Concerned for Ushijima’s reputation, General Cho insisted that the Thirty-Second Army must launch a counterattack. Yahara called the proposal “completely irresponsible,” warning that Japanese troops would be mowed down as soon as they left their fortified lines. But the pressure from Tokyo and Formosa could not be ignored, and the mood in the command bunker was strongly in favor of an attack. After hearing Cho’s and Yahara’s contending arguments, Ushijima approved plans for a surprise night attack on April 12. A brigade drawn from the Sixty-Second and Twenty-Fourth Divisions would sally out from their lines after dark, to penetrate American entrenched positions below Kakazu Ridge.
The attack began at midnight on April 12. After hours of savage combat, including desperate fighting at hand-to-hand, the Japanese withdrew, but then renewed their attacks on the two following nights. The American army took losses, but stopped the attacks and hurled the Japanese back. The experience seemed to vindicate the views of Colonel Yahara—whatever the advantages of night infiltration attacks, the American advantages in artillery and firepower would inflict disproportionate losses on Japanese troops whenever they left their caves and entrenchments. General Ushijima cancelled the operation on the morning of April 13, but the impulse to attack was in the marrow of the Japanese army’s bones, and the Cho-Yahara debate would be reprised later in the campaign.
AFTER THE BIG KAMIKAZE RAIDS OF APRIL 6, U.S. intelligence analysts judged that the enemy’s aircraft reserves must be so depleted that they could not mount another attack on such a scale, at least not in the near term. But that appraisal was too optimistic. The Japanese were preparing to hurl thousands of planes at the Allied fleet. April 6 was only the first of ten Kikusui “floating chrysanthemum” operations—and in between these major massed aerial attacks, the Japanese would launch smaller raids nearly every day of the Okinawa campaign. The attacking aircraft included a sundry assortment of obsolete models that the Americans had not seen for years, but also plenty of the newer-type bombers and fighters. Conventional dive-bombing and torpedo attacks were combined with kamikazes and even Oka rocket-propelled manned suicide missiles. Total Japanese aerial sorties during the campaign would eventually surpass 3,700, and the attackers would hit more than 200 Allied ships, killing more than 4,900 naval officers and bluejackets.
Japanese air commanders had allowed themselves to believe that the April 6 attacks had dealt a shattering blow to the Allied fleet. In his diary, Admiral Ugaki recorded that a reconnaissance plane had counted 150 columns of black smoke, and that “the sea around Okinawa had thus turned into a scene of carnage.” Listening in on the American fighter control circuits, the Japanese had taken satisfaction in the “hurried confusion” of the enemy’s airmen. On April 6, Ugaki concluded that “it was almost certain that we destroyed four carriers.”78 After a fuller assessment, drawing upon observations by the Thirty-Second Army on Okinawa, the Imperial Headquarters accepted estimates that thirty-five American ships had been hit and twenty-two had sunk.79 This exaggerated tally persuaded the high command that the massed suicide attacks held the potential to overpower and scatter the enemy fleet, perhaps even to force the Americans to abandon Okinawa. On April 9, Admiral Toyoda ordered air reinforcements from bases across Japan to stage into Kyushu airfields, in preparation for Kikusui No. 2.
For Task Force 58, operating in a 60-square-mile defensive zone northeast of Okinawa, the daily routines were an exhausting struggle. The force had been at sea for nearly a month, without respite, constantly fighting off hair-raising aerial and kamikaze assaults. More than one-third of its aircraft carriers had been mauled in these attacks, often with appalling loss of life. The days and nights passed in a nightmarish blur. Nervous strain, at every level of the command chain, became a vital concern. It was necessary to rotate ships out of the theater, back to Guam, Ulithi, or Leyte Gulf—partly for repairs, upkeep, and reprovisioning, but also to provide a short break for the crews. The fleet surgeons warned that symptoms of pilot fatigue were rife. Jocko Clark’s Task Group 58.1 staff, for the sake of the admiral’s mental health, did not show him the overnight messages until he had completed his morning ablutions and eaten a quiet breakfast.80 Marine fighters flew into Yontan Field on April 8, but for various reasons the land-based air units could not assume primary responsibility for protecting the island and fleet until much later in the campaign. “The fleet that came to stay” was forced to stick it out, making good its nickname.
As the campaign wore on, the Americans learned important lessons in the unforgiving school of daily aerial combat. The Japanese constantly tried new tactics, forcing the defenders to adjust. When reconnaissance planes began approaching at very high altitudes, the Americans stacked “high CAP” at 35,000 feet. The Hellcat and Corsair pilots circled at that lofty height, their cockpits as cold as igloos, breathing canned oxygen through their masks. Remaining on station required deft flying, because the westerly winds at that altitude often surpassed 150 knots. Radar was a godsend at Okinawa—even more than in previous campaigns—but the systems then in use did not always provide accurate estimates of the altitude of incoming planes, and as the range closed they often lost contact.
As a countermeasure, the Americans deployed radar picket destroyers at sixteen “stations” on the outskirts of the island and the fleet patrol area. The busiest picket stations were patrolled by a pair of destroyers, with two to four amphibious gunboats to provide supporting antiaircraft fire. They maintained continuous radar, sound, and visual searches for enemy planes and submarines. During the days, a strong combat air patrol orbited overhead. Fighter director officers (FDOs) were established on board the destroyer pickets themselves, to direct the orbiting fighters. The specialized dialogue between the FDOs and the CAP, laden with jargon and codenames, was broadcast on the Inter-Fighter Director (IFD) net, and played through loudspeakers on ships throughout the fleet. This gave officers and sailors a means to track the progress of incoming air raiders even before they could be seen in the sky above. “The IFD net was at once our salvation and our entertainment,” said an antiaircraft gunnery officer on one of the battleships off Okinawa. “It prepared us to defend ourselves by following the progress of approaching enemies and, of course, under the circumstances it was perfectly fascinating.”81
The cold reality, which no admiral was willing to admit out loud, was that the picket ships were not just an early-warning radar “tripwire.” They were a decoy force whose purpose was to divert the attention of a certain percentage of the incoming enemy planes. Destroyers and gunboats (LCSs and LCIs) were less valuable than the larger warships to the south, or the heavily laden troopships and transports off the beachhead. They were expendable, and their crews knew it. Throughout the long campaign, the picket vessels bore the brunt of the kamikazes’ wrath. The CAP over the picket stations was often spotty, especially in thick weather or after sunset. Unlike the carrier fighters, the suicide pilots did not have to worry about navigating back to their bases in darkness. Often, the little picket ships had only their helms and their antiaircraft guns to protect them. And even if a strong CAP was overhead to intercept the Japanese raids, the radar scopes could not distinguish friend from foe. Kamikazes might break out of an aerial melee at any moment, diving suddenly on the ships below. When a picket destroyer was targeted by more than one diver simultaneously, the fire control officers had to divide their fire, and accuracy suffered accordingly.
Gradually, with experience, the picket destroyer skippers learned to maneuver more effectively against attacks. They rang up maximum speed for every action, to improve the ship’s nimbleness. They steered to keep the diving planes on the beam, so that the greatest possible volume of antiaircraft fire could be trained on the target. A picket ship that was hit once—or even suffered a single damaging near-miss—was likely to lose a portion of her speed and maneuverability. One or more of her antiaircraft batteries might be silenced—the weapons put out of action or the gun crews killed—rendering her more vulnerable to any kamikaze that f
ollowed. This problem was disastrously illustrated by the ordeal of the Laffey at Radar Picket Station No. 1 on April 16, when the 2,200-ton destroyer was attacked by twenty-two Japanese planes in eighty minutes. Struck by four bombs and six kamikazes, the Laffey lost thirty-two killed and seventy-one wounded, nearly one-third of her crew.
In ten massed Kikusui attacks between April 6 and June 22, the attacking planes simply overwhelmed the Allied defenses by weight of numbers. Enemy planes might circle their targets at 5 or 6 miles, beyond effective range of the antiaircraft guns, and then attack simultaneously from all directions, forcing individual antiaircraft batteries to fire almost at random as the attacking planes swarmed in. For the entire period of the Okinawa campaign, fifteen radar picket vessels were sunk and fifty damaged, amounting to nearly one in every three vessels that served on the stations during the period. Total crew casualties on the radar pickets alone (not including the rest of the fleet) were 1,348 killed and 1,586 wounded.82
Admiral Turner sent Admiral Nimitz a series of twenty-eight photographs of picket ships damaged by kamikazes. One image after another depicted grievously mangled destroyers and gunboats, with gaping holes torn in the decks, smashed and charred superstructures, gun turrets hanging over the side, and molten steel drooping seaward. In a covering letter, Turner wrote: “These will give you an idea of what our boys are going through. How they ever get their ships back is a mystery; but they are cheerful and do everything they can to keep their ships up here instead of being sent to the rear areas. Morale seems very high, even among our radar picket vessels who well realize what they are up against as do all of us, and they are willing to fight it out on this line.”83
Again and again, Mitscher sent carrier task groups north to raid Japanese airfields on Kyushu. They bombed the runways, shot down defending fighters, and strafed whatever parked aircraft they could find. But the Americans never managed to stifle the Japanese air threat at its source; they could not simply throw the “big blue blanket” over Kyushu, as they had done on Luzon. Kyushu was too large, with too many airfields, too widely scattered, and the antiaircraft defenses were much more formidable than on Luzon. Ugaki’s Fifth Air Fleet could also disperse planes to airfields on nearby Shikoku, or southern Honshu. From his headquarters on Guam, Admiral Nimitz exercised his provisional authority to call upon the services of the Twentieth Air Force, and hundreds of B-29s dropped high-explosive “iron bombs” on Kyushu and Shikoku’s airfields on seventeen different days in April and May 1945. But these raids could never put the Fifth Air Fleet out of business; Kanoya and its many satellite airfields remained a cornucopia of kamikazes. The Japanese planes were kept dispersed, hidden under camouflage netting or brush, and moved into takeoff position under cover of the predawn darkness. Craters in the runways were quickly filled in by teams of laborers working with basic tools and equipment, including wheelbarrows, baskets, shovels, and hand-pulled rollers. The carrier bombers and Superfortresses dropped delayed-action bombs, fused to detonate hours after the U.S. planes had departed—but no matter how many workers were killed by these blasts, the Japanese never lacked manpower to replace their losses.
These operations were never popular with the USAAF generals, who objected to diverting the B-29s from their ongoing strategic bombing mission against Japanese cities and aircraft plants. But when General LeMay complained to Nimitz, the CINCPAC firmly told him to keep flying the bombing raids. The argument was bucked up the chain of command to the JCS, which backed Nimitz. The Superforts flew more than 1,600 bombing sorties against Kyushu and Shikoku airfields between April 8 and May 11, when they were finally released from this unwanted duty. In his memoir, LeMay argued that the mission had been misbegotten, and was not worth the effort: “The B-29 was not a tactical bomber and never pretended to be. No matter how we socked away at those airdromes, we could not reduce the kamikaze threat to zero. In some proportion it was always there.”84
West of Okinawa, in the crowded coastal waters off Naha and the Hagushi beachhead, the sea was littered with flotsam and jetsam. Crews of the transport and amphibious fleet watched vigilantly for suicide speedboats, “midget” submarines, and even swimmers wearing explosive belts. After the destroyer Charles J. Badger was hit by a mine dropped by a speedboat before dawn on April 9, sentries with flashlights and Tommy guns were posted on all ships. Taking no chances, they tended to fire upon any debris that drifted within range. The fleet supported the Tenth Army with naval call fire and night-long illumination over the battlefields north of Shuri and Naha. The “no-man’s-land” between the American and Japanese lines was kept brightly lit by starshells, every night, from dusk to dawn. The troops ashore were grateful for this service, and credited it with reducing the threat of night infiltration attacks.
Whenever the voices on the IFD net reported “bogeys” approaching the picket lines, an alarm buzzer rang through the ship, a bugler played a bugle call through the loudspeakers, and the crew went to general quarters. The captain set “Condition Zed,” requiring that all watertight doors and hatches be slammed shut and dogged down. The bombardment ships of Admiral Deyo’s Task Force 54 fell into a defensive circular formation, like covered wagons on the old western frontier. The chemical smoke generators began emitting a thick, bluish-gray miasma that drifted on the breeze and appeared to cling to the sea. The gunners and fire directors scanned the skies and listened to the radio dialog between the FDO and the fighter pilots. The gunners in the “firing line” on each ship, manning antiaircraft weapons ranging in size from 5-inch down to 20mm, kept their barrels pointed skyward and their eyes peeled.
The most deadly and versatile antiaircraft gun of this period was the mid-ranged 40mm Bofors, which fired a 2-pound projectile with a muzzle velocity of 2,890 feet per second and a cyclic rate of 160 rpm per barrel, and held a flat trajectory to a range of nearly two miles. The Bofors could hit a steeply diving kamikaze when it was still more than a mile away, and the 40mm rounds would begin to take the plane apart—sawing off its wings, tearing away chunks of the fuselage, shattering the windshield and canopy, shooting away the propeller. The engine and frame, being the heaviest and sturdiest portions of the airplane, might continue forward for a brief time—even after the rest of the plane was gone—until finally nosing down into the ocean. Lieutenant Robert Wallace, an antiaircraft gunnery officer on the Idaho, concluded of the Bofors gun: “No kamikaze could get past even a single quad-40 if its people knew what they were doing.”85
The full potential of the larger 5-inch/38 caliber gun was realized with the introduction of the VT (variable time) fuse, also known as the “influence” or “proximity” fuse, which placed a small short-ranged Doppler radar directly into the shell itself. This technological marvel solved the problem of detonating a shell in close proximity to a small, rapidly moving target—the enemy airplane—rather than below or behind it.86 To witnesses, the successful performance of a 5-inch VT-fused shell was a spectacular sight. If the target aircraft was a bomber, the shell usually set off the bomb that the plane carried. Rather than bursting into flames and diving toward the ocean, the enemy plane simply disintegrated in midair, leaving nothing but a puff of black smoke.
On April 12, a clear, fresh day with almost unlimited visibility, Admiral Ugaki ordered the second “floating chrysanthemums” operation, consisting of 185 kamikazes accompanied by 150 fighters and 45 torpedo planes. The action began shortly after 11:00 a.m., when 129 planes took off from southern Kyushu airfields. Two hours later, the radar scopes of the two destroyers and four LCS(L)s (gunboats) at Radar Picket Station No. 1 (nicknamed “coffin corner”) lit up, and thirty Aichi dive-bombers fell upon the Purdy and Cassin Young. The two destroyers erected a wall of antiaircraft fire, and about a dozen flaming planes splashed down into the sea around them. Both destroyers and one of the gunboats were hit and badly damaged in the ensuing fracas. The Purdy’s skipper remarked in his action report, “The prospects of a long and illustrious career for a destroyer assigned to radar picket station duty
is below average expectancy. That duty is extremely hazardous, very tiring, and entirely unenjoyable.”87
Later that afternoon, in the waters west of Okinawa known as “kamikaze gulch,” Admiral Deyo’s Task Force 54 warships were assaulted by a swarm of planes. At 1:26 p.m., the call came over the IFD net: “Exbrook. Exbrook. [Attention all ships.] Conductor says, ‘Flash Red, Control Green [shoot approaching planes on sight].’ ”88 Three torpedo planes approached in a high-speed wavetop attack, hopping over the screening vessels and aiming for the battleships at the heart of the formation. One, riddled with 40mm fire, struck the port side of the destroyer Zellars and exploded in a ball of fire, killing twenty-nine of her crew. The battleship Tennessee was rushed by five more low-flying attackers that came through the smoke thrown off by the Zellars. They went down one by one, hit by the converging tracers of the Tennessee’s and Idaho’s 40mm and 20mm fire. A few minutes later, another descended out of the sky in a well-timed gliding attack on the Tennessee, and was shot down directly ahead of the ship. An Aichi dive-bomber on the port bow zoomed in directly toward the superstructure. It struck one of the 40mm quads, killing the entire crew and sending burning gasoline across the deck. Its 250-pound bomb pierced the deck and exploded in the berthing areas for the warrant officers. The Tennessee suffered casualties of 23 killed and 106 wounded, including dozens of men who suffered hideous burns.
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