They sank two heavy cruisers, including KuritaвЂ™s flagship, and damaged a third which was escorted back to Borneo by two destroyers. There they would get their revenge.ДЄlso on 23 October, two American submarines, the USS Darter and USS Dace, ambushed Adm KuritaвЂ™s Center Force that night in the Palawan Strait. His six pre-World War Two Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Colorado class battleships sailed south to the Surigao Strait. They were thought to be worthless for anything except pre-invasion bombardments and fire support for MacArthurвЂ™s troops. OldendorfвЂ™s Task Force consisted of the venerable battlewagons that were sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor, and then resurrected and repaired. There they would be met by Vice Adm Jesse OldendorfвЂ™s battleships. On 23 October, Adm NishimuraвЂ™s Southern Force was spotted by a PBY flying boat and the Americans planned to ambush the Southern Force in the Surgiao Strait. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Americans knew the precise locations of both the Center and Southern Forces. (Ozawa commented later that if he had planes and trained pilots, he would have destroyed the entirety of TF 38, so ignorant the Americans were of his location.) Ozawa needed to lure Halsey away from the Philippines, but despite his best efforts to be detected, the Americans had no idea his four carriers were closing in from the north.

The one Japanese Task Force that needed to be spotted by the Americans, Adm OzawaвЂ™s decoy Northern Force, was the only task force that was not spotted by the Americans. On the morning of 24 October 1944, the Japanese Operation Sho-Go I was already falling apart.

Battle of the sibuyan sea