title: The Elusive Enemy: U.S. Naval Intelligence and the Imperial Japanese Fleet
author:  Douglas Ford 
description: "Carefully researched and preparedIntelligence gathering is an arcane and secretive activity, as the author describes, and is usually hidden from and little mentioned by historians. So, in the mix of factors that lead to success in war, it is often inadequately recorded. Mr. Ford has done a brilliant job in correcting that unbalanced record as far as the Pacific war is concerned." <i><b>-- Work Boat World</b></i>
zlib_text: > > “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot
  > be expected. We will do what damage we can.”
  
  With these words, Lt. Cdr. Robert W. Copeland addressed the crew of the
  destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts on the morning of October 25, 1944, off
  the Philippine island of Samar. On the horizon loomed the mightiest ships of
  the Japanese Navy, a massive fleet that represented the last hope of a
  staggering empire. All that stood between it and Douglas MacArthur’s
  vulnerable invasion force were the Roberts and the other small ships of a tiny
  American flotilla poised to charge into history.
  
  THE LAST STAND OF THE TIN CAN SAILORS
  
  It was an upset victory won by overmatched American warships fighting a battle
  they were never supposed to fight. In a two-and-a-half-hour running cataclysm
  in the Philippine Sea, the Americans performed the impossible, turning back
  the Japanese Navy in its last desperate gamble and changing the course of
  World War II in the Pacific. W