It was a good read and i enjoyed the book. Cutter used several good sources, such as US and Japanese diaries and postbellum memoirs that were interesting to me.

8/10 Recommend ( )

The Battle of Leyte Gulf is usually described as the largest naval battle in history.* For the American navy, it opened an era of dominance that lasts until the present day. For the Imperial Japanese Navy, it was effectively the end. There were four essentially separate sub-battles, plus some preliminaries and side conflicts. The Americans had two separate fleets, the Japanese four. And yet, the story of the battle really revolves around just two people, American admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey and Japanese admiral Takeo Kurita.

The battle arose because the Americans were attacking the Philippines, starting with the island of Leyte. Halsey's ships were there to cover the landing; the Japanese were trying to destroy enough of the attacking fleet as to allow their troops to beat off the invasion. If they could do that, perhaps they could hold out until war-weariness overtook the Americans.

Unfortunately, Japanese naval aviation had been destroyed over the last few months. They still had some aircraft carriers, but no planes. Carriers had become the key element in naval war, and the Americans had them. So the Japanese had to find a way to overcome that decisive American advantage.

They came up with a plan -- a very chessmaster-type plan, with a deliberate sacrifice to open the way for other pieces. They would offer their defenseless carriers as "bait," and use them to lure the American carriers away from Leyte, so that their still-formidable force of battleships could sneak in behind them and destroy the American transports.

The fancy plan came near to disaster. The American carriers found the main Japanese battleship force, under Kurita, before they spotted the carriers, and sent everything they had after him. Kurita's force was badly hurt (losing among other things its newest battleship, the Musashi). The pressure on Kurita was so severe that he turned and fled.

But not for long. After he turned back, Halsey's carriers found the Japanese carriers -- and Halsey rushed to the conclusion that Kurita was no threat, and took every unit he had to go chase the Japanese carriers. He got them, all right -- every true Japanese carrier was sunk. But by chasing them with all his forces, he left the chance for Kurita to turn around. Which Kurita did.

The American forces left behind weren't entirely defenseless. They had a force of battleships -- but these had been set to Surigao Strait to deal with a second battleship force under Admiral Shoji Nishimura. The Americans pulverized Nishimura, but they were out of position to fight Kurita's force when it returned. Kurita found himself in the middle of the all-but-helpless American American transport fleet. Kurita sank an escort carrier and several destroyers and destroyer escorts, and was on the brink of getting in among the American transports, his true objective.

And then Kurita, having put himself in a winning position, gave up and turned back. The battle was over, the invasion of the Philippines was safe, and the Americans had won. They had lost more than they should have, but they had broken the Japanese carrier force, and reduced the battleship force, without suffering irreparable damage themselves.

Both sides had made mistakes, Halsey in not leaving a defensive force in case Kurita changed his mind and Kurita in giving up his fight. These phases of the action author Cutler describes in detail and, as best I can tell, with high accuracy. It's the psychology that gets interesting. This is naturally much harder. Cutler can't really give much of an answer about why Kurita did what he did; no one can. Halsey is easier; although he hated the nickname "Bull" (which began as a typo for "Bill"), he really was as stubborn -- and as single-minded and unimaginative -- as a bull. He wanted those Japanese carriers, and he wasn't going to worry about anything else. And so he gave Kurita his chance -- and Kurita muffed it. Beyond that we really can't go, and Cutler, apart from some minor speculations, doesn't try.

That doesn't make this a perfect book. It would really have helped to have an Order of Battle for Leyte Gulf -- that is, a list of which ships were under whose command. It's hard to appreciate, e.g., the American advantage if you don't realize that they had about fifteen carriers, with planes, to the Japanese four, without planes. There is a wisecrack that Admiral Marc Mitscher didn't "look a day over eighty," which doesn't make much sense unless you know that he was just 57.

And there is a problem that has bugged me for years. The Japanese lost two battleships at Surigao Strait, Fuso and Yamashiro. They died in different ways and at different times. I've read four accounts of the battle, and two say Fuso was the first to go and two say Yamashiro. It is true that the two were sister ships and looked very alike. It's easy to understand that they could have been confused by the Americans (who wrote most of the accounts, since the Japanese forces were destroyed). But in this fullest account of the battle, wouldn't it be better to know why author Cutler says which one was which?

These are relative nitpicks. This is a readable account of a great battle, and it helps us understand the "fog of war" and the fact that "surprise is a condition that happens in the mind of a commander." But if you're looking for the answer to every question, there are a few things you won't find here.

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FOOTNOTES:

* There is some dispute on this point. In terms of naval vessels in the vicinity, and total tonnage, Leyte Gulf is surely the biggest battle of all time. But many of the American ships were simply present for the invasion of the Philippines, and were not really involved in the battle itself. Whereas at the Battle of Jutland, the other candidate for "greatest battle," every ship present actually fought the enemy navy. So there is a case to be made for each. ( )

Thorough with many personal references. Excellent bibliography ( )

A terrific narrative history of what may have been the last great naval battle. ( )