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Battle of Leyte Gulf, The 23-26 October 1944 by Thomas J Cutler Soft Cover
Battle of Leyte Gulf, The 23-26 October 1944 by Thomas J Cutler
Soft Cover
343 pages
Copyright 2001
CONTENTS
List of Mapsxi
Prefacexiii
Prologuexvii
Part I * Preludes *
1 CINCSOWESPAC3
2 COMINCH11
3 CINCPAC25
4 COMTHIRDFLT37
5 "We Will Fight You All!"45
Part II * The Return *
6 King Two53
7 "We Sailed Quietly East in the Dark of Night"62
8 "Strike!"74
Part III * First Blood *
9 Of Sorties, Submarines, and Coffee83
10 Dangerous Ground94
Part IV * 24 October 1944 *
11 TG 38.3113
12 Sibuyan and Sulu Seas135
13 "Start Them North"154
Part V * Night of 24-25 October 1944 *
14 Exits and Entrances169
15 Midwatch in Surigao Strait182
16 Curtain Call194
17 Friction and Fog206
Part VI * 25 October 1944 *
18 "Charge of the Light Brigade"219
19 "The World Wonders"249
20 "Divine Wind"265
Part VII * Aftermath *
21 Long Nights277
22 Epitaph283
Source Notes299
Bibliography315
Acknowledgments329
Index331
Illustrations follow page 188.
Maps
Philippines4
Starting Points and Routes Followed by Japanese Forces63
Approach of the Japanese Forces90
Kurita's Formation in Palawan Passage97
Battle of Surigao Strait183
Situation on the Morning of 25 October220
Battle of Samar Begins223
PREFACE
The Simon & Schuster Encyclopedia of World War II calls the Battle of Leyte Gulf "the greatest naval engagement ever fought." Famed historian Ronald Spector in his history of the American war with Japan, Eagle Against the Sun, describes the engagement as "the largest naval battle in history." Former military editor of the New York Times, Hanson W. Baldwin, in one of his many successful books, Battles Lost and Won, entitles his chapter on this battle, "The Greatest Sea Fight."
Why is the Battle of Leyte Gulf always referred to in such superlative terms? Because it was, in point of fact, the biggest and most multifaceted naval battle in all of history. It involved more ships than any other engagement, including the gargantuan Battle of Jutland in the First World War (250 British and German ships fought at Jutland; 282 American, Japanese, and Australian ships engaged at Leyte). Nearly two hundred thousand men participated in the fight, and the geographical area in which the battle was fought spanned more than a hundred thousand square miles. Dozens of ships were sunk, including some of the largest and most powerful ever built, and thousands of men went to the bottom of the sea with them. Every aspect of naval warfareair, surface, submarine, and amphibiouswas involved in this great struggle, and the weapons used included bombs of every type, guns of every caliber, torpedoes, mines, rockets, and even a forerunner of the guided missile.
But more than size gave this battle its significance. The cast of characters included such names as Halsey, Nimitz, MacArthur, even Roosevelt. It introduced the largest guns ever used in a naval battle and a new Japanese tactic that would eventually kill more American sailors and sink more American ships than any other used in the war. It was the site of the last clash of the dreadnoughts and the first and only time that an American aircraft carrier was sunk by gunfire. It was replete with awe-inspiring heroism, failed intelligence, sapient tactical planning and execution, flawed strategy, brilliant deception, incredible ironies, great controversies, and a plethora of lessons about strategy, tactics, and operations.
If all of the above is true about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, why is it not a household word like Pearl Harbor? Why have fewer Americans heard of it
than the Battle of Midway or the D-Day invasion of Europe? The answer lies in its timing. Leyte Gulf occurred late in the war, after several years of conflict in which great battles had become commonplace. Names like Midway, Stalingrad, Guadalcanal, and Normandy were by then frequent fare. More significantly, however, was that the Battle of Leyte Gulf happened when most of America had accepted ultimate victory as merely a matter of time rather than as a debatable question. Midway was widely accepted as the turning point of the war in the Pacific, a dramatic reversal of what had been a losing trend. The D-Day invasion at Normandy was seen as the true beginning of the end of the war in Europe. But Leyte Gulf was seen as just another step along the way, the continuation of a trend which by that time was seen as normal and inevitable. Lacking such drama as the earlier battles had enjoyed, Leyte Gulf was then eclipsed by events like the near-reversal at the Battle of the Bulge, the ferocious fighting at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the cataclysmic dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But the Battle of Leyte Gulf was indeed pivotal in that it represented the last hope of the Japanese Empire and the last significant sortie of the Imperial Japanese Navy. It was vastly important to millions of Filipinos and thousands of Allied prisoners of war, whose liberation from Japanese oppression depended upon it. And, while an American victory in the battle may have been viewed as somewhat mundane by that stage of the war, an American defeat would have been a disaster of great magnitude.
Writing about a battle of such vast proportions is no simple task. Many important events were occurring simultaneously and yet must be presented in a linear format. This requires frequent shifts of scene which can become confusing if presented carelessly. I have tried to make each scene as clear as possible in terms of time and place so that the reader may keep up with the whirlwind of widespread yet interlocking events.
I have written this book making a few assumptions about the reader's knowledge. I have assumed that the reader knows that a battleship is bigger and more powerful than a cruiser and that these are, in turn, larger
than a destroyer. But beyond that I have tried to explain the nature of each type of ship introduced. Readers already familiar with such things may find this somewhat tedious, but this is preferable to excluding other readers from a clear understanding. I have dispensed with the laborious practice of including the hull numbers of vessels that so many authors seem compelled to do, using instead only the ships' names. In that same streamlining vein, I have omitted from the names of individuals the frequently appended "USN" and "USNR," using only their ranks as appropriate.
Certain biases will become apparent as the reader progresses through this work. I am an American patriot and a retired naval officer, so my account will reflect a certain pride in the achievements of the U.S. Navy and a great deal of respect and appreciation for the heroism and sacrifice of the American sailors who fought at Leyte. I have interviewed and gotten to know some of these men and my admiration for them has been strengthened by that experience. But I also have an abiding and sincere respect for their Japanese adversaries. I respect anyone who has faced the terrors and rigors of combat, even those who once were my enemies in a different war at a different time.
This is not to say that I have pulled my punches when discussing the errors made during the battle. I sincerely believe that a true patriot must be willing to criticize constructively his beloved country, just as a loving parent will chastise the misbehaving child. Nothing is perfect, and nothing will get nearer to perfection without honest appraisal.
I have used the military 24-hour system of timeso that 3:00 A.M. becomes 0300, noon becomes 1200, 1:15 P.M. becomes 1315, etc.because to a naval officer, using civilian time when discussing a military operation is something akin to using the word "tune" when describing Beethoven's music.
The reader will probably detect that I have a love of the sea and some readers may find my personification of ships somewhat overdone. But those are the readers who have not served in ships, who have not experienced firsthand how a vessel takes on the collective personality of the men who crew her.
A half-century has passed since the sound of gunfire echoed across the waters of Leyte Gulf, but the importance of what happened there has not diminished with time. It is fitting that we should take another look, fifty years later, at what happened at Leyte Gulf, recognizing the courage and sacrifice of those who fought there, learning from the mistakes that were made, and hoping that nothing in our future will ever rival this event for its well-deserved title of "greatest naval battle in history."
The criticisms of others found within this work are offered humbly. My purpose in questioning the acts and decisions taken a half-century ago is not to defame the men who originated them but rather to let their actions and the criticisms contained herein serve as lessons for future naval officers. Never would I claim to have been able to do better than the men I write about. I have known the awesome responsibility of handling a single ship in moments of challenge; my mind boggles at the thought of handling whole fleets. I have experienced the confusion that can reign on the bridge of a ship in the dark of night when all is not going according to plan; I can only begin to imagine how that would be magnified if my ship were sinking beneath me. And I have known the mind-numbing terror of combatthough never to the degree experienced by most of the men I now write about; I sincerely believe that only those who have never been shot at would disparage the actions of men under fire. I make my judgments from the comfort of a desk chair. I am surrounded by books and documents with a hundred times the information available to those on-site commanders, and I may peruse them at my leisure, pressured only by a publisher's deadline. I write on a machine that dutifully erases my errors, and I sip coffee as I write. Most of all, no one must live or die by what I do here.
So it is with the ultimate humility that I hope that my criticisms and judgments will serve as food for thought, as stimulus for further debate, but never as a substitute for what brave men did under the pressures of command and combat.
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