By October 1944, the US Navy had driven the devastated Japanese fleet across the far Pacific. But with each defeat, Japanese commanders became even more determined to destroy the Americans in a final decisive battle. In Storm Over Leyte, acclaimed historian John Prados gives readers an unprecedented look at both sides of this titanic naval clash. Drawing upon a wealth of untapped sources Prados offers up a masterful narrative that breaks new ground in our understanding of the greatest naval clash in history.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The fight in the Marianas that June crystallized the issue. The Allied fleet invaded Japanese territory for the first time, and the Japanese fleet was soundly defeated. The Allied planes hardly managed to lay a glove on the Japanese. #2 The Japanese diplomat Kase Toshikazu was a trusted friend of the captain, and he told him the toasts were to the official version. In reality, the Navy had sustained a devastating defeat. #3 The Japanese had never been better prepared for the attack on the Marianas. They had reconceptualized the Pacific Ocean area as a series of zones, and had developed plans for each one having local resources and bases. #4 The Japanese planned to use their advantage of having longer striking range than American carrier aircraft. They created a First Air Fleet, an elite land-based force, to attack the American task forces from distances at which the United States would be unable to respond.

Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds ranks among the country's finest naval historians.World War II at Sea is his crowning achievement, a narrative of the entire war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas between 1939 and 1945.Here are the major engagements and their interconnections: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the scuttling of the French Navy; the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords and Mussolini's Regia Marina; the rise of the KidoButai and Pearl Harbor; the landings in North Africa and New Guinea, then on Normandy and Iwo Jima. Symonds offers indelible portraits of the great naval leaders - FDR and Churchill (self-proclaimed "Navy men"), Karl Donitz, Francois Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Louis Mountbatten, andWilliam Halsey - while acknowledging the countless seamen and officers of all nationalities whose lives were lost during the greatest naval conflicts ever fought. World War II at Sea is history on a truly epic scale.

"The Battle of Leyte Gulf was an extremely unusual battle. It was unusual on five separate counts that are so obvious that they are usually missed. It was unusual in that it was a series of actions, not a single battle. It was unusual as a naval battle in that it was fought over five days; historically, naval battles have seldom spread themselves over more than one or two days. It was unusual in terms of its name. This battle involved a series of related actions subsequently grouped together under the name of just one of these engagements, but in fact none of the actions were fought inside Leyte Gulf.... More importantly, it was unusual in that it was a full-scale fleet action fought after the issue of victory and defeat at sea had been decided, and it was unusual in that it resulted in clear, overwhelming victory and defeat." -- from Chapter One The Battle of Leyte Gulf -- October 22-28, 1944 -- was the greatest naval engagement in history. In fact the battle was four separate actions, none of which were fought in the Gulf itself, and the result was the destruction of Japanese naval power in the Pacific. This book is a detailed and comprehensive account of the fighting from both sides. It provides the context of the battle, most obviously in terms of Japanese calculations and the search for "a fitting place to die" and "the chance to bloom as flowers of death." Using Japanese material never previously noted in western accounts, H.P. Willmott provides new perspectives on the unfolding of the battle and very deliberately seeks to give readers a proper understanding of the importance of this battle for American naval operations in the following month. This careful interrogation of the accounts of "the last fleet action" is a significant contribution to military history.

The most authoritative and revealing examination yet of the way intelligence--of all kinds--was instrumental in defeating Japan. Prados gives a new picture of the war in the Pacific, one which will challenge many previous conceptions about that conflict, and one which will be irresistible to those readers who find histories of that period fascinating. 16 pages of photos.

With the Leyte Campaign the War in the Pacific entered a decisive stage. The period of limited offensives, bypassing, and island hopping was virtually over. American troops in greater numbers than ever before assembled in the Pacific Theater, supported by naval and air forces of corresponding size, fought and overcame Japanese forces of greater magnitude than any previously met. Though the spotlight is on the front-line fighting, the reader will find in this volume a faithful description of all arms and services performing their missions. The account is not exclusively an infantry story. It covers as well the support of ground fighting on Leyte by large-scale naval operations and by land-based air power under the most adverse conditions. In addition, careful attention to logistical matters, such as the movement of supplies and the evacuation of the wounded, gives the reader a picture of the less spectacular activities of an army in battle.

Pulitzer-Prize-winner and bestselling author C. Vann Woodward recreates the gripping account of the battle for Leyte Gulf—the greatest naval battle of World War II and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. For the Japanese, it represented their supreme effort; they committed to action virtually every operational fighting ship on the lists of the Imperial Navy, including two powerful new battleships of the Yamato class. It also ended in their greatest defeat—and a tremendous victory for the United States Navy. Features a new introduction by Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder.