Volume 12: Leyte, June 1944-January 1945, is a dramatic retelling of the greatest naval battle of all time, the Battle for Leyte Gulf. The Allied victory at Leyte enabled the U.S. Navy to transport troops and base long-range bomber planes in positions so close to Japan that victory was all but assured.
Recounts the role of the United States in World War II at sea, from encounters in the Atlantic before the country entered the war to the surrender of Japan
Highly detailed account of events in the Pacific during the winter of 1944 - 1945 After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which crushed Japanese naval power in the Pacific even more effectively than American naval chiefs were aware at the time, the U.S. moved against Japan to liberate the Philippines. Here, the carrier actions supporting these operations are told in detail. Through Admiral Samuel Morison's eloquence, the half-forgotten, far-off names of these Philippine battles come to life again, as he tells of the preliminary bombardments, the assaults over the beaches, and the land fighting for the islands and Manila, as well as of the countermeasures taken against the fanatical air attacks of the Japanese. Here too is Admiral Halsey's famous raid of Task Force 38 in the South China Sea, ranging from Formosa to Indochina. Of particular interest to sailors and landsmen alike is the chapter on the frightful typhoon of 18 December, 1944, in which three U.S. ships went down and over eight hundred lives were lost. Additional chapters tell the story of the three amphibious assaults on Borneo by Australian troops covered by the U.S. Navy; of submarine operations in the southwest Pacific in 1945; and of Captain Milton Miles's amazing U.S. Naval Group, China, which carried out cloak-and-dagger operations on the mainland for years and fought the last naval battle of the war with sailing junks.
Each of these 15 volumes covers a period and campaigns in the Pacific, Atlantic and North African waters during World War II. It was Morison's aim to show what the U.S. Navy accomplished in the greatest of all wars and how it was done. The story, in the main, is one of fighting; that is what the Navy is for and what its entire effort was directed toward. But the author included enough space to strategic discussions, planning, organization, and logistics to explain the end product -- the naval operations. And when other armed services of the United States and her allies participated, he brought them in too, although not in so great detail. Filled with many maps, a number of them larger fold-outs, and black and white photos of the ships, personnel and operations.
