Word: surigao
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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When the protecting rain clouds parted, the force made a feint toward the open sea, in the hope of throwing the Japanese off the trail if any Japs were looking. Then the task force wheeled and squeezed through Surigao Strait, steaming over the drowned hulks of Jap warships sunk in the great October battle...
Before dawn of the 7th, the 225-mile end run from Leyte Gulf through Surigao Strait and up into the Camotes Sea, had been completed. Almost a hundred craft under Rear Admiral Arthur Dewey Struble, a Normandy veteran, lay off shore. At 6:30 the destroyers opened up on the beaches with 5-inch guns; after 20 minutes, LCIs carrying rocket launchers belched their loads onto a 1,200-yd. beachhead. At 7:07 (because General Bruce likes sevens for his 77th), the first troops sloshed up the beaches, without a casualty. Most of the Japs had been sucked into...
...Chance. As it must to all admirals in battle, the chance came to "Bull" Halsey at a moment when the big decision had to be made quickly and followed fearlessly. At that point the southernmost of the Jap's three prongs was thrusting east through Philippine waters toward Surigao Strait, south of the Leyte beachhead, while another was in a position to attack the beachhead from the north...
...southern prong had been struck by air attack, was plowing on. Before it stood the heavy firepower of Vice Admiral Thomas Cassin Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet. The Seventh would stop it, and smash it to bits in the twelve-mile-wide gut of Surigao. The northern group, approaching San Bernardino Strait, had also been air-attacked. Airmen reported that it had been turned back...
...admiral had his problems, too. To the south the other arm of the pincers (through Surigao Strait) had been broken. Between him and escape in that direction lay Kinkaid's main force, unhurt and full of fight. And toward him from the north steamed Halsey with the most powerful force in the Pacific; Halsey's first planes were already thundering toward Leyte Gulf. The Jap admiral made his own quick decision: he turned and fled into San Bernardino Strait...