With their chances of winning WW2 quickly waning, Imperial Japan hurls one last Pacific offensive against the US at Leyte Gulf. Devising a three-prong attack with top and bottom feints designed to draw US ships away from the center, Japan nearly pulled off a dramatic victory. Against all odds and logic, the center held. This story draws the focus of WW2 down to that center offensive through the San Bernardino straight—where dramatically over-matched US forces stymied what should have been overwhelming forces. There is some well-handled big picture stuff, but the guts and glory of this book is the staggering amount of detail about the American “oil can sailors” and their fate. Once it gets rolling the narrative will take your breath away. Shifting perspective from ship to ship during the course of the battle could have made the book uneven but the tempo never slows. So much is going on, and clearly related, that I kept being stunned when given a time check reminding me almost everything was happening within a 6am to 8am window. Because of the often staggering amount of detail, kept having flashbacks of the first time I saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and their assault on Omaha Beach. Even a watered down filming of this could have the same effect. If you love the sea and history, how people and rise and fall confronted by hell, then grab a copy of this and pull up a deck chair.