In that dreadful hour, William Halsey proved himself unsuited to high command. He could not lead a fleet because he could not control himself. It was almost noon before he ordered some of his heavy units to reverse helm and head south—an action that he later regretted because his battleships were so close to Ozawa.

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At that point it mattered little that Task Force 38 sank all four of Ozawa’s decoy carriers. Kinkaid’s vulnerable forces only escaped destruction when Kurita unexpectedly broke contact with Taffy 3 and retired westward. But the outcome was bad enough: an escort carrier and three other ships were lost, and another escort carrier was sunk that day by kamikazes. “The Battle off Samar was for a time the victory whose name the navy dared not speak,” Historian Jim Hornfischer noted. Since the navy had lauded Halsey for so long, it was felt that full disclosure of the story would besmirch the admiral and the service.

Meanwhile, Nimitz wrote to the chief of naval operations, Adm. Ernest J. King, conceding, “It never occurred to me that Halsey, knowing the composition of the ships in the Sibuyan Sea, would leave San Bernardino Strait unguarded.”

In his memoir, Halsey sacrificed his long friendship with Kinkaid by writing, “I wondered how Kinkaid had let ‘Ziggy’ Sprague get caught like this.” While Kinkaid was not without fault—he could have posted a picket destroyer in the strait—Halsey had failed in his responsibility to protect the amphibious craft and tried to pass the blame. And he got away with it.

Nor was that all. After Leyte Gulf, which cost Japan four carriers, three battleships, and twenty other combatants, Halsey kept attacking in the Philippines. While supporting operations against Luzon he faced a more formidable opponent than the Imperial Navy. It was nature herself, and this time Bull Halsey was completely outmatched. On December 17 a fleet refueling was interrupted by worsening weather. Halsey, aggressive as ever, chose to ignore some of the signs and remained in position to support the Mindoro landings. In fairness, he received conflicting information from Pearl Harbor and his own staff. The Hawaiian weathermen predicted a northerly path for the storm, which would have cleared Task Force 38 by some two hundred miles. Eventually his own staff was far closer to the mark with a westerly direction but Halsey played the odds, declining to cancel planned operations. The next day the storm had mutated into a full-grown typhoon, with heaving seas and ninety-knot winds.

New Jersey’s weathermen noted a precipitous barometric drop at 10:00 a.m., sure sign of a typhoon. Only just before noon did Halsey order the fleet to steer southeast, away from the growing wind. Almost two hours later Third Fleet issued a typhoon warning, by which time three of his destroyers had capsized with 790 sailors and 146 aircraft lost.

A court of inquiry found Halsey responsible for the losses, citing “errors of judgment committed under stress of war operations.” Nimitz softened the blow, inserting a passage about “insufficient information” in the final report.

In January 1945, Halsey turned his command over to Spruance in the Third Fleet–Fifth Fleet rotation. Then from May onward Halsey presided over the final naval campaign, steering his fleet into another typhoon on June 5. King and Nimitz probably would not have tolerated such a poor showing from another flag officer, but Halsey’s public popularity insulated him from accountability. Thus, he was present when Japan surrendered aboard Missouri on September 2. It brought an eerie symmetry to Halsey’s career, as his first assignment out of Annapolis had been on Missouri’s namesake predecessor four decades before.

In December 1945 Halsey was promoted to Fleet Admiral, a year after King, Nimitz, and White House chief of staff William D. Leahy. The promotion still is controversial considering that between Leyte and the typhoon, Halsey was responsible for the loss of seven warships and 1,450 men, without accountability. In vivid contrast, Lt. Gen. George Patton had been sidelined for nearly two years after slapping two GIs in Italy. But Halsey had allies if not always friends in high places. Nimitz apparently felt a lingering loyalty to the Bull of 1942, and whereas King was notably unsentimental, he refused to hand the army a talking point when the postwar political climate clearly showed more feuds over budgets, roles, and missions.

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