The Battle of Leyte Gulf, fought from October 23-26, 1944, was the largest naval battle in history. Across four separate engagements spread over 115,000 square miles of Philippine waters, 282 warships and nearly 200,000 men fought a three-day action that determined control of the Pacific. The Imperial Japanese Navy ceased to exist as an effective fighting force before it was over.

It is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of the Second World War.

The Strategic Context

General Douglas MacArthur had waded ashore at Leyte in the central Philippines on October 20, 1944, fulfilling his promise to return. For the Japanese, the loss of the Philippines was existential: the islands sat astride the sea lanes connecting Japan to the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies. Without that oil, Japan's fleet, air force, and army would grind to a halt within months.

Imperial Japanese headquarters issued Sho-1 — Victory Plan No. 1 — the moment American landings were confirmed. The plan concentrated every remaining major surface combatant of the Japanese Navy into one supreme effort to destroy the American beachhead. It was desperate by design. Japanese naval planners knew they could not win a sustained naval war. They hoped one decisive blow might force a negotiated peace.

The Four Battles

The plan was a three-pronged pincer. A powerful Southern Force under Vice Admiral Nishimura would approach through the Surigao Strait in the south. A Central Force under Vice Admiral Kurita — the largest, containing the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi — would come through the Sibuyan Sea and emerge north of Leyte through San Bernardino Strait. A Northern Force under Vice Admiral Ozawa — stripped of aircraft and functioning deliberately as bait — would lure Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet away from the beachhead.

The bait worked perfectly.

At Surigao Strait on the night of October 24-25, the American Seventh Fleet under Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf executed one of the last classic battleship engagements in history, "crossing the T" of Nishimura's approaching column. Nishimura's flagship Yamashiro was sunk. The Southern Force was annihilated.

In the Sibuyan Sea on October 24, American carrier aircraft attacked Kurita's Central Force throughout the day. The Musashi — 72,000 tons, the largest battleship ever built alongside her sister ship Yamato — absorbed nineteen torpedo hits and seventeen bomb hits before rolling over and sinking. Kurita turned back. American commanders reported the Central Force destroyed.

Halsey, baited by Ozawa's decoy Northern Force, raced north with every carrier and fast battleship he had, leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded. He believed Kurita had been finished off. He was wrong.

Kurita turned around again in the night and passed through San Bernardino Strait at dawn on October 25. What stood between his armada — four battleships, eight cruisers, eleven destroyers — and the Leyte beachhead was Task Unit 77.4.3: "Taffy 3," a force of six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts. These were small ships assigned to air support, not fleet combat. Their carriers could make 18 knots; Yamato could do 27.

The Stand of Taffy 3

What followed was one of the most remarkable defensive actions in naval history. Taffy 3's commander, Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague, immediately ordered smoke and maximum speed. His destroyers and destroyer escorts charged into the Japanese fleet — ships outgunned by factors of ten — firing torpedoes and drawing fire.

The destroyer USS Johnston, under Commander Ernest Evans, drove directly at the Japanese cruiser line, fired ten torpedoes, and was then blown apart over the next hour by accumulated gunfire. She went down with Evans and 186 of her crew. Evans received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

The sacrifice bought time. Kurita, confused by the ferocity of the small ships' resistance and falsely believing he was engaging fleet carriers, grew cautious. American aircraft struck continuously. After two hours of combat, with two escort carriers sunk and the situation apparently deteriorating, Kurita made the decision that sealed his mission's failure: he ordered a general withdrawal.

He had the American beachhead within reach. The men, supplies, and equipment for the Philippine liberation were exposed. He turned away.

The Kamikaze Debut

On October 25, as Taffy 3 fought for its life, Japanese aircraft struck the American escort carriers in a new way: deliberately. The Special Attack Corps — the Kamikaze — made their first organized attacks that morning, sinking the escort carrier St. Lo and damaging five other ships. The tactic would consume thousands of young Japanese pilots and hundreds of American ships in the months ahead.

The End of the Japanese Navy

Japan lost three battleships, four carriers, ten cruisers, and eleven destroyers at Leyte Gulf. The American losses — one light carrier, two escort carriers, three destroyers and destroyer escorts — were by comparison trivial. The Imperial Japanese Navy would sortie its surface forces only once more in significant strength, at Okinawa in April 1945, when Yamato was sent on a suicide mission with enough fuel for a one-way trip.

The Pacific War would continue for another year. But its naval dimension was decided in 115,000 square miles of Philippine water, over three days in October 1944, by the improbable sacrifice of six escort carriers and their tin-can escorts against the most powerful surface fleet Japan could assemble.