Yep, but people state it was number one with regularity. Helldivers sank a lot of ships. Ozawa sure got a taste of that. It was all downhill for Japan when the SB2C came online. Timing is everything and sure helped the HD's cause...
Yes, but what was their source? LOTS of "common knowledge" gets passed around without anyone actually checking the original source. And notably, the tonnage claim for the Helldiver is NOT mentioned on Wikipedia, and that's the sort of factoid that would almost certainly find its way IF a source was available for it.
You can't forget that in one day at Midway, the Dauntless sank in excess of 120,000 tons. Meanwhile two of the Japanese carriers sunk at Phillippine Sea were recorded by submarines, and the Helldivers at Leyte didn't even manage half of the Midway tonnage against Ozawa's task group (splitting credits with the TBMs, while
Chiyoda was ultimately finished by naval gunfire).
And Japanese naval power had already been broken LONG before the Helldiver came online. Philippine Sea and Leyte were essentially the last gasps of the IJN.
