The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  The shuttle-bombing tactic embodied in A-Go was sound in theory, but it was an expediency chosen to spare the pilots the ordeal of landing on the carrier flight decks. It was a tactical concept selected, in part, to mitigate the deficiencies in the carrier pilots’ skills, and therefore pointed to the larger problem that would inevitably decide the outcome of the impending battle. The Japanese aviators were simply not ready to meet their adversaries on anything approaching equal terms.

  The officers and pilots told one another that A-Go was a good plan that would deliver a badly needed victory for Japan. By some reports, the Japanese officers and crews were confident in the week before sailing for battle. High hopes were invested in the land-based First Air Fleet, also called the Base Air Force, commanded by Vice Admiral Kakuji Kakuta and headquartered on Tinian. Shore-based naval air had always been closely integrated into the Imperial Navy’s fleet command structure. Naval leaders had retained a lingering belief, despite plenty of contrary evidence, that their land-based bombers could deal devastating blows to enemy fleets at sea.

  On paper, the First Air Fleet had a huge complement of about 1,750 planes, but that figure overstated Kakuta’s actual strength in the Marianas by more than threefold. His command suffered from poor ground support facilities, a shortage of qualified mechanics and aircrews, and scarcities of spare parts, ammunition, and fuel. The submarine threat in waters between the home islands and the Marianas had rendered it impractical to crate the planes and send them by sea. Most were flown in from Japan by unseasoned and undertrained pilots through airfields in the Bonin and Volcano archipelagoes. Operational accidents, including crashes and navigation failures, accounted for crippling losses of both aircraft and aviators. On the eve of the American attacks, Kakuta was thought to have about 435 aircraft in flyable condition.

  Quite apart from the amphibious campaign and the ubiquitous depredations of the fast carriers, American submarines were cutting the internal tendons of the Japanese war effort. The undersea campaign had grown steadily more potent since mid-1943. On June 7, the Naval General Staff announced that 210,000 tons of shipping had been lost in May. Since the beginning of April, the Japanese had lost five destroyers, six tankers, four troopships, and fourteen freighters. The Japanese fleet was constantly stalked, reconnoitered, harassed, and hunted by submarines operating from Pearl Harbor and Australia. Each of Japan’s superbattleships had caught a torpedo fired from an American submarine. The Yamato had taken a hit from the Skate on Christmas Day, 1943; the Musashi was torpedoed by the Tunny while departing Palau on March 29. Though the huge ships could easily withstand single torpedo hits, the damage had to be repaired in Japanese home waters, requiring long voyages and absences that consumed scarce fuel and deranged the formations and plans of the Japanese commanders.

  In April and May 1944, every major movement of Ozawa’s fleet was tracked and reported by submarines. American boats skulked off Lingga Roads near Singapore, observing and reporting as Japanese ships entered and exited. They assailed tankers shuttling between Tarakan and Tawi Tawi, off the northeast coast of Borneo. Freighters and troop transports carrying reinforcements from China went down between Shanghai and Manila. The veteran light cruiser Yubari was destroyed in an attack by the Bluegill off Halmahera on April 26. On May 6, the Crevalle sank the big tanker Nisshin Maru off Borneo.

  As the First Mobile Fleet gathered in Tawi Tawi in mid-May, it was reconnoitered by the submarines Lapon and Bonefish. On May 15, the Bonefish (Commander Thomas W. Hogan) damaged a tanker and sank one of its escorting destroyers, the Inazuma. His sighting reports confirmed that a major fleet rendezvous was in progress at Tawi Tawi, and two more submarines, the Puffer and Bluefish, shadowed the approaches during the following week. The Puffer’s attack on the seaplane tender Chitose on May 22 resulted in two hits, both apparent duds. On June 5, she sank two valuable cargo ships, the Takasaki and the Ashizuri. In a three-day rampage off Tawi Tawi between June 6 and 9, the submarine Harder (Commander Samuel D. Dealey) ran up one of the most extraordinary scores in the history of submarine warfare. On the sixth, just south of Tawi Tawi, the Harder sank a charging destroyer, the Minazuki, with a down-the-throat shot. She repeated the performance the following day with another down-the-throat shot, sinking the destroyer Hayanami. On the eighth, Dealey found the veteran destroyer Tanikaze in his sights and sank her with a four-torpedo salvo.

  Destroyers, having been conceived and designed as submarine hunters, were the submariner’s natural enemy. The destruction of so many such vessels was a source of singular satisfaction to the American submarine crews. It also weakened Ozawa’s antisubmarine screening force, a factor that would prove decisive in the impending carrier battle.

  While fretting over the location and intentions of the Fifth Fleet, the Japanese army and navy were also forced to react to MacArthur’s offensive up the northern coast of Dutch New Guinea. In a finely choreographed series of sealifts, Admiral Kinkaid’s naval forces had put army amphibious troops ashore on Hollandia (April 21) and Wakde Island (May 17). In each case the invaders had secured airstrips in a matter of days, and USAAF planes had begun exerting pressure on points farther west. In May, MacArthur was driving toward the “Bird’s Head” peninsula of northwestern New Guinea. On May 20, naval and amphibious forces began maneuvering into position to attack Biak Island. About 10,000 Japanese troops held the island, including an elite 222nd Regiment that had been battle-tested in China. The initial landings caught the defenders by surprise, but in the drive to capture Biak’s three airfields, the fighting bogged down and both sides suffered heavy losses.

  The Japanese deemed Biak a critical outpost in the defense of the southern inner perimeter. The island’s airfields were an important node in the forthcoming battle envisioned in A-Go. If they were lost, they would be turned against the Japanese. USAAF B-24 bombers would launch a lethal bombing campaign against western New Guinea, Palau, and the southern Philippines. They would command the sea-lanes east of Mindanao. Therefore, Admiral Ugaki wrote in his diary, “Biak Island is the most critical crossroad of the war.”60 He suspected that the Japanese army was less than sanguine about its prospects on Biak and therefore was inclined to abandon the garrison as it had on so many other islands. But the navy could not countenance such a retreat, and Ugaki urged Ozawa to pressure Tokyo to send all available air and troop reinforcements into the area.

  On May 29, Admiral Toyoda of the Combined Fleet ordered “Operation KON” to commence. KON involved the massing of land-based air units and troops behind the lines, and plans to move troops quickly into disputed areas to respond at the point of attack. It was thought that the U.S. Fifth Fleet might even be lured south to intervene in the campaign, an event that would activate A-Go and perhaps lead to a war-altering decisive naval victory. Kakuta was ordered to fly some 480 planes into airfields at Sorong and Halmahera island, from which they could attack the American amphibious fleet off Biak. Encouraged by reports from the island, where the Japanese garrison had repeatedly driven American forces back in counterattacks, the Imperial General Headquarters resolved to send in land reinforcements. Short of transports, the navy resorted to the old tactic of using destroyers and cruisers as makeshift troopships, which staged at Sorong. The flotilla, committed by Vice Admiral Naomasa Sakonju, would fetch 2,500 troops of the Second Amphibious Brigade from Zamboanga, Mindanao, on May 31 and land them on Biak three days later. Much of their weaponry and supplies would be towed in by barges.

  Sakonju’s approach was detected on June 3 by Allied reconnaissance planes, and the flotilla was intercepted by a cruiser-destroyer force under Admiral Victor A. C. Crutchley. Heavy air attacks on June 8 sank one of Sakonju’s ships and damaged another. The Japanese warships, crowded with troops and in no condition to fight, withdrew in a running battle.

  The failure of the first reinforcement mission only redoubled Ozawa’s determination to hold Biak. At Tawi Tawi, where divisions of ships were arriving from Lingga Roads, the staff pored over maps of Biak and w
estern New Guinea and contemplated their options. Their prevailing view remained that the U.S. fleet would sail through the Palau islands to force a diversionary fight. Ugaki was keen to bring his heavy ships into action but reluctant to risk them to force the troop reinforcements through to Biak. On June 10, Admiral Toyoda ordered the battleships Yamato and Musashi, with the light cruiser Noshiro and six destroyers, to attempt another troop landing. Admiral Ugaki, who had admitted in his diary the previous morning that “I thought we had no choice but to give up Biak,” would command the combined force. He sailed from Tawi Tawi that afternoon and rendezvoused with additional forces in Batjan on June 11.61

  With nothing to compare to the Americans’ sophisticated amphibious equipment and landing craft, the Japanese warships were forced to the expedient of carrying army landing craft on their decks—one each on the destroyers, two each on the cruiser and battleships. With the decks awkwardly burdened in this way, the ships could not come to action or use their guns to bombard shore positions. The troops would have to be landed before the squadron went into action; if the Americans interfered, this reinforcement mission was likely to end in another failure. En route, Ugaki admitted in his diary that he was “worried” about his anemic air cover, and considered that his ships were likely to come under punishing air attack before they could get troops ashore or bring their naval guns to bear on any enemy target: “I think that to reach the front line itself without air cover is awfully difficult, but I won’t grumble about it now. I shall do all that is humanly possible.”62

  The Biak operation was complicated by a series of indications that the Americans were staging a major operation north of the equator, probably aimed at the Marianas. Long-range scouting flights launched from Nauru had photographed a powerful American fleet anchored at Kwajalein and Majuro. A few days later, on June 9, another flight confirmed that the carriers and battleships seen earlier were gone. Where were they? Where were they going? On Toyoda’s flagship, still anchored in Tokyo Bay, the staff officers continued to believe that the Pacific Fleet’s next thrust would be aimed toward Palau and the southern Philippines. Only the staff intelligence officer, Commander Chikataka Nakajima, predicted that the enemy was headed to Saipan. On June 10, American carrier planes were sighted about 300 miles east of Guam. The next day came a powerful fighter sweep over Saipan and Guam. On the night of June 12, Kakuta’s headquarters radioed its best estimates of the situation off the Marianas, judging that the enemy force consisted of eleven carriers.63

  Kakuta’s early reports on the air fight over the Marianas were largely upbeat. Though he was losing a great many planes, he believed (or said he believed) his forces were inflicting proportionate damage on the American carrier forces. Air scouts had not yet detected Turner’s amphibious fleet, so the Japanese surmised that the action in the Marianas might be nothing more than a raid or a feint. Other air scouts had seen MacArthur’s transports passing through the Admiralties, indicating that a major landing might be at hand in the south.

  At this moment, the strategic merit of the Americans’ double-headed offensive was plainly in view. The Japanese high command found itself frozen in place, awaiting clarity on the location and objective of the Fifth Fleet.

  On June 13, with minesweepers working off Saipan’s leeward beaches and battleships bombarding the coast, it seemed clear that an invasion of that island was imminent. Without waiting for orders, Ugaki suspended the Biak operation and began clearing his decks of the landing craft. Impatient for orders to fall in with Ozawa, he weighed the pros and cons of rushing north on his own initiative. Two hours later, Admiral Toyoda suspended Operation KON and gave new orders: “Set Op A in motion for the decisive battle.”64 The First Mobile Fleet filed out of the channel at Tawi Tawi. Ozawa set course at high speed for the Guimaras Strait in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines, where the fleet would take on 10,800 tons of fuel before sailing for the San Bernardino Strait. Ugaki’s force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers broke off the attack on Biak and sped north at 20 knots, keeping Mindanao to port, intending to rendezvous with Ozawa in the Philippine Sea. The Biak garrison was left to make the now-customary last stand, and die to the last man.

  * The nickname was Oni Gawara in Japanese. Ozawa had suffered a facial injury while serving on a destroyer early in his career. The injury had immobilized his facial muscles, making it impossible for him to smile or show other emotions through facial expressions.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ON JUNE 6, 1944, AS ALLIED TROOPS STORMED THE BEACHES OF northern France, President Roosevelt offered a simple prayer over the radio: “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. . . . With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy force of our enemy.”1

  The president knew, but could not yet disclose, that another great amphibious flotilla was underway in the Pacific. If not for the invasion of northern France (OVERLORD), the Pacific operation (FORAGER) would have surpassed all previous amphibious landings in scale and sophistication. That two such colossal assaults could be launched against fortified enemy shores, in the same month and at opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass, was a supreme demonstration of American military-industrial hegemony. The force that sailed against the Marianas included more than 600 ships carrying more than 300,000 men. Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58 now included fifteen aircraft carriers divided into four task groups. Task Force 51, the Joint Expeditionary Force, carried 127,000 amphibious assault troops, including the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Marine Divisions and the army’s 27th Infantry Division. Records enumerated 40,000 discrete categories of supplies and munitions in the holds of the transports. These had been combat-loaded so that they could be removed and transferred to the beachhead quickly and in exactly the quantities requested by the troops ashore. For every one marine or soldier in the landing force, the transport fleet carried more than a ton of supplies and equipment. A single supply ship brought rations to feed 90,000 men for a month. Mitscher’s task force carried eight million gallons of aviation fuel, and would burn more than four million barrels of bunker oil during the operation.2

  An F6F pilot, flying above Task Force 58 during the five-day passage from Eniwetok to Saipan, was impressed by the sight of the fleet as it turned into the wind to launch aircraft. Carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers turned together and steadied on the same course. “The wakes from all of those ships were perfectly symmetrical with each other, like a perfect corps de ballet, but some of these ships weighed thirty-five thousand tons. I looked down on this power and wondered what kind of fools these Japanese were. They had made one of the greatest miscalculations of all time, and boy, were they going to pay a price.”3

  The top echelon of the command roster was unchanged from previous operations. Spruance would command the entire fleet from his flagship, the cruiser Indianapolis, but he would leave tactical command of the carriers to Mitscher. Kelly Turner commanded Task Force 51, consisting of 486 vessels ranging in size from battleships (the older, slower class, optimized for shore bombardment) to landing craft. The marine Holland Smith retained his job as commander of the Fifth Amphibious Corps. General Ralph Smith of the U.S. Army remained his subordinate as commander of the 27th Infantry Division. Task Force 51 was subdivided into a Northern Attack Force, which would take Saipan (and which Turner commanded directly), and a Southern Attack Force, which would tackle Guam. The southern group was commanded by Admiral Richard L. Conolly, and the assault troops of that group were commanded by General Roy Geiger, the marine who had very adeptly run the Cactus Air Force during the Guadalcanal campaign.

  Two weeks earlier, a massive explosion had ripped through a row of moored LSTs in the West Loch of Pearl Harbor. Its cause could never be established with certainty because all direct witnesses vanished in an instant. A subsequent investigation concluded that it was likely an ammunition-loading accident,
perhaps caused by a dropped mortar round. The blast quickly touched off the magazines of adjoining vessels. Debris and bodies rained down across Ford Island and onto the decks of ships moored as far as half a mile away. Fires raged throughout the day and were not brought fully under control until the following morning. The disaster destroyed six LSTs slated for FORAGER. Casualties were heavy: 163 killed and 396 wounded. No reference to the incident was permitted to appear in the press.

  If the West Loch disaster had occurred six months earlier, in the prelude to FLINTLOCK, it would have forced Nimitz to postpone the operation. But in the late spring of 1944, the Pacific Fleet was so abundantly outfitted that it could shrug off the loss of six LSTs. Two days after the accident, Nimitz assured King that salvage and clean-up operations were underway and “FORAGER target date will be delayed but little if at all.”4

  The Marianas were nothing like the low-lying coral atolls of the Gilberts and Marshalls. They were big, rugged islands, dominated by steep peaks, yawning gorges, undulating tablelands, and fields of sugarcane. The lowlands were overgrown with thick vegetation. Saipan, Guam, and Tinian, the three principal islands in the southern Marianas and FORAGER’s main objectives, took in almost 300 square miles altogether. Saipan, twelve miles long, was dominated by a ridge of volcanic mountains running down the middle of most of its length. Its highest peak, Mount Tapotchau, rose to 1,554 feet. The western (or leeward) side of the island descended through terraced hills and sugarcane fields to a populated coastal plain. Three towns were situated on the west coast. Saipan was home to about 30,000 civilians, of whom about five-sixths were Japanese or Okinawans, the remainder mostly Chamorros and Koreans. The marines and soldiers of the Fifth Amphibious Corps had previously fought in flat, constricted terrain. In Saipan they would fight a wide campaign through towns, canefields, and mountainous backcountry. They would assume all the responsibilities and risks inherent in fighting among a civilian population.