To add to what dalem already said:
Kurita lost his nerve. Go back and read everything that had happened to him up until that point.
He'd already had his flagship shot out from under from by US submarines, and then he witnessed the horrifying weight of US airpower smothering HIJMS
Musashi
The destroyers, destroyer escorts and escort carriers of Taffy 3 were consistantly misidentfied during the Samar engagement as Baltimore-class cruisers and Essex-class carriers.
The damage his force suffered at their hands was certainly commensurate with that of a heavy force (rather than the tiny tin cans that were actually there).
Even worse was the constant air attacks launched by the Taffys during the attack.
Hardly a moment went by when some American aircraft would strafe the hell out of his ships with heavy machine gun fire (and in the case of one pilot, his .38 caliber revolver
) or even just a bluff attack by torpedo planes, forcing the Japanese ships to break off pursuit on the chance that the Avenger pilot really did have a torpedo.
Kurita's flagship
Yamato was forced back by a destroyer-launched torpedo attack that reversed him right out of the battle pretty much for good.
Chaos, confusion, the fog of war and the absolute conviction that the worst was still yet to come had a powerful influence on Kurita.