Leyte Gulf: The Battle That Made the U.S. Navy the World's Most Dominant

Robert Farley

Security, Asia

But could it have ended differently?

The Battle of Leyte Gulf left the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) almost utterly broken. Three battleships were lost, including the super-battleship HIJMS Musashi. Four aircraft carriers had been sunk, along with some ten cruisers and eleven destroyers. Exact numbers of Japanese losses are difficult to come by, because the battle gave free rein to US submarines and aircraft carriers to wreak havoc across the region. For example, the battleship HIJMS Kongo was lost to submarine attack three weeks after the battle, while relocating from Brunei to Japan. The rest of the IJN would struggle to reconstitute itself in any useful manner for the duration of the war, with many vessels sunk by U.S. carrier raids against bases in Japan. The battle dramatically curtailed the ability of Japan to resist the final Allied campaigns of the war.

The Kamikazes

Leyte Gulf did reveal one final Japanese weapon, however. Although both American and Japanese pilots had made suicide attacks (generally under extreme conditions) earlier in the war, Leyte Gulf saw the first organized efforts to use suicide aircraft for tactical effect. Not long after narrowly escaping Admiral Kurita’s Center Force, the escort carriers of Taffy 3 came under concerted attack from a unit of Japanese suicide planes. Most of the carriers were damaged in the attacks, with St. Lo succumbing after a direct hit from an A6M Zero. Although the attacks could not turn the tide of the battle, they offered an ominous harbinger of what the rest of the war would look like. 

The Great What Ifs

Leyte Gulf is characterized by its great “what ifs,” generated by the complexity of the Japanese plan and the confused nature of the U.S. response. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the huge disparities in resources between the U.S. Navy and the IJN meant that almost any scenario would have led to the near utter destruction of the fleet. 

What if Halsey had caught Kurita?