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By Root 1066 0

exception. Marines followed by army infantry landed on the southwest corner, fought their way onto and across the local airstrip, and then had to dig the Japanese out of the caves squad by squad, or one by one. It took seven weeks to secure Peleliu and the surrounding islands of the group. The Japanese, who managed to reinforce with another 4,000 during the fighting, had 13,600 killed, and 400 were taken prisoners. The Americans had 7,900 casualties, including 1,750 dead. Those figures provided the notable factor about Peleliu: it cost the highest casualty rate—nearly 40 percent—of any amphibious assault in American history.

While the assault troops fought it out, changes were in the making. At the Quadrant Conference in Quebec the timetable of advance was quickened. MacArthur and Nimitz had expected to take one more set of intermediate islands before reaching the Philippines. Now it looked as if there were a possibility that they could move straight to the heart of the Philippines instead. Japanese naval power and air strength were obviously weakening—though that was more obvious in headquarters than it was on Peleliu—and it was a time for daring initiatives. Asked if they could advance their timetables, MacArthur and Nimitz both said they could. After feverish staff work and exceptional interservice cooperation, the target date for the invasion of Leyte in the central Philippines was moved up from mid-December to October 20. While army and Marine officers moved frantically to rearrange troop allocations and reinforcement schedules, the navy roamed the Philippine Sea, striking heavily at targets on Formosa and other islands which might be used as supporting bases for the 350,000 Japanese in the Philippines themselves. The end result of these strikes was minor damage to American units, and the destruction of another 650 Japanese aircraft, just as they were attempting to rebuild their shattered squadrons after the beating in June.

In the Philippines, the Japanese were well aware that the Americans were coming. Their troops were commanded by the conqueror of Malaya, General Yamashita. The islands were doomed to succumb to any enemy possessing naval and air control, as the Japanese knew from their own experience in 1941-42. But the archipelago was central to the entire empire; if it fell, all communications with the East Indies and much of Southeast Asia would go with it. The Japanese Army determined to put up a fierce fight for the Philippines, and the navy decided, once again, that while the Americans were tied to the amphibious landing forces, there might just be a chance to wipe them out. If all went well, and if they were lucky, the whole tide of the war might be turned. They set in train what was to become the greatest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

The invasion of the Philippines began on October 20, right on schedule, when units of the U. S. 6th Army, under General Walter Krueger, landed in Leyte, a large island in the center of the archipelago. Yamashita poured in reinforcements, and while the ground troops fought it out, the Japanese Navy moved to implement its immensely complicated plan for the annihilation of the U. S. Fleet.

The Sho Plan, or Victory Plan, called for a complex converging operation by initially widely separated units of the Japanese Navy. The Main Body, under Admiral Ozawa, was to sortie from the home islands, move south, and act as a decoy to draw off Halsey’s 3rd Fleet. The Second Striking Force, Admiral Shima, was also to sail from the home islands, south through the Formosa Strait, west of the Philippines, to the Sulu Sea. There it would fall in with part of the First Striking Force, under Admiral Nishimura, coming north from Singapore and Borneo. This so-called Third Section of the First Striking Force, plus Shima’s Second Striking Force, were to turn northeast and sail into Leyte Gulf via Surigao Strait, where they would pounce on the amphibious assault ships under Admiral Kincaid. Meanwhile, the rest of the ships from the south, redesignated Central Force, were