Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

Some of those later mopping-up actions fell outside the time boundary set by historians to mark the end of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Even so curtailed, however, the sprawling contest had been the largest naval battle in history. It had involved nearly three hundred ships with combined displacement of about 3 million tons. The contending fleets were manned by about 200,000 men, enough to populate a midsized city. Combined losses were thirty-four ships, more than five hundred airplanes, and more than 16,000 casualties. The contest had included every conceivable variety of naval fighting, by every kind of vessel—carrier strikes, gunnery and torpedo duels between surface warships, submarine attacks, swarming PT-boat attacks, and suicide air attacks. The action included history’s last “battle line” at Surigao Strait, the consummate David versus Goliath fight of the “tin can” sailors at Samar, and the official opening blow of the kamikaze campaign. Lasting four days, the “battle” was really a series of widely separated actions fought over a theater covering 100,000 square miles.