Carrier Division 25 under fire off Samar - Photo #1.

U.S. Navy Photograph

from the personal collection of Mike McKenna

"SECOND BATTLE OF THE PHILIPPINE SEA"

"DOWN PAYMENT ON VICTORY: SMOKE AND FLAME"

"The vast and complex score of the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea draws near the finale, crescendoing in a furious percussion-roll of death and destruction.  Outgunned and inferior in speed, a group of Navy escort carriers battled gallantly against the still-formidable force of a damaged Jap flotilla east of San Bernardino Strait on October 25, 1944 (West Longitude Date). Destroyers and destroyer-escorts braved an unremitting hail of Jap shells to lay smoke screens to cover the converted merchantmen, while the latter sent aloft their planes in a counter-blow.   In this photograph the dark curtain of the smoke screen blends with the gray sky and sullen sea as the sinister spouts of Japanese misses string across the scene like geysers."

Contemporaneous U.S. Navy caption

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Honor the Missing in Action and Killed in Action of Taffy III

We do remember.  We won't forget.