The Battle of Leyte Gulf at 75. Thomas J. Cutler (Ed). Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019.
The Naval Institute Press, via the editorship and authorship of naval officer and historian Thomas Cutler, has brought another fine anthology not just to students and consumers of naval history, but other audiences as well. This effort, about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, is much in the same vein as Thomas C. Hone’s earlier anthology of The Battle of Midway, released in 2013.[1] Leyte Gulf, fought in the waters around the Northern Philippine Islands in late October 1944, was the last great fleet action, pitting the still-powerful Japanese surface fleet against the U.S. Navy’s Seventh and Third Fleets.[2] The battle included at least four separate engagements and many pre- and post-script actions as well. Those four actions—in the Sibuyan Sea, the Surigao Strait, off the Island of Samar, and off Cape Engano—contained enough nail-biting drama, tales of desperate heroism, and controversy to keep naval and military historians writing for, well, 75 years.
As always, there is something new to be said, and perhaps something older that still is worth revisiting. The controversy surrounding Admiral Bill Halsey’s turn to the north to chase a deception fleet while leaving the Leyte Gulf landing forces and their light protection at risk against Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo’s Main Force battleships, cruisers, and destroyers certainly bears revisiting. Disaster was averted, but barely. It is a story that really never grows old.
There are some differences in this effort versus Hone’s earlier work on Midway. While the earlier book looked at the battle topically, this anthology is structurally divided into two parts—original essays and the archives.[3] It also includes a fine retrospective and introduction by Cutler, as well as a short closing epitaph that consists of three short epigrams on the battle from other books published about it.
The original essays will receive the bulk of the attention in this review since they amount to what can be called new scholarship. Oddly, the first entry, a collection of short oral histories of the battles that spans from enlisted ranks to an admiral by A. Denis Clift might have been better placed at the end of the first part or in the archives component of the collection. That said, it does capture the reader’s attention, but if that reader has little knowledge of the battle, they might find themselves missing some context. For example, the opening oral history about the actions of the submarine USS Darter mentions the sinking of the Japanese heavy cruiser Atago. However, readers unfamiliar with the battle might not realize that Atago was Admiral Kurita’s flagship—thus the admiral had to evacuate his sinking ship at night to another. This ominous opening to the battle perhaps provides a key element in understanding his psychology later when he broke off the surface action two days later on the verge of annihilating the lightly protected naval shipping in Leyte Gulf.
The next ten essays flow in roughly chronological order and are authored by a who’s who of naval historians. Lisle Rose and Milan Vego look at various aspects of the planning, operational and otherwise, as well as strategic decision-making leading to the sprawling series of engagements fought over literally one hundred thousand square miles. Norman Friedman offers a rather Corbettian analysis of “Objective at Leyte Gulf,” and Trent Hone examines, once again, Halsey’s key decision to go north on the night of 24-25 October 1944.[4]
Karl Zingheim revisits an engagement that has often received too little attention, the air attacks on 24 October by Third Fleet carriers in the Sibuyan Sea against Kurita’s Main Force, which led Halsey to believe Kurita was no longer much of a threat. Paul Stillwell also addresses the topic of Halsey and the task force he never formed that was supposed to have been commanded by Admiral Willis Lee, one of the naval heroes of the Guadalcanal campaign.[5]
Kevin Delamer takes on the counterfactual, using an allusion to Thucydides’ famous account of the strategic catastrophe of Athens’ loss of her fleet at Syracuse 2500 years earlier—except with Kurita delivering the devastating blow to the American navy, not the Athenian one. His conclusion will surprise many. Vincent O’Hara does yeoman’s work in examining an amphibious landing after the battle proper, in the larger context of the Leyte campaign, at Ormoc Bay. He particularly looks at the idea of sea control, and how battles often do not establish as much sea control as they seem to promise when first won.
Dave Winkler offers a folksy account of “Jack & Jim,” two Americans who participated in the battle and whose last names one does not learn until the very end of the essay. For originality in its approach, this essay took the cake. The reader feels as if they—insert your first name here—are part of Jim’s and Jack’s comradeship by the time the essay is over. James Hornfischer, author of the fabulous Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, revisits a topic that is tailor made for him.[6] He offers an after-the-battle examination of the dimming memory about naval history’s last great fleet action in his contribution, “The Tin Can Sailors are Gone.”
Instead of giving the game away and discussing each essay in depth, I will simply recommend reading them; that way I will avoid the accusation of a series spoilers. Suffice to say, the scholarship for all of them is solid, and the anthology offers refreshing new looks at Leyte Gulf through the prism of today’s concerns and realities.
The archives part of the anthology consists of older articles and memoirs of the battle, to include pieces by Halsey and Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf, the victor of the Battle of Surigao Strait (24-25 October), the last battleship-on-battleship action in naval warfare. The organization and flow for this section was difficult to discern. Being a historian, I would have organized it along chronological lines, with the oldest articles being first followed by articles with subsequent years of publication. That said, they have much to offer and show, when read in order of publication, on the evolution of thinking about the battle as time has gone on.
One caution for readers with little familiarity with the battle as well as the Pacific War in general—it might be better to start with the Part I essay by Lisle Rose that establishes strategic context, and then proceed to Part II of the book before going back to the original essays in order to get a better feel for the overall campaign and its constituent engagements. To say that there is something for everyone in this anthology states the obvious. This diverse collection is highly recommended, and not just for naval history buffs, but also citizens of all stripes. Leyte Gulf was, and is, something of a milestone in human history. There has not been a major naval battle like it, or even approaching it, since. For 75 years the slaughter on the seas that was common prior to it has been largely absent. The Falklands War of 1982 is the only real exception, and the maritime component was not really two fleets opposing each other, but air power versus sea power. One can only hope that perhaps we might get to 100 years since this pivotal battle, and see the release of a similar anthology without any more bloody fleet actions. If that becomes the case, then Leyte Gulf’s significance will only increase.
John T. Kuehn teaches military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He is the author of six books on naval and military history. His latest work is entitled, The 100 Worst Military Disasters in History.
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Header Image: Musashi departing Brunei in October 1944 for the Battle of Leyte Gulf (Wikimedia)
Notes:
[1] Thomas C. Hone, ed. The Battle of Midway: The Naval Guide to the U.S. Navy’s Greatest Victory (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013).
[2] H.P. Willmott, The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last Fleet Action (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 2.
[3] Thomas J. Cutler, editor, The Battle of Leyte Gulf at 75 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019), v-vi.
[4] The reference here is to naval historian and theorist Sir Julian Corbett, author of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press Reprint, 1988), whose chapter one of the second part of his book is entitled “Theory of the Object—Command of the Sea,” 91.
[5] Cutler, ed. The Battle of Leyte Gulf at 75, 34.
[6] James D. Hornfischer, Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (New York: Bantam Books, 2005).