The Battle for Leyte Gulf (October 23-25, 1944) was the largest naval engagement in history, involving four major actions between hundreds of ships of the U. S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy over a hundred thousand square miles of the Pacific Ocean. It marked the end of the Japanese navy as a significant fighting force in the Pacific theater of World War II and ensured the success of the American invasion of Leyte Island in the Philippines.
Following American victories in the Battle of the Philippine Sea (which had destroyed Japan’s naval air strength) and in the Mariana Islands in the summer of 1944, U. S. Army general Douglas MacArthur landed forces on Leyte Island on October 20. His assault was supported by the U. S. Third and Seventh Fleets, the largest naval force ever assembled. It included some 35 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 28 cruisers, 150 destroyers, plus other ships. At the same time, Japan implemented a complicated plan, involving four forces of its Combined Fleet, that was designed to lure U. S. ships away from Leyte and leave the American invasion force vulnerable to attack.
After contact was made with Japanese ships on October 23, aircraft from Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey’s Third Fleet launched attacks against Vice Admiral Kurita’s force, sinking the superbattleship Musashi and other ships, though losing the light aircraft carrier USS Princeton. Two of the other Japanese forces encountered Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet in the Surigao Strait, lost two battleships and three cruisers in a one-sided surface battle, and were forced to withdraw.
Meanwhile, airplanes from the Third Fleet had spotted the fourth Japanese force. The aggressive Halsey turned his fleet north to intercept what was really a decoy force of four aircraft carriers with few planes. Although Halsey sank all four Japanese carriers, he left the San Bernardino Strait unprotected, in what some derisively called the “Battle of Bull’s Run.” Elements of Kurita’s force returned to the strait on October 25 and steamed toward Leyte Gulf, but were repelled by badly outnumbered ships from the American Seventh Fleet. The battered Japanese forces withdrew.
The heavy losses in the Battle for Leyte Gulf dealt the Japanese navy a lethal blow. In all, the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, 10 cruisers, and nine destroyers; the U. S. Navy lost three carriers, two destroyers, and one destroyer escort. But while the engagement meant the death of the Imperial Japanese Navy as a serious force, it also witnessed the birth of Japan’s newest weapon—the kamikaze, the suicide airplane attack that would cause such enormous damage at the battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Though the destruction of its navy and the impending loss of the Philippines ended any realistic hopes in the war, Japan would fight on.
Further reading: Thomas J. Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October, 1944 (New York: Harper, 1994).
—Michael Leonard
World History
