The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

by James D. Hornfischer

IT WAS 6:47 A.M. when Ensign Brooks confirmed his sighting of the Japanese fleet and relayed it to Ziggy Sprague. At precisely the same moment, Admiral Halsey, on the flag bridge of the battleship New Jersey, received a radio message from Admiral Kinkaid: “Question: Is TF 34 guarding San Bernardino Strait?” What the hell was this? Halsey wondered. Why was Kinkaid bothering him now? Sent by the Seventh Fleet commander at 4:12 A.M., two and a half hours before Halsey got it, Kinkaid’s inquiry had traveled from Leyte Gulf two thousand miles east to Manus, languished for a few hours amid a pile of other communiqués, then been routed to the Third Fleet commander. At MacArthur’s insistence, all messages between the Third and Seventh Fleets were routed through his Admiralty Islands headquarters. The communications staff there was deluged with transmissions, the urgent ones all but indistinguishable from the merely important. Halsey read the late-arriving message from his Seventh Fleet counterpart and thought him out of touch, if not entirely delinquent. Task Force 34, the heart of Willis Lee’s battle line, sailed with him. In the earlier dispatch Halsey had meant that Task Force 34 “will be formed” only on his further command. He was shocked that Kinkaid had assumed the actuality of a mere contingency. Wasn’t it plain enough that Halsey had not detached the four battleships? And why was the Seventh Fleet relying on him in any event? Conceived as a defensive force, it had more tha...