Battle Off Samar - Oldendorf's Task Group

Oldendorf's Task Group

It has been speculated that even if Center Force had quickly annihilated the escort carrier units, Kurita would still have had to contend with Jesse Oldendorf's task group—which contained six well armed and armoured battleships and eight large, powerful cruisers. After the Surigao Strait action, 7th Fleet's battleships had much less armor-piercing ammunition than battleships would normally be expected to have on entering an action. But, as Morison observes, they had enough for what would have been required of them in defending the entrance to the Gulf, although not enough for a running fight. The same probably was true for the heavy cruisers. The light cruisers—with their much higher rate of fire—had used most of their armor-piercing ammunition, but still had plenty of HC (or "HE") rounds available. Oldendorf's destroyers had expended almost all of their torpedoes, but still had plenty of ammunition for their 5 in (130 mm) guns (and Samar demonstrates how effective such guns could be even against heavy cruisers). Even though unable to make torpedo attacks, these 28 or so destroyers would have been able to provide an effective defense against the Japanese destroyers.

Oldendorf's formation was in fact roughly comparable in strength with Center Force after the latter's losses (on 23 October in Palawan Passage and on 24 October in the Sibuyan Sea), and Kurita would have had to dispose of—or at least fight his way through—Oldendorf's task group before he could fall on the invasion shipping in the Gulf. If, instead of annihilating the Taffy units, he had managed to get through to the Gulf without having neutralized the escort carriers, he would then have had to engage Oldendorf while under sustained assault from the air—and (as the Battle off Samar also demonstrates) it is an extremely difficult task for warships to fight a surface action while simultaneously defending themselves against air attack. It is therefore debatable whether Kurita had a realistic prospect of causing serious damage to the invasion force off Leyte, let alone of inflicting a major reverse on the Allies.