USS White Plains (CVE-66) - Service History - World War II - Battle of Leyte Gulf

Battle of Leyte Gulf

In October, after repairs at the naval base at Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands, the USS White Plains headed for the invasion of the Philippines at Leyte. The initial assault went forward on 20 October. Aircraft from the White Plains provided air support for the troops and ASW and combat air patrols for the ships assembled in Leyte Gulf. However, because of the strategic importance of the Philippines which lay athwart their lines of communication with the East Indies, the Japanese chose to oppose the landings with their surface fleet. They launched their surface counterattack in three distinct phases. While a decoy force of carriers under Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa moved south from Japan in an attempt to draw off Halsey's Third Fleet and the large carriers, the forces under Vice Admirals Shōji Nishimura and Kiyohide Shima attempted to force the Surigao Strait from the south, and Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force tried to sneak through the Central Philippines and transit the hopefully unguarded San Bernardino Strait. The Center Force, by far the strongest of the enemy fleets involved, consisted of five battleships - including the huge superbattleships Yamato and Musashi - 11 heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and 19 destroyers. By the time Kurita's Center Force cleared the San Bernardino Strait on 25 October, it had been reduced by four heavy cruisers and the battleship Musashi. Three heavy cruisers had fallen prey to American submarine attacks in Palawan Passage on 23 October, and the Musashi and the Myōkō succumbed to Task Force 38's air attacks in the Sibuyan Sea on the following day. The Musashi sank there, whereas the Myōkō headed back to Brunei Bay, heavily damaged. In addition, on the night of 24 October and 25 October, Vice Admiral Oldendorf's old battleships in Leyte Gulf obliterated Nishimura's force and sent Shima's packing.

In the meantime, after Admiral Halsey received information indicating that a battered Center Force had begun retirement, Ozawa's decoy force finally managed to draw the American carriers off to the north. However, Kurita's retrograde movement proved to be only temporary, and he once again reversed course and headed back toward San Bernardino Strait. With Oldendorf regrouping his warships in Leyte Gulf and Halsey off chasing the Japanese Navy's aircraft carriers, only three Task Groups - composed of escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts - remained off Samar island between Kurita and Leyte Gulf. The USS White Plains was an element of "Taffy 3," the northmost of the three Task Groups, and the one which bore the brunt of Kurita's surface onslaught. "Taffy 3", commanded by Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague, first learned of Kurita's presence when, at 0637, a pilot on routine air patrol spotted Kurita's task force and attacked it with depth charges. Rear Admiral Sprague was incredulous about the presence of the Japanese Navy, and he demanded identification verification - verification which came disconcertingly enough when the enemy battleships' pagoda-style masts loomed up over the horizon.

For the next two and one-half hours, the Japanese force chased "Taffy 3" southward and subjected the escort carriers and their counterattacking screen to a murderous, but mercifully and frequently inaccurate, heavy-caliber cannonade. The aircraft carriers' warplanes fearlessly fought back, even making dummy runs on the Japanese ships to slow the ships' speed of advance, after expending all their bombs, torpedoes, and ammunition. During their counterattacks, the USS Johnston, Hoel, and Samuel B. Roberts were sunk by gunfire. Later, the USS Gambier Bay was sunk by gunfire as well, while the USS Fanshaw Bay, the USS Kalinin Bay, the Dennis, and the Heermann suffered heavy damage. Throughout the surface phase of the action, the leading position of the White Plains in the disposition protected her from any gunfire damage, but the ship still had an aerial ordeal to endure.

Miraculously, the Japanese surface force broke off its pursuit from 0912–0917 hours, and after milling around in apparent confusion for a time, retired northward to San Bernardino Strait. The retreat by Kurita's surface force, however, did not end the ordeal for the White Plains and her fellow warships. After a 90-minute respite, they suffered harassment from a different quarter. At 1050 hours, a formation of nine Japanese Navy Zeke fighters appeared and began simultaneous kamikaze attacks. Two of them singled out the White Plains as their victim. Her antiaircraft gunners responded with a hail of gunfire. They scored a hit on one of the intruders, and he immediately changed course and succeeded in crashing into the USS St. Lo, which eventually sank. His comrade continued on toward the White Plains, but her antiaircraft guns finally brought him down mere yards astern. His explosion scattered debris all over her deck and sides but caused only 11 relatively minor casualties. In the meantime, the USS Kitkun Bay and the USS Kalinin Bay also suffered from kamikaze crashes, but neither of these proved to be fatal to the carriers. That attack proved to be the final combat action of the USS White Plains, not only of the Battle off Samar but also of the war. She steamed to the naval base at Manus with the other surviving carriers, and she arrived there on 31 October. After an inspection of the damage, it was decided that the battered escort carrier should return to the United States for complete repairs. Accordingly, she departed from Manus on 6 November and headed to the West Coast. The USS White Plains arrived at San Diego Harbor on 27 November and repairs began immediately.

Ready for action once more, the USS White Plains steamed out of San Diego on 19 January 1945. However, for the remainder of the war, she carried out the relatively tame assignment of ferrying replacement aircraft from their factories in the United States to bases in the western Pacific. During the last months of the war, the White Plains visited such places as Kwajalein, Hollandia (currently known as Jayapura), Ulithi, Saipan, Guam, Leyte, and Pearl Harbor. All had been scenes of major combat actions in the past, but by this time, they had all become rear areas. The closest approach to the fighting by the White Plains after the Battle off Samar came just after the amphibious landings on Okinawa in April 1945, when she steamed to within 100 miles of that island to launch two squadrons of Marine Corps F4U Corsair fighter planes for duty from air bases on that large island.