While William Halsey's Third Fleet has been pummeling

the Japanese carriers off Cape Enga o,

the American landing forces in Leyte Gulf have been

caught completely off guard.

[cannon firing]

Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force.

The force Halsey thought was retreating in fact

turned around, sailed all night through the San Bernardino

Strait, entered the Philippine Sea,

and steamed south toward Leyte Gulf early this morning.

With Halsey's Third Fleet well north sinking carriers,

Kurita reached the Gulf unopposed

and is now bearing down on the American landing forces.

Seventh Fleet's battleships are too far south

to lend immediate aid, and the destroyers and carriers simply

don't have adequate firepower.

They are hopelessly outgunned.

There's no weapon larger than a 5-inch gun

on any of the American ships in the area.

And on the Japanese side, you have Battleship Yamato,

which is armed with 18.1-inch guns, the largest naval

rifles ever installed afloat.

They have a second battleship.

They have numerous heavy cruisers.

This is a mismatch of mythic proportions.

NARRATOR: But the commander of one of the small destroyers

chooses to stand and make the best showing he can--

despite the odds.

Lieutenant Commander Ernest E. Evans,

commanding the destroyer USS Johnston,

determines to charge the enemy.

He had two choices.

He could flight or fight.

What he did is he turned his ship,

and he actually went, and he attacked this Japanese armada.

NARRATOR: Evans orders his little vessel

to speed toward the vastly superior Japanese force.

He knows the enemy's guns will be firing on him,

but he plans to weave to try to avoid the killing rounds.

And if he gets close enough, he might just score a lucky hit.

[explosions booming]

Evans's bold charge inspires other commanders around him,

and soon, many destroyers join the attack.

They go after the Japanese with both gunfire

and torpedoes.

They're laying smokescreens to try

to screen the escort carriers as they're

trying to dawdle their way out at 17 or 18 knots.

NARRATOR: Finally in range, Evans

unleashes a torpedo at the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano.

The torpedo courses through the sea, and minutes later--

[explosion booming]

Blew the valve right off the front of a Japanese cruiser.

NARRATOR: Soon, the Japanese cruiser Suzuya stops

to assist the wounded Kumano.

He fired another torpedo, and he also hit and sunk that ship.

NARRATOR: Amid the heavy gunfire, torpedo attacks,

and the hundreds of planes harassing them,

Admiral Kurita and his commanders are bewildered.

The Japanese are thrown into confusion.

They believe that they're being attacked by more

powerful forces than they are.

You start seeing Japanese cruisers getting knocked out.

The Japanese battleships are taking

damage to their top sides.

It makes it very difficult for the Japanese

to fight a coherent action against the Americans.

They're constantly maneuvering to avoid air attacks, which

in turn makes it difficult to direct gunfire against

the American Jeep carriers.

NARRATOR: Like a bear under attack by a swarm of bees,

the Japanese Center Force falters.

Where they thought that they had a mismatch--

and they really did in terms of raw material terms--

they are unable to close with the Americans.

They're increasingly harassed by American air power.

And eventually, the Japanese admiral decides that he's

had enough, and he leaves.

WILLIAM BODETTE: They said, the hell with this.

They turn around and they hightail it out of there.

NARRATOR: The battle of Leyte Gulf

has ended in utter disaster for the Japanese Navy.

The Japanese losses at Leyte include 4 aircraft carriers,

3 battleships, 10 cruisers, 11 destroyers, and nearly

14,000 sailors and air crewmen.

American losses, by contrast, are relatively light.

One light aircraft carrier, two escort carriers,

two destroyers, two destroyer escorts, and

1,500 sailors and air crewmen.

This really marks the final demise of the Japanese Navy,

and they'll never really be able to do anything

of a concerted nature to repel any further attacks

by the US Navy at this point.

It really is the end of an era.

NARRATOR: The US Navy has now eclipsed the force that

started a mode of warfare--

carrier warfare-- whose supreme potential no one had recognized

before December 7, 1941.

No one knew how carriers were supposed to operate.

Pearl Harbor really was the initial battle

that sort of announced the beginning

of the carrier age warfare.

Leyte is the battle that announces that there's only one

navy in the world that is really capable of doing

that sort of warfare, and it's the US Navy.

NARRATOR: The Battle of Leyte Gulf

has another pre-eminent distinction.

It is the largest naval confrontation

in the history of mankind.