was on.

And yet one of the guests was missing, a fact that Nishimura finally noticed. At 3:52 am the Yamashiro slowed to 12 knots and turned somewhat to the east. At the same time, Nishimura himself radioed the Fuso, “Notify your maximum speed!” He received a reply, but not from the Fuso: Shigure immediately inquired about the status of the flagship. But she would receive no reply.

For the Yamashiro turned up the speed again to 15 knots and was rewarded with a deluge of shells from the US battle line. Her communications were apparently knocked out, and the War College speculates that Nishimura and the command staff may have suffered casualties. At about 3:55, a shell struck the No. 4 14-inch turret amidships, causing a fire that gave a point of aim for the US ships in the darkness, and the shell hits on Yamashiro began to mount, the fire consuming everything between the No. 3 14-inch turret and the mainmast (which was actually the shorter mast behind the stack and the pagoda, which was in the position of the foremast). Mogami and Shigure tried to support Yamashiro, but there were too many Americans and not enough Japanese. Worse, to Japanese eyes their own fire was not hitting anything. In reality Yamashiro scored a few hits with her dual-purpose 5-inch guns on the destroyer Albert W. Grant, as Smoot led his section of three destroyers in for the close attack on Nishimura’s beleaguered command – too close, as it turns out.

At 3:56, Yamashiro turned to the west. The War College believes it was a temporary retirement, but Tully gives a more likely explanation that it was an attempt to “unmask” her No. 3 14-inch turret; the turret could not fire directly forward because it was blocked – “masked” – by the pagoda superstructure. No. 4 turret had similar issues, but it was now inoperable, as were the No. 5 and No. 6 14-inch turrets aft because of the earlier flooding of their ammunition magazines. Yamashiro gave it everything she had, and was rewarded with the straddling (bracketing) of the Denver, but her fires continued to increase.

Her compatriots were faring little better. Shigure faced her own deluge of shells starting at 3:58, which required desperate high speed maneuvering to avoid. Even so, she suffered damage from numerous near-misses – shells that missed the ship but landed so close in the water that their detonations caused damage.

Mogami had trouble locating a target; her radar was ineffective. She turned west to launch torpedoes at what she thought was the enemy positions, but she was being harassed by the Hutchins and her compatriots. She initially mistook the US destroyers for friendly ones. The mistake was not returned, and at 3:57 Mogami decided she had had enough and decided to retire, covering herself with a smokescreen in the process. The smoke screen was ineffective, though, and shells from the Portland set her afire. Shigure radioed Mogami at 4:00 for information, but the War College does not believe Mogami received the message. Her radio communications had apparently been disabled.

During her retirement at 4:01, Mogami launched torpedoes northward from her fixed port torpedo tubes (Japanese cruisers carried torpedoes, while most US cruisers did not, in what this writer considers to be a major error in judgment of US war planners). At whom is uncertain, but Willmott believes it was at the Hutchins group. If so, they missed badly, for the they ended up just missing the Richard P. Leary. It may have been in desperation to cover her retirement, which was not going well so far.

And it did not improve any. At 4:02 a shell from the Portland exploded on the aircraft cruiser’s bridge, killing Captain Toma and the entire command staff. The rain of shells also landed on her engines, disabling three of her four and bringing her almost to a stop, forcing her to switch to manual steering in the process. Shigure would soon join her in flight, suffering s shell hit on the starboard side of her stern.

In the meantime, Smoot’s destroyers – Albert W. Grant, Richard P. Leary and Newcomb – had closed with the Yamashiro and began launching their torpedoes at 4:04. Their bravery was rewarded not only with fire from the Yamashiro, but from their own ships as the destroyers fouled the battle line’s line of fire. Albert W. Grant took a severe beating from both sides. Informed of the destroyer’s plight, at 4:09 Oldendorf gave the order to cease fire.

More than one historian (most notably Morison) has noted that to Nishimura the stoppage of fire must have seemed to be a miracle. Yamashiro, burning brightly, made a sharp turn to port to began retiring at 16 knots.

But she would never complete her retirement; she would not even complete her turn. At 4:11, she was struck by two torpedoes from the Newcomb. The first of the torpedoes from the Newcomb – the third overall for the Yamashiro – struck the starboard side near the engine room, disabling her engines. The second torpedo from the Newcomb struck just aft of the first. The Yamashiro lost all engine power and stopped.

And she began to tilt “silently yet steeply,” as Lt. Izaki described it. Capsize was imminent, and the order was given to abandon ship at 4:17 am. The crew began to leave. Nishimura merely stood silently on the bridge.

“We have arrived at battle site!” came the radio message from Shima at 4:18 am. His message was intended as loud encouragement to what he knew had to be a beleaguered force. One can ponder Nishimura thoughts when he heard this message – if he heard it at all. Yamashiro rolled over – to port, say some records – and sank at 4:19 am. The battleship Tennessee watched the Yamashiro’s pip on radar shrink and then disappear.

There were survivors in the water, but almost all of them would perish in the sea. The US made some rescue efforts, but they wee minimal. While this may seem cruel in the 21st century, the US had learned painful lessons from Japanese prisoners in the past. Most refused to be captured, and many of those that did not would turn on their captors with smuggled weapons, sometimes even playing possum to do so. The Japanese also did little to rescue their own survivors, as will be seen. As Hoyt would later say:

Literally thousands of men died in the water in the darkness, mostly because no one stopped to help them, partly because they would accept no help from the enemy.

Of the some 1,400-man crew of Yamashiro, only ten, including Lt. Izaki, were recovered. Isaki himself was recovered by the US destroyer Claxton.

Third Section had ceased to exist. All that was left was the burning Mogami staggering southward barely under control, shell-shocked Shigure, a bow-less Asagumo, and the two burning halves of the Fuso. In such bad shape were these ships that no one thought to take command of the force, so focused were they on saving their own ships.

Enter Shima’s Second Striking Force, which had been operating about 40 miles behind Nishimura and once again living up to the Japanese definition of “distant support.” His night had not gone well. Like Nishimura, he had problems with the communications – his attempts to listen in on Third Section’s communications to find out what was going on ahead served more to frighten him and his crew than anything else – and even the weather, and his ships – heavy cruisers Nachi and Ashigara, light cruiser Abukuma and destroyers Ushio, Akebono, Kasumi and Shiranuhi – struggled to keep formation.

Nishimura had managed to clear out most of the US destroyers – not necessarily his intent, just that most US destroyers did not carry reloads for their torpedoes – but Shima still had to deal with the skirmish line of US PT boats. Once again, they would skim in with their hit-and-run attacks to fire their torpedoes. Once again, they missed all of their intended targets.

Not that Shima could be grateful about this. At 3:25 am the three-stack light cruiser Abukuma was hit by a torpedo intended for one of the escorting destroyers, fired by PT-137. The torpedo hit the port side beneath the bridge and had detonated near the No 1. boiler room and the forward radio room, killing everyone in the latter. “Communications again,” as Hoyt noted. Her speed was cut to 10 knots. Shima had no destroyers to leave to help Abukuma, and Second Striking Force left her behind. Now unfit for combat, she would have to make her own way home.

Shima’s force continued onward, now in a column formation for battle, with the Nachi in the lead, followed by the Ashigara and the four destroyers, heading due north. At around 4:05 am, the Japanese spotted three fires up ahead. Of particular interest were two large fires to starboard, with a light that Toland says filled the strait. Commander Mori Kokichi, the torpedo officer on Shima’s staff, said they “saw two fires, two ships burning, very big ships.” Shima himself said the fires were blazing “like steel-mill flames,” an apparent reference to a steel mill’s blast furnace.

Mori remembered the two infernos:

When we first saw that fire, I judged it was about 20,000 meters from their position. Although we knew they were Japanese vessels on fire we did not bother with them, just progressed. […] We thought it was two battleships, but when we arrived at Manila we heard that it was one battleship (Yamashiro) and three destroyers close together instead of two battleships.

Tully reveals that destroyer Kasumi’s entry at 4:18 states: “Prepare for simultaneous torpedo and gun action. Three ships on fire within visibility range. Enemy red tracers coming from shadow of Hibuson Island seen. Flashes of gunfire from apparently friendly units also seen.”

Shima’s ships hugged the coastline, trying to stay out of the glare of the fires. They soon came upon a Japanese destroyer headed southward. They hailed her by signal lamp, “I am the Nachi.” The ship responded, “I am the Shigure. I have rudder difficulties.”

Successful military organizations normally depend on teamwork. Examples of it are legion. This short exchange is not one of them. Quite the opposite. Nishino and his ship was basically the sole survivor of a trap of the first order. He comes across another Japanese force headed into that same trap and he tells them absolutely nothing about it. As Nishino explained later:

The reason I did not communicate directly with Admiral Shima and inform him of the situation was that I had no connection with him and was not under his command. […] I assumed Shima knew the conditions of the battle […] by sighting the burning ships Fuso and Mogami, and seeing me on a retiring course.

It should also be noted that Shima did not ask Nishino for information, even though he had been desperately trying to get some intelligence on enemy dispositions for the past few hours. This story suggests that the rumors of an extremely bad relationship between Nishimura and Shima were true and extended to their subordinates. Another possibility, though, was that Nishino was in shock at the course of the battle and just would not or could not deal with it, his later excuse serving as a rationalization.

If Shima was hoping his luck would change, it would – for the worse. Behind the ever-helpful Shigure was the third fire seen earlier, a burning Japanese cruiser apparently dead in the water. This was the Mogami. The stream of discouraging signs continued.

The radar had been giving the Japanese fits that night. Mori said, “[T]he Japanese radar on our ships were not working effectively for search; we could detect no American ships on the radar.” But at 4:20 am, they finally picked up two radar contacts. Perhaps anxious to do something, Shima ordered a torpedo attack on these targets.

Nachi and Ashigara were to turn to starboard and fire eight torpedoes apiece from their port tubes. This move was intended to turn them in front of the Mogami to keep them from being silhouetted or illuminated by the glare of the burning cruiser. A good tactical move, except for one detail.

Both cruisers fired their torpedoes and turned to starboard as ordered, and only then did Shima notice that Mogami was not dead in the water, but was moving southward at 8 knots – directly into the path of the Nachi moving at 26 knots Badly damaged, burning, her command staff dead, barely under control and reduced to using manual steering aft, Mogami could not get out of the way.

“We turned rudder full to starboard,” Mori would later explain. But at this point the collision could not be avoided, only minimized. As Tully later pieced together, the rudder turn had the effect of putting the Nachi into a “skid” into the Mogami, and at 4:30 am the Nachi slammed her port bow against the starboard bow of the Mogami at the No.1 turret.

Toland relates the exchange. “This is Mogami!” someone on the heavy aircraft cruiser’s smashed bridge yelled through a megaphone. Captain and executive officer killed. Gunnery officer in charge. Steering destroyed. Steering by engine. Sorry.” What he was apologizing for is anyone’s guess, because the crew of the Mogami was supposedly furious at the Nachi for veering into their already shattered ship. It is hard to find fault with them on that point.

But on the bright side Shima had effected his rendezvous. And two of his torpedoes did hit the targets that they had picked up on radar – the two Hibuson Islands, where the two torpedoes were later recovered. No word on whether the islands were damaged.

At that point, Shima turned his force around – to the south, away from the Allied forces waiting ahead – to evaluate the situation. This is considered unusual for a Japanese admiral, but remember Shima’s orders were so vague that he could basically interpret them however he wished. He was to support Nishimura’s force, but clearly the only support that would be of any use to the remnants of Nishimura’s force at this point would be of the moral variety. He still had no information on dispositions of the enemy, but whatever they were they had been enough to destroy a force larger than his, and there was no indication that the reception his forces would receive would be any more pleasant. His force had been reduced by the torpedoing of the Abukuma and his own flagship Nachi had been damaged in the collision, her speed reduced to 18 knots.

The calculation was clear. After one more attempt to advance, at 5:06 am Shima turned his force around again and called it a day.

But US forces had not, and Shima and the remaining ships of the Southern Force knew it. Daybreak would bring further Allied air attacks, to which they were extremely vulnerable, given their own lack of air cover, and they needed to put as much distance between themselves and Allied air power as possible. And yet the fleeing Japanese ships had another spectre stalking them.

Oldendorf had initiated pursuit down the strait. He had gathered his own flagship Louisville and the other left flank cruisers with Smoot’s destroyers and headed after the retreating Japanese at 4:32. Oldendorf eventually added Destroyer Division X-Ray (Claxton, Cony, Thorn, Aulick, Sigourney and Welles), which had been directly screening his battle line, to his group. Shima turned up the speed, but the crippled ships would have a difficult time getting away.

Indeed, at 5:18 am Oldendorf’s pursuit caught up with the Asagumo, Mogami and the remnants of the Fuso. At 5:31, the Louisville opened fire on “what seems to have been the bow” of the Fuso. Louisville described Fuso as large but “no course, speed zero. Very large fire burning.” Two minutes of gunfire – eighteen rounds – was all it took to finish off the bow, and radar operators on the destroyer Cony saw the pip of the bow disappear at 5:36.

Mogami and Asagumo were also engaged. Asagumo took a hit from the Minneapolis that started a fire on her stern. The Americans were amazed by the sight of the Mogami. “Burning like a city block” was one description “Completely ablaze and burning worse than the Arizona burned at Pearl Harbor,” was another. But Oldendorf, concerned about poor visibility and a possible ambush by Japanese destroyers, broke off the pursuit for the time being.

At 6:30 am, as dawn broke, PT-323 “sighted at 2.5 miles a destroyer standing by a large ship which was burning furiously.” The destroyer was the Asagumo, which was apparently abandoning ship; the fire started by the hit from the Minneapolis had gotten the upper hand. The “large ship” was the stern section of the Fuso, which may have started to sink at around this time. At 6:52 the a second group of PT boats (dubbed the “Kanihaan PT’s” after the island near which they were patrolling; they consisted of PT's 495, 489 and 492.) closed to within 700 yards of the Fuso’s position and found the fire still burning, but no ship left. The stern section of the Fuso had sunk in the interim.

At 7:00 am PT-323 moved in for a torpedo attack on the Asagumo. The now-stationary destroyer was being abandoned but still opened fire with her remaining guns on the PT boat, who fired three torpedoes. One hit the Asagumo in the stern.

In the meantime, Oldendorf had resumed the pursuit with the light cruisers Denver and Columbia and destroyers Heywood L. Edwards, Leutze and Bennion. They picked up several more destroyers along the way back south, including the Cony, Sigourney, Thorn and Claxton. They all piled on the hapless Asagumo and a three-minute encounter was all it took to sink the destroyer at 7:18 am. Historian Thomas Cutler notes the most remarkable feature of this exchange: “Her American adversaries watched in awe as the stern slipped in the sea with the after gun mount still firing!”

The US later picked up survivors from the Asagumo. Apparently, some were in the water and some were recovered from natives on the neighboring islands, whose bitter resistance to the Japanese occupation had left the Japanese controlling little more than the ground they stood on. They were brutal to Japanese prisoners, though perhaps not much moreso than the Japanese treated prisoners. According to Tully, a few of the crewmen from the Asagumo related how they talked with a survivor from the Fuso. This Fuso crewman was never recovered.

Mogami escaped Oldendorf, and even drove off a PT attack and an air attack, but a second air attack forced her abandonment at 9:10 am and her scuttling by the Akebono. Crippled Abukuma was sunk the next day by air attack. Both Nachi and Shigure made their way to Manila, where the cruiser was sunk in spectacular fashion by yet another air attack, and, in what must have been a very interesting exchange, Nishino would report on his version of events to Shima.

Part Two: Was the Fuso the battleship that was torpedoed and dropped out?

Part Three: Why did Nishino believe the Yamashiro had dropped out instead of the Fuso?

Part Four: What happened to the Fuso?

It's a QUAGMIRE!!!

Harvey explains that America Can't Win the "War On Fire."

Gawd, is it funny.

(h/t: Instapundit)

Good for him

Bill Clinton takes on the 9/11 "truthers." A Sister Souljah moment?

So close

I spent all night working on my Leyte Gulf post, and it still is not done. So close. But I don't want to post something when my eyes are popping out of my head as they are at the moment, and make a stupid edit on something I've been working on for a year now just to get it out the door. This weekend. I promise. It will be worth the wait.

Almost done

My monster post dealing with part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf is almost finished. I have spent the past year both pondering it and researching it. It is by far the longest, most detailed post I have ever done. For that reason, I have not yet decided if it needs to be broken up into multiple posts or not. In any event, at least part of it should be up tomorrow night.

Are you prepared

to survive a zombie apocalypse?

Finding the dock but missing the boat

Over the weekend, the Indianapolis Star had an editorial dealing with Indiana's lack of an educated workforce:

The dearth of highly skilled workers, upon which knowledge-based firms are built, makes the state less appealing to both established employers and startups. Rising property taxes, especially in key areas such as Indianapolis, make it harder for homeowners and businesses to spend and invest in the economy.

Solving both problems will require dramatic reforms in how local government is structured and in education.

It's well known that only 22 percent of Indiana's adults have completed college or graduate school, the nation's seventh-lowest level of educational attainment. That number, however, merely hints at the depth of the state's problems in developing, luring and retaining high-skilled workers.

Professionals made up only 29 percent of the state's work force in 2005, according to analysis of state and federal data by the state Commission for Higher Education. The national average is 33 percent. Only six other states -- Nevada, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Alabama and Kentucky -- have such a low percentage.

Just 24 percent of the state's high school freshmen eventually graduate from college with a bachelor's degree, six percentage points below the national average. Many of those who do earn a college diploma don't stay in Indiana. About 10,500 college graduates, including those with graduate-level degrees, moved out of the state during the 2004-05 school year.

Thanks to the presence of top universities, Indiana is a prime location for students pursuing a degree. But a lack of high-paying jobs, and not enough other opportunities for advancement, means many of the students will exit Indiana once their studies are completed. They take with them the skills needed to build a knowledge-based economy.

[...]

State officials have made small strides in making the state more attractive to high-skilled workers and emerging industries. Further steps are needed.
One idea worth reviving is Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to offer scholarships designed to retain top graduates. The proposal died in the legislature this year. Forgiveness of college loans based on how long a graduate remains an Indiana resident also should be explored.

While the Star acknowledges the problem of the hemorrhaging of college graduates, they miss what I believe to be the single biggest factor: the culture. As I said on the topic earlier when I returned from New York City:

I returned to Indianapolis, and the place seemed dead. There is no shame in being dead compared to New York City, but I walk the streets here and I see relatively few young people. The young people I do see here don't seem happy, particularly if they're educated. I see a pretense of being happy, but little outward expression of it, like I saw so much of in New York. The bars and restaurants are there -- but they're all chains. Indianapolis has spent a ton of money on the convention center and hotels in an effort to lure visitors and travelers -- but very few of them seem to want to relocate here. That's a problem.

There's no spark, no excitement, no creativity, no energy, no buzz here.

Indiana has had very well-documented problems retaining college graduates. The young and educated flee this place in droves. The birth rate is of no value to Indiana if the young people flee and never come back. I've known quite a few who have left the state or are considering doing so, and almost all of them tell me the same thing -- they don't like the atmosphere here: the conservative, Bible-thumping atmosphere.

[...]

There's no spark, no excitement, no creativity, no energy, no buzz here because any natural manifestation of it has been strangled in its crib by the extreme right in Indiana. They try to manufacture it when needed, but it tends to come off more like bread and circuses.

Any non-conformity to their "religious" or "family" values is punished. Enforced conformity destroys creativity. But creativity produces innovations and businesses. Most importantly, creativity is what makes a place fun. And young educated people want a place that's fun, and educated people tend to have more mobility. So if where they live is not fun, they will leave for someplace that is.

There seems to be no acknowledgement among people in Indiana or in the GOP as a whole that an extreme brand of conservatism is a turnoff to the very people who make a place exciting. New Yorkers actually take pride in the weird things you will see in New York. But many of the Red states make fun of it.

They are trying to stem the hemorrhaging of college graduates in Indiana -- tax breaks, reduced tuition, attracting high-end jobs and the like. And they are failing. They're doomed to failure unless the cultural issue is addressed. Most of the people I know who left already had steady jobs -- they left because of the atmosphere. No amount of tax reductions can change that. And businesses won't locate to a place where they feel they can't attract workers.

Bottom line is, young educated people want to live in a place that's fun. They don't care about low taxes -- New York City ain't exactly a low-tax jurisdiction, and young educated people consider it a mecca. To attract young, educated people, you need to create a place that's fun, which you can't do as long as you allow "family values" to dominate.

And until you address the cultural issue, any other efforts at attracting the educated will just be blowing kisses in the wind.

When the Devil's Wind comes to Paradise

Say a prayer for San Diego tonight. Two massive wildfires, the so-called "Witch Fire" and the "Harris Fire," are cutting wide swaths through San Diego. Todday alone, the Witch fire appears to have moved some 60 miles, and is now even threatening the coast and my West Coast "home" of Encinitas. Containment is no where in sight.

Light posting for a bit

I'm working on my monster post about Leyte Gulf and I'm making some improvements on the house, though nothing any assessors can see for obvious reasons. I'm also trying to avoid the media because of the impending disaster that will take place in Boston tonight. The miseries for my ancestral city contine.

On this date

in 1944, the US Seventh Fleet landed over 60,000 army troops in Leyte, in the Philippines.

I am preparing a massive post, one I have been working on for over a year, discussing a rather enigmatic part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I hope to have it out this week.

Required reading

Warren Central grad Jason Whitlock.

(h/t: In From the Cold.)

Just in case you're wondering

what I believe marks a true sports town, let me tell you this story.

I was at a funeral yesterday in Cleveland. We had maybe 50-60 people at the funeral. About a third of them were wearing Cleveland Indians attire -- jackets, shirts or even hats. Probably another 10 or 15 were wearing Cleveland Indians jewelry. I could not look around without seeing someone wearing Chief Wahoo or the wordmark.

That is a true sports town.

Light posting for a bit

We've had a death in the family and I need to tend to that for the next few days.

The Second-Best Joke of the Day

goes to Scrappleface: Gore Wins Nobel Prize, High Court Gives It to Bush.

The biggest joke, quite obviously, is the Nobel committee giving the Peace Prize to Al Gore in the first place.

Giving the award to Gore should be the final nail in the coffin of the Nobel prize. It is nothing more than leftist, anti-American claptrap now. Power Line details its descent into parody.

As for Gore, there have been many vile, despicable people in American politics. Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy are at or near the top of the list historically, but a case can be made that Al Gore is not far behind. Gore's attempt to steal the 2000 election (with the acquiescence of a rogue Florida Supreme Court and four SCOTUS justices) left the country bitterly divided and our political institutions with diminished credibility. His attempt to deny the votes of our armed forces serving overseas was simply the single most vile act I have ever witnessed in my 36 years of watching politics.

Al Gore is beneath contempt.

Required reading

Mission accomplished. Excerpt:

The question of what to do in Iraq today must be separated from the decision to topple Saddam Hussein four and a half years ago. That decision is a matter for historians. By any normal ethical standard, the coalition's current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq's other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition's role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam's struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.

Some just wars, however, are not worth fighting. There are countries that do not matter very much to the rest of the world. Rwanda is one tragic example; and its case illustrates the immorality of a completely pragmatic foreign policy. But Iraq, the world's axial country since the beginning of history and all the more important in the current era for probably possessing the world's largest reserves of oil, is no Rwanda. Nor do two or three improvised explosive devices a day, for all the personal tragedy involved in each casualty, make a Vietnam.

The great question in deciding whether to keep fighting in Iraq is not about the morality and self-interest of supporting a struggling democracy that is also one of the most important countries in the world. The question is whether the war is winnable and whether we can help the winning of it. The answer is made much easier by the fact that three and a half years after the start of the insurgency, most of the big questions in Iraq have been resolved. Moreover, they have been resolved in ways that are mostly towards the positive end of the range of outcomes imagined at the start of the project. The country is whole. It has embraced the ballot box. It has created a fair and popular constitution. It has avoided all-out civil war. It has not been taken over by Iran. It has put an end to Kurdish and marsh Arab genocide, and anti-Shia apartheid. It has rejected mass revenge against the Sunnis. As shown in the great national votes of 2005 and the noisy celebrations of the Iraq football team's success in July, Iraq survived the Saddam Hussein era with a sense of national unity; even the Kurds—whose reluctant commitment to autonomy rather than full independence is in no danger of changing—celebrated. Iraq's condition has not caused a sectarian apocalypse across the region. The country has ceased to be a threat to the world or its region. The only neighbours threatened by its status today are the leaders in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran.

(h/t: The Corner)

Another outrage

to placate the "Religion of Peace."

If you want to light up the Empire State Building green, do it for the New York Jets, not for the these guys. Trust me, they will see it as submission.

Another proud moment for your judiciary

Bush's token enforcement of immigration laws has been blocked by a federal judge in San Francisco. What? Policing immigration is an executive function, you say? Silly you, mere mortal. These are judges. Federal judges. They don't need no stinkin' law; they are the law. Just ask Stephen Reinhardt.

Frank Drebin is on it

In response to (yet another) leak of intelligence information, U.S. intelligence officials will "investigate" allegations that someone in the government leaked an Al Qaida tape, alerting the terror group to a gap in its computer security that has since been closed. But as Spook86 says, "Don't get your hopes up":

[Director of National Intelligence Spokesperson Ross] Feinstein's comments are essentially a rehash of what's already been said about the tape controversy. In bureaucrat-speak, his comments could be translated as "We'll go through the motions, but there's really no interest (or incentive) to find the leaker."

We base that observation on several factors. First, as we've noted in previous posts, the record of the intelligence community and the Justice Department in locating (and punishing) leakers is laughable. Over a 10-year period, beginning in the mid-1990s, there were more than 500 inquiries into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, which often would up in the media. The number of leakers brought to justice? Approximately zero. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find in the intelligence or security apparatus that was internally disciplined or censured during that period.

The sad fact is that lots of people--too many of them--are willing to disclose classified information, for a variety of reasons. Administration officials leak to support their agenda; their opponents do it for the same reason. Others disclose sensitive data to embarrass rival agencies while enhancing their own standing in budget battles and bureaucratic turf wars. Other leaks are aimed at foreign governments, letting them know that the U.S. is aware of their activities, and prepared to take action, if necessary.

Is this really a mystery?

In a column titled "North Korean Mystery," Jim Hoagland asks:

Why is President Bush accepting the promises of a regime he has regularly excoriated -- at a time when officials in his administration make a credible case that North Korea has just been caught helping Syria with nuclear technology?

He goes on to detail the developments sparking this question:

A crucial provision of the six-nation accord announced in Beijing on Wednesday requires Pyongyang to declare the extent of its weapons-grade plutonium stockpile, including the amount it used in a nuclear test last year.

U.S. officials have estimated that North Korea could make 10 to 12 bombs from its existing stockpile. But the actual number is smaller -- perhaps half as many -- according to the intelligence service of one major Asian nation. A significant revision downward in U.S. intelligence estimates of North Korea's nuclear threat could explain the Bush administration's more relaxed view of Pyongyang in recent months.

But the more significant change in attitude has come from Pyongyang toward Washington, according to diplomats involved in the talks, which also included China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

A key moment came when North Korea agreed to an international inspection last month to determine how its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon should be disabled -- and asked Hill to have the United States rather than the United Nations carry out that intrusive inspection.

Hoagland then addresses the Israeli "incursion" of September 6th:

In another bout of tacit cooperation that indicates this deal may be serious enough to last, the United States and North Korea have kept the agreement from being derailed by the mysterious airstrike that Israel launched against Syria on Sept. 6. Israel and Syria have both thrown unusual secrecy around the raid, refusing to disclose what was hit.

But highly classified U.S. intelligence reports say that the Israelis destroyed a nuclear-related facility and caused North Korean casualties at the site, which may have been intended to produce plutonium, according to a senior official with access to those reports. The Israelis have provided the United States with photographs, physical material and soil samples from the site -- taken both before and after the raid -- according to two independent sources.

A last gasp of North Korean international banditry before going straight on nuclear nonproliferation? A continuing confidence by Pyongyang that it can say one thing in public and do another covertly? Or simply the serendipity of one branch of a secretive government going about its skulduggery while others go a different way?

The timeframe, about which Hoagland is vague, is critical here, but there does seem to be another possibility: the September 6th raid was a catalyst for the NoKos to reach this agreement.

Under this scenario, the NoKos were willing to agree to these US inspections over the summer -- perhaps -- because they were secretly shipping much of them to Syria. The Israeli raid exposed their duplicity. It also may have struck the fear of God (or whatever atheist communist bastards) into them because the Israeli raid was apparently so easy and so devastating, going against an air defense arsenal more modern than North Korea's. The raid may have served as the stick W has been unwilling to use for so long.

Or not. The timetable is critical here.

Question of the Day

Which sucks more:

1. Microsoft Windows Vista; or
B. Sony PlayStation 3?

"The issue is competence." -- UPDATED

So said Michael Dukakis during his 1988 campaign against George H.W. Bush. It was probably the best Dukakis could do, but even this issue was a double-edged sword -- since Dukakis had presided over the bloated and corrupt government of Massachusetts and cemented the Democrats' image as soft on crime by releasing vicious thugs like Willie Horton on "weekend furloughs" on an unsuspecting public. As a general rule, Michael Dukakis sucked.

But I am reminded of his quote by a continuing stream of incidents like this (via Power Line):

Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system.

The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda's production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

While intranets are usually based on servers in a discrete physical location, Obelisk is a series of sites all over the Web, often with fake names, in some cases sites that are not even known by their proprietors to have been hacked by Al Qaeda.

One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America's intelligence community saw. "We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak," the official said. "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy."

Captain Ed put it in simpler terms:

The leak of Osama bin Laden's video to the news media last month has shut down an important private penetration into al-Qaeda's communication network. SITE, run by an Israeli whose father was murdered by Saddam Hussein, shared the video with American intelligence on a confidential basis. Hours after its release to the public, observers watched as AQ shut down its Obelisk network as the terrorists realized it had been compromised[.]

Some parties, notably Dr. Rusty Shackleford, are casting doubt on the timeline. Dr. Rusty argues pretty persuasively that the White House acquired the video from US intelligence sources before SITE provided it to them. He then comes to this rather interesting analysis:

[J]ust because SITE's intel source got burned, doesn't mean that we've lost capability of tracking al Qaeda online. In fact, SITE was not the only one that had the "new" bin Laden 9/11 video before it was supposed to be released, as these two articles suggest.

Both Intel Center and Laura Mansfield also had the video. Hell, I had the video.
So, sorry to hear that SITE has lost its edge. And it really sucks that it was someone at The White House who leaked the video.

But why would you give the video to the White House and not to the FBI or CIA? The White House leaks like a sieve. That's just the way the White House works.

Now, I'm a fan of Dr. Rusty and he's usually pretty on point, except when it comes to that whole In 'n' Out versus Carl's Jr. thing, but not sure I get his logic.

Does he mean that the video was already out there on the Web so that its leak by the White House was largely irrelevant in al Qaida shutting down the Obelisk system? Does he mean that the presence of the video on the Web was a tipoff to al Qaida that its system had been breached, and its shutdown after the ABC News report was a coincidence? Or does he mean that since the White House already had the video it could leak it as it wished?

If any of this is true, why did it "suck" that the White House leaked it?

Captain Ed has what may be an optimistic appraisal of the situation:

The release of the Osama tape turned out to be even less significant than first thought. At the time, the tape clearly intended to coordinate the launch of at least three terrorist attacks in the second week of September. The effort was timed to coincide with September 11th, the sixth anniversary of 9/11. The leaks put the tapes out days earlier, and in the meantime, Western agencies had already rolled up the cells planning the attacks.

The US government insists that the leak did no real damage to their intel capabilities. However, the two independent reports, especially Lake's, demonstrates at least a temporary setback in acccessing AQ's Internet activities. If the reports are true, then SITE and the intel agencies will have to rediscover AQ's network of servers, figure out how to hack back into the networks, and re-establish the identities of those who run them. That could take a very long time, and in the interim, we could be missing some vital information.

The NSA has undoubtedly already started checking communications to track down all of the new activity, and there may be greater vulnerability for AQ during its launch. It could be that the US wanted to rattle AQ and get them to dismantle their systems, and leaked the Osama tape to both embarrass them and to get them to panic and leave a big trail. It could have been an attempt to force AQ into a mole hunt, a technique both sides used in the Cold War.

Let's not forget that the destruction of the Obelisk network will have created difficulties for AQ, too. It will have increased their reliance on human couriers for messaging. The US may have wanted to force AQ into using those in order to finalize a position on AQ leadership, or on other management assets in the terrorist organization. Forcing them to dismantle their network may have given the US an opportunity to triangulate through conventional means on Osama himself, or Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But he adds this caveat: "Or it could just have been stunning incompetence."

Now, how many of you out there believe that this was anything but administration incompetence? Even Dr. Rusty asks why anyone would give this to the White House instead of the CIA or FBI, since the White House "leaks like a sieve."

(Question: has anyone actually seen a sieve leak? Does this happen a lot? I mean, we use this phrase so much you would think that a sieve would be kind of an everyday thing, like pantyhose. Just asking.)

But assuming that is true, then the FBI and CIA are no better. How's that SWIFT program working out? About as well as Norv Turner in San Diego, you say? Maybe those wiretaps on international phone calls with suspected Islamists are working out better, huh? No? Maybe those secret airplane flights and secret prisons for interrogation of Islamists?

The fact is that leaks of secret information damaging to our national security have plagued this administration, this government, this country like insects plagued Joba Chamberlain. And this administration has done nothing, zero, zilch, zip, nada, Kucinich (I'm trying to coin a new word for "zero") to stop it. Not fired anyone. Not prosecuted anyone. Not investigated anyone. Nothing.

Oh, we had Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, you say? Remember, I said leaks damaging to our national security. Plame and her husband were neither honest, nor competent, nor covert and understood less about intelligence gathering than Bill Belichick. If anything, at worst was a case of addition by subtraction, and our national security was improved by their exit from the government stage, if not the public one. Not that our intelligence has improved much, since we apparently couldn't even detect a Syrian nuclear facility. But with Plame and friends setting the standard, we should consider ourselves lucky they could even find Syria on a map.

In any event, this administration's record on the gathering and protection of intelligence, they have established a presumption of guilt. They have earned that presumption by complete incompetence in both gathering intelligence and managing it.

At this point, I need more than Dr. Rusty, Captain Ed or Power Line have shown so far to rebut that presumption.

UPDATE -- link fixed.

Chief Wahoo rules!!! -- UPDATED

America's Team -- the Cleveland Indians advances to the American League Championship Series, vindicating Eric Wedge's decision to start Paul Byrd fully rested instead of C.C. Sabathia on three-days rest. It was always the right decision. When Mike Hargrove was Indians manager, he tried starting his top two starters on three-days rest in a playoff series against Boston, with disastrous results. Somehow, ESPN and TBS never mentioned that.

And for the dozens of idiots across America who are actually opposed to the Chief Wahoo logo, this is just for you:



UPDATE: The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer's Terry Pluto appears to be alone among journalists in recalling the disastrous 1999 attempt to pitch on 3-days rest against the Red Sox:

In 1999, the Indians were up, 2-0, on Boston in the division series, and they used Bartolo Colon and Charles Nagy both on three days' rest. Not pretty. Colon was crushed for seven earned runs in one inning, the Indians losing, 23-7. Nagy started Game 5, and was smacked for eight runs in three innings, the Tribe losing, 12-8.

This is remarkable -- UPDATED

How do you lose a mayor? I don't mean have him resign or die in office or something? I mean, physically lose him and be unable to locate him.

Now, I might be able to understand this if it was Lake County or something, but ...

UPDATE -- They found him. In rehab, for undisclosed reasons. He has resigned.

Captain Ed

has his take on the Israeli "incursion" of September 6th and the utter incompetence of the Bush administration in dealing with it:

Between July and September, weeks of high-level talks took place. The Israelis wanted to destroy the facility immediately, and had some support from the American intelligence community that had managed to miss this development. However, Condoleezza Rice and others did not. They wanted to "confront" the Syrians first -- as the Jerusalem Post puts it, to scold Assad publicly for operating a nuclear facility.

Yes, I'm sure that would have been effective. Publicly scolding them over the Hariri assassination only resulted in five more car-bomb assassinations of anti-Syrian politicians in Lebanon since then. Fingerwagging has done so much to curtail their material support for Hezbollah, too.

The Israelis, who actually originated the "Bush doctrine" decades ago, appear to be the only nation still using it. They probably have concluded that they cannot rely on American will to protect them from Syria and Iran any longer, especially after this episode. The US opposed the raid up to the moment it occurred, afraid of destabilizing the region. Israel, more worried about the consequences of a nuclear Syria -- something that should worry us as well -- simply ignored Washington after weeks of argument and acted in its own self-interest.

And note that Syria has not lifted a finger in retaliation. Assad knows well that Israel would annihilate his forces in a straight-up fight, and the raid confirmed it. They had to know that Israel would attack that facility if they discovered it, and Syria had to have some defense ready against it. In the event, Israel flew unmolested across the widest part of their airspace, devastated their facility, and flew home as if on an El Al jaunt.

I recall the American response to Osirak was a large amount of finger-wagging at the Israelis. We had reason to thank them later for their long view of nukes in the region. We should be thanking them again, and next time should try following their advice.

Duh!

Can't anyone here play this game?

ABC News (via Instapundit) has a report on the September 6th Israeli "incursion" into Syria, and, well, it speaks for itself:

The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.

In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.

One U.S. official told ABC's Martha Raddatz the material was "jaw dropping" because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility.

Officials said that the facility had likely been there for months if not years.

[...]

A senior U.S. official said the Israelis planned to strike during the week of July 14 and in secret high-level meetings American officials argued over how to respond to the intelligence.

Some in the administration supported the Israeli action, but others, notably Sect. of State Condoleeza Rice did not. One senior official said the U.S. convinced the Israelis to "confront Syria before attacking."

Officials said they were concerned about the impact an attack on Syria would have on the region. And given the profound consequences of the flawed intelligence in Iraq, the U.S. wanted to be absolutely certain the intelligence was accurate.

I became a Republican because of their strength on matters of defense and foreign policy. As if their bungling of the Iraq War hasn't made me question that enough already, this is completely outrageous. Concerned about "stability?" My ass. I used to love Condi Rice, but she is just a walking UN. Talk talk talk talk. No action, or at least no action that will make a difference. If she had had her way, Syria and Iran would have nukes right now. Unbelievable.

And don't get me started on our Central "Intelligence" Agency. My Gawd, do they suck. Bill Belichick puts them to shame.

The bugs always win.

So said Gil Grissom in CSI. Tonight, we have proof.

In other good baseball news, America's Team -- the Pittsburgh Pirates fired manager Jim Tracy, who appears to have single-handedly destroyed pitcher Zach Duke. Surprisingly, they also fired senior director of player development Brian Graham. I was afraid they would keep Graham because of his prior connection to new GM Neal Huntington, but Graham deserved to be fired. The Pirates farm system is even more of a disaster than the major league team, no mean feat, with bizarre coaching and player development decisions and players coming up to the majors short on fundamentals.

This is a good day for baseball.

An effect of September 6th?

Nort Korea agreed to a disabling of its nuclear program, with monitoring by US inspectors? Whoa! Back Talk believes that North Korea was caught with its hand in the cookie jar as a result of the September 6th Israeli "incursion" into Syria. My take is that the effectiveness of the Israeli attack against the Russian-made air defenses of Syria could have spooked the NoKos as well.

If this is true, it's a reminder that "peace" often can only get you so far. This agreement would have been the result of military activity.

The fantasy of free trade

Today, Prof. Reynolds is lamenting an apparent fall in public support for "free trade," calling it "Perhaps the Worst News of the Year" and commenting:

A general opposition to free trade will be terrible for the U.S. -- and the global -- economy. I hope that this anti-free-trade sentiment is aimed only at new agreements, and doesn't extend to a rollback of existing free trade, but I'm not that optimistic.

Well, I respect the Professor and normally agree with him, but I think he's dead wrong on this one. For one thing, I don't care about the global economy; I care about the US economy. Second, the big problem is that there is no such thing as "free trade." What usually ends up being considered "free trade" is the US lowering import barriers to foreign goods, while those same foreign countries raise or keep in place import barriers to ours and dump their own exports on the newly-opened US market.

Is that the intent of free trade supporters? No. But that has become the effect. US consumers have benefited from "free trade" with lower prices at the expense of their jobs. It doesn't matter how cheap something is if you have no money with with to pay for it.

Ya want examples? How 'bout the steel industry?

The US steel industry has been decimated by unfair foreign competition. By "unfair" I mean Chinese, Japanese and European steel companies dumping their steel on the US market, often at below-market cost. Many of these foreign companies are subsidized by their governments.

Again, that is not the intent of "free trade" but that is what it has become. We open up our markets to foreign exploitation.

So what, you say? Steel is cheaper, which means cheaper cars and appliances, you say? Perhaps that is true. For now. But the problem shows itself on several levels.

First, as the steel companies shutter, their employees and executives -- and steel is a very difficult line of employment which requires some skills -- go unemployed. Their purchasing power ends. No more steelworkers buying at local shops and restaurants around the mill, or going to local doctors and lawyers. No more giant steel mill paying property taxes to support local schools and government. No more executives directing company revenues to local charities and the arts. Everyone suffers as a result of the loss of the steel mill -- because they were unfairly undercut by foreign competition.

But that's not what happened? Check out Pittsburgh (Steeltown has one remaining integrated steel mill), Cleveland (one remaining mill) and northwest Indiana, and get back to me.

Worse, steel-making capacity is a strategic asset, essential to national security. If we import our steel from China, what will we do in case of a war with, say, China? What if we get into a war with a country with a blue-water projection capability -- like China is developing? And did you know that China owns much of the area around the Panama Canal?

(By the way, will someone please tell me what good has come of admitting China into the WTO?)

This is why the steel tariffs against imported steel were imposed, and why they need to remain in place.

The US steel industry has had a resurgence of sorts in recent years, but it s only a shadow of its former self. Would we be able to fight another World War II? I don't know.

But that is what we have gotten a a result of "free trade." It is an aspiration, not a reality. And as long as foreign companies and foreign countries treat it as a method for exploitation, we must be wary of it.

Where have I been?

Right here:




America's Team -- the Cleveland Indians.

Rick Moran says it best

And captures my disgust with the social cons of the GOP:

[A]ccording to my many critics on the hard right, evidently I am not a conservative. I am an atheist, pro-choice, gay loving, liberal weenie – despite the fact I was on the frontlines of conservative activism when most of my critics were still in books or not even born yet. There wouldn’t be a conservative revolution without people like me and it’s time you haughty, holier than thou, insufferably arrogant party destroying numskulls acknowledged it. You have turned a party with which a majority of Americans identified because of its probity, its strong stands on national defense, foreign policy, and fiscal restraint into the party of anti-abortion zealots, gay bashing louts, and obsessed morality nannies.

Obviously not all Christians are as I describe so don’t be emailing me telling me how wrong I am. But there is a sizable, vocal minority – probably close to 15% of the party – that has skewed GOP issues away from the everyday concerns of the American people and toward these religious crusades against abortion, gay marriage, and making America “moral” whatever that means. The first thing the American people think of today when they hear the word “Republican” is either “anti-abortion” or “anti-gay marriage.” To have those issues identifying the party is again, stupid and self-defeating.

I actually support some of the Christian right’s agenda with regards to the decay of cultural values (not personal morality). But kicking me out of the Conservative Book Club because I think that people who love each other – regardless of what sex they are – should be able to enjoy all the legal rights of heterosexual couples is insane. Nor should my belief that the state has a compelling interest in the life of a baby only when it is viable outside of the womb (which is not the de facto pro-choice position) be a reason to take away my key to the Haliburton executive washroom.

Amen!

This could be interesting

May we see an impeachment of a federal judge in the near future? The one in question is Samuel Kent, federal district judge in Galveston, TX. Very little is known about the current charges against Kent, but they do involve sexual harrassment.

The Thompson, uh, Principles

I consider myself a Rudy supporter, though if he gets the nomination I will happily support Fred Thompson and I think he would make a great president. But if Thompson actually believed in these ideas, I'd be on the front lines fighting for his nomination!!!

My personal favorite is, "America deserves a giant wall on both borders made from human bones."

Since when

was Ron Dellums "widely admired?" Ron Dellums is an even worse traitor than John Kerry, -- remember his time as a congressman, when he said he wanted to dismantle America's intelligence assets "piece by piece, brick by brick" -- and should be treated as such.

I can't believe

that social conservatives and anti-abortion activists would be this stupid. Well, OK, yes I can.

When Gandhi's tactics don't work -- UPDATED

You get Burma:

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.
Meanwhile, the United Nations special envoy was in Burma's new capital today seeking meetings with the ruling military junta.

Ibrahim Gambari met detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon yesterday. But he has yet to meet the country's senior generals as he attempts to halt violence against monks and pro-democracy activists.

It is anticipated the meeting will happen tomorrow.

Heavily-armed troops and police flooded the streets of Rangoon during Mr Ibrahim's visit to prevent new protests.

Mr Gambari met some of the country's military leaders in Naypyidaw yesterday and has returned there for further talks. But he did not meet senior general Than Shwe or his deputy Maung Aye - and they have issued no comment.

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared" as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Others who had failed to escape disguised as civilians were locked in their bloodstained temples.

There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines.

In stark contrast, the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay - centres of the attempted saffron revolution last week - were virtually deserted.

Checkpoint: Police outside the house of opposition leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi today

A Swedish diplomat who visited Burma during the protests said last night that in her opinion the revolution has failed.

Liselotte Agerlid, who is now in Thailand, said that the Burmese people now face possibly decades of repression. "The Burma revolt is over," she added.

"The military regime won and a new generation has been violently repressed and violently denied democracy. The people in the street were young people, monks and civilians who were not participating during the 1988 revolt.

"Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear."

Incidents such as this and the 1989 massacre at Tian An Men should show the limits of peaceful protest. Those might get you the moral high ground, but those tactics lose their usefulness when used against a regime or organization that:

1. Has a lot of weaponry; and

2. Is very happy to use it.

This is why suggestions to "talk" with Iran and Syria, Venezuela and China are quite useless. If they can get whatthey want by force, they will do so.

Quite often throughout history, "peace" and "change" is not a cafeteria selection, but a choice. You need to understand the possibility that you might only be able to have one, but not the other.

To the people of Burma, and to quote Jigsaw, "Make your choice." The free world is behind you. But the free world cannot do anything about the junta ruling Burma absent armed intervention.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg agrees with me.

We can't necessarily remove every dictatorial regime on the planet, but there were many reasons to remove the one in Iraq. Critics of that decision often claim that it was up to the Iraqi people to stand up to Saddam and remove him if that's what they wanted. Some of them (particularly the pacifists among them) even cite Mahatma Gandhi as an example, and advocate the use of non-violent resistance techniques.

What they ignore in doing so is that Gandhi faced an almost unique situation--imperialists who were not monsters, and were unwilling to put down the rebellion with the brutality necessary to do so. To think that Gandhi's tactics would have been effective against a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Saddam, is foolish.

(h/t: InstaPundit)