Leyte Gulf: The most misunderstood battle in our history?

Imagine winning one of the greatest victories in history only for journalists and academics to portray it as a blunder-filled near-disaster.

That's the story of Leyte Gulf. In the historiography of WWII the debate over command decisions and "missed" opportunities has obscured the fact that the US Navy won a victory without precedent in modern naval warfare. The writerly urge to heighten the drama in a narrative often obscures the fact that Japan's operation SHO was nothing more than gruesome theatrical flourish. The Imperial Japanese Navy would go down to "honourable" destruction for no strategic purpose. Their admirals knew that the sacrifice had no chance to alter the outcome of the Philippines campaign let alone the Pacific War. Yet they ordered thousands of men to their deaths for a grand gesture.

Mark Stille, in a recent book on the battle does a great job setting the record straight.

Leyte Gulf: A New History of the World's Largest Sea Battle

Leyte Gulf, in his view, "was the greatest American naval victory of the war". He has the facts to back up his assertion. Japan lost 45% (by tonnage) of the forces it committed to this battle. Those losses were eight times greater than those suffered by the US Navy. The IJN ceased to exist as a significant military force.

Stille makes three key points which are often overlooked in popular narratives.

1. Air supremacy was vital.

The surface actions around Leyte Gulf were almost a side show. The only real threat to the Leyte campaign was Japanese airpower With that in mind, Adm. Halsey and the Third Fleet struck air bases in Okinawa Formosa, and Luzon in the two weeks before the landings. Japan lost more planes in those battles than Germany lost in the entire Battle of Britain. After that drubbing Japanese naval forces were helpless against air attacks. "It would not be an exaggeration to state that the outcome of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, fought only a week later, was already a foregone conclusion."

2. The escort carriers were far from helpless.

The battle of Samar was much more than a lopsided fight between Sprague's escort carriers and light escorts and the heavy ships of the First Diversionary Attack Force. As the surface ships battled, there was also an air-sea battle unfolding. The scale of American air attacks on Kurita's ships from 730 until about 930 by over 200 aircraft was one of the heaviest onslaughts of the entire war. Unrelenting American air attacks were the main reason for the Japanese defeat.

Aircraft from the CVE's flew over 400 sorties against Kurita's battleships and cruisers. This was more than the big carriers of Task Force 38 had thrown against the same Japanese force the previous day when it sank the superbattleship Musashi. Together with their destroyers and destroyer escorts the baby flattops sank 3 heavy cruisers and damaged several other warships.

Kurita's decision to retire is completely understandable in light of these loses. His depleted task force was being whittled down while the slow pursuit of the carriers offered no hope for the swift decisive victory the SHO plan called for. At the same time he could not enter the Leyte Gulf to attack the beachhead as long as the carriers were nearby. And even if he had...

3. The amphibious landing was never in danger.

"MacArthur's Navy" was a well-oiled machine when it came to landing operations. By the time the IJN made its appearance, 130,000 men were ashore with enough supplies to last month. Nearly all of the transports and landing craft had left the gulf. Had Kurita entered the gulf unopposed, he could not have done more than delay the American advance by a day or two. The only opportunity he "missed" was the chance to sacrifice thousands of men to preserve the "sacred honor" of the admirals who had remained in Tokyo.

Crime: Real and imagined

 “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” —Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Theodore Dalrymple (AKA Anthony Danies), prison psychiatrist and astute social observer, has seen enough of real life crime and criminals to agree completely with Weil:

Most murder is merely sordid, unmysterious, stupid, and not infrequently drunken, or alternatively engendered by passions of a crude culture.

In light of this, it is interesting that his latest book is devoted to fictional murder of the most contrived sort:

Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder

A deep dive into Christie's They Do It With Mirrors serves as a launch pad for a discursive meditation on crime, criminals, and modern society.

Christie's novel is perfectly suited to Dalrymple's purposes because this country house mystery is not populated by aristocrats, vicars, or village gentry. This time Miss Marple finds herself surrounded by juvenile delinquents, left-wing do-gooders, and the women who enable them.

The denizens of this novel are different from the criminals Dalrymple dealt with in prisons and inner-city hospitals. His real life patients are a product of “a culture that was debased, crude, and shallow, though profound in its effects. It was thin in its content but deep in the hold that it exerted.” Christie's characters are high-minded, educated, and devoted to the fine arts.

Dalrymple does not scoff at this nor does he deride the writer for her inventions. As a shrewd observer of of the world and a student of history, he understands that “a man in the grip of an obsession to do good can be very ruthless and not see that his end does not justify his means – even if his end is genuinely good rather than an impossible pipedream. In fact, the less tangible the good a man is trying to do, the greater the lengths he is prepared to go to secure it. The worst crimes are committed by those of the largest visions.”

Not for the first time, Christie has buried a profound truth in one of her cozy entertainments.

II

In his book Our Culture, What's Left of It, Dalrymple notes that this transformation of Christie's England to Kier Starmer's "did not come about through any volcanic eruption from below: on the contrary, it was the intellectual wing of the elite that kicked against the traces."

Modern Britain chose to reject the common sense and traditional morality of Miss Marple and Agatha Christie and instead put its faith in experts and do-gooders.  The results have been nothing short of catastrophic.

In 2019 Usman Khan was a Cambridge University success story: a de-radicalized terrorist and a rehabilitated criminal.  On 29 November he was in London for a conference touting the success of Cambridge University's "Learning Together" program for educating criminals.  While there, Khan demonstrated the high value of the program by stabbing five people (killing two). 

Stephen Griffiths had a lengthy record of violent criminal behavior and was diagnosed as a schizoid psychopath..  This proved to be no barrier when he was admitted to the University of Bradford's Ph. D. program in Criminal Justice Studies (studying homicide methods).  Alas, he was unable to graduate after he was convicted of the murder and dismemberment of three women.

Currently, Mohammed Yaseen is living a soft life subsidized by taxpayers.  He is an ISIS/Al Qaeda member who participated in atrocities in the Middle East.  After entering the UK illegally he then lied about his age, identity, and terrorist past.  That landed him a stint in jail but somehow he "earned"  early release (six months).  Then he claimed asylum to avoid deportation. 

Ten years before Christie wrote "They Do It with Mirrors" the UK and US swiftly executed enemy combatants who infiltrated their homelands.  In the new Britain they get free housing.

Nowhere is the contrast between Christie's Britain and the modern "cool Britannia" more evident than with  policing.

Robert Conquest identified 'firm leadership and light rule'  as the essence of traditional governance.  The police in Christie's mysteries exemplify this,  Stolid and polite, they maintain order with a stern glance and a quiet word.  They are an integral part of the community but rarely intrude into the lives of the public.

Woke policing has shattered that image forever.  The police are unable or unwilling to curb street violence, the grooming gangs are an indelible stain on their reputation, and burglaries are an every day fact of life.  Meanwhile, countless man-hours are devoted to monitoring mean tweets and angry Facebook posts.