1944 Naval Battle of Leyte Gulf

C-Span ^ | October 1st 2014 | James Hornfischer

[laplata]

Anyhow, it may have been true in the case of the Johnston but was most assuredly not true in his case.

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Thanks for that admission.

[laplata]

Glad your FIL made it. I lost an uncle to a kamikaze attack off Okinawa. He was on a destroyer pulling picket duty.

[yarddog]

I used to work with 3 government agents who were all in the pacific during WWII. They were all Navy and were on different ships. When they were together they would often talk about the war.

I can recall them talking about the Kamikaze attacks, the Philippines campaign and most of all, the great typhoon which struck the fleet.

[laplata]

Brave men in very bad situations.

[Rockpile]

The USN had 99 aircraft carriers on VJ Day. Fleet carriers, light carriers and over fifty escort carriers plus more carriers under construction.

I think we lost ten during the war plus some didn’t have repairs finished since the war ended.

[GeronL]

99 wow

[eartrumpet]

I read an account where somebody misidentified a little sandbar island as an enemy ship at night and slid two torpedoes up on the beach. Made a perfect shot.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Halsey should have been relieved of command. His job was to support the Leyte landings not go tearing after a Japanese fleet sent to lure him out

Leyte was a close run thing but thanks to Admiral Kincaid Admiral Oldendorff and the destroyers we won that one

[Jimmy Valentine]

Surigao Strait was revenge for Pearl Harbor. USS West Virginia USS Maryland USS Pennsylvania USS California crossed the Japanese “T” and destroyed that whole group

[TalonDJ]

Plus he sailed into Typhoons twice.

[Colonel_Flagg]

That was such dangerous duty. I had another relative on a second jeep carrier that took a kamikaze hit — might even have been in the same campaign as your uncle.

He said he walked through a doorway and closed the door behind him as the plane hit. Everyone in the section he had just left was killed. Said it gave him nightmares for many years.

[Boowhoknew]

That's quite a bit of history for 1 man to go through. I regret not having known him. That kind of person, once plentiful, is a rare commodity now days. As a side note, I got to know a man who was on a escort carrier at Leyte Gulf,who survived the kamikaze attack which sank the USS St. Lo, previously named the USS Midway.The Midway name went to a Essex class carrier, and the crew grumbled about bad luck in a name change.He was friends with my parents in the 60s, when our parents all were in their best years I guess. Thanks for the reply.

[Boowhoknew]

yeah, that’s the one. I wondered for years where my copy went, finally found one on eBay. How did you come across that one?

[X Fretensis]

Thanks, My dad was quite a man.

[PLMerite]

I just did an image search with the info you posted and someone had scanned it into the net.

If ebay lets you down for things, sometimes Amazon has third-party sellers of old/odd magazines.