The Allies won the Battle of Leyte Gulf between 23 and 26 October 19441, the largest naval battle in history, fought in the waters around the Philippines. Japan gambled almost its entire remaining fleet to stop the American landings and lost; the Imperial Japanese Navy was broken as a fighting force.
In October 1944 the largest naval battle in history was fought in the waters around the Philippines. To stop the American return to the islands, Japan gambled almost its entire remaining fleet in one enormous throw. What followed was not one battle but four, spread across hundreds of miles of sea, ranging from the last clash of battleship lines to a desperate stand by a handful of small ships against giants. By the end, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been broken as a fighting force, and the road to Japan lay open.
Part of The greatest battles of the Pacific War · Before: The Battle of Peleliu · Next: Battle of Iwo Jima
Japan's Last Gamble
When American troops began landing on Leyte to liberate the Philippines, Japan launched a complex plan to smash the invasion fleet in the gulf. A decoy force of aircraft carriers, now almost without planes1, would lure the powerful American carriers away to the north. Meanwhile two surface forces of battleships and cruisers would slip through the islands from different directions and fall on the vulnerable transports and landing beaches. It was a bold, intricate scheme that depended on everything going right, against an enemy that had grown vastly stronger since the disaster at Midway.
Four Battles at Once
The fighting broke into separate actions. In the Sibuyan Sea, American aircraft swarmed the main Japanese force and sank the mighty battleship2 Musashi. In the Surigao Strait, an Allied battle line crossed the T of a Japanese squadron2 in the last great duel of battleships in history, wiping it out almost to the last ship2. Far to the north, off Cape Engano, the decoy worked, and Admiral Halsey raced away with the American carriers after the empty Japanese flattops2, leaving the landing area thinly guarded.
The Stand off Samar
That gap nearly proved disastrous. Off the island of Samar, a small American group of escort carriers and destroyers, remembered as Taffy 3, suddenly found itself facing a battle fleet led by the enormous Yamato. Instead of fleeing, the little ships turned and charged3, throwing destroyers and slow escort carriers straight at heavy cruisers and battleships, laying smoke, launching torpedoes and flying every plane they had. Their reckless courage, and the confusion it sowed, helped persuade the Japanese commander that he faced a far stronger force4. At the edge of a breakthrough, he broke off and turned back.
The End of a Navy
Leyte Gulf was a shattering Allied victory. Japan lost battleships, carriers and cruisers it had no way to replace, and its navy never again fought as a serious threat. The battle also saw the first large-scale use of2 kamikaze suicide attacks, a sign of how desperate the war at sea had become. Widely counted as the largest naval battle ever fought5, it secured the American foothold in the Philippines and marked the effective end of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Set it beside the other decisive clashes at sea in our guide to the greatest naval battles in history, revisit the turning point at Midway, or explore the wider war in the greatest battles of the Second World War.