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 of World War II.

This is your host, James, and I've got Scott Rank with me, as always.

And we are now moving into the second half of the Battle of

Lete Golf, the epic naval battle, the largest naval battle in world history. So before we jump

into our narrative for today, let me recap what happened in our last episode. If you haven't

listened to the last one,

you're definitely going to want to, but just in case, if you just are determined that,

by golly, I'm not going to go back. I'm going to listen to this one right now. Nothing's going to

stop me. Then we've got you covered. We will give you a little bit of a recap here. So the United

States in 1944, in the summer of

1944, they had decided their next major target would be the Philippines. Taking the Philippines

would go a long way toward cutting off the Japanese supply route from Southeast Asia to the

Japanese home islands and and they desperately needed that

to not be cut off.

So when the U.S. was picking their target, General MacArthur, of course, lobbied for the

Philippines, strictly for strategic reasons.

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