Leyte Gulf

Thank you.

Episode 458, The Battle of Leyte Gulf.

As I told you last week, the Americans quickly won the air and land battles on Leyte, though it would take months to fully secure the island.

But what about the Japanese Navy? I told you last week that what was left of the Japanese combined fleet was ordered to Leyte as soon as it became clear to the Japanese that the Americans intended to land there.

Their mission was to make an appearance, look threatening, then withdraw to the north, and hopefully lure most of the American warships covering the invasion of Leyte into pursuing them, especially the American carriers.

The second force, the southern force, would approach the Philippines from the west, from Borneo, and pass through the Philippine archipelago through the southernmost passage.

That is, it would follow along the northern coast of Mindanao, then turn north and enter Leyte Gulf from the south, where it would attack the Americans' amphibious vessels and cargo ships anchored in the gulf.

This route would be easy going most of the way, but in order to enter Leyte Gulf, it would first have to pass through the narrow Surigao Strait.

The carriers are still there, technically, but there are not enough experienced pilots left to make them dangerous.

They will appear again at Leyte Gulf in October, mostly as decoys, trying to draw the American fast carriers away from the invasion beaches.

That brings us back to David McCampbell.

He is thirty-four years old, which is old for a fighter pilot, and he is serving as commander, Air Group Fifteen aboard Essex.

It lies on the eastern side of the archipelago, near the middle, Mindanao is just a short distance away to the south, and Samar lies within spitting distance to the north.

Best of all, from an invader's point of view, are the open waters to the east of Leyte, called the Leyte Gulf.

Here the water is deep, which allows large ships to get in close, and the island's shore lacks the coral reefs that have fouled up previous American amphibious assaults.

Nimitz's first step in the plan to retake the Philippines was an airstrike against Palau.

There was a risk in moving the invasion date up to October, typhoon season, and indeed a typhoon struck the Philippines in mid-October, but it was already moving on as the invasion date grew near, while the occasional sightings of American ships near the Philippines were dismissed by Japanese commanders.

These must be cases of mistaken identification.

How would the Americans dare to send the tattered remnants of their fleet to the Philippines just after suffering their greatest naval defeat of the war, a defeat worse than at Pearl Harbor? On October 17th, during a driving rain in the aftermath of the typhoon, a handful of American ships led by two light cruisers shelled the tiny island of Suluan at the entrance to Leyte Gulf.

After a brief bombardment, a battalion of U.S. Army Rangers landed on the island and seized the lighthouse, killing or driving off the 32-member Japanese garrison.

By October of 44, he was one of the Navy's leading aces and in command of VF-15.

October 24, the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

The Japanese launched their largest naval operation of the war, a multi-pronged effort to destroy the American landing forces in the Philippines.

It was a desperate gamble.

The sun was barely up over the Philippine Sea when the radar operators aboard the carrier Essex spotted them.

A formation of Japanese aircraft, 60 strong, inbound and tightening up, bearing down on the American fleet at Leyte Gulf.

The largest naval battle in recorded history was already unfolding on the surface and beneath the waves.

Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, all of it.

But Japan could still put airplanes in the sky.

And in October of 44, with American forces landing on Leyte and threatening to sever Japan's supply lines to the south, Japan committed everything it had left in one desperate, all-in move.

The goal was to destroy the American invasion fleet at Leyte Gulf before it could establish itself.

If they could pull it off, the Philippines campaign would collapse.

She was there from Pearl Harbor all the way almost up to that final victory in Tokyo.

And as far as where she was in the interim during that entire time period, she was everywhere within the Pacific, all the major engagements, Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, Philippines, everything.

Do you have nautical miles traveled?

I don't.

They fly against the Bonin Islands, Palau, probably mispronounced that, to kind of soften up some defenses for future invasions.

October, she's in the air battle in Formosa.

Later in October, battle of Leyte Gulf.

They end up helping to sink in Leyte Gulf the battleship Musashi, which is the sister ship to the Yamato.

What am I talking about? Well, On the 81st anniversary of Imperial Japan's surrender, President Trump issued a message that rightly honors the warriors of the greatest generation.

Those men and women answered the call after Pearl Harbor fought across the Pacific Ocean at Midway, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, delivering total victory.

More than 16 million served.

Over 400,000 never returned.

I guess nobody at senior levels in the US military noticed, and they didn't.

Okay? So what you have are 20th century platforms in the US Navy, which is designed to fight Leyte Gulf, too bad it's 80 years in the past, against a dug-in continental power that is specifically recalibrated to fight a modern war with precision strike, with persistent surveillance platforms, with the capacity to strike US military targets across the region and to defend themselves, not just because they're dug in, but because they can reorganize, they can resupply, they can essentially reposition as needed.

And The New York Times and other mainstream sources have said that the damage that the United States military has done from the air, it's essentially negligible at this stage.

And finally, and then I'll turn it back to you guys, but finally, the US military, whose job it was to execute the will of the president.

Yeah

... and Leyte Gulf, and like, this, this region is going to be the next flashpoint, and what that will do to the environment, what that will do f- to global economies is going to be, well, not pretty.

So policy-wise, doubling down, quadrupling down on export mining coal is, I think is...

We need to view coal as a defensive weapon.