Japanese carrier Zuikaku sinking at Leyte Gulf.
The Japanese commander's penchant for melodrama kept the crew on board far too long to salute the ship as it was sinking costing the lives of half of them.
Posted on 10/25/2015 6:51:24 PM PDT by harpygoddess
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt (wiki) in 1415, when the English under King Henry V defeated the French on St. Crispin's Day (25 October) of that year. Henry (1387-1422) followed his father King Henry IV to the throne in 1413 and two years later announced his claim to the French throne and rekindled the Hundred Years War by invading Normandy.
This is also the anniversary of the "the charge of the Light Brigade" (wiki) at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854. Although of relatively little importance in the larger context of the Crimean War, Balaclava has emerged as its most famous encounter because of Tennyson's poem, which immortalizes the brave, but foolhardy, British light cavalry assault on massed Russian guns and infantry at the end of a shallow valley near Sevastapol. Of the 673 men who started out, 118 were killed outright, and only 195 remained on horseback at the end of the encounter.
And finally, today is the anniversary of the largest naval encounter of World War II in the Pacific, the Battle of Leyte Gulf (wiki) (which actually lasted from 23 to 26 October 1944), in which the U.S. Third and Seventh Fleets decisively defeated the Japanese Combined Fleet after the latter sortied in an attempt to destroy the forces supporting the ongoing Allied invasion of the Philippine Islands. The U.S. victory at Leyte Gulf essentially destroyed the Japanese Navy as a fighting force, and its remnants posed little threat for the remaining months of the war.
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Ah! This has been one of my favorite subjects for a long time, the parallel between “The Charge of The Light Brigade” and the Battle of Leyte Gulf! Here is what I wrote just the other day...
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Yes...great book, amazing battle.
I am a movie buff, and have always wished that someone had made a movie about that battle.
The scale of the battle was huge. The stakes were high. The sub-plots were astounding.
Halsey, itching for a fight, taking the bait, and through a common clerical error which threw gasoline on the fire, ends up to his dying days fighting what he viewed as slander by people who questioned his actions, all under the shadow of the words “The world wonders”.
On the other side, almost simultaneously, the Davids of the US Navy in Taffy3 against the Goliaths of the Imperial Japanese Navy and their battleships, darting in, really, the unbelievable parallel to “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.
The destroyers of Taffy 3 with bones in their teeth sailed directly at the Japanese battlewagons, their five inch guns like the sabres of the Light Brigade being flashed in the air, they “Volley’d and thunder’d” like hooves, as the superstructures of the battleships flashed with impacts. They sailed under full steam to what many of them, like the calvary in Tennyson’s poem, assumed was going to be their certain death...”Someone had blunder’d”.
Halsey, in full pursuit to the north, gets the communication from his boss who is trying to discreetly ask what Halsey was up to without ruffling his feathers, ending with Halsey losing it on the bridge of the New Jersey and throwing his hat to the floor in white hot anger and shame as “All the world wonder’d” in Hawaii what was going on.
You could not make this up.
And then, Typhoon Cobra just a month or two later.
With the way they could use computer graphics to recreate that, with the real, unadulterated story line from history, that would be quite the production.
“The Battle of Leyte Gulf”.
Can’t help but laugh at “Agincourt”. If you’ve ever been to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, you might know why.
The Brits continued their tradition of foolhardy charges against the enemy with the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey, WW I.
Wasn't like that was the only time he did that with a typhoon. December, 1944 and June, 1945.
Wasn’t quite chilly enough to wear my Cardigan today...but did skip into my Raglan sleeved Panther’s jersey.
Japanese carrier Zuikaku sinking at Leyte Gulf.
The Japanese commander's penchant for melodrama kept the crew on board far too long to salute the ship as it was sinking costing the lives of half of them.
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
But Oct 25 is no slouch either.
...slip...
True. They were two very odd occurrences for him. Inexplicable. He had a reputation up that point of a man who understood weather and how to navigate in it.
Just odd.
Thing was, that kind of action by a IJN Captain wouldn’t even cause so much as a bat of the eye. The rest of the IJN didn’t regard that as a hazarding of their mens lives.
As we consider the above we must also acknowledge that Gallipoli was a planned attack that went awry and Churchill, whose career was in tatters in the aftermath, slinked away in humiliation. He salvaged his career, which he believed to be over, by his actions at the front lines of WWI.
The Charge of the Light Brigade though was the result of a miscommunication, with the Brigade attacking the wrong position.
There is a terrific book about the Leyte battles called “The Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.”.
Yes...read it...excellent book!
I will say, I tend to be a little on the forgiving side...it was war, and we had these older admirals under a huge strain. I am surprised more of them didn’t just snap.
Of course, regardless of what one thinks of John McCain, he was a crusty sailor indeed, fell on the sword for Halsey and The Naval Service, and died his first night back at home after the war.
“Halsey, itching for a fight, taking the bait,”
Leyte Gulf, went exactly as planned for the Japanese.
Had Kurita “Damned the Torpedoes” and pressed his advantage, bought at such a high price, he could have devastated the landing forces, and bought Japan another 6 months of open supply routes to the south. (Oil going north, ammo and supplies going south, raw materials from China).
It is just one of those twists in the fog of war. If Kurita had pressed...IF Taffy 3 had not attacked so ferociously...IF...IF...
It could have gone sideways in soooo many directions.
Crispen’s Day Speech
William Shakespeare, 1599
Enter the KING
WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
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