US Escort Carriers bracketed by shells from Japanese warships during the Battle of Samar

The Battle off Samar was the major action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history, which took place in the Philippine Sea off Samar Island on October 25th 1944. Admiral William Halsey Jr. was lured into taking his powerful Third Fleet after a decoy fleet of what was left of the Imperial Navy’s carrier force, including the last member of the Pearl Harbor attack, the aircraft carrier Zuikaku, taking with him every ship in the area that he had the power to command. The remaining American forces in the area were three escort carrier groups of the Seventh Fleet. The escort carriers and destroyer escorts which had been built to protect slow convoys from submarine attack had been adapted to attack ground targets and had few torpedoes, as they normally relied on Halsey’s fleet to protect them from armored warships. A Japanese surface force of battleships and cruisers, led by the super battleship Yamato, the largest and most heavily-gunned ship afloat, had been ba