In October 1944, the Japanese Sho-Go plan used a decoy fleet to lure Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet north, and a chain of assumptions left the San Bernardino Strait unguarded. What stood between Admiral Kurita's four battleships, eight cruisers and eleven destroyers and the Leyte landing beaches was Taffy 3: six slow escort carriers, three destroyers and four destroyer escorts armed with nothing larger than five-inch guns. The Yamato alone outweighed the entire American unit. This episode reconstructs the dawn discovery, the surreal pink, green and yellow dye-marked shell splashes, and Admiral Clifton Sprague's dash into a rain squall.

The tin cans turned and charged. USS Johnston blew the bow off the cruiser Kumano, and the Samuel B. Roberts pushed its engines to 29 knots and fired illumination flares when it ran out of shells. Armor-piercin ...