While the Palau and Morotai landings were going on—indeed a few days before they started, but too late to stop them—Admiral Halsey made a bold proposal to cancel all intermediate landings and take the biggest jump of all, completely over Talaud, over Yap, even over Mindanao itself, all the way to Leyte in the Central Philippines. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of all the Allies, then at a conference in Quebec, swiftly accepted the recommendation and set October 20th as target date, chopping two months (and nobody will ever know how many casualties) off the life of the Pacific war. In a wild flurry of activity, planners concentrated the preparations of three months into a month, diverted the forces for the other landings into Leyte force, and made bold carrier strikes at Formosa, in preparation for the landings in the Central Philippines. An example of the incurable tendency of high-level Japanese officers to believe in their own foolish propaganda is the fact that on the very eve of the Leyte landings the Japanese defenders of the Philippines relaxed their guard, because they thought the Third Fleet had been wiped out. American carriers had been roving the waters off Formosa during the week before the landings, and carrier planes had chewed up enemy airpower. Japanese Intelligence officers, however, believed the fantasies told them by their pilots returning from attacks on the American fleet. Radio Tokyo solemnly announced that the Third Fleet had been annihilated with the loss of 11 carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and one destroyer. The Japanese public went wild with enthusiasm. The Emperor made a special announcement of felicitation to his people, and victory celebrations were held at army and navy headquarters in the Philippines. The Third Fleet had actually suffered two cruisers damaged. The first American troops—a scouting force—landed on October 17th on Dinegat and Suluan islands, across the gulf from Leyte. Minesweepers swept the gulf and frogmen poked about the shoreline. Bombardment ships pounded the beaches, and carrier planes blasted enemy airfields. Ships of the attack landing forces entered Leyte Gulf during the night of October 19th, and next morning troops went ashore on four beaches on the west side of Leyte Gulf and on both sides of Panoan Strait, to the south. PTs were rushed up from New Guinea, 1,200 miles away. Forty-five of the boats, under the tactical command of Lieut. Commander Robert Leeson, made the trip on their own power with a stop-over for rest of a sort in Palau and a refueling at sea, so as to arrive with enough gas to start patrols immediately. They arrived in the combat zone on the morning of October 21st, and began prowling that same night. Times were lively in Surigao Strait, and the PTs had good hunting, but nothing compared to what was coming.