Talk:Battle of Leyte Gulf

Reducing dramatic writing, but perhaps adding context

It is my intention to approach this article from the sometimes conflicting positions of more specificity/less dramatization, and more contextualization. Take, for example, "When Kinkaid finally bothered to check to be sure Halsey was still covering the San Bernardino Strait, he was dumbfounded to be told "no"--Halsey was out chasing carriers." This are Professor Jensen's words; I propose to replace them with the actual tactical message and primary-source interviews of the relevant officers.

Tentatively, I'm going to try to put in sidebar matrices of the successes and errors in command and control. I'm not coming up with the title from memory, but the book is on my shelf somewhere, The Anatomy of Error(?), which has a systematic way of analyzing failures.

Eventually, I hope to get an appropriate level of detail in each of the levels of writing:

• World War II, Pacific (and perhaps reexamine the title)
  • Battle of Leyte Gulf (a naval campaign on its own, and certainly part of the air-sea-land campaign against the Phillipines)
    • Significant engagements: the four usually accepted naval actions, but also actions in the Palawan Passage, the appearance of kamikazes, and the role of land-based Japanese air.

This will involve moving blocks of text among articles. At present, there is more detail in parts of the mid-level article than in some of the engagement articles. --Howard C. Berkowitz 15:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Divided command

Russell, I see you removed the sentence about divided command from the lede. Now, I'm certainly open to rewriting this, but the lack of a common operational concept was significant on both sides. Where and how should this be discussed? Yes, it's in the outcome, and mentioned in the situation on both sides, but I consider it unifying for the article. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I removed it because I didn't understand it; the idea wasn't clear. I should have talked about it first before exercising by big red pen. Are you suggesting that the reason for U.S. failure or Japanese failure in the battle was a divided command? Shouldn't ledes be synoptic? Russell D. Jones 16:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)