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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Little Joe who wrote (133378)	3/24/2001 11:52:57 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Well, you talked me into it (after I practically begged someone to ask). Warning: it may not be fascinating to anyone outside my family; I think the fascinating thing is to think of my granddad being present at a event that was recorded in history books. I'm borrowing some of this from memory, and some from John Tolands excellent "The Rising Sun". If you don't have this book, it is a MUST READ. When the Allies invaded the Phillipine islands and landed on Leyte, we had a huge fleet to support the landings. The Japanese planned a last ditch effort to stop the Americans, by committing the remains of their fleet to destroy the American beachhead. The plan was pretty simple; bait the 7th fleet (with most of our aircraft carriers) by dangling the remaining Japanese carriers. What did the Japanese have to lose? They had almost no trained pilots left, so the remaining carriers were expendable. The Japanese decoy force attacked from the north, to draw Halsey away from the beachhead. The three other main Japanese forces, consisting of all their remaining battleships (including the Yamato, a huge ship) would slip between the islands from the west and attack the beachhead at Leyte Gulf from the south. The bait worked wonderfully; Halsey felt his main job was to destroy the Imperial fleet. He left the defense of the beachhead to Kinkaid, who only had some destroyers and jeep carriers (small carriers converted from freighters). He rushed off to destroy the Japanese carriers; just what the Japanese wanted. However, the Japanese force had been spotted by our subs and planes, and suffered losses to both, as well as mines. That did not stop the Japanese, who surprised the holy heck out of our forces when they started shelling the covering jeep carriers with 16 inch shells. The jeep carriers and destroyers put up a valiant defense, but we wholly outgunned by the Japanese armada of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Here's the part of the story my grandfather observed. Back then, coded radio messages were padded with nonsensical phrases at the beginning and end, to throw off any decoding efforts. There was a list of phrases to add; the crewman in charge of sending the message would look on the list, and add the next one to the start of the message, and a different on at the end. It was the job of the crewman who received the message to strip these sentences off before passing them to command. Kinkaid sent an urgent message to Halsey to come to their aid at once, as they were being attacked by BBs (battleships). Halsey was annoyed, because he didn't think it was his job to protect Kinkaid, but to destroy the Japanese. He hesitated, because he was in the middle of destroying the Japanese 'decoy' carriers. Another message came 20 minutes later, again pleading for help. Another was similarly ignored. Finally, they received the following: TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC X WHERE IS RPT [repeat] WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY-FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS Well, the TURKEY TROTS TO WATER and THE WORLD WONDERS were the phrases that were supposed to be stripped. But the officer on the New Jersey thought the ending message made sense, and left it on. Well, apparently Halsey hit the roof. Toland's book talks about him throwing his hat on the floor, but my granddad said there was also a lot of colorful language involved. Halsey obviously thought this was a big insult by Kincaid, and was livid. Well, the rest of the battle was fairly anticlimatic; the Japanese commander was very nervous, and had suffered big losses to the subs, planes, and surface vessels in the gulf. So, they turned around. Ran. Right on the verge of maybe a great setback for our forces, they went home. Anyway, like I said, what was fascinating was reading a specific event, in detail, and also hearing the same story from my granddad. Sorry if it wasn't really a fascinating story, but seeing history come alive is kind of neat. Get the book. The story of the Battle of Midway is way more dramatic than anything Hollywood could have ever thought up.