NARRATOR: Battle of Leyte Gulf. While William Halsey's Third
Fleet has been pummeling the Japanese carriers
off Cape Enga o, the American landing forces
in Leyte Gulf have been caught completely off guard. [cannon firing] Vice Admiral Takeo
Kurita's Center Force. The force Halsey thought
was retreating in fact turned around, sailed all night
through the San Bernardino Strait, entered
the Philippine Sea, and steamed south toward
Leyte Gulf early this morning. With Halsey's Third Fleet
well north sinking carriers, Kurita reached
the Gulf unopposed and is now bearing down on
the American landing forces. Seventh Fleet's battleships
are too far south to lend immediate aid, and the
destroyers and carriers simply don't have adequate firepower. They are hopelessly outgunned. There's no weapon
larger than a 5-inch gun on any of the American
ships in the area. And on the Japanese side,
you have Battleship Yamato, which is armed with 18.1-inch
guns, the largest naval rifles ever installed afloat. They have a second battleship. They have numerous
heavy cruisers. This is a mismatch of
mythic proportions. NARRATOR: But the commander
of one of the small destroyers chooses to stand and make
the best showing he can-- despite the odds. Lieutenant Commander
Ernest E. Evans, commanding the
destroyer USS Johnston, determines to charge the enemy. He had two choices. He could flight or fight. What he did is he
turned his ship, and he actually went, and he
attacked this Japanese armada. NARRATOR: Evans orders
his little vessel to speed toward the vastly
superior Japanese force. He knows the enemy's guns
will be firing on him, but he plans to weave to try
to avoid the killing rounds. And if he gets close enough, he
might just score a lucky hit. [explosions booming] Evans's bold charge inspires
other commanders around him, and soon, many destroyers
join the attack. They go after the
Japanese with both gunfire and torpedoes. They're laying
smokescreens to try to screen the escort
carriers as they're trying to dawdle their
way out at 17 or 18 knots. NARRATOR: Finally
in range, Evans unleashes a torpedo at the
Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano. The torpedo courses through
the sea, and minutes later-- [explosion booming] Blew the valve right off the
front of a Japanese cruiser. NARRATOR: Soon, the Japanese
cruiser Suzuya stops to assist the wounded Kumano. He fired another torpedo, and
he also hit and sunk that ship. NARRATOR: Amid the heavy
gunfire, torpedo attacks, and the hundreds of
planes harassing them, Admiral Kurita and his
commanders are bewildered. The Japanese are
thrown into confusion. They believe that they're
being attacked by more powerful forces than they are. You start seeing Japanese
cruisers getting knocked out. The Japanese
battleships are taking damage to their top sides. It makes it very
difficult for the Japanese to fight a coherent action
against the Americans. They're constantly maneuvering
to avoid air attacks, which in turn makes it difficult
to direct gunfire against the American Jeep carriers. NARRATOR: Like a bear under
attack by a swarm of bees, the Japanese Center
Force falters. Where they thought that
they had a mismatch-- and they really did in terms
of raw material terms-- they are unable to close
with the Americans. They're increasingly harassed
by American air power. And eventually, the Japanese
admiral decides that he's had enough, and he leaves. WILLIAM BODETTE: They
said, the hell with this. They turn around and they
hightail it out of there. NARRATOR: The
battle of Leyte Gulf has ended in utter disaster
for the Japanese Navy. The Japanese losses at Leyte
include 4 aircraft carriers, 3 battleships, 10 cruisers,
11 destroyers, and nearly 14,000 sailors and air crewmen. American losses, by contrast,
are relatively light. One light aircraft carrier,
two escort carriers, two destroyers, two
destroyer escorts, and 1,500 sailors and air crewmen. This really marks the final
demise of the Japanese Navy, and they'll never really
be able to do anything of a concerted nature to
repel any further attacks by the US Navy at this point. It really is the end of an era. NARRATOR: The US Navy has
now eclipsed the force that started a mode of warfare-- carrier warfare-- whose supreme
potential no one had recognized before December 7, 1941. No one knew how carriers
were supposed to operate. Pearl Harbor really
was the initial battle that sort of announced
the beginning of the carrier age warfare. Leyte is the battle that
announces that there's only one navy in the world that is
really capable of doing that sort of warfare,
and it's the US Navy. NARRATOR: The
Battle of Leyte Gulf has another pre-eminent
distinction. It is the largest
naval confrontation in the history of mankind.
