As we went back to Formosa we were starting what’s known no as the second battle of Philippine Sea. We steamed north to Okinawa Jima Looking for the Japanese fleet which was rumored to be somewhere in the vicinity. We did not find them and started working back between Formosa Dn Luzon softening the airfields up for dug out dug’s invasion of Leyte.
On October 25 we met the Japanese fleet west of Luzon and the fighting was pretty rough. We sank 3 Japanese carriers and left one dead in the water, sank 3 battlewagons, left 2 damaged. Sunk 8 cruisers, and left 2 dead in water. Sank 14 Destroyers and 5 possibles. We shot down 50 Japanese planes. But all this damage to the enemy was not one sided as we too suffered damage. Our losses were: 2 light cruisers damaged by bombs. One carrier sunk (USS Princeton), the Birmingham was severely damaged while alongside the carrier trying to save the personnel as well as fight fires. The carrier exploded and two cans as well as the Birmingham who were all three alongside when the carrier went down were damaged. Nearly all of the carriers personnel were saved however and although they remained in the water several hours other ships picked them up. The Grant took twelve 6" and 8" hits and still remained afloat proving that we can take lots of punishment and still live to fight another day.
After the second Battle of Philippine Sea where the Japanese tried to knock out our positions on Leyte we received the following message from General Douglas MacArthur forwarded to us through Admiral Halsey. "I send my deepest thanks and appreciation to your magnificent forces on the splendid support and assistance you and they have rendered in the Leyte Operation. We have cooperated with you so long that we are accustomed and expect you brilliant successes and you have more than sustained our fullest anticipation everyone here has a feeling of complete confidence and I operation when you go into action in our support.
We then hit Manila and the planes spotted a Japanese convoy of cargo ships and sank all of them. The Japanese planes kept us at general quarters nearly 48 hours.
On October 29, a day we will all remember only too well, for we were celebrating Navy Day as well as Halloween by having a big turkey dinner with all the trimmings including cake pie and ice cream. The Japanese hit us again. No sooner had we sat down to chow when general quarters sounded and we had to leave our dinner to fight the Japanese. Here we encountered our first Jap suicide plane. He came diving in on a carrier from nearly 7,000 feet and would have crashed on the carrier but she filled him so full of lead until he exploded only 20 feet from the carrier. The carrier was the Intrepid and she really put up a sheet of lead and no plane could survive it so the Japanese went to meet honorable ancestors.
Then for the next few days we had a lull and everyone managed to get plenty of rest. We started back for port and as we started back in we had of all things, target practice. It seemed as though we could not get by a day without burning powder and of all the time to have target practice that was a plenty rough time.
We were in port for only four days and those four days was certainly a nightmare. We had to do all the work and have the ship ready for sea and in such a short time. We managed to get squared away by November 14th and once more we were underway and as usual destination unknown.