This offensive breached Japan's strategic inner defense ring and gave the Americans a base from which long-range Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers could attack the Japanese home islands.

[16] However, the considerable land-based air power the Japanese had amassed in the Philippines was thought too dangerous to bypass by many high-ranking officers outside the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Admiral Chester Nimitz.

[30] Darter and Dace traveled on the surface at full power for several hours and gained a position ahead of Kurita's formation, with the intention of making a submerged attack at first light.

Halsey finally recalled McCain on 24 October—but the delay meant the most powerful American carrier group played little part in the coming battle and Third Fleet was therefore effectively deprived of nearly 40% of its air strength for most of the engagement.

The fire was gradually brought under control, but at 15:23 there was an enormous explosion (probably in the carrier's bomb stowage aft), causing more casualties aboard Princeton, and even heavier casualties—241 dead and 412 wounded—aboard the light cruiser Birmingham which was coming back alongside to assist with the firefighting.

The destroyers initially attempted to come alongside and spray the burning carrier to help the ship's crew suppress the fires, but they repeatedly collided with Princeton in the heavy seas.

[41] Planes from the carriers Intrepid and Cabot of Bogan's group attacked at about 10:30, scoring hits on the battleships Nagato, Yamato, and Musashi, and badly damaging the heavy cruiser Myōkō which retired to Borneo via Coron Bay.

As a result of a momentous decision taken by Admiral Halsey and some unclear communication of his plans, Kurita was able to proceed through the San Bernardino Strait during the night to make an unexpected and dramatic appearance off the coast of Samar the following morning, directly threatening the Leyte landings.

This omission led Admiral Kinkaid of Seventh Fleet to believe Halsey was speaking in the present tense, so he concluded TF 34 had been formed and would take station off the San Bernardino Strait.

Kinkaid's light escort carrier group, lacking battleships for naval action and set up to attack ground troops and submarines, not capital ships, positioned itself south of the strait to support the invasion force.

Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf had a substantial force comprising Five of the six battleships had been sunk or damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently repaired or, in the cases of California and West Virginia, rebuilt.

To pass through the narrows and reach the invasion shipping, Nishimura would have to run the gauntlet of torpedoes from the PT boats and destroyers before advancing into the concentrated fire of 14 battleships and cruisers deployed across the far mouth of the strait.

The rear of the Japanese Southern Force—the "Second Striking Force" commanded by Vice Admiral Shima—had departed from Mako and approached Surigao Strait about 40 mi (35 nmi; 64 km) astern of Nishimura.

The American radar was equally unable to detect ships in these conditions, especially PT boats, but PT-137 hit the light cruiser Abukuma with a torpedo that crippled her and caused her to fall out of formation.

Halsey's decision to take all the available strength of Third Fleet northwards to attack the carriers of the Japanese Northern Force had left San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded.

[74] Meanwhile, Rear Admiral Thomas Sprague (no relation to Clifton) ordered the sixteen escort carriers in his three task units to immediately launch all their aircraft – totaling 450 planes – equipped with whatever weapons they had available, even if these were only machine guns or depth charges.

Ozawa's carrier group was a decoy force, divested of all but 108 aircraft, intended to lure the American fleet away from protecting the transports at the landing beaches on Leyte island.

Ozawa's force was not located until 16:40 on 24 October, largely because Sherman's TG 38.3—the northernmost of Halsey's groups and responsible for searches in this sector—had been preoccupied with the action in the Sibuyan Sea, and in defending itself against the Japanese air strikes from Luzon.

During the night, Halsey had passed tactical command of TF 38 to Admiral Mitscher, who ordered the American carrier groups to launch their first strike wave, of 180 aircraft, at dawn—before the Northern Force had been located.

The U.S. air strikes continued until the evening, by which time TF 38 had flown 527 sorties against the Northern Force, sinking Zuikaku, the light carriers Chitose and Zuihō, and the destroyer Akizuki, all with heavy loss of life.

Shortly after 08:00 on 25 October, desperate messages calling for assistance began to come in from Seventh Fleet, which had been engaging Nishimura's "Southern Force" in battle in Surigao Strait since 02:00.

From 3,000 mi (2,600 nmi; 4,800 km) away in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz had been monitoring the desperate calls from Taffy 3, and sent Halsey a terse message: "TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS."

The last three words—probably selected by a communications officer at Nimitz's headquarters—may have been meant as a loose quote from Tennyson's poem on "The Charge of the Light Brigade",[84] suggested by the coincidence that this day, 25 October, was the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Balaclava—and was not intended as a commentary on the current crisis off Leyte.

Nevertheless, at 16:22, in a desperate and even more belated attempt to intervene in the events off Samar, Halsey formed a new task group—TG 34.5—under Rear Admiral Oscar C. Badger II,[86] built around Third Fleet's two fastest battleships—Iowa and New Jersey, both capable of a speed of more than 32 kn (59 km/h; 37 mph)—and TF 34's three cruisers and eight destroyers, and sped southwards, leaving Lee and the other four battleships to follow.

Regarding Halsey's failure to turn TF 34 southwards when Seventh Fleet's first calls for assistance off Samar were received, Morison writes: If TF 34 had been detached a few hours earlier, after Kinkaid's first urgent request for help, and had left the destroyers behind, since their fueling caused a delay of over two and a half hours, a powerful battle line of six modern battleships under the command of Admiral Lee, the most experienced battle squadron commander in the Navy, would have arrived off the San Bernardino Strait in time to have clashed with Kurita's Center Force ... Apart from the accidents common in naval warfare, there is every reason to suppose that Lee would have "crossed the T" and completed the destruction of Center Force. ...

[90][e]Vice Admiral Lee said in his action report as Commander of TF 34: "No battle damage was incurred nor inflicted on the enemy by vessels while operating as Task Force Thirty-Four.

He believed strongly in the current naval doctrine of force concentration, as indicated by his writings both before World War II and in his subsequent articles and interviews defending his actions.

Halsey's chief of staff, Rear Admiral Robert "Mick" Carney, was also wholeheartedly in favor of taking all of Third Fleet's available forces northwards to attack the Japanese carriers.

This divided command was more important in determining the course of the battle than the tactical decision made by Halsey and led to an American disunity of effort that nearly allowed Kurita's mission to succeed.

J. F. C. Fuller writes of the outcome of Leyte Gulf:[114] The Japanese fleet had ceased to exist, and, except by land-based aircraft, their opponents had won undisputed command of the sea.