"Tarnished victory : Battle for Leyte Gulf" Topic

Do you agree it was a "Tarnished victory"? Would a single command decreased the loss of life? Robert

Tarnished victory : divided command in the Pacific and its consequences in the naval battle for Leyte Gulf

"The Battle for Leyte Gulf in October 1944 was the largest naval battle of World War II both in terms of the number of ships involved, and the expanse of area the battle covered. The battle was a decisive victory for the Allied Forces, who effectively crushed the might of the Japanese Navy for the remainder of the war. The Joint Chiefs made the decision to keep command in the Pacific divided in the early months of the war. The Joint Chiefs were presented with opportunities to resolve this problematic command structure as the war progressed, but they chose to perpetuate the division. This decision, directly contributed to disunity of effort, differing objectives, poor communication, and tragically, unnecessary loss of life during the Battle off Samar."
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In my humble uninformed opinion, Halsey has a lot to answer for, and only survived because of his reputation.

I agree with the OFM. And not just for Leyte Gulf

I have always blamed it on a breakdown in communication within the chain-of-command. That is a problem for the commander. With out the benefit of hindsight, Halsey did not know the enemy carriers were without planes and had spent the entire war focus on going after carriers. Fault and lack of followup rests with him. Again not for going after the carriers but for not assuring the safety for the elements left behind.

I agree more with cwbuff. If I were in Halsey's shoes I might have done the same thing. Until that point in the war, carriers were the greatest danger. He couldn't have known that they were without aircraft. I can understand why Halsey may have weighed the two threats and decided the Japanese carriers were the greater of the two. Hell, if you have to decide betwee a couple of enemy heavy carriers and a handful of destroyers and a couple of jeep carriers, I think you go for the big boys.

I think the conflicted command structure was primarily to blame for the fog of war. Even Nimitz seemed to react sluggishly to the situation. Besides, war is messy. There are rarely nice clean victories. Even Rommel screwed up a couple of times.

So, I think Halsey was to aggressive and single minded, but that's a desired characteristic for a CV fleet commander. He messed up here, but I don't think it was a big enough mistake to cashier one of the most successful and important leaders of the Pacific war.

I agree Toshach. The fact that Halsey & many of his staff were sick and stress fatigued didn't help either. Poor communication between Army & Navy certainly existed, and was the fault of both.

Well, we still won big and that's the main thing, although I sort of wish that Halsey had sent his fast battleships back soon enough to catch the Japanese BBs. Now THAT would have been a legendary fight!

But my favorite line of the Pacific War come out of this battle. Some unnamed seaman aboard one of the jeep carriers upon seeing the Japanese force turn away: "Goddam it! They're getting away!"

"We're sucking them into 40mm range!"

Oops, sorry, hit the button before done.

The Author says

"The battle was a decisive victory for the Allied Forces, who effectively crushed the might of the Japanese Navy for the remainder of the war."

OK, what more do you want?

Rule #1 in war. "Young men die."

Rule# 2 "You can't change rule #1."

I really have no patience with works like these which come off to little more than sour-grapes and nit-picking by people who weren't there, weren't in charge, and have the benefit of all the records, all the files and can see everything from not only each side, but top down and bottom up. Somehow reducing the Japanese navy to a force able to only use its battleships on Kamikaze missions is a victory.

Halsey was right. By 1944 land based air, the terror of the war at the start was irrelevant. The United States could field so may carriers and support them with Jeep carriers to keep the heavies crammed with full flight decks mean't that whatever the Japanese sent to land bases were immobile sitting ducks. The Americans slaughtered most of them on the ground in raids. Halsey was right, the carrier was MOBILE and could get away and therefore that's the main point, the main target. Wipe out the Japanese carrier fleet and you wipe out its mobility AND its ability to provide air-cover for its naval forces.

But again, I simply can't get past the fact that most of these authors are like gamers caviling about how it was done.

Hows 'bout this one?,

Halsey at Leyte Gulf: command decision and disunity of effort.
" In October 1944, US forces executed amphibious landings on the Japanese-occupied island of Leyte in the central Philippines. Japanese naval forces, severely outnumbered by the US Third and Seventh Fleets, attempted to stop the invasion by attacking US amphibious shipping in Leyte Gulf. Due to the divided US area commands in the Pacific theater during World War II, the Third and Seventh Fleet commanders, Adm. Halsey and Vice Adm. Kinkaid, reported to separate superiors, Adm. Nimitz and Gen. MacArthur, even though both fleets were supporting the operation. Although the Japanese were soundly defeated, one of the Japanese forces, under Vice Adm. Kurita, nearly reached its objective. Many historians have criticized Halsey for ordering his carrier force to close with a Japanese carrier force that was acting as a decoy, thus leaving the US forces in Leyte Gulf unprotected. Although Halsey was effectively decoyed, the divided US naval chain of command amplified problems in communication and coordination between Halsey and Kinkaid. This divided command was more important in determining the course of the battle than the tactical decision made by Halsey and led to an American disunity of effort that nearly allowed Kurita's mission to succeed. "
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How bout Jeff Grimes at the Sales Meeting.

The Sales Manager reported record sales and markups that exceeeded expectations that year, and everyone did a bang up job. We knocked the competition almost out of the market.

Jeff Grimes gets up and starts ragging on the Sales manager that he didn't get the $4,200 USD sales from the Walrite in East Hogslobber Ky, or his salesman didn't get the $1,300 USD from the MomandPop Pharmacy in Buttcrack Tenn., but the total sales hit $50 USD million which was $7 USD million over what we projected.

After Leyte, the Japanese were done. I'll give Halsey his oops. As for Kurita, he had about as much chance of fulfilling his mission and destroying the landings as Jeff Grimes of selling ice water in the Sahara.

Stop nit picking the heroes of WWII. Could the author have done better.

No one puts up a statue to a critic.

It's the same thing.

Just the response I expected.Thanks. Thanks to the other fellow members for your responses. I appreciate them.Robert

Point blank: Halsey blew it at Leyte. He became fixated on the IJN carriers at the expense of covering San Bernadino Strait. And that gave Kutita a straight shot into Samar. But for the incredible work of a handful of DDs, DEs and CVE aircrews, he could have succeeded. If you want a complete run down, I suggest H.P. Wilmott's 'Leyte Gulf'.

Thanks coastal2. I'll just have to check that out. Robert

As a well-trained submariner, I can't fault Halsey for going after the high-value aircraft carrier targets. And that's not just because I served with a grand-nephew of his.

Did he over-reach a bit and left his DDs and CVEs hanging? yeah. But I still cannot fault him for going after big game.

He can be faulted for leaving the strait uncovered. Which was in his orders to cover. That he was split between two diverse objectives and had a difficult command problem goes without saying. But that comes with the gold stars on your collar. Just a little background: Nimitz, et al were under the impression (based on previous comm with Halsey) that he had detached TF 34 to cover San Bernadino Strait. In fact, he had not… and didn't tell anybody that. When the infamous 'the world wonders' message was received (BTW, the supposedly offending parts were strictly padding for the RT message), instead of immediately ordering the detachment of TF 34, Halsey went into a fit and didn't detach TF 34 for a FULL HOUR.

Sorry Otto and Lion, Halsey doesn't get a mulligan for this.
That it was not Halsey's finset hour, that's clear. Good commanders have bad days. And they take the hit for them. Unfortunately, Halsey's 'bad day' was a costly one for the USN destroyermen…

Both sides only had one effective weapon in the Pacific War – their carriers. Everything else was secondary. Gamers and historians just want to fantasize about climactic surface engagements.

The USN submarine arm might have something to say about that….

Sorry, Number6, that's a gross over simplification. The US subs were strangling the Japanese home islands long before the first B29 made its appearance overhead. And it wasn't the air arm that was exchanging fire in The Slot as the IJN tried to keep the Canal supplied and USN tried to stop them.

Apologist for Halsey. The fact is he should have told someone he was taking the entire covering force for the invasion on a wild goose chase. At least leave one heavy carrier and an Iowa class BB.

The Japanese plan worked and if it wasn't for the Japanese Admiral getting cold feet, it would have been an even worse tragedy.

But this isn't what got him in hot water. Later in the war he sailed his fleet on two different occasions directly into a typhoon. On both occasions he had plenty of warning. He nearly lost his command by a official board of review. Only Nimitz's intervention and a timely cover picture on Time magazine saved his command.

There is a TMP thread that discusses this in more detail but I can't find it. I think it was a poll suggestion or a poll comment.

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As I noted elsewhere, whatever one's opinion of Halsey in general or his performance in this campaign in particular, the "winner" at Leyte Gulf was Clifton Sprague. If there's a statue to _his_ memory anywhere, I'm not aware of it.

Edit to add: Okay, he's got a bust in San Diego next to museum ship USS MIDWAY. Good.