The USS St. Lo, the first U.S. ship to be sunk by a kamikaze during World War Two, moments after being hit.
The heaviest fighting in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese effort to draw the U.S. Navy off of support for the invasion of Leyte and to destroy it, occurred. The Battle off Samar occurred as part of it.
The first mass use of kamikazes occured as part of the Japanese effort. The escort carrier USS St. Lo was sunk by kamikazes, the first of 47 ships to be lost to such attacks during the war.
The U.S. escort carrier USS Kitkun Bay (CVE-71) prepares to launch Grumman FM-2 Wildcat fighters during the Battle off Samar on 25 October 1944. Japanese shells are splashing near the USS White Plains (CVE-66) in the background. A rare example of an aircraft carrier launching aircraft while a surface vessel shells another one.
The Imperial Japanese Navy lost the aircraft carriers Chitose, Chiyoda and Zuikaku, battleships Fusō and Yamashiro, cruisers Chikuma, Chōkai and Suzuya and the destroyers Akizuki, Asagumo, Michishio, Wakaba and Yamagumo.
Lowering the flag on Zuikaku as she sinks. She was the last of the aircraft carriers that participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor still afloat. Half the crew would survive.
The Americans lost the escort carriers USS Gambier Bay and USS St. Lo and destroyers USS Hoel and USS Johnston.
The Japanese battleship Yamato and a heavy cruiser at Samar.
The scale of the battle, and the intense fighting it involved, can hardly be imagined today.
The Red Army took the port town of Kirkenes, Norway.
Soviet forces completed clearing the Transylvania region of Romania.
8in howitzer being laid into place in France, October 25, 1944.
The Italian government of Ivanoe Bonomi was recognized.
Dog faces, October 25, 1944.
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Labels: "Wacht am Rhein", 1940s, 1944, Adolf Hitler, Australian Navy, Battle of Leyte Gulf, Battle of the Bulge, China Burma India Theater, Imperial Japanese Navy, Kamikaze, Philippines, U.S. Navy, World War Two
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