The Battle for Leyte Gulf

"The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval battle of the Second World War and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. It was composed of four separate yet closely interrelated actions, each of which involved forces comparable in size with those engaged in any previous battle of the Pacific War." So writes C. Vann Woodward in his study of the conflict, called The Battle for Leyte Gulf.

I picked this book up because it was on sale and my grandfather fought in this battle, although I don't know exactly what he did (he died when I was sixteen, but I do remember having a map of the Philippines and him showing where he was). He was on the USS Mink, which is not mentioned in this account, but did shoot down two Japanese planes (I am to understand that they were kamikaze pilots. This was the first battle that the Japanese used that suicidal method of attack as a strategy).

The book is short and eminently factual, which makes it sometimes hard to follow. There are maps, but one drawback of a Kindle is that you can't really make them out. So a lot of place names meant nothing to me. Woodward wrote this in 1947, so a lot information was still classified, but it was certainly fresh in people's memories. He is also patriotic, in that he refers to the U.S. as "we" and the Japanese as "the enemy."

Basically, Woodward writes,"The Battle of Leyte Gulf, or as it is sometimes called The Second Battle of the Philippine Sea, spelled the end of the Imperial Japanese Navy as a fighting force." In a kind of all-in bet, they threw everything at the U.S. off the coast of the Philippines. It was fought over four days--October 23rd to October 26th, 1944--and involved 200,000 fighting men on both sides.

The book at times is a long list of men and ships. Some men are more prominent, such as Admiral "Bull" Halsey, who was a man of action. and Admiral Kurita of the Japanese, who made a curious move when he backed off an attack in which he had superior forces. He was unable to explain his change of heart coherently. Woodward, in a bit of literary allusion, writes: "What was needed on the flag bridge of the Yamato on the morning of the 25th was not a Hamlet but a Hotspur—a Japanese Halsey instead of a Kurita. It would be a distortion of history to fix upon the short comings of a personality to explain a failure of this magnitude."

Another Japanese Admiral, Ozawa, had a strange mission, a queen's gambit--use his fleet of aircraft carriers as a diversion, a sacrifice. It did not work, and Ozawa wanted to commit harikari after the battle, but was persuaded that his mission did succeed, it was just in vain. A few names are famous for different reasons today: Admiral John S. McCain, father of the recently deceased senator, was one of the leaders of the attack, and Byron R. White, who was an All-American football player and later a Supreme Court Justice, served as an intelligence officer.

The chapter on the Battle off Samar, which was the heart of the conflict, is the most exciting. There is a lot of American bravery to celebrate, as a group of destroyers held off battleships long enough to establish victory. One of the ships, the Johnston, comes in for special praise: "Steered manually from aft, the Johnston not only managed to remain afloat for two more hours but continued to fight as violent an action as was ever fought by a ship of her class. When the order for a concerted torpedo attack was received, her skipper, Comdr. Evans, was wounded in several places, his ship was severely damaged, her speed reduced, and all her torpedoes expended. Evans nevertheless maneuvered for position to give fire support to the two other destroyers while they ran in for a torpedo attack."

Another man died bravely: "Carr, his body torn open from neck to groin, begged for help to get off the shell. The petty officer took the shell from him and dragged a wounded and unconscious man from the mount. When he returned he found Carr attempting to get the projectile on the loading tray. Carr died within five minutes."

The resulting victory ended the naval war in the Pacific. There was still almost a year of deadly fighting, but that was the Japanese holding onto islands such as Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Woodward didn't know this, but it was the last time battleships were used in war time.

The book is mostly pretty dry, a well-conceived assemblage of facts. There may be other books that are more literary, but I don't think one could top this one for information.