War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Music James Early. Welcome back to Key Battles of the Pacific Theater World War II. This is your host,

James Early, and I've got my trusty rusty co-host, Dr. Scott Rank, how are you, sir?

Doing well, good sir.

All right, well, I've got, this is going to be a great episode.

In fact, a pair of episodes.

We are now on episode 21, and we're not even anywhere near done.

We're getting kind of close to the end, but we're going to be talking about the largest naval battle in world history ever, and it's the Battle of Leite Gulf. And we will also discuss

briefly the American recapture of the Philippines, which goes along with Leite Gulf. This is key battle

number seven. It is massive. It is epic. It has tons of moving

parts. And we are going to spend quite a bit of time on this one, aren't we, Scott? Yeah, I mean,

this one, it just has everything where, like you said, it's the largest naval battle in history.

So take that Thermopyla, take that Lepanto, you have nothing on Lite golf. And it's the largest naval battle in history. So take that thermopoly, take that Lepanto.

You have nothing on Lite Gulf.

And it's also kind of a, it's a passing of the torch of naval tactics because, like we talked

about earlier in the series, some old-fashioned admirals thought the battleship was still

how you build your naval tactics,

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