As of 2025, the Battle of Surigao Strait was the last battleship-to-battleship action in history, one of only two battleship-versus-battleship naval battles in the Pacific campaign of World War II. (The other was the
naval battle during the
Guadalcanal campaign, where sank the ). It is also the most recent battle in which one force (in this case, the U.S. Navy) was able to "
cross the T" of its opponent. However, by the time that the battleship action was joined, the Japanese line was very ragged and consisted of only one battleship (
Yamashiro), one heavy cruiser, and one destroyer, so that the "crossing of the T" was notional and had little effect on the outcome of the battle.
Japanese forces Nishimura's "Southern Force" consisted of the old battleships (flag) and , the heavy cruiser , and four destroyers, , , and . This task force left Brunei after Kurita at 15:00 on 22 October, turning eastward into the
Sulu Sea and then northeasterly past the southern tip of
Negros Island into the
Mindanao Sea. Nishimura then proceeded northeastward with
Mindanao Island to
starboard and into the south entrance to the Surigao Strait, intending to exit the north entrance of the Strait into
Leyte Gulf, where he would add his firepower to that of Kurita's force. The Japanese Second Striking Force was commanded by Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima and comprised heavy cruisers (flag) and , the light cruiser , and the destroyers , , , and . The Japanese Southern Force was attacked by U.S. Navy bombers on 24 October but sustained only minor damage. Nishimura was unable to synchronize his movements with Shima and Kurita because of the strict radio silence imposed on the Center and Southern Forces. When he entered the Surigao Strait at 02:00, Shima was behind him, and Kurita was still in the Sibuyan Sea, several hours from the beaches at Leyte.
Engagement As the Japanese Southern Force approached the Surigao Strait, it ran into a deadly trap set by Seventh Fleet. Rear Admiral
Jesse Oldendorf had a substantial force comprising • six battleships: , , , , , and , which carried 48 14-inch (356 mm) and 16 16-inch (406 mm) guns; • four
heavy cruisers (flagship), , , and
HMAS Shropshire, which carried 35 8-inch (203 mm) guns; • four
light cruisers , , , and , which carried 54 6-inch (152 mm) guns; and • 28 destroyers and 39 motor torpedo boats (
Patrol/Torpedo (PT) boats) with smaller guns and torpedoes. Five of the six battleships had been sunk or damaged in the
attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently repaired or, in the cases of
California and
West Virginia, rebuilt. The sole exception was
Mississippi, which had been in Iceland on convoy-escort duty at that time. To pass through the narrows and reach the invasion shipping, Nishimura would have to run the gauntlet of torpedoes from the PT boats and destroyers before advancing into the concentrated fire of 14 battleships and cruisers deployed across the far mouth of the strait. At 22:36,
PT-131 (Ensign Peter Gadd) was operating off
Bohol when it made contact with the approaching Japanese ships. The PT boats made repeated attacks for more than three and a half hours as Nishimura's force streamed northward. No torpedo hits were scored, but the PT boats did send contact reports which were of use to Oldendorf and his force. Nishimura's ships passed unscathed through the gauntlet of PT boats. However, their luck ran out a short time later, as they were subjected to devastating torpedo attacks from the American destroyers deployed on both sides of their axis of advance. At about 03:00, both Japanese battleships were hit by torpedoes.
Yamashiro was able to steam on, but
Fusō was torpedoed by and fell out of formation, sinking 40 minutes later. Two of Nishimura's four destroyers were sunk; the destroyer
Asagumo was hit and forced to retire, but later sank.
Sinking of Fusō The traditional account of the sinking of
Fusō was that she exploded into two halves that remained floating for some time. Samuel Morison states that the bow half of
Fusō was sunk by gunfire from , and the stern half sank off Kanihaan Island; this version took into account that battleships were known sometimes to be cut into two or even three sections which could remain afloat independently. However,
Fusō survivor Hideo Ogawa, interrogated in 1945, in an article on the battleship's last voyage, stated: "Shortly after 0400 the ship capsized slowly to starboard and Ogawa and others were washed away," without specifically mentioning the bisection.
Fusō was hit on the starboard side by two or possibly three torpedoes. One of these started an oil fire, and as the fuel used by ships was poorly refined and easily ignited, burning patches of fuel could have led to the description from Allied observers of
Fusō "blowing up". Ten sailors survived the ship's sinking and were repatriated to Japan after the war.
Battle continues At 03:16,
West Virginias radar picked up the surviving ships of Nishimura's force at a range of .
West Virginia tracked them as they approached in the pitch black night. At 03:53, she fired the eight guns of her main battery at a range of , striking
Yamashiro with her first salvo. She went on to fire 93 shells. At 03:55,
California and
Tennessee joined in, firing 63 and 69 shells, respectively, from their guns.
Radar fire control allowed these American battleships to hit targets from a distance at which the Japanese battleships, with their inferior fire control systems, could not return fire.
History's last salvo The other three U.S. battleships also had difficulty as they were equipped with less advanced gunnery radar.
Pennsylvania was unable to find a target and her guns remained silent.
Maryland eventually succeeded in visually ranging on the splashes of the other battleships' shells, and then fired 48 projectiles. only fired once in the battle-line action, a full salvo of twelve 14-inch shells. This was the last salvo ever fired by a battleship against another battleship in history, closing a significant chapter in naval warfare.
Yamashiro and
Mogami were crippled by a combination of 16-inch and 14-inch armor-piercing shells, as well as the fire of Oldendorf's flanking cruisers. The cruisers that had the latest radar equipment fired well over 2,000 rounds of armor-piercing 6-inch and 8-inch shells.
Louisville (Oldendorf's flagship) fired 37 salvos—333 rounds of 8-inch shells. The Japanese command had apparently lost grasp of the tactical picture, with all ships firing all batteries in several directions, "frantically showering steel through 360°."
Shigure turned and fled but lost steering and stopped dead. At 04:05
Yamashiro was struck by a torpedo fired by the destroyer , and suddenly sank at about 04:20, with Nishimura on board.
Mogami and
Shigure retreated southwards down the Strait. The destroyer was hit by friendly fire during the night battle, but did not sink. The rear of the Japanese Southern Force—the "Second Striking Force" commanded by Vice Admiral Shima—had departed from
Mako and approached Surigao Strait about astern of Nishimura. Shima's run was initially thrown into confusion by his force nearly running aground on
Panaon Island after failing to factor the outgoing tide into their approach. Japanese radar was almost useless due to excessive reflections from the many islands. The American radar was equally unable to detect ships in these conditions, especially PT boats, but
PT-137 hit the light cruiser
Abukuma with a torpedo that crippled her and caused her to fall out of formation. Shima's two heavy cruisers,
Nachi and
Ashigara, and four destroyers next encountered remnants of Nishimura's force. Shima saw what he thought were the wrecks of both Nishimura's battleships and ordered a retreat before coming into range of the U.S. battleships and cruisers. His flagship
Nachi collided with
Mogami, flooding
Mogamis steering room and causing her to fall behind in the retreat;
Mogami was further damaged by American carrier aircraft the next morning, abandoned and scuttled by a torpedo from
Akebono. Aside from the collision damage to heavy cruiser
Nachi and a PT torpedo hit to light cruiser
Abukuma, Shima's forces were unscathed.
First kamikaze attacks of the Pacific War While the Battle off Samar was raging between the Japanese surface fleet and Taffy3, Taffy1's escort carriers were supporting the American surface ships after the Battle of Surigao Strait when daylight broke (the nighttime Surigao Strait action meant no carrier aircraft could participate until after dawn, by which time the defeated Japanese southern fleet was in full retreat). As a result of Taffy1 being so far south of Samar, not many Taffy1 airplanes participated in the Battle off Samar. While in the air southwest of Leyte Gulf, the aircraft and ships of Taffy1 were immediately ordered to assist Taffy3 off of Samar but they had to return to the escort carriers to refuel and rearm. After the carrier aircraft returned from aerial attacks on the retreating Japanese naval forces from Surigao Strait, the Japanese launched the first pre-planned
kamikaze (suicide "special attack" planes) attacks of World War II against Taffy1 from
Davao. The escort carrier was hit by a
kamikaze first, killing 16 crewmen. A Japanese submarine also successfully launched a torpedo at
Santee, striking her starboard side. Four Avenger torpedo bombers and two Wildcat fighters on
Santee were destroyed in this attack. Emergency repairs saved
Santee from sinking. The escort carrier was shortly afterwards hit by a
kamikaze, killing 71 sailors.
Suwannee was hit by another
kamikaze around noon on 26 October that caused even more damage and killed 36 more crewmen. This second
kamikaze strike caused a large fire that was not extinguished until nine hours later. A total of 107 sailors were killed and over 150 were wounded on
Suwannee in the
kamikaze attacks on 25–26 October. Five Avenger torpedo bombers and nine Hellcat fighters on
Suwannee were destroyed.
Results Of Nishimura's seven ships, only
Shigure survived long enough to escape the debacle. It was sunk by American submarine on 24 January 1945 off
Kota Bharu,
Malaya, with 37 dead. Shima's ships survived the Battle of Surigao Strait, but they were sunk in further engagements around Leyte. The Southern Force provided no further threat to the Leyte landings. ==Battle off Samar (25 October 1944)==