David L Brooks

Halsey's Decision David L Brooks

At 0646 Fanshaw Bay makes an "unidentified surface contact" on her radar and her radio watch reports "Japs gabbing" on the fighter-interception net. And then at 0647 the A/S patrol radios: "I can see pagoda masts, and I see the biggest red meatball flag I ever saw on the biggest battleship I ever saw."

Ziggy Sprague knows his ships are in trouble. His 20-knot carriers and his paltry 5-inch guns firing a 54-pound shell with a range of about nine nautical miles, which could not penetrate battleship or cruiser armor, are no match for even the smallest of the Japanese battleships, which could do 30 knots and fired three-quarter-ton 14-inch shells twenty miles.

How could this have happened? Where was TF 34? Where was Halsey?