a.  The silent passage between Canigao and Leyte Island through a suspected mine field was almost surreal.  We were in column with Cooper and Moale with AMS as guide.  Although the Captain's account states the passage was 1/2 mile wide (about 1000 yards), I swear it looked less than 150.  There was a full moon and a clear sky.  You could plainly see the foliage of trees on the shoreline on either side of the ship as we slipped quietly through.  A sniper on the bank with a night scope could have picked off the bridge crew like ducks in a shooting gallery.  But the Captain led the column through as if it was a piece of cake.  I remember the confidence he engendered.  I believe there wasn't a man on that bridge had any doubt he knew exactly what he was doing.  So if he was "holding his breath" as he states, he hid it from us.
 

b.  As Air Defense Officer, I was in contact with CIC via head set sound powered telephone.  The air search radar CIC officer would report relative bearing and ranges to all "Bogey" contacts. The first bomb attack, a close miss on the starboard bow that peppered our starboard bow and forward quarter of the ship with some 90 shrapnel holes and started a fire in the paint locker in the bow, came as a complete surprise.  We had received no preliminary report of the "bogey": that penetrated our radar screen from the 180 degree position.  I should add, we were operating with all 4 boilers on the line with superheat and our wake made a brilliant white path in the water.  I was told later the wake was accentuated by plankton in the sea which became phosphorescent when agitated by our props.  We weren't zigzagging at that point so he must have flown right up our wake and just missed us.  The "green water" the bomb splashed up on the outer bridge surely got our attention.  From that time on we were fully occupied with many air and surface targets which the Captain's report fully and accurately details.
 

c.  One incident which we later took as a lesson to live by occurred early in the attack on the transport and destroyers near the beach.  We had 4 or 5 6-gun salvos in the air before the first salvo landed on those ships.  Our 5inch gun crews could sustain a salvo every 15 seconds for a short period of time.  But during that first barrage, someone mistakenly inserted a smokeless powder charge (used in the daytime) for a flashless charge (used at night).  The result was a blinding flash from one of the 5-inch guns, which was immediately responded to by very accurate artillery fire from the beach area.  I remember watching the incoming red-hot shells, which first seemed to be aimed long until they got immediately overhead when they seemed to fall right straight down on us.  We were "straddled" but not hit before our own 5-inch silenced the Jap artillery.  We learned to respect the optic range finder sights of the Japs who didn't have radar to direct fire at that time.
 

d.  Almost simultaneously with hearing we had lost the Cooper (she just disappeared from the radar screen), I saw a torpedo wake approaching off our starboard bow.   I was standing right next to the Captain who immediately ordered "hard left rudder".  It was almost like watching it in slow motion as our ship's head turned left and the torpedo passed within feet in front of our bow.
 

e.  One of my shipmates who writes you under the nom-de-plume of Ensign Scuttlebutt tells of the Captain ordering the guns to fire on Jap personnel in the water.  That order did not originate from Captain Sampson.  After our initial firing run and after we executed a "18 Turn" to pass back past the destroyed enemy ships, you could plainly see many men in the water.  Commodore DESDIV120, in operational command of the attack, called the Command center on Leyte and advised of the enemy in the water requesting what course of action to take.  I remember hearing the succinct command "Kill Them". This command came over a plain language TBX and was heard by the entire command circuit.  I'm not sure but I believe we also dropped a shallow pattern of death charges.
 

f.  The trip home was a nightmare as well.  The Jap night fighters followed us all the way back to The Surigao Strait.  Because they were invisible to the eye, I could only direct my aft quad 40s to train out directly astern at a 45 degree angle and when the closing bogey was reported to be within 4000 yards commence firing training right and left for about 15 degrees so the attacker would have to fly though a screen of 40 mm fire to position himself to drop on us.
 

g.  The trip back was made at maximum speed (approaching 35 knots).  At one point  Dan Bergin, the engineering officer came to the bridge to advise the Captain he had a shaft bearing so hot he was cooling it with a salt-water hose.  He wanted to know if we could slow to save the shaft from seizing.  His request was refused.  Later we found we had a defective temperature gauge but we surely worried whether we could maintain those high RPMs.
 

h.  As a footnote, we kept calling for CAP that night and were advised our airfields were so wet the fighters could not take off.   I remember the Commodore fuming about the Japs having the same weather but not having the same problem with getting aircraft in the air.
 

i.  From Supply Officer's prospective. I learned that a result of the close miss bomb many pieces of shrapnel which penetrated the hull also passed through the clothes lockers in the chief's quarters forward and the two officers quarters just forward of the wardroom, one of which was mine.  I won't speak for myself, but, pursuant to the authority in the Bureau of Supplies and Account Manual, I refurbished the Chiefs and three Officers with complete new wardrobes of uniforms.  In particular, I discovered the Chiefs of the AMS had been the best dressed and most completely uniformed CPOs in the US Navy afloat.
 

j.  The best news of all was that except for one finger amputation, all our injuries were minor and we lost no personnel.