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

Intermingling orphaned pilots from Ziggy Sprague’s task unit with the squadrons of his own six carriers, Taffy 2 commander Admiral Stump’s carriers mustered a total of 204 sorties against Kurita, 117 by Avengers and 87 by Wildcats, dropping 49 torpedoes and 286 500-pound bombs, and firing 276 rockets and untold thousands of rounds of machine-gun ammunition. By the time the last of his pilots returned to Taffy 2 at 6:25 P.M., just before nightfall made carrier operations doubly hazardous, Kurita’s force had been smashed down to size. Limping north toward San Bernardino Strait went a battered and broken Center Force, reportedly consisting of four battleships, just three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and seven destroyers. Two of the battleships trailed broad slicks of oil; three destroyers and one of the light cruisers lagged behind the main group; and one heavy cruiser appeared heavily damaged. Impossible to catalog but probably significant nonetheless were the assorted lesser catastrophes inflicted by the ceaseless strafing, bombing, and battering by American five-inch shells. Twenty-four aircraft from the jeep carriers had fallen to Japanese antiaircraft fire, with forty-three pilots and aircrewmen lost or missing in action.