The Ship Model Forum

Finished this book about two weeks ago. It details the less heralded part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the gun fight between battleships in Surigao Strait (the Battle off Samar being the most famous part of the overall Leyte Gulf battle).

Simply stated, I LOVED this book. It was fast paced, well written and completely fascinating. I learned a lot of things I didn't know before and had some misconceptions corrected. Author Tony Tully is one of the co-authors of "Shattered Sword", so if you like the writing style of that book, you'll like Surigao Strait.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - go out and get this book, from your library or favorite book seller. It's a really great read.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

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I checked it out at a local library and agree. I've always been more interested in the battle of Surigao than the other battles for Leyte Gulf since it was a (more or less) straight battleship vs battleship fight. I'm just starting to read it and one of the things I like about it is view of of events from the Japanese side.

What makes it so interesting is that it represents the Japanese finally committing it surface warships to a decisive battle.
This operation was supposed to take place in conjunction with a full commitment by the IJN naval airforces. Both operating at full commitment at the same time. But the USN Carrier raids triggered the IJN naval airforces to react and shoot their bolt before the IJN surface forces committed to defeating the invasion. By all rights, the IJN naval air should have played the rope-a-dope against the USN Carrier raids and then been available to offer some support to the BBs and CAs.
I agree, this battle is fascinating. The IJN wouldn't unleash it's big gun forces 'en mass until it was far too late in the war. Naval air power as used by the USN had far outstripped the era of big gun warships by this time. But you have to give the Japanese their due. With a bit more pluck, some of their surface attacks might have had much more success.
And it did give the older USN BBs one last chance to execute destruction in narrow waters at night. Not at all what a BB was designed to do, but things had changed by 1942-44. Close quarters at night had become the scenario for big guns by then.
Bob B.