In October 1944, nearly 300 Allied ships and a cornered Japanese fleet clashed across 100,000 square miles of the Pacific in the largest naval battle in history. This episode follows the Battle of Leyte Gulf from the Formosa-versus-Philippines debate between Nimitz and MacArthur, through Admiral Toyoda's all-or-nothing Sho-Go 1 plan, to the submarine ambush in the Palawan Passage that forced Admiral Kurita to swim for his life and transfer his flag to the Yamato. We unpack why Japan's carriers were nearly empty after losing 600 aircraft in the Philippine Sea, and how Ozawa's decoy force was designed to lure Halsey's Third Fleet away from the landing beaches.

The heart of the story is a catastrophic failure of divided command. Halsey's message that Task Force 34 'will be formed' was read by Kincaid and Nimitz as a statement of fact, leaving  ...