In October 1944, nearly 300 Allied ships and a cornered Japanese fleet clashed across 100,000 square miles of the Pacific in the largest naval battle in history. This episode follows the Battle of Leyte Gulf from the Formosa-versus-Philippines debate between Nimitz and MacArthur, through Admiral Toyoda’s all-or-nothing Sho-Go 1 plan, to the submarine ambush in the Palawan Passage that forced Admiral Kurita to swim for his life and transfer his flag to the Yamato. We unpack why Japan’s carriers were nearly empty after losing 600 aircraft in the Philippine Sea, and how Ozawa’s decoy force was designed to lure Halsey’s Third Fleet away from the landing beaches.

The heart of the story is a catastrophic failure of divided command. Halsey’s message that Task Force 34 ‘will be formed’ was read by Kincaid and Nimitz as a statement of fact, leaving the San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded while Oldendorf crossed the T at Surigao Strait in the last battleship-versus-battleship engagement ever fought. At dawn off Samar, the escort carriers and destroyers of Taffy 3 charged Kurita’s battleships in a suicidal delaying action that convinced him he had run into Halsey’s main fleet. We close with the infamous ‘the world wonders’ padding error, the first organized kamikaze attacks, and what the battle teaches about assuming someone else has the back door covered.

• Why Toyoda concluded there was no point saving the fleet if the Philippines and its oil lifeline were lost
• How two separate chains of command, Halsey under Nimitz and Kincaid under MacArthur, shared the same waters with no one in overall charge
• The sinking of the Musashi after at least 17 bombs and 19 torpedoes, and why Kurita’s temporary retreat fooled Halsey
• USS Johnston, USS Hoel and the Samuel B. Roberts, the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship
• How a coincidental line from the Charge of the Light Brigade left Halsey sobbing on deck and delayed his return for over an hour