After the air raids started, the Japanese perceived “salvos of medium-caliber guns” hitting near the Yamato. That no ship in Sprague’s fleet boasted medium-caliber weaponry—as the six- or eight-inch guns of cruisers were generally called—revealed the extent of Kurita’s bewilderment. In a landscape of tropical squalls and enemy smoke, he was not at all certain what to make of the fleet that had materialized unexpectedly on the southern horizon.