James D. Hornfischer. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. New York: Bantam, 2010. E-book.

“This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.” (2661)

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is a thriller. Hornfischer knows how to tell a story. I read this book right after reading the latest Tom Clancy novel. The Clancy novel was entertaining as usual, but The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors was a real page-turner. And it is nonfiction!

This book focuses on United States and Japan naval action in the first part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, especially on October 24-25, 1944. There are probably more than one reason why the author chose the words Last Stand in the title.

(1) It turned out to be Japan’s last major naval push in the war. After this, Japan’s sea power was negligible.

(2) The American forces that fought in this part of the Battle, a.k.a. the Battle off Samar, were greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the Japanese fleet they were facing. While American casualties were significant, the Japanese were turned back.

(3) It echoes Custer, of course, and here probably the most heroic ship captain was an American Indian.

(4) It was a battle of some “firsts”: the first U.S. aircraft carrier destroyed by surface gunfire, the first ship sinking via suicide airplane, and the first time the largest battleship ever fired on enemy ships. It had, however, some “lasts”: “the last massed ship-versus-ship action in naval history; the last time a battleship fired its main batteries at an enemy”; (6449) and the last time small destroyers and escorts attacked an enemy line of ships. Tin Can is a navy term for smaller vessels of war like destroyers and destroyer escorts as opposed to cruisers, frigates, or battleships.

Here we learn how the Japanese planned to rout the American Navy. McArthur had begun his “return” to the Philippines. It would be much more difficult without naval support.

The Japanese plan was actually a three-pronged attack, one from the South and West towards Leyte Gulf, one from the North, and a decoy from the North and East. It is not giving too much away by saying that the decoy worked. Admiral Halsey refused to send ships to aid Admiral Sprague’s small task force (Task Unit 77.4.3 or “Taffy 3”) because he anticipated a Japanese attack from the North. Indeed, if there is an American heel in this story, it is Halsey, with maybe some blame to Admiral Kinkaid, who apparently misinterpreted the information Taffy 3 was sending him.

Halsey’s own command was radioed asking for help, even specifically asking “Where is Task Force 34 [the nearest large fleet, Kinkaid’s] the world wonders,” an well-known allusion to Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” about a suicidal mission in another war.

I confess that I was not familiar with this Pacific battle. It seems like everyone has heard of Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Coral Sea. Leyte Gulf was the biggest—some say it was the largest naval battle in terms of men, ships, and scope in history. But perhaps because of the above admirals’ mistakes and General McArthur’s personal emphasis on the land battles by this time, this battle is often overlooked.

Hornfischer himself acknowledges that it was probably not as decisive as Midway in the overall direction of the war, but it opened the way to Manila and kept many Japanese from getting closer to their homeland to defend the inevitable invasion there.

Most of the story focuses on the relatively small task force of Admiral Sprague. There were six small escort aircraft carriers (often nicknamed “jeep carriers” or “baby flattops”), three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts (the seven “tin cans”). Because of their tenacity and effective use of smoke screens, the Japanese thought it was a “gigantic enemy task force of six or seven [full-sized] carriers accompanied by many cruisers and destroyers.” (6704)

What we read about mostly is the tenacity. The brave escorts simply would not quit. Enough planes from the small carriers contributed. At this point in the war, the Americans had a foothold on Mindinao and pilots from the carriers would refuel at an improvised army airstrips on land. Most of the planes did not have anti-ship weapons until they received torpedoes and bombs from those bases.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors paints a real David versus Goliath picture. The much larger Japanese task force was turned back. But the fighting was brutal. Many men and ships were lost on both sides. A few chapters are devoted to the stories of men from several ships that were sunk who had to survive at sea for days before being rescued or coming ashore.

While there were individual suicide planes and torpedo boats before October 25, 1944, this was actually the inauguration of the formal kamikaze attacks by Japanese airmen. The author also notes that Japanese sailors who abandoned their ships refused to be rescued or captured by American ships in the area.

There is so much more. Here it worth quoting author and war veteran Herman Wouk in his sprawling War and Remembrance:

The vision of Sprague’s three destroyers—the Johnston, the Hoel, and the Heermann—charging out of the smoke and rain straight toward the main batteries of Kurita’s battleships and cruisers, can endure as a picture of the way Americans fight when they don’t have superiority. Our schoolchildren should know about that incident, and our enemies should ponder it. (6457)

Well said, Mr. Wouk. Mr. Hornfischer has done his best to make it a reality to the reader. Let us not forget. Alas, that may not be easy. A book of recommended reading for schoolchildren that I had to read when taking education classes only had books on Hiroshima and the Atom Bomb in its World War II listings. (The Holocaust was a separate listing, which in the compilers’ minds must have taken care of the European Theater.) Remembrance is in Wouk’s title, too.

One side note: The book mentions in passing that Admiral Sprague’s brother-in-law was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their careers went in very different directions, so they were not close. Read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors to see how Admiral Sprague himself summed up the events off Samar.

For readers like us who are using Kindles or other smaller devices, the publisher included a link, rhlink.com/tin001, for the maps and charts so we can see them on a larger screen.

P.S. I chose this book because my late father served in the Navy in the Pacific, mostly around Borneo and the Philippines. As he told it, he graduated from high school one day (in 1944) and the next day joined the Navy. At the time of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, he was still attending Quartermaster School. By the time he arrived on scene, the naval battle was nearly over.

He did take part in supporting Australians in Brunei and some “mop-up” (his words) in the Philippines. I am sure that he would have appreciated this book. Hornfischer gives a lot of attention to the ordinary sailors and what they endured. Because the fighting had devastated the islands that he saw so much, my father had no romantic ideas about the South Pacific. After reading this book, the reader may also have few romantic notions about war left in his or her mind, but most readers will probably have a great appreciation of what Americans working together can accomplish.