Philippines Naval Campaign 1944-45: The Battles After Leyte Gulf
96 pages
Prof Geoffrey Till
This is another slim, well-illustrated and nicely laid out campaign history in the admirable series published by Osprey. Like its predecessors, it has the same basic format of clear descriptions of the forces and commanders of both sides, followed by a detailed if necessarily concise narrative of the main events. The text is engagingly written and the reader is treated to a generous array of war-time photographs, maps, tables and dramatic double-page artistic re-creations of the various encounters. The latter had a novel feature I have not encountered before; little numbers were discreetly inserted into the pictures to help readers understand what they are looking at. That distant flash on a darkened horizon represented a Japanese transport being torpedoed, or an American escort firing its guns. It all worked, and like its predecessors, this product of Mark Stille is highly recommended.
This recommendation isn’t based just on the quality of the coverage, but also on the extraordinary interest of its subject. Most readers of the Naval Review will be broadly familiar with the famous battle of Leyte Gulf which more or less finished off the Imperial Japanese Navy and opened the way to the final Allied advance on Japan itself. First came the Homeric assault on Iwo Jima, then Okinawa, the death ride of the Japanese super-battleship Yamato (look for the stunning modern film of this on YouTube, which presaged the rise of today’s Japanese navy in so many ways), the choking of Japan by Allied submarines and then the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What is forgotten though, is what happened in the Philippines immediately after the four battles of Leyte Gulf, namely the campaign that led to the liberation of the Philippine archipelago itself. In brief, Manila and the key island of Luzon had to be recaptured, but even with the US Navy dominating the sea area this wasn’t going to be easy. The Japanese, under the redoubtable General Tomayuki Yamashita (the victor in the Singapore campaign of 1941-2) would offer determined resistance, and to get through to Luzon, the Americans would need to penetrate the cloud of smaller islands that were its first layer of defence, and in particular the island of Leyte itself. Both sides considered this the likely epicentre of the campaign.
But, in fact did they? Yamashita actually wanted to concentrate his efforts on Luzon itself and not fritter away his scarce resources on reinforcing Leyte, but was over-ruled. Admiral ‘Bull’ Halsey (who doesn’t come out very well in this account) wanted to bypass the Luzon problem and drive on towards Japan. In this he was supported by the ferocious Admiral Earnest J King, the Navy chief who planned on the way to invade Taiwan as a stepping stone to China, and eventually Japan, if necessary. (There’s a new biography coming that will argue this too). On the other hand, General Douglas C. (“I will return”) MacArthur was determined to fulfil his messianic promise. It turned out there weren’t yet the resources for the Taiwan option, so Macarthur got his way.
What makes this all so interesting is its striking salience for today. Remember, the Philippines is only 180 miles from Taiwan! A few years ago, the then Commandant of the US Marines, General David H. Berger came up with a very controversial plan to transform the Corps into one better suited for a war with China in the island chains of the Western Pacific. The connections between what he recommended, and which are indeed slowly being implemented today, and the implicit lessons of this campaign are uncanny. It’s as though the planners had based their preparations on study of this campaign. First of all there is the need to match up the aspirations of the marines as the landing force and the Navy as the transport and support force; this wasn’t easy then, and it isn’t now.
Then there’s the problem of how to meet those transport and supply requirements in a fast-moving campaign as both sides hopped from island to island. Every time a landing was made, a commitment to support (or attack) followed. Both sides found this difficult in the face of often intense air attack when operating in littoral waters within easy range of land and carrier-based aviation – and the occasional submarine. The Americans had the indifferent Japanese Army air force to contend with and the new hugely more dangerous kamikaze threat; the latter as man-guided missiles were the progenitors of today’s antiship cruise and ballistic missiles operating from the shore. The Japanese needed to run nine reinforcement and resupply convoys into their bridgehead at Ormoc on Leyte. When TF 38 was able to deploy 350 aircraft from nine carriers against these small convoys the result was devastating. But some got through all the same. What worked best for both sides was deception, operating at night, stiffening air defence as much as possible and making maximum use of smaller vessels. Indeed, when the US 7th Fleet launched its main offensive against Leyte it only used small amphibs, not big ones. (Pruning the USMC’s big amphibs was one of the most contentious of Berger’s proposals).
Even what was left of the Japanese fleet had a sting in its tail. Japanese destroyers operating at night, without radar but with the famous Type 93 ‘Long-lance’ heavyweight torpedo, proved deadly in the mini-battle of Ormoc Bay, raising thereby the perennial issue of who has the most effective firepower. But, of course, American numbers (250,000 v 60-70,000 Japanese), professionalism and industrial capacity won in the end; thus the ever-aggressive Halsey was able to use the liberated Philippines as a base from which to ravage Japanese forces in Cam Ranh Bay and the South China Sea.
One could go on, but both for its treatment of a sadly neglected campaign and as kind of for-runner of some of today’s leading issues in the Western Pacific, I really enjoyed this book, and I think you would too.
