Leyte Gulf - USS Natoma Bay CVE-62

the enemy force and adding: "Request Lee proceed top speed
cover Leyte Gulf. Request immediate strike by fast
carriers."
"That surprised me," said Halsey. "It was not my job to
protect the Seventh Fleet. My job was offensive, to strike
with the Third Fleet, and we were even then rushing to
intercept a force which gravely threatened not only Kinkaid
and myself, but the whole Pacific strategy."
From Kinkaid came more cries for help, with the
additional information that his old battleships were low in
ammunition. Halsey, exasperated, ordered McCain, coming up
from the southeast with his carrier group, to turn back and
attack the enemy force near Leyte Gulf. Then, notifying
Kinkaid that McCain was coming, Halsey pressed on to the
north with TF 34 and TF 38.
At CINCPAC headquarters at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz
was reading the Halsey-Kinkaid messages with increasing
dismay. His staff urged him to order Halsey to take or send
TF 34 back south. Nimitz declined, not wishing to interfere
with the commander at the scene. Besides, Halsey might
already have sent TF 34 back, though no such action was
mentioned in the dispatches intercepted at Pearl Harbor.
At last Nimitz authorized his assistant chief of staff,
Commodore B. L. Austin, to ask Halsey where TF 34 was -
intending the question both as an inquiry and as a gentle
prod to take action, if he had not already done so. When the
message reached Halsey a little after 1000, it had become
less a prod than a bludgeon. As placed in his hands, the
dispatch read: FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO
COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE
THIRTY-FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS.
Austin had added Admiral King and Admiral Kinkaid
(CTF 77) as information addresses and stuck in RPT (repeat)
for emphasis. The Pearl Harbor communicator had routinely
inserted padding, random phrases, at the beginning
and end of the message: TURKEY TOOTS TO WATER GG . . .
RR THE WORLD WONDERS, to increase difficulty of
cryptanalysis. The communicator aboard the New
Jersey removed the opening padding, but that at
the end read so much like a part of the message
26 Leyte Gulf