After completing her sea trials, Ise was attached to the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima and ferried troops and munitions to the naval base at Truk in October. In November the ship began working up, joined by the newly completed Hyūga the following month, and both rejoined the 2nd Battleship Division. On 1 May 1944, the sisters were transferred to Rear Admiral Matsuda Chiaki's reformed Fourth Carrier Division of the 3rd Fleet. The division's 634th Naval Air Group was formed that same day and conducted its first catapult launches in late June. Battle off Cape Engaño In October 1944, the two ships were involved in the Battle off Cape Engaño. Shortages of aircraft and serviceability problems greatly retarded pilot training and the ships only had a total of 17 D4Ys and 18 E16As on hand on 1 October; of these, only 6 and 16 were operational, respectively. The Japanese plan for the defence of the Philippines envisioned that the surviving carriers would be used to lure the American carrier forces away from the invasion area to a position where the carriers could be attacked by land-based aircraft, while the transports would be attacked by the rest of the IJN. The other carrier air groups were not in much better shape and the Japanese decided to retain the aircraft ashore for use against the American carriers. The Fourth Carrier Division, including the sisters, fleet carrier and the light carriers , , and , was assigned to the Northern Force under the command of Vice Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa. The Ise-class sisters sailed from Yashima on 20 October. Ozawa's carrier group was a decoy force, divested of all but 108 aircraft, intended to lure the American fleet away from protecting the transports at the landing beaches. On the morning of 24 October, the group was facing a United States Navy force that included ten carriers containing 600–1,000 aircraft. Ozawa launched the bulk of his few aircraft to attack the American carriers as a distraction. They inflicted no damage and caused the Americans to search in the direction from which they had attacked. The Americans finally spotted the Japanese carriers at 16:40, some east of Cape Engaño, the northeastern tip of Luzon. The American carriers were spread out and it was very late in the day to launch an airstrike, so Admiral William Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet decided to mass his