Thread: Fly bridge?
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Old 10-25-2012, 03:55 AM   #75
Marin
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In a way, yes. When Admiral Kincaid began desperately asking for the whereabouts of Halsey's carrier and battleship force which had gone off in pursuit of the Japanese decoy carrier force leaving the US invasion fleet at Leyte uncovered, Nimitz finally sent his famous signal to Halsey asking his whereabouts. The signal ended with the phrase "the world wonders" but that was not part of Nimitz's query as I explained above.

The battle of Leyte Gulf is the single largest naval battle in history and Halsey wasn't there with his carriers and Iowa-class battleships. As a result the Japanese, including one of the two largest battleships in the world, the Yamato, came within a whisker of destroying the invasion fleet. They were turned around by three destroyers, the Hoel, the Johnston, and the Heermann, and the little destroyer escort, the Samuel Roberts.

This battle and the Hoel (which was sunk by the Japanese ships) have a role in the book I'm currently writing so I've researched it pretty thoroughly.
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