The 4 Days Japan's Navy Ceased to Exist: Leyte Gulf

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ October 1944. Four Japanese carriers sail south with barely a hundred aircraft between them. They are not going to fight. They are going to be found. While Ozawa pulls Halsey's fast carriers north, two battleship forces close on Leyte Gulf from either side. Submarines sink Kurita's flagship before he fires a shot. Musashi takes nineteen torpedoes and rolls over in the Sibuyan Sea. In Surigao Strait, battleships raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor fire the last battleship salvo in history. Halsey takes everything north, and off Samar six small escort carriers and seven thin-skinned escorts find themselves facing Yamato. Johnston turns toward the enemy before any order comes. Then Kurita turns away, with the transports in reach. Four carriers, three battleships and ten cruisers are gone. And the next morning a Zero carrying a bomb finds St. Lo, and a new kind of war begins.