On board one of the destroyers still pressing the attack down in the strait, a squadron commodore heard a strange sound overhead and looked up. The remainder of his force, still potent by any standard, continued on across the Sibuyan Sea toward San Bernardino Strait, the passage that would take him to Leyte Gulf.As darkness descended over the Philippines and Kurita's force pressed on toward San Bernardino Strait, Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf, Kinkaid's subordinate in command of Seventh Fleet's Bombardment and Fire Support Group, prepared to meet Nishimura's force approaching Leyte Gulf from the south through Surigao Strait.
To allow him to fall into the hands of an enemy whose propagandists predicted that they would see him hanged publicly in the Imperial Plaza in Tokyo was simply unthinkable. This alone would have been a difficult gauntlet to run. All told, the Japanese had lost two battleships, three cruisers, and four destroyers as a result of this last of the great gun and torpedo battles. "In the final analysis, the battle was not decisive in the same sense that the Battle of Midway had been. With no insult intended toward those who fought there, this Halsey-Ozawa showdown remembered as the Battle of Cape Engano was almost mundane in comparison to the other actions associated with Leyte Gulf. This time the damage to Nishimura's ships was severe.Toward the end of the midwatch in one of the U.S. destroyers retiring from the fray, a young torpedoman peered into the darkness and said, "Would you look at that ?" Losing a battle at sea often meant that even your wounded were lost from a sunken ship and ships that were captured gave the enemy a very expensive war tool. The cast of characters included such names as Halsey, Nimitz, MacArthur, even Roosevelt.

Leyte Gulf occurred late in the war, after several years of conflict, when great battles had become commonplace. "Over there. Without oil, it would only be a matter of time before the once-powerful Japanese war machine would grind to a halt.At battle's end, Japan had lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships (including one of her super-dreadnoughts), nine cruisers, a dozen destroyers, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of airmen and sailors. "The Battle of Surigao Strait proved to be an epoch of history. Turns out, a lot of battles are the largest sea battle of all time. With Halsey's massive striking power lured northward and Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet punch drawn southward to cover Surigao Strait, the landing forces in the gulf were left virtually unprotected and would be easy pickings for a marauding force of gunships such as the one on its way through San Bernardino Strait. All Rights Reserved.This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. General Douglas MacArthur, 25 pounds lighter than he had been three months earlier, removed his gold-encrusted khaki cap and raised it in a final salute to Corregidor, the island-fortress he had been ordered to abandon.In the gathering darkness of those early days of the war, when defeat had followed defeat, the brave but futile stand that MacArthur's forces had made on the fortified peninsula of Bataan had been a welcome ray of light.


As the day wore on, the incoming strikes grew larger in number, and proportionately fewer aircraft succumbed as more and more Japanese antiaircraft batteries fell silent.Her crew had tried to run her aground rather than sink—at least that way her great guns could remain in service as a gigantic shore-battery—but damage to her steering equipment relegated her to slow circles in the Sibuyan Sea, and it seemed only a matter of time before she would succumb. Partly because of a geographical accident and partly because of sensible planning, Oldendorf had prepared quite a reception for Nishimura.Approaching through the confined strait would force the Japanese to maintain a n arrow formation. Where lush vegetation and vibrantly colored tropical flowers had flourished, all that remained was the shattered remnants of an army on the verge of capitulation. Naval Institute Photo Archive (Courtesy of L.E. Ranking battles by their importance has been a bloodsport among military historians as long as there have But what makes a battle decisive? As the lines of battle roll forward to bring you within the zone of operations, rise and strike.Just after midnight on 18 October 1944, the sound of anchor chains rattling in hawsepipes drifted across the still waters of the Lingga Roads anchorage as seven battleships, 15 cruisers, and 20 destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy prepared to get under way.

It's ultimately about shaping affairs on land, which, after all, is where people live.