Battle of Sibuyan
Battle of Sibuyan
24 October 1944
24 October 1944
In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Running wild through the vast South Pacific in the war’s earliest months, Japanese military forces had since enjoyed few successes while absorbing critical defeats. The American military machine, temporarily grounded after Pearl Harbor, had returned with a vengeance.
Fueled by grim determination, mountains of reinforcements, and thousands of ships, tanks, and aircraft, the U.S. registered a series of advances that brought its military to the inner reaches of the Japanese empire. At the same time, American submarines savaged Japan’s merchant fleet and drastically reduced the crucial flow of oil.
With the enemy poised to assault the Home Islands, Japanese military strategists concocted four different responses called the SHO Plans. Depending where the United States chose to advance, the Japanese would focus their efforts in either the Philippines, the island of Formosa to the west, the Kurile Islands to Japan’s northeast, or the Japanese Home Island of Honshu.
When it seemed obvious that the Americans had chosen the Philippines as their next objective, Japan enacted its SHO-1 plan for the defense of these islands. An elaborate plan in which succcess depended on the precise movements and coordination of four different naval forces, SHO-1 hoped to employ one force to lure away from Leyte Gulf the potent aircraft carriers that stood guard over the American invasion forces, while three other Japanese units slipped in to attack the vulnerable landing forces.