The Battle for Leyte Gulf by C. Vann Woodward

The Battle for Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval battle of the Second World War and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. It was composed of four separate yet closely interrelated actions, each of which involved forces comparable in size with those engaged in any previous battle of the Pacific War. The four battles, two of them fought simultaneously, were joined in three different bodies of water separated by as much as 500 miles. Yet all four were fought between the dawn of one day and dusk of the next, and all were waged in the repulse of a single, huge Japanese operation. In The Battle for Leyte Gulf Pulitzer prize-winning author C. Vann Woodward recounts the story of the largest naval battle of all time.