Leyte Gulf - USS Natoma Bay CVE-62

Before invading Luzon, the Americans prepared to capture
and build airfields on Mindoro to provide close air support.
The expeditionary force, advancing via Surigao Strait and
the Sulu Sea, came under vicious attack by kamikazes from
the central Philippines. Despite air cover from Leyte and
from escort carriers, these heavily damaged the flagship
Nashville and a destroyer, obliging both to turn back. The
landing, on December 15, was unopposed, but kamikazes struck
repeatedly at the supply convoys, sinking five LST's, three
liberty ships, and a tanker. A Japanese cruiser-destroyer
force on the night of December 26 briefly bombarded one of
the new Mindoro airfields but was driven off by air attack.
From December 14 to 16, TF 38 had kept fighters over
Luzon airfields around the clock, preventing all but a few
planes from taking off and destroying nearly 200 on the
ground. On the 18th the force was hit by a typhoon that sank
3 destroyers, damaged 7 other ships, destroyed 186 planes,
and killed nearly 800 officers and men. On December 30,
after Service Squadron 10 had patched up the storm-battered
ships, TF 38 left Ulithi and headed for a strike on Formosa
to support the impending invasion of Luzon.
The new invasion would be in Lingayen Gulf, where the
Japanese had come ashore three years before. The forces were
almost identical with those that had participated in the
Leyte assault. The chief resistance to the new invasion came
not from ships but from suicide planes, more numerous and
deadly than ever. As the 164 ships of Admiral Oldendorf's
support force approached the gulf, kamikazes crashed into
the escort carriers Manila Bay and Ommaney Bay, the cruisers
Louisville and Australia, a destroyer escort, and an LCI.
The Ommaney Bay had to be abandoned and scuttled. On January
6, 1945, when the force began operations inside the gulf,
suicide planes struck the battleships New Mexico and
California, the cruiser Columbia, the cruisers Louisville
and Australia a second time, three destroyers and several
other vessels - including a minesweeper, which went down
after being hit twice.
In the approaching amphibious forces, kamikazes
crashed into an LST, into a troop-filled transport,
and into the escort carriers Kadashan Bay and
36 Leyte Gulf