“We tried to pull the _Carole Baby_ off the reef, but she was too far gone. She went down in deep water—the only American ship, incidentally, lost in the Battle of Surigao Strait.” Admiral Chester W. Nimitz radioed from Hawaii: THE SKILL, DETERMINATION AND COURAGE DISPLAYED BY THE PERSONNEL OF THESE SMALL BOATS IS WORTHY OF THE HIGHEST PRAISE.... THE PT ACTION VERY PROBABLY THREW THE JAPANESE COMMAND OFF BALANCE AND CONTRIBUTED TO THE COMPLETENESS OF THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEFEAT. By contrast to the corking of Surigao Strait, at the unguarded San Bernardino Strait, the powerful Central Striking Force that morning passed unopposed into Leyte Gulf and jumped the escort carriers and their screen. Something close to worldwide panic broke out in American command centers when the brass realized that the Central Striking Force was already in the gulf and Admiral Halsey’s force was off chasing the carrier decoy—too far off to engage Kurita’s fleet. A handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts of the screen threw themselves between the Japanese wolf and the transport sheep. Planes from the escort carriers made real and dummy bombing runs on Kurita’s ships. Between them the desperate escort forces—planes and destroyers—battled Kurita to a standstill in the most spectacular show of sheer fighting courage in all of naval history. Incredibly, Admiral Kurita, with a victory as great as Pearl Harbor within his grasp—the very victory that the northern decoy carrier force was being sacrificed to buy—turned his mighty fleet about and steamed back through San Bernardino Strait, content with sinking two of the escort carriers and three of the screen ships whose gallant skippers had put their destroyers between the enemy and the helpless transport fleet. Admiral Halsey sank all four carriers, three destroyers, one light cruiser and a fleet oiler of the decoy force. The _Sho_ plan had worked almost perfectly for the Japanese—but with an unexpected outcome; the Japanese surface fleet, instead of wiping out the American transport fleet, was shattered. Its carrier force virtually vanished. His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s navy could never mount a major attack again. With the main battleline of the Japanese fleet driven from the scene, the PTs were right back where they had been in New Guinea and Guadalcanal—busting barges and derailing the Tokyo Express. On the far side of Leyte Island the waters are reef filled, the channels shallow and tortuous. The Japanese were using the dangerous waters of the Camotes Sea and Ormoc Bay to land supplies at night behind their lines. A familiar enough situation for the PT sailors, so the skippers took their shallow-draft torpedo boats into Ormoc Bay, looking for trouble. On the night between November 28th and 29th, Lieut. Roger H. Hallowell took PTs 127, 331, 128, and 191 around the tip of Leyte and headed up the western shore for Ormoc Bay in the first combat patrol of these waters.