A problem that plagued the Japanese side throughout the battle was fundamental confusion about the nature of the enemy who opposed them. In no small part due to the smoke roiling from the stacks and sterns of the U.S. ships, the Japanese were nearly unanimous in mistaking Ziggy Sprague’s task unit for something considerably more powerful than it really was. Kurita would describe Taffy 3 in his own action report as a “gigantic enemy task force including six or seven carriers accompanied by many cruisers and destroyers.”
