Review by Cmdr. Peter B. Mersky, USNR (Ret.)
Of all the history of World Pacific War, the approximately two weeks of October 1944, involving Japan’s last and most bloody strategic attempt to regain its massive momentum of the first two-and-a-half years and that of the U.S.-led Allied originally desperate attempt to stop Japan’s rule of the western and southern Pacific, and especially to retake the Philippines, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, has taken more research, resulting in more pages in magazines and books than any other operation of World War II.
Indeed, this book’s author has now written two campaign series titles in Osprey’s catalog, as well as still yet another soft-cover title (Campaign No. 399),
Philippines Naval Campaign 1944-45: The Battles After Leyte Gulf. And finally, this hard-cover book. Add to all this highly-researched production yet a single Osprey soft-cover book on the ground war,
Leyte 1944: Return to the Philippines by U.S. Air Force veteran and Ph.D., Clayton Chun, and you have a veritable multi-volume modern encyclopedia of the struggle to kick the Japanese out of the Philippine archipelago, as well as perhaps to return the Army’s five-star Gen. Douglas Macarthur to his pre-war throne. After all, with Macarthur’s pressure to overcome Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz’s desire to press on to Japan’s home Islands for at least the last year of the war,
Stille now approaches the same subject to bring it all together with new in-depth research and analysis in a single hard-bound volume. He has set himself a very hard task, but he is up to it.
At first, he begins with a very workmanlike history of the Pacific war’s preceding years bringing Japan’s distinct military and political stories together to establish the nearly monolithic presence in the Pacific that almost accomplished Tokyo’s vision of “Asia for the Asians.”
This single-mindedness of purpose is almost graphically illustrated in every history of the first half of the 20th century east of Hawaii. Consider any folio of photos that accompanies each tome put out by many publishers. Photos of Allied leaders abound with groups of these senior officers struggling to plan their route to the victory they eventually attain. It’s usually President Roosevelt with two of the war’s most identifiable military competitors—Admiral Nimitz and General Macarthur, normally at each other’s throats vying for the president’s attention and support for their widely differing interpretations of the current situation and individual programs of how to fight the war. Yet, in every account of their enemy’s conduct of their war, each Japanese admiral and general is shown alone, in full-dress uniforms and medals, seriously posing for an official portrait, but seldom with the ship and aircraft crews fighting his war.
Leaving the introduction, the author gets into a very serious discussion of the major leaders of the coming engagement. Mired in heavy details that often get perhaps too much for me, frankly, these weighty facts, figures and other aspects get in the way of the overall story of any such historical accounts. The young men on both sides fight to not only destroy targets but simply stay alive.
We eventually get to the units that made up the battle on either side and their equipment beginning with the aircraft involved, with the Grumman F6F Hellcat leading the way, perhaps one of the most naval tractable aircraft of the Pacific war, possessing the combination of maneuverability, armament, speed and ruggedness that made it the victor over the veteran Zero, but still the main fighter of the Imperial Navy since before Pearl Harbor three years earlier and many thousands of miles across the Pacific.
The Japanese Navy was severely hampered by a lack of underway refueling and supply capability, while the U.S. Navy had been developing this vitally important capability for a long time. Japanese logistical support for its aircraft was also inferior. All of which contributed to their inferiority for the coming showdown with the Allied forces during what they called Operation Sho-Go (Victory Plan).
After detailing the setup and preliminary skirmishes, the author gives a barely readable though still very important account of the first major encounters in the Sibuyan Sea north of the island of Panay, where Japanese carriers and fleet ships like the monster battleship Musashi one of two huge BBs, (the other being the Yamato) the world largest and most heavily-armed battleships, fought it out against squadrons of Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers and Curtiss Helldivers, successors to the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers that kept the Imperial ships at bay in the first year of the Pacific war. The U.S. Navy suffered important losses.
The key to understanding this book is Chapter 8: Why combat-experienced Japanese Vice Adm. Kurita Takeo broke off the battle and turned for home, right at the time he had the advantage over the still-strong and nearby American fleet. Kurita did not want to have his forces die in a meaningless death in a final useless engagement contesting the enemy fleet and especially its seemingly uncontrollable carrier airpower and the presence of so many destroyers and cruisers. (Kurita now commanded the Mobile Force’s First Diversionary Attack Force, arguably the most-powerful sub-force in the Japanese line-up. It had no carriers, but among its complement, counted three battleships [among them, the Musashi and Yamato, the world’s largest and most heavily armed BBs] and six heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and no less than nine destroyers.)
This chapter puts a human face on a Japanese admiral struggling with how to decide what his next moves should be as he also decides whether to continue the fight against the Allied surface forces arrayed against him and his dwindling assets, or strike out back to Japan and home, which is what he actually decided to do.
There was also the introduction on Oct. 25, the first organized kamikaze suicide attacks, a very surprising and personal weapon that remained for the next 15 months of the Pacific war. Kamikazes were so much against western understanding that Allied sailors in the ships that were attacked and occasionally sunk by the enemy planes that were now being used in this terrible fashion could never truly understand this drastic development.
Stille’s ability to keep data organized in this lengthy account of what was undoubtedly the greatest naval battle of the 20th century, putting it on a par with the Battle of Midway in June 1942, places this new book and new assessment of Leyte far beyond what I have seen.
