American forces under Admiral Thomas Kinkaid and Third Fleet commander William Halsey engaged Japanese naval forces attempting to disrupt the U.S. invasion of Leyte. Fighting on October 24 included the sinking of the battleship Musashi and the beginning of the Battle of Surigao Strait, part of a sprawling four-part engagement. Japan's navy suffered losses from which it never recovered, and the battle also saw the first organized kamikaze attacks.
Japan committed nearly its entire remaining fleet to a desperate gambit: lure Halsey's powerful carrier force away from Leyte Gulf with a decoy squadron, then send battleships through San Bernardino and Surigao Straits to annihilate the vulnerable American landing fleet. On October 24, American carrier aircraft caught the Center Force in the Sibuyan Sea and sank the Musashi, one of the two largest battleships ever built, after hours of sustained bombing and torpedo runs.
That same day, Japanese land-based aircraft sank the light carrier USS Princeton, and Admiral Jesse Oldendorf's Seventh Fleet battleships prepared an ambush at the southern entrance to Surigao Strait, where the last classic battleship-versus-battleship gunnery duel in naval history would unfold overnight. Meanwhile, Halsey, deceived by the Japanese decoy force under Ozawa, took his carriers north, leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded, a decision that nearly proved catastrophic the following morning off Samar.
The battle also marked the debut of organized kamikaze attacks, as Japanese pilots deliberately crashed aircraft into American ships, a tactic born of desperation as conventional naval power slipped away. By the battle's end days later, Japan had lost four carriers, three battleships, and effectively its capacity to contest the seas, sealing the fate of the Philippines campaign.