82 years ago today, the Battle of Leyte Gulf continued in the Philippines. Wresting control of Leyte Island was critical for taking back the Philippines, something which General Douglas McArthur had promised the Filipino people when he was forced to evacuate 2 1/2 years earlier. By this point in the war, the Japanese were struggling to hold onto all the islands they had seized in the South Pacific. And the Philippines were something they highly coveted since they knew the United States was committed to taking it back. Additionally, the island sat astride the shipping lanes linking their home islands to the resource-rich Indonesia and Dutch East Indies. This battle was key to their survival and they were going to fight to the last man.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf continues – October 25, 1944

On the morning of October 25, 1944, the fate of the Philippine invasion, and much of the remaining Japanese naval fleet, was to be decided across several hundred miles of ocean. What history records as the Battle of Leyte Gulf had already been under way for two days, with brutal naval attacks and air sorties, but this date brought the simultaneous clashes that turned a complex Japanese gamble into a decisive Allied victory.

Japan’s high command had activated Operation Sho-1 to smash the American landings that began on Leyte on October 20. The plan called for surface forces to converge on Leyte Gulf from north and south while a carrier group drew the powerful U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet away from the primary invasion area. By the 25th the southern arm of that plan was already failing. During the night of October 24–25, Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura’s force of two battleships, a heavy cruiser, and destroyers entered Surigao Strait. Waiting for them was Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf’s battle line of older American battleships, many of which had been damaged at Pearl Harbor, and later repaired. These battleships were supported by cruisers, destroyers, and PT boats. After successive torpedo attacks disrupted the Japanese formation, the American ships moved into position and concentrated their gunfire. The battleship Fusō was hit by torpedoes and sank; Yamashiro was pounded by shells and torpedoes until she went down with Nishimura. Another Japanese naval armada, under Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima, turned back rather than enter the contested strait. It would be the last battleship-versus-battleship engagement of World War II – and as fate would hold for large battleships – the last battle of these Goliaths in history.

Far more dangerous was the situation developeding to the north. Admiral William Halsey’s Third Fleet had been lured north by Vice Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa’s decoy carriers, leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded. Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Center Force, which included the giant battleship Yamato, passed through the strait after midnight and, shortly after dawn, surprised Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague’s Task Unit, Taffy 3. This group of six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts was intended for air support and anti-submarine work, not a surface action against battleships and heavy cruisers. Sprague ordered his carriers to flee into rain squalls while launching aircraft and directed his destroyers, and their escorts, into close-range torpedo attacks. The destroyer USS Johnston (DD-557), and the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413), pressed home attacks, under heavy fire. Both of them would soon be on the seabed. The escort carrier, USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), was also lost to gunfire. Sprague’s use of aircraft strikes, smoke screens, and the aggressive screening delayed and disordered the Japanese force long enough for Kurita, facing mounting damage, and uncertainty about what other U.S. Navy ships were nearby, to break off the pursuit and withdraw. Had he continued, the troop transports still off the Leyte beaches would have been exposed.

Simultaneously, Halsey’s carriers located Ozawa’s Northern Force, off Cape Engaño, and systematically sank its four carriers. Elsewhere on that fateful day, Japanese pilots carried out the first organized kamikaze attacks of the war, with one crashing into the escort carrier USS St. Lo (CVW-63). The stricken escort carrier would sink after its magazines exploded. This would be the first sinking of a large U.S. naval ship by a kamikaze pilot. Of the nearly 900 sailors on board the St. Lo, 143 would perish.

Across the larger area of battle, the Japanese lost roughly two dozen major warships, including three battleships and four carriers, and suffered more than ten thousand casualties. American losses were six ships and about three thousand men. More importantly, the Imperial Navy’s ability to mount another large-scale offensive operation was effectively destroyed. The landings on Leyte Island continued, and the Philippines campaign moved forward with alacrity. October 25th therefore marked both the high point of American naval power, in the Pacific, and the practical end of the Japanese fleet as a major naval fighting force.

The Original Grey Beard Biker™
gbb@TheGreyBeardBiker.com
@_RockyTop_Biker on X
@RockyTopBiker on YouTube