who won battle of leyte gulf

The "Battle" of Leyte Gulf was actually a campaign consisting of four interrelated battles: The Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, the Battle of Surigao Strait, the Battle of Cape Engao, and the Battle off Samar. After expending all of its torpedoes, Johnston continued to fight with its 5-inch guns, until it was sunk by a group of Japanese destroyers. In the light of the intercepted 15:12 24 October "will be formed as Task Force 34" message from Halsey, Admiral Kinkaid and his staff assumed, as did Admiral Nimitz at Pacific Fleet headquarters, that TF34commanded by Vice Admiral Leehad now been formed as a separate entity. The Battle of Surigao Strait was one of only two battleship-versus-battleship naval battles in the entire Pacific campaign of World War II (the other being the naval battle during the Guadalcanal Campaign, where Washington sank the Japanese battleshipKirishima). [8][pageneeded] Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague wrote to his colleague Aubrey Fitch after the war, "I stated [to Admiral Nimitz] that the main reason they turned north was that they were receiving too much damage to continue and I am still of that opinion and cold analysis will eventually confirm it. Early in the day, a 550-pound (220-kg) bomb from a Japanese dive-bomber penetrated the flight deck of the light carrier USS Princeton and ignited a series of fires on the decks below. To Halsey the Japanese carriers represented a target too inviting to ignore. The initial landings were entirely successful and almost completely uncontested, as the Japanese had chosen to mount their defense farther inland and out of the range of naval gunfire. A piece of U.S. Navy slang for Halsey's actions is Bull's Run, a phrase combining Halsey's newspaper nickname "Bull" (he was known as "Bill" Halsey) with an allusion to the Battle of Bull Run in the American Civil War, where Union troops lost the battle due to poor organization and lack of decisive action. Organized suicide attacks by the "Special Attack Force" (Japanese Special Attack Units) began on 25 October during the closing phase of the Battle off Samar, causing the destruction of the escort carrier St. Lo (CVE-63), USS Suwannee (CVE-27), and USS White Plains (CVE-66), amongst others. Halsey finally recalled McCain on 24 Octoberbut the delay meant the most powerful American carrier group played little part in the coming battle and Third Fleet was therefore effectively deprived of nearly 40% of its air strength for most of the engagement. At 08:00, as the attack went in, its escorting fighters destroyed Ozawa's combat air patrol of about 30 planes. [53][51][pageneeded], The other three U.S. battleships also had difficulty as they were equipped with less advanced gunnery radar. Just prior to the bomb hitting the carrier ten fighter planes had landed on the flight deck from a previous mission and in the hangar deck six fully loaded and fueled Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers were waiting for the next mission. Fuller: "In the battle which ensued, the greatest up to then between ship- and shore-based aircraft, 650 Japanese aircraft were destroyed. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff, acting with necessary haste, moved to capitalize on the situation. 'Leyte Open Sea Naval Battle') was the largest naval battle of World War II and by some criteria the largest naval battle in history, with over 200,000 naval personnel involved. Ozawa's force was not located until 16:40 on 24 October, largely because Sherman's TG38.3which was the northernmost of Halsey's groupswas responsible for searches in this sector. Sprague directed his carriers to launch their planes, then ran for the cover of a rain squall to the east. Three days later, General MacArthur ordered his forces ashore on Leyte. Gambier Bay, at the rear of the American formation, became the focus of the battleship Yamato and sustained multiple hits before capsizing at 09:07. At 15:12 on 24 October, Halsey sent an ambiguously worded telegraphic radio message to his subordinate task group commanders giving details of this contingency plan: BATDIV 7 BILOXI, VINCENNES, MIAMI, DESRON 52 LESS STEVEN POTTER, FROM TG 38.2 AND WASHINGTON, ALABAMA, WICHITA, NEW ORLEANS, DESDIV 100, PATTERSON, BAGLEY FROM TG 38.4 WILL BE FORMED AS TASK FORCE 34 UNDER VICE ADMIRAL LEE, COMMANDER BATTLE LINE. Pennsylvania was unable to find a target and her guns remained silent. Over the following days, U.S. carrier planes responded with attacks on Japanese air bases in Formosa and the northern Philippines, and October 1819 saw further strikes on targets near the landing beaches. The goals of this operation were threefold: (1) to win positions that would allow the Allies to sever Japans supply lines to the East Indies, (2) to make possible an invasion or neutralization of Formosa [Taiwan] and the east China coast, and (3) to provide bases for an attack on the Japanese home islands. Halsey was certainly philosophically against dividing his forces. The escort carrier Santee was hit by a kamikaze first, killing 16 crewmen. The combined battles of Leyte Gulf destroyed the Imperial Japanese Navy as an offensive force and decisively led to the defeat of Japan in 1945. Japans total losses in the Battle of Leyte Gulf amounted to 3 battleships, 1 large carrier, 3 light carriers, 6 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers. Kinkaid sent a series of increasingly desperate messages to Halsey, requesting that he dispatch Task Force 34a collection of Third Fleet battleships, destroyers, and cruisers that was supposed to have been guarding the San Bernardino Straitto aid Taffy 3. In what was perhaps the unlikeliest naval victory of the Pacific War, Taffy 3 lost two destroyers, Johnston and Hoel, and the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts. Of Nishimura's seven ships, only Shigure survived long enough to escape the debacle,[66] but eventually succumbed to the American submarine Blackfin on 24 January 1945, which sank her off Kota Bharu, Malaya, with 37 dead. Suwannee was hit by another kamikaze around noon on 26 October that caused even more damage and killed 36 more crewmen. As Woodward wrote: "Everything was pulled out from San Bernardino Strait. At 05:24, Darter fired a salvo of six torpedoes, at least four of which hit Kurita's flagship, the heavy cruiser Atago. As a result of communication errors and other failures, a large number of survivors from Taffy3 were unable to be rescued for several days, and died unnecessarily as a consequence. However, much hard fighting would be required before the island was completely in Allied hands at the end of December 1944: the Battle of Leyte on land was fought in parallel with an air and sea campaign in which the Japanese reinforced and resupplied their troops on Leyte while the Allies attempted to interdict them and establish air-sea superiority for a series of amphibious landings in Ormoc Bayengagements collectively referred to as the Battle of Ormoc Bay. In the end, it would be Gen. Douglas MacArthur who prevailed. A fundamental defect in this plan was there would be no single American naval admiral in overall command. Focusing on U.S. Navy escort aircraft carriers, the pilots hit USS Kitkun Bay (CVE-71), USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70), USS Sangamon (CVE-26), USS Santee (CVE-29), USS St. In reality, Leyte Gulf was a series of naval . The Battle of Leyte Gulf Inside the Myths Surrounding History's Largest Naval Showdown - MilitaryHistoryNow.com By Mark Stille THE BATTLE OF Leyte Gulf, fought in the Philippine Sea from Oct. 23 to 26, 1944, has no counterpart. At 05:56, Dace made four torpedo hits on the heavy cruiser Maya (sister to Atago and Takao). In doing so, he had left the American amphibious forces on Leyte woefully unprotected. Shark was sunk immediately by Japanese escort ships. Nishimura's "Southern Force" consisted of the old battleships Yamashiro (flag) and Fus, the heavy cruiser Mogami, and four destroyers,[52] Shigure, Michishio, Asagumo and Yamagumo. The major IJN surface ships returned to their bases to languish, entirely or almost entirely inactive, for the remainder of the war. When he entered the Surigao Strait at 02:00, Shima was 25 nautical miles (29mi; 46km) behind him, and Kurita was still in the Sibuyan Sea, several hours from the beaches at Leyte. Following the American invasion of the Philippines, the Japanese Navy made the transition to Sh-G 1. At 04:05 Yamashiro was struck by a torpedo fired by the destroyer Bennion,[60][61] and suddenly sank at about 04:20, with Nishimura on board. Poor communication between the separate Japanese forces and a lack of air reconnaissance meant that Kurita was never informed that the deception had been successful, and that only a small and outgunned force stood between his battleships and the vulnerable transports of the invasion fleet. 'Battle of Leyte gulf'; Japanese: , romanized:Reite oki Kaisen, lit. Halsey's chief of staff, Rear Admiral Robert "Mick" Carney, was also wholeheartedly in favor of taking all of Third Fleet's available forces northwards to attack the Japanese carriers. As a result of Taffy 1 being so far south of Samar not many Taffy 1 airplanes participated in the Battle off Samar. He believed strongly in the current naval doctrine of concentration, as indicated by his writings both before World War II and in his subsequent articles and interviews defending his actions. "[59] Shigure turned and fled but lost steering and stopped dead. Louisville (Oldendorf's flagship) fired 37 salvos333 rounds of 8-inch shells. Halsey, however, when reading the message, thought that the last words"THE WORLD WONDERS"were a biting piece of criticism from Nimitz, threw his cap to the deck and broke into "sobs of rage". In its opening salvo the Darter sank the Japanese heavy cruiser Atago, Kuritas flagship, and proceeded to seriously damage the cruiser Takao. Having been battered by U.S. aircraft and submarines, Kurita initially appeared to be retiring to the west, but he soon resumed course, and the Japanese central force pushed doggedly onward toward the San Bernardino Strait and Leyte. [27], Kurita's ships passed Palawan Island around midnight on 2223 October. Northern Force would be built around several aircraft carriers, but these would have very few aircraft or trained aircrew. On the morning of 20 October Task Group 78.3, which included Westralia, Kanimbla and Manoora, entered Leyte Gulf and commenced landing operations at Panaon Island. Lo (CVE-63) was the first naval vessel to be sunk by a single precision-guided weapon, a Japanese kamikaze attack, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Apparently, no decisions on strategy were reached at the Pearl Harbor conferences. As this meant the loss of most of Ozawa's half-trained aircrews, more than anything else it wrecked the, Task Group 34.5 in fact only finished off the straggling destroyer, a series of carrier raids against Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, Learn how and when to remove this template message, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, "The Navy's Aerial Arsenal at Leyte Gulf", "The Largest Naval Battles in Military History: A Closer Look at the Largest and Most Influential Naval Battles in World History", U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific) 1945, "H-038-2: The Battle of Leyte Gulf in Detail", "Oral Histories Battle of Leyte Gulf, 2325 October 1945", "USN Overseas Aircraft Loss List October 1944", https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-038.html, "H-Gram H-036: Special Edition: No Higher Honor The Battle off Samar, 25 October 1944", "H-Gram H-038-2: The Battle of Leyte Gulf in Detail", Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Preliminary Action Report of Engagements in Leyte Gulf and off Samar Island on 25 October, 1944, Report of Operations of Task Force Thirty-Four During the Period 6 October 1944 to 3 November 1944, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, "Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 1944 Loss of USS Princeton (CVL-23), 24 October 1944", "Navy and Marine Corps Awards Manual [Rev. Four U.S. destroyers and two cruisers hastily converged on the Princeton in an attempt to save the stricken carrier and its crew. Men of the central Philippines attack force, under Vice Adm. Thomas Kinkaid (commander of the Seventh Fleet and MacArthurs principal naval subordinate), went ashore on the east coast of Leyte. It was an epic battle between the Japanese Imperial Navy and the US Navy (with some help from the Australian Royal Navy) that was fought in 4 separate engagements near the islands of . I believed that the Center Force had been so heavily damaged in the Sibuyan Sea that it could no longer be considered a serious menace to Seventh Fleet.[86][87]. Kurita's Center Force therefore emerged unopposed from San Bernardino Strait at 03:00 on 25 October and steamed southward along the coast of the island of Samar. The Japanese Navys Victory Operation not only failed to disrupt the Leyte landings, it resulted in serious losses to what remained of Japans surface fleet. After the carrier aircraft returned from aerial attacks on the retreating Japanese naval forces from Surigao Strait the Japanese launched the first pre-planned kamikaze (suicide "special attack" planes) attacks of World War II against Taffy 1 from Davao. Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf had a substantial force comprising, Five of the six battleships had been sunk or damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently repaired or, in the cases of Tennessee, California, and West Virginia, rebuilt. And "Admiral Mitsumasa Yoni, Navy Minister of the Koiso Cabinet, said he realized that the defeat at Leyte 'was tantamount to the loss of the Philippines.' The mighty gunfire of Third Fleet's Battle Line, greater than that of the whole Japanese Navy, was never brought into action except to finish off one or two crippled light ships. Efforts to scuttle Darter failed over the course of the next week, including torpedoes from Dace and Rock that hit the reef (and not Darter) and deck-gun shelling from Dace and later, Nautilus. Vol. Battle of Leyte Gulf, (October 2326, 1944), decisive air and sea battle of World War II that crippled the Japanese Combined Fleet, permitted U.S. invasion of the Philippines, and reinforced the Allies control of the Pacific. But Task Force 34 had not been detached from his other forces, and Lee's battleships were on their way northwards with Third Fleet's carriers. The Japanese counterattacked in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. 4 Avenger torpedo bombers and 2 Wildcat fighters on Santee were destroyed in this attack. When Ozawa learned of the deployment of DuBose's relatively weak task group, he ordered battleships Ise and Hyga to turn southwards and attack it, but they failed to locate DuBose's group, which they heavily outgunned. At 10:00 am Nimitz himself sent what would become one of the most famous radio messages of the entire war: WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS. The last three words were meant to serve as meaningless padding to deter Japanese code breakers and should have been stripped from the final message, but they were included in the printout that was given to Halsey. Meanwhile, the Australian Army, spread thin by engagements in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies and various other Pacific islands, would not have been able to spare any troops for such an operation. The Battle of Surigao Strait is significant as the last battleship-to-battleship action in history. [6][pageneeded]. The Allied campaigns of August 1942 to early 1944 had driven Japanese forces from many of their island bases in the south and central Pacific Ocean, while isolating many of their other bases (most notably in the Solomon Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, Admiralty Islands, New Guinea, Marshall Islands, and Wake Island), and in June 1944, a series of American amphibious landings supported by Fifth Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force captured most of the Mariana Islands (bypassing Rota). Although the Darter ran aground and was eventually destroyed by Japanese aircraft after its crew had safely transferred to the Dace, the two submarines had inflicted serious damage on the Japanese fleet as well as robbing it of the element of surprise. The "Southern Force" under Vice Admirals Shoji Nishimura and Kiyohide Shima would strike at the landing area via the Surigao Strait. 2 turret, with a second just below the first. The destroyer USSJohnston was the closest to the enemy. Ozawa transferred his flag to the light cruiser yodo. While the Battle off Samar was raging between the Japanese surface fleet and Taffy 3, Taffy 1's escort carriers were supporting the American surface ships after the Battle of Surigao Strait when daylight broke (the nighttime Surigao Strait action meant no carrier aircraft could participate until after dawn, during which the defeated Japanese southern fleet was in full retreat). Vice Admiral Lee, who had correctly deduced that Ozawa's force was on a decoy mission and indicated this in a blinker message to Halsey's flagship, was similarly rebuffed. Contents 1 Background 2 Battle of the Sibuyan Sea 3 Battle of Surigao Strait 4 Battle off Cape Engao 5 Battle off Samar 6 Aftermath Love Battle 360? The effect was devastating. On 22 October, Halsey had detached two of his carrier groups to the fleet base at Ulithi to take on provisions and rearm. A second wave from Intrepid, Essex and Lexington later attacked, with VB-15 Helldivers and VF-15 Hellcats from Essex, scoring another 10 hits on Musashi. When the search aircraft made contact at 07:10, this strike wave was orbiting ahead of the task force. 4 Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers went down with Gambier Bay. [38], Planes from the carriers Intrepid and Cabot of Bogan's group attacked at about 10:30 scoring hits on the battleships Nagato, Yamato, and Musashi, and badly damaging the heavy cruiser Myk which retired to Borneo via Coron Bay. Adm. William (Bull) Halseys Third Fleet covered the landings with carrier-based aircraft and guarded against attacks by the Japanese fleet. However, one Japanese aircraft (a Yokosuka D4Y3 Judy) slipped through the defences, and at 09:38 hit the light carrier USSPrinceton with a 551lb (250kg) armor-piercing bomb. The Battle of Leyte Gulf is the largest naval battle in World War II and in history. Halsey also held an overwhelming advantage in air power: not only were his pilots more experienced than the raw recruits that the Japanese were rushing into service, but just one of his heavy carriers boasted an air complement that equaled that of the entire Japanese decoy fleet. It was fought during the Pacific War of World War II, in the seas surrounding the Philippine island of Leyte from 23 October to 26 October 1944 between the Allies and the Empire of Japan. [82] This was the last act of the Battle off Cape Engao, andapart from some final air strikes on the retreating Japanese forces on 26 Octoberthe conclusion of the Battle for Leyte Gulf. After this battle, Japan never sailed again in comparable force. Kurita turned his fleet around to get out of range of the aircraft, passing the crippled Musashi as his force retreated. The United States lost 1 light carrier, 2 escort carriers, and several other vessels. TF34 TO ENGAGE DECISIVELY AT LONG RANGES. The four main actions in the battle of Leyte Gulf: 1 Battle of the Sibuyan Sea 2 Battle of Surigao Strait 3 Battle of (or 'off') Cape Engao 4 Battle off Samar. Gambier Bay sighted a cruiser, and claimed at least three hits. However, Morison states that Admiral Lee said after the battle that he would have been fully prepared for the battleships to cover the San Bernardino Strait without air cover,[88] as each of the escort carriers of TF77 had up to 28 planes on them, but little surface ship protection, from Kurita's traditional naval force, which lacked air support. One message from Kinkaid, sent in plain language, read: "My situation is critical. This, of course, was entirely the point. Halsey's withdrawal of all six of Lee's battleships in his attempt to assist Seventh Fleet had now rendered TF38 vulnerable to a surface counterattack by the decoy Northern Force. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, was the biggest naval battle in modern history. Kinkaid's light escort carrier group, lacking battleships for naval action and set up to attack ground troops and submarines, not capital ships, positioned itself south of the strait to support the invasion force.

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