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

These anxieties preyed upon a mind that was thoroughly battle-fatigued. Kurita hadn’t slept in three days, ever since the Atago had been torpedoed out from under him in the Palawan Passage on October 23. Fished from the sea and relocated to the Yamato, he had witnessed on the following afternoon the destruction of Japan’s proudest dreadnought, the Musashi. He had struggled with the decision to withdraw before sunset on the twenty-fourth, then turned around again and by night threaded his large formation through the perilous San Bernardino Strait. The next morning the unexpected windfall of American aircraft carriers coming under his guns further taxed his powers of analysis and command. Now even that coveted prize threatened to elude him, though he had gotten reports claiming that several U.S. flattops, including one of the “Enterprise class,” had been sunk along with two heavy cruisers and some destroyers. But truth was cruelly at variance with Kurita’s weary senses. As an American historian would wryly note, “Outfought by pygmies, he yet thought he had conquered giants.” Now Kurita had to decide whether he should press his luck, gather his scattered force, and enter Leyte Gulf.