77.3 on the afternoon of 25 October to help guard the eastern entrance to Leyte Gulf. That assignment lasted until the early morning hours of the 27th when she transferred to TG 77.4, the escort carrier group that had been mauled off Samar on the 25th. Soon thereafter, she was assigned more specifically to Task Unit 77.4.2 (TU 77.4.2) built around and five other escort carriers. Ammen served with that outfit until the early morning hours of 29 October when she was reassigned to TG 77.2 inside Leyte Gulf. Later that day, the destroyer resumed duty screening the flagship as an element of TG 77.1. Rebuffed on the surface, the Japanese resorted to an aerial blitz. Ammen spent the first 16 days of November helping to ward off enemy aircraft. On the very first day, 1 November, a burning Yokosuka P1Y "Frances" twin-engine bomber struck Ammen 15 feet from the bridge crew taking off a searchlight and two stacks. The plane caromed off the ship into the sea but caused considerable topside damage and inflicted 26 casualties, including five dead. Ammen, however, carried on with her duties and claimed a number of hits and two probable kills in the aerial onslaught over the following two weeks. On 16 November, the warship laid in a course for the Admiralty Islands. She entered Seeadler Harbor on 21 November and spent the next nine days preparing for the voyage back to the United States. On 30 November, Ammen departed Manus and pointed her bow east toward the United States. After stops at Majuro and Pearl Harbor, she arrived in San Francisco on 21 December. Okinawa, March–June 1945 Repairs to her battle damage carried out at the Mare Island Navy Yard kept Ammen out of the Lingayen Gulf operation in January 1945, and their completion at the beginning of the second week in February came too late for the destroyer to play a part in the mid-February seizure of Iwo Jima. On 9 February 1945, she sailed out of the Golden Gate in company with and set a course for Pearl Harbor. The two warships reached Oahu on 15 February, and Ammen performed training and carrier escort missions in the Hawaiian Islands until the middle of the first week in March. On 4 March, the destroyer departed Pearl Harbor in company with and her old division mate, . The three warships made one stop-at