Chapter 24 05. The funeral of the United Fleet

In 1944, the situation in the Pacific battlefield had undergone fundamental changes.Under the continuous attack of the US military, Japan's painstakingly managed defense circle in the Pacific fell apart.Facing the grim situation, the Japanese base camp is not reconciled to perishing.The Japanese war machine has not yet been fatally hit, and the navy and army still have a certain strength.At this time, the Japanese army was like a gambler who had lost their eyes. They insisted on going their own way and continued to implement the war policy stubbornly, intending to resist to the end. At the end of July 1944, US President Roosevelt went to Pearl Harbor to meet with the two generals Nimitz and MacArthur, and decided to launch the Philippine campaign as soon as possible. In October 1944, the U.S. military prepared to capture Leyte Gulf in the eastern Philippines first, and concentrated the Third Fleet of the Central Pacific Theater and the Seventh Fleet of the Southwest Pacific Theater to the eastern waters of the Philippines.The U.S. military, relying on its strong military strength, has not implemented a centralized and unified command of the troops participating in the war. The Third Fleet and the Seventh Fleet are still under the jurisdiction of the Central Pacific Theater and the Southwest Pacific Theater respectively.

Facing the menacing U.S. military, the Japanese army had two internal countermeasures.Commander of the Fourteenth Front Army of Japan stationed in the Philippines, Yamashita Fufumi and Chief of Staff Akira Muto, originally planned to wait for MacArthur to attack on Luzon Island and fight a protracted war on the island.However, the Japanese base camp suddenly changed its mind and changed the scheduled decisive battle in Luzon to the decisive battle in Wright Gulf. Why did the base camp change its mind?Their reasoning: Circumstances have changed.Now the situation is very good, the US military has been hit hard, why hide and fight?Go out and fight with dignity, victory belongs to us!

It has only been a few days since the fall of the Mariana Islands, how dare the staff of the Japanese base camp make such a clamor?It turned out that the "Taiwan Sea Battle" gave the staff officers who knew nothing about the heights of the sky and the depths of the earth a shot of chicken blood. On October 10, 1944, the U.S. Navy suddenly launched a concentrated attack on Okinawa and Taiwan. This was a feint operation in preparation for landing in the Philippines, but the Japanese did not see it. From October 12th to 15th, the air force of the Japanese Combined Fleet launched a counterattack against the American fleet, with a total of more than 900 aircraft participating.The battle report published by the Japanese base camp on the 19th stated that as many as 19 US aircraft carriers were sunk and destroyed!Sinking 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, and 15 destroyers. In short, the "Imperial Japanese Army" has achieved great results, and the US Pacific Fleet lost more than half.In fact, the Japanese are bragging again, and the total loss of the US military is only 2 cruisers.

It stands to reason that the Japanese base camp has long been used to the generals lying about their military exploits, knowing that there is a lot of water in the so-called military exploits, but this time the base camp did not think that the frontline soldiers were bragging and lying, but believed that they had really won the battle, and the US Pacific Fleet was useless. MacArthur, who was about to land in the Philippines, lost his naval cover, didn't he just come to die?Therefore, the base camp revised the battle plan overnight. The absurdity of this "Taiwan Sea Battle" is not limited to the falsity of the battle report.It is said that a small number of people knew that the battle report was very watery, and after pointing it out to their superiors, not only did no one listen, but they were "wearing small shoes".This is strikingly similar to the Soviet Union.

This highlights that in the latter part of World War II, the spirit of the Japanese military had reached its peak.Its characteristic is that it extremely underestimates intelligence collection and the accuracy of intelligence, and the more it fails, the more obvious it is. On October 20, 1944, an amphibious force of the U.S. Army landed on the small island of Leyte Bay in the central Philippines. The Japanese base camp made specific regulations on the tasks of each fleet: the aircraft carrier fleet commanded by Lieutenant General Ozawa Jisaburo went south and acted as a bait in the sea north of Luzon to lure the US fleet away from the landing troops and ships to create fighters for the main fleet; The main force of the Second Fleet commanded by the general went north. Once the main US fleet left Wright Gulf, it took the opportunity to attack the US military and land on the beach, sweeping up the US landing ships and troops; Pincer attack, straight to Wright Bay. In late October, these Japanese fleets headed for Leyte Gulf at the same time.

The Japanese used Ozawa's aircraft carrier fleet as bait, and some strong men had no choice but to cut off their wrists.After the war, Deputy Takeshi Toyoda explained: "If we lose the Philippines and the fleet survives, then the sea lanes between our north and the south will be cut off. If the fleet stays in Japanese territorial waters, then it will not be able to get fuel supplies. If the fleet stays in the South China Sea, then it cannot get supplies of weapons and ammunition. Therefore, if we lose the Philippines, there is no point in keeping the fleet." With the mentality of a desperate gambler, the Japanese navy took action. In the early morning of October 23, the main fleet led by Kurita was accidentally attacked by two U.S. submarines. Two Japanese heavy cruisers were sunk and one heavy cruiser was severely damaged.Of the two heavy cruisers sunk, one of them was Lieutenant Admiral Kurita's flagship.A bad start is not a good sign.

The results and roles played by U.S. submarines in World War II are actually on par with German submarines, but because all arms of the U.S. Navy are outstanding, it is not like the German submarine force that stands out in the navy.In contrast, Japanese submarines, like Soviet submarines, belong to the masters who kill three hundred enemies and lose one thousand themselves. On the morning of October 24, after the U.S. military discovered the Kurita fleet, it dispatched carrier-based aircraft to carry out five batches of bombing.At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, all the battleships of Kurita's fleet were shot and damaged.A heavy cruiser lost its combat capability, and the super battleship "Musashi" was sunk without firing a single shot since it was launched.Suffering such heavy damage, the Kurita fleet had to change course and retreat backwards.

After the Kurita fleet withdrew, the central front temporarily calmed down, while the Surigao naval battle broke out on the southern front.The Surigao Strait is 30 nautical miles long and 10 nautical miles wide, and the water flow in the strait is turbulent.The U.S. military has ambushed heavy troops here, ready to fight. At 2 o'clock in the morning on October 25, the Nishimura Shoji Fleet, which belongs to the main fleet of the Japanese army, blindly sailed into the Surigao Strait, and the brutal night battle broke out in an instant.The U.S. fleet already ambushed here attacked both sides of the Nishimura fleet, sank two Japanese destroyers and damaged one.Nishimura still led the remaining ships to march northward tenaciously.At 3:38 in the morning, Nishimura's flagship was hit by a torpedo, and Nishimura and all officers and soldiers on the flagship were buried in the dark seabed.The Japanese fleet was leaderless and in chaos. In the end, only one battleship and two destroyers of the Nishimura Fleet were able to escape the encirclement.Whether this Lieutenant General Nishimura Shoji is brave or second is left for future generations to comment.

The Shima fleet entered the Surigao Strait 1 hour after Nishimura's death.By 5:00 a.m., Shima spotted the U.S. fleet and the wounded and escaped Japanese ships.Seeing that the situation was not good, Zhimo hurriedly ordered the ships to turn their rudders, and fought back while fleeing for their lives. After this battle, the Japanese army's plan to attack Wright Gulf from the south was declared bankrupt.In the Battle of Surigao, the Nishimura Fleet sank 2 battleships, 1 cruiser and 3 destroyers, the Shima Fleet damaged 2 cruisers, and killed more than 5,000 Japanese troops. The U.S. only sank 1 torpedo boat, damaged several destroyers, and killed 41 people.It seems that the gap between the Japanese Navy and the US Navy is not only in terms of weapons and equipment.

According to the pre-plan, the aircraft carrier formation commanded by Ozawa successfully attracted the main US fleet to take the bait at around 5 pm on the 24th, thus eliminating the danger of the Kurita fleet being encircled and wiped out.The Ozawa fleet consists of 1 large aircraft carrier, 3 light aircraft carriers, 2 aviation battleships and more than 20 other ships.The U.S. military thought that this was the main Japanese fleet. In fact, after the Mariana naval battle, the Ozawa fleet's carrier-based aircraft had been completely lost, and it almost lost its combat capability. It could only serve as "bait".

On the morning of October 25, the Ozawa Fleet had attracted the main US fleet several hundred nautical miles away from Wright Gulf.The U.S. carrier-based planes bombarded the Ozawa fleet indiscriminately, and the Japanese aircraft carriers that lacked protection capabilities became "targets" floating on the sea, and they were all sunk by U.S. planes in an instant. It was under the support of the Ozawa fleet that the Kurita fleet narrowly escaped death.After the Kurita fleet escaped, they did not evacuate, but took advantage of the night to head straight for Wright Gulf.However, due to the interruption of the contact between Ozawa and Kurita, Kurita feared that the main US fleet was nearby, so he did not dare to launch an attack on Wright Gulf rashly, so he missed the opportunity. At dawn on October 25, the Kurita Fleet encountered a U.S. aircraft carrier formation. Kurita thought this was the main U.S. fleet, so he launched a sea pursuit that was rare in the history of world naval warfare.In this pursuit battle, one US aircraft carrier and three destroyers were sunk, and two other destroyers were injured.Four Japanese heavy cruisers were sunk.After the pursuit battle, Kurita Electric ordered his ships to withdraw from the battle, but failed to launch an attack on Wright Gulf, which was only tens of nautical miles away, and missed an excellent opportunity. After Kurita missed this opportunity, the US main fleet has outflanked the Kurita fleet from all directions.Under the circumstances, Leyte Gulf has become a death trap.Therefore, Kurita decided to give up attacking Wright Gulf and turn to the open sea for a decisive battle with the US military.However, Kurita did not even find the shadow of the US aircraft carrier formation, and the fuel of the Japanese destroyers was running out, so Kurita had to return to the base. At this time, the main U.S. fleet seemed to wake up from a dream, and rushed to the south in an attempt to catch up with the Kurita fleet. However, except for sinking a few small ships that fell behind, the U.S. military failed to do so.So far, the four-day Wright Gulf naval battle came to an end. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, despite its size, had little to boast about in its method of operation, and was in fact a melee at sea.The Japanese Navy is like a bunch of gamblers, who gambled recklessly and ended up losing almost all their money.After this naval battle, the Japanese navy suffered further blows, the combined fleet became a historical term, and the Pacific Ocean completely became an American lake.