Battle of Leyte Gulf

Fought in the waters around the central Philippines from 23 to 26 October 1944, the Battle of Leyte Gulf is generally ranked as the biggest naval engagement of the Second World War, and by some measures the biggest ever fought. The Imperial Japanese Navy threw almost all of its remaining warships against the American invasion of Leyte, and in four main engagements it was decisively beaten by the United States Third and Seventh Fleets, with Australian support. It saw the first organised kamikaze attacks and the last clash between battleships.

By mid-1944 the Allies had driven Japanese forces from much of the central and south Pacific, and in June the Battle of the Philippine Sea had destroyed most of Japan's carrier air power. American leaders debated whether to strike next at Formosa or at the Philippines, and General Douglas MacArthur's case for returning to the Philippines won. Troops landed on Leyte in October 1944. Command was divided: Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet, supporting the landings, answered to MacArthur, while Admiral William Halsey's Third Fleet, with the fast carriers, answered to Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Losing the Philippines would cut Japan off from the oil of Southeast Asia, so the navy's commander, Soemu Toyoda, staked the fleet on a plan called Shō-Gō 1. A Northern Force of carriers under Jisaburō Ozawa, carrying only 108 aircraft, would act as bait to draw Halsey north. Meanwhile two surface forces would converge on the landing beaches: Takeo Kurita's powerful Centre Force, including the giant battleships Yamato and Musashi, through the San Bernardino Strait, and a Southern Force under Shōji Nishimura and Kiyohide Shima through the Surigao Strait.

On 23 October American submarines sank two of Kurita's heavy cruisers in the Palawan Passage. The next day, in the Sibuyan Sea, Halsey's aircraft sank Musashi after hitting her with many bombs and torpedoes, while a Japanese bomber fatally damaged the light carrier USS Princeton. Kurita turned back, and then, unseen, turned round again.

In the early hours of 25 October Nishimura's ships entered the Surigao Strait and ran into a trap laid by Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf: torpedo boats, destroyers and then a line of battleships and cruisers. Five of Oldendorf's six battleships had been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor. Both Japanese battleships were sunk, Nishimura was killed, and only one of his seven ships survived the night. It was the last battleship-against-battleship action in history.

Halsey, believing Kurita beaten, took his whole fleet north after Ozawa's carriers, leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded. On the morning of 25 October Kurita's battleships fell upon a small group of escort carriers and destroyers off Samar, known as Taffy 3. Its destroyers charged the Japanese ships while aircraft from all the escort carriers attacked repeatedly. Several American ships, including the carrier Gambier Bay, were sunk, but Kurita, confused and believing he faced a much larger force, broke off and withdrew. That day Japanese pilots made the first organised suicide attacks, sinking the escort carrier St. Lo.

Far to the north, off Cape Engaño, Halsey's aircraft sank all four of Ozawa's carriers, including Zuikaku, a veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack. Halsey's delay of more than three hours in answering Seventh Fleet's calls for help, and his furious reaction to a message from Nimitz whose padding he mistook for a rebuke, remain among the most debated episodes of the war.

According to one widely used count, Japan lost 26 warships, including four carriers, three battleships and ten cruisers, with roughly 12,000 men killed; the Allies lost about 11 ships, among them three carriers, and around 3,000 men. The Japanese navy never again sailed in comparable strength; many of its surviving ships sat in port for lack of fuel. Leyte was secured by the end of December, the loss of the Philippines became inevitable, and the way opened to the Ryukyu Islands and the Battle of Okinawa.

Our 1938 map shows the Philippines under American rule beside the Empire of Japan, and the 1945 map shows the Pacific at the war's end.