The Battle Of Leyte Gulf

3 Pages 867 Words

The last great battleship engagement in history was the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October of 1944. By late 1944, it was starting to become obvious that desperate measures were needed to be taken to stop the onslaught of the United States Navy. The strength of the U.S. Navy had been growing at an alarming rate, and to make matters worse, nearly every time the Japanese navy had fought with the U.S. navy the Japanese took a terrible beating.
The fall of the Philippines would be a terrible blow to the Japanese, but they had no way to prevent it. After the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Japan only had a handful of planes and even fewer pilots to fly them. Because of this, there carriers were totally useless, except if they were used as decoys.
This was the basis of Japan’s brilliant plan. They would lure the powerful and dangerous Third Fleet under Admiral Nimitz away to chase the empty aircraft carriers. Then, they would ambush the slow and unarmored Seventh Fleet, under General MacArthur.
Admiral Ozawa would steam down from the north with the “bait.” If the Third Fleet took the “bait,” the surface units of the Japanese Navy under Admiral Kurita would attempt to spring a deadly trap. A small force consisting of two battleships, a heavy cruiser, and four destroyers would sneak through the Surigao Strait, followed by three more cruisers and four destroyers sailing in from Japanese home waters. However the main force would sail from Brunei consisting of five battleships, twelve cruisers, and fifteen battleships. They would sneak through the San Bernardino Strait, loop around the island of Samar, and smash the Americans.
The Japanese would fight a fleet that consisted of 151 LSTs (landing ships, tank), 58 transports, 221 LCTs (landing craft, tank) and 79 LCIs (landing craft, infantry), and hundreds of other vessels in five battles.
The first stage of the Japanese Navy’s trap did not go so well. As they advanced up the Pal...