Customer Reviews

Battle for Leyte, 1944: Allied And Japanese Plans, Preparations, And Execution

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The battle for Leyte was one of the big ones. It was one of the few where Nimitz and MacArthur worked together to come up with the forces needed to begin taking back the Phillipines. In this book Mr. Vego shows an extraordinary amount of research in what both the Allies (mostly American) and the Japanese were doing to prepare for and fight the battle.

The most famous part of the battle was Halsey's decision to take virtually all of his carrier force north to fight the Japanese northern decoy force. This, of course, left the naval forces around Leyte very weak. This event again shows the careful research that characterizes the book.

Years later Halsey still defended his actions saying, 'given the same circumstances and the same information ..., I would make it again.' The author's conclusion, 'no decision can be considered sound if the commander does exactly what the enemy wants him to do.'

Writing many years after the battle Mr. Vego has the ability to draw a whole series of conclusions about the battle (too many to go into here) and his final chapters are a masterpiece of conclusions and lessons learned.