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Home > Battle of Leyte Gulf

1 Strategic background

The battles of 1943 had driven the Imperial Japanese Army from its bases in the Solomon Islands, and in 1944 a series of Allied amphibious landings supported by large carrier forces had captured the Marianas Islands. The Allied victory in the battle of the Philippine Sea in June had destroyed Japanese carrier power and established Allied air and sea superiority over the Western Pacific.

This gave the Allies freedom to choose where to strike next. Admiral Chester Nimitz favoured blockading Japanese forces in the Philippines and attacking Formosa (present day Taiwan). Possession of Formosa would give the Allies control of the sea routes to Japan from Southern Asia, severing Japan's links with its garrisons, which would then perish from lack of supplies. General Douglas MacArthur favoured an invasion of the Philippines, which also lay across the supply lines to Japan. Leaving the Philippines in Japanese possession would be a blow to American prestige, and a personal affront to MacArthur, who in 1942 had famously vowed to return. President Roosevelt was called in to adjudicate the dispute; he chose the Philippines.

The Allied options were equally apparent to the Imperial Japanese Navy. Combined Fleet Chief Toyoda Soemu prepared four "victory" plans: Sho-1 (捷１号作戦 Sho ichigo sakusen) was a major naval operation in the Philippines, Sho-2, -3 and -4 were responses to attacks on Formosa, the Ryukyu Islands and the Kurile Islands respectively. The plans were uncompromising, complex, aggressive operations committing all forces to a decisive battle.

Thus, when on October 12 1944 Nimitz launched a carrier raid against Formosa to make sure that planes based there could not intervene in the Leyte landings, the Japanese put Sho-2 into action, launching wave after wave of attacks against the carriers, losing 600 planes in three days, almost their entire air force, and leaving the Japanese navy without air cover.

Sho-1 called for Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's force to lure the U.S. Third Fleet away from the landings using an apparently vulnerable force of carriers. The Allied landing forces, now lacking air cover, would then be attacked from the west by three Japanese forces: Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's force, based in Brunei, would enter Leyte Gulf and destroy the Allied landing forces. Rear-Admiral Shoji Nishimura's force and Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima 's force would act as as mobile strike forces. The latter three forces would consist of surface ships.

The plan was likely to result in the destruction of one or more of the forces, but Toyoda later justified it to his American interrogators as follows:

Should we lose in the Philippines operations, even though the fleet should be left, the shipping lane to the south would be completely cut off so that the fleet, if it should come back to Japanese waters, could not obtain its fuel supply. If it should remain in southern waters, it could not receive supplies of ammunition and arms. There would be no sense in saving the fleet at the expense of the loss of the Philippines.

2 Overview of the battle

The battle consisted of four distinct engagements. See the map to the right.

1. Kurita's force entered the Sibuyan Sea, northwest of Leyte, on 24 October. In the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea it was attacked by carrier aircraft and Musashi was sunk. When Kurita turned around the American pilots thought he was retreating, but he turned again and made his way through the San Bernardino Strait in the night, to appear off Samar in the morning.
2. Nishimura's force headed for the Surigao Strait to the south, where at 03:00 on 25 October it ran into an American battlegroup. In the Battle of Surigao Strait the Japanese battleships Fuso and Yamashiro were sunk, Nishimura was killed, and his surviving force retreated west.
3. Halsey learned of the approach of Ozawa and took the bait, taking his carriers in pursuit on 25 October. In the Battle off Cape Engaño four Japanese carriers were sunk by air attacks. Ozawa's surviving ships fled for Japan.
4. Kurita arrived off Samar at about 06:00 on 25 October. With Halsey away in pursuit of Ozawa, the only American forces between Kurita and the landing beaches were three groups of escort carriers and their destroyers. But in the Battle off Samar, desperate American destroyer torpedo attacks, relentless air attacks and bad weather bluffed Kurita into turning back.

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Topics: Battle Of Leyte Gulf Force Japanese October Forces Kurita...

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