Once again King “nudged” Nimitz along the path to the Marianas. Taking Truk no longer made strategic sense, he argued. Mitscher had already forced the Combined Fleet to evacuate Truk’s anchorage and seek shelter a thousand miles to the southwest, near Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Sea. American bombers flying from newly captured fields in the Gilberts and Marshalls could suppress Truk’s residual air power. Seizing the Marianas would close the door on Truk altogether. Nimitz, virtually unflappable, said “aye, aye, sir” and put his planning staff to work on the Marianas. The time was mid-March. King, speaking for the Joint Chiefs, had already assigned a D-Day of 15 June.
Rear Adm. Forrest Sherman—razor sharp, acerbic, driven—became chief war planner for Nimitz after the Marshalls and would serve as the mastermind behind the great campaigns of the remainder of the war. The Marianas presented a daunting first challenge. He and his staff stared at the huge chart of the Central Pacific in the CINCPAC headquarters on Makalapa Heights, Oahu, and shook their heads with concern. The Marianas lay 3,300 miles from the fleet base at Pearl Harbor, 1,300 miles past Kwajalein, and 1,100 miles beyond Eniwetok, “the last frontier.” Moreover, the target islands of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian were large, mountainous, populous, and heavily defended—as befitting their location well within Japan’s proclaimed Absolute National Defense Sphere.
Sherman and Nimitz fully expected the Combined Fleet to sortie from the Sulu Sea to seek a “decisive battle” against the invading Fifth Fleet, the same kind of climactic sea fight waged by the legendary Admiral Togo against the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. The Japanese would have two advantages in such an engagement. Their carrier aircraft, unencumbered by such safety features as armor-shielded gas tanks, could outrange their American counterparts by a distinct margin. The second advantage reflected the “unsinkable” Japanese carriers—their airfields in the Marianas. The Imperial Navy’s carrier planes could strike Mitscher’s task force, swing by Guam (among many other islands) to refuel and rearm, then strike again on their homeward leg.
Forrest Sherman thus specified multiple objectives for the Fifth Fleet: establish air and sea superiority in the Marianas; pulverize the local airfields; forcibly seize Saipan, Guam, and Tinian (the principal task); deliver and protect a major construction force to build strategic bombing bases; be prepared to engage and destroy the Combined Fleet. Raymond Spruance would need an enormous force, the largest assembled in the Pacific War to date.
In that respect, Operation Forager’s timing was terrible. The Normandy landings rated top priority on amphibious transports, cargo ships, and self-deploying landing craft. In any earlier period this would have killed the Pacific operation. Not this time. American shipyards had attained unprecedented heights of productivity. There would be plenty of LSTs, for example, to support both massive landings. Moreover, the Allied Fleet, operating in the narrow seas of the English Channel, had a minimal requirement for carriers, and General Eisenhower’s landing force opted not to adopt LVTs to enhance their ship-to-shore assault. And there was another fortuitous coincidence. Forager took place just as William Halsey’s South Pacific Command ran out of missions. MacArthur and Nimitz divided Halsey’s warfighting assets. MacArthur got an abundance of land-based bombers. Nimitz got enough amphibious troops and craft to make Forager executable. Halsey himself would rotate future fleet command with Spruance.
Spruance, Kelly Turner, and Holland Smith again teamed up to lead the joint naval expedition to the Marianas. Turner would be ably supported by two up-and-coming amphibious admirals, Harry W. Hill, veteran of Tarawa and the Marshalls, and Richard L. Conolly, who had served coolly in command of the Kwajalein and Roi-Namur landings. General Smith would coordinate two corps—rarified atmosphere for a Marine officer—the new III Amphibious Corps (IIIAC), commanded by a can-do aviator, Maj. Gen. Roy S. Geiger, and Smith’s own V Amphibious Corps (VAC), commanded by himself at Saipan and by the rock-steady Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt at Tinian. Altogether, Spruance would lead 535 ships and 166,000 troops into the Marianas.
The Marines who had survived Tarawa marveled at the improvements in hardware available for Forager. While each target island would be surrounded by a coral reef, this time there would be plenty of LVTs for the landing force, including newer versions configured for the assault mission—LVT-4s with stern ramps and overhead hatch covers as well as LVT-As, new armored amtracs equipped with turret-mounted cannon. The Marines assaulted Tarawa with 125 field-modified LVTs. Seven months later they would land with 732 LVTs at Saipan, 456 at Guam, 519 at Tinian. And LCI-G gunboats had finally joined the Central Pacific Force. These would precede the H-Hour assaults, delivering concentrations of final preparatory fires from point-blank range with 4.5-inch rocket launchers and 40-mm and 20-mm gun mounts.
Certain tactical improvements for Forager brought grim smiles to Tarawa veterans like Merritt Edson and David Shoup. Now the Navy would devote much more time to preliminary air and naval gunfire bombardment. The Navy also agreed to utilize deception landings—amphibious feints—at Saipan and Tinian, as well as advanced force operations with UDT teams and minesweepers at all three islands. A compromise of sorts evolved between the Navy’s Gun Club—the diehard battleship advocates—and the Airdales, the fast carrier advocates. Since the prewar battleships lacked the speed to keep up with the carriers, they would find a permanent home in the amphibious forces, where their 14-inch and 16-inch main batteries would be most welcome additions to shore bombardment. The new, fast battleships would accompany the carrier task forces.
These improvements in amphibious doctrine notwithstanding, the work-up for Forager developed ragged edges. The landing forces lacked sufficient cargo ships to fully embark their organic vehicles. This had not been a factor on the small islands. But fighting ashore in the Marianas would require a major logistic effort to keep frontline troops armed and equipped. Shortage of prime movers in Guam, for example, would significantly slow the forward displacement of artillery units. Extended combat ashore also dictated a much greater need for ammunition. Truckloads of ammo kept appearing dockside during embarkation—well after the ship’s captain and the landing force had agreed on the extent, stowage, and off-load priority of the loading plan.
Haphazard loading of ammunition and gasoline on eight LSTs in the West Loch section of Pearl Harbor led to a tragic disaster that marred the beginning of Forager. The ships, nested together and overloaded with dangerous and incompatible cargo, constituted an accident waiting to happen. A spark ignited on 21 May, and all of West Loch seemed to explode at once. The conflagration killed 163 men, injured 396 more—irreplaceable veterans. Six precious LSTs were totaled.*
A disaster of this proportion would have scuttled any previous expeditionary mount-out. Only three LSTs, for example, participated in the assault landings at Tarawa. Losing six of these increasingly useful ships, with all their combat cargo, seemed staggering. Yet Kelly Turner replaced the ships in a fortnight; Holland Smith found substitute vehicles and ammo; and the huge task force sailed on schedule. Yet the troops would not readily forget the West Loch nightmare. Five hundred good men gone....
The West Loch disaster reflected the critical shortage of ammunition ships in the Pacific Fleet. Indirectly, the incident may also have stemmed from the overriding sense of urgency that characterized the mount-out for Forager. Several units in fact complained that the whole schedule seemed too frenetic for adequate planning, training, and combat loading, but Admiral Spruance persisted in his belief that strategic momentum would prove to be the great equalizer. Events in the Central Pacific never proved him wrong. The Fifth Fleet’s dash for the Marianas caught the Japanese flat-footed. Admiral Toyoda, preoccupied with MacArthur’s landing on Biak in the Schouten Islands off New Guinea’s north coast, had deployed his main forces southward. General Obata chose the week of 8–15 June to leave his Saipan headquarters and tour the outer islands of his command. News that American carrier aircraft were suddenly savaging the Marianas on 11 June in advance o
f the invasion fleet came as a great shock to both commanders. The Marianas were not yet ready to withstand an American invasion—and would not be until autumn.
Japanese troops in the Marianas would defend all three islands fanatically, but they would go to their deaths cursing their fate at not receiving sufficient soldiers, major weapons, or fortifications material to prepare adequate defenses. Maj. Kiyoshi Yoshida, intelligence officer of the 43d Division on Saipan (one of the few field grade officers of the Imperial Japanese Army ever captured alive), admitted to his interrogators that the completion date for the island’s defensive construction program had slipped until November.
Major Yoshida’s statement begs the question of why IGHQ would allow a full year to lapse after the fall of Tarawa before completing the urgent upgrade of defenses in the Marianas. This inordinate delay reflected neither bureaucratic bumbling nor interservice rivalry—but rather the emergence of a terrible new menace to Japanese prosecution of the war. Ship after ship left Japan for the Marianas loaded with troops, weapons, and material. But the Western Pacific was no longer a Japanese lake. American submarines, their faulty torpedo fuses finally fixed, now prowled the underseas with a vengeance. Aided by ULTRA intercepts of routine reports of ship schedules between Japanese port captains, the subs began to eat the heart out of Japanese maritime power. Time and again these subs positioned themselves to torpedo Japanese cargo ships laden with tanks, heavy guns, cement, and steel bound for Saipan. The “silent service” likewise helped even the odds for the Marines ashore by sinking—in one celebrated case—five of seven transports conveying the veteran 43d Division from Pusan, Korea, to Saipan. Those troops who survived the sinking of their ships arrived in the Marianas waterlogged, disoriented, and often weaponless—barely two weeks before the U.S. storm landings began.
Lt. Gen. Yoshitsuga Saito took command of the twenty thousand Japanese soldiers and sailors on Saipan in General Obata’s absence. Although Saipan’s rugged terrain made it ideal for a disciplined defense in depth, Obata had adhered to the prevailing philosophy of “defend-at-the-water’s edge,” and Saito had no time to make major adjustments. Saito figured the Americans would land on the east coast, over Magicienne Bay’s broad beaches, and he arrayed much of his firepower in that quadrant. But his artillery officers were professionals. All points on the coastline—including the western beaches chosen for assault by the Americans—would be covered by howitzers, heavy mortars, and dismounted naval guns.
Holland Smith, ever the realist, warned his landing force commanders of the tough job ahead. “We are through with the flat atolls now,” said Smith. “Now we are up against mountains and caves where the Japs can really dig in. A week from now there will be a lot of dead Marines.” Smith might have added another caveat: in the Saipan town of Garapan the Marines would face house-to-house fighting for the first time since Vera Cruz in 1914.
Neither Holland Smith nor Kelly Turner wanted to repeat the complicated choreography of Tarawa. The amphibious task force therefore stopped at Eniwetok Atoll to “shoe-horn” assault troops into LSTs, already loaded with amtracs. The rough-riding ships steamed directly for Saipan’s southwest coast. Arriving in darkness early on D-Day, 15 June, the LSTs dropped anchor on line fifty-five hundred yards offshore, opened their bow doors, and launched their loaded LVTs toward the beach. The line of departure lay directly ahead.
As dawn broke, Navy and Marine control officers in offshore small craft were startled to see small red flags along the reef. They had not been there yesterday. The Japanese, tipped off by the preliminary UDT survey, had placed range markers offshore for their artillery spotters.
The Japanese maintained good fire discipline, waiting until the LVTs struck the reef line before opening fire. Naval observers, recoiling at the sudden curtain of explosions that erupted all along the line, thought the reef had been mined. What they were seeing was a well-orchestrated “time-on-target” artillery and mortar barrage performed by Japanese gunners firing from a hundred reverse-slope emplacements. Although never as grim as Tarawa had been—or Peleliu would soon be—the ship-to-shore assault at Saipan nevertheless had its own moments of sheer horror. One large-caliber round made a direct hit on an LVT carrying the assault elements of Company C, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. The force of the explosion blew several men to bits. Lt. Paul M. Dodd was grievously wounded by bones blasted from the Marines next to him. The vehicle foundered in the surf, then drifted out to sea, a gruesome, smoking relic.
But Turner and Smith’s insistence on direct delivery of preloaded LVTs just seaward of the line of departure served to maximize surprise and minimize exposure to the Japanese killing zones. Somehow the Marines lost only twenty LVTs to the combination of high surf and enemy fire in the initial assault. A formidable force of twenty thousand men had stormed ashore by nightfall, but they sustained nearly two thousand casualties, mainly from unrelenting artillery and mortar fire delivered along the crowded beaches, the most skillful the Marines had yet faced. Both divisions landed their artillery units early to help equal the odds, but the Japanese that first day were looking right down the Marines’ throats.
Night counterattacks characterized the fighting on Saipan throughout the weeks of the battle. One of these, shortly after the landing, included the first armored counterattack the Marines had experienced, some forty Japanese medium tanks roaring through the darkness toward the beach. But the Marines were ashore to stay. This time they had plenty of bazookas and Sherman tanks at hand. There was never a question of “issue in doubt” as at Tarawa.
The only real threat to the capture of Saipan came when Admiral Toyoda dispatched his principal task force, the Mobile Fleet, into the Philippine Sea with orders to sink the American carriers, then destroy the amphibious task force off Saipan. Spruance did not overreact. He directed Turner and Smith to offload the 27th Infantry Division immediately and prepare for curtailed support from the fleet. The amphibs would still dart in to unload critical supplies; the gunships could still return for called fire missions. Spruance then uncoiled Mitscher’s Task Force 58. The resulting Battle of the Philippine Sea, which included “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” became a convincing naval victory for the United States. While the carrier admirals (and even genial Chester Nimitz) expressed keen disappointment when Spruance allowed the major components of the Mobile Fleet to escape destruction, the landing force appreciated his caution. Spruance took the heat calmly. His primary mission, he reminded his critics, was to capture Saipan by amphibious assault. “We were at the start of a very large amphibious operation, and we could not afford to gamble and place it in jeopardy.” These words did little to placate his critics, but some strategists would take another look at Spruance’s practical conservatism later that fall after Halsey abandoned the Leyte beachheads to chase what he believed to be the Japanese fleet.
Nor did Spruance’s distraction with the Mobile Fleet result in another Guadalcanal for the landing force. Amphibious ships unloaded 11,500 tons of combat cargo across the beach at the height of the naval battle. General Saito then knew his cause was lost. There would be no rescue by the Japanese fleet, no reinforcements for his beleaguered garrison.
Late in the battle, surviving Japanese troops staged a massive banzai attack, some four thousand troops screaming out of the night with swords and grenades. Finding a wide gap in the American lines, the human waves penetrated several thousand yards to overlap the artillerymen of the 14th Marines. The cannoneers died by their guns in desperate, close-range fighting. Daylight brought reinforcements and succor, but the slaughter had been great on both sides.
Another horror followed. As Marines and soldiers converged on the final enemy positions near Marpi Point in the north, hundreds of Japanese and native civilians, convinced by the garrison that Americans would torture them, began jumping off the cliffs onto the rocks below—entire families, including infants. In a war increasingly marked by cruelty and devastation, these scenes proved awful to behold by even the most battle-hardened
Americans. Admiral Nimitz, visiting the site several days later, became visibly moved at the sight of the bodies strewn along the rocks far below. The experience convinced Nimitz that an invasion of the Japanese homeland would result in the virtual extermination of the civilian population.
“Chaos Reigned.” D-Day on Saipan. Hell on earth. (U.S. Naval Institute)
Holland Smith declared Saipan “secured” on 9 July, putting an official ending to twenty-four days of close combat. American casualties reached sixteen thousand. Virtually all of the twenty-thousand-man Japanese garrison perished. Now Spruance directed his commanders to the other two objectives in the Marianas: first, Guam, then Tinian, separate and nearly simultaneous operations.
Spruance had to postpone the Guam landing by a month once he committed his force reserve, the 27th Division, to the Saipan flail. The 77th Division, in theater reserve on Oahu, had to hustle aboard ships and join General Geiger’s IIIAC at sea. The long delay rode heavily on the Guam landing force. At Admiral Conolly’s suggestion, Spruance returned the amphibious task force to Eniwetok for a little R&R, a dubious interlude, little more than a few hours of exercise on a forlorn sand spit, followed by two cans of warm beer per man. Conolly’s subsequent announcement of reembarkation for a new “W-Day” of 21 July inspired cheers from the bored troops.*
Storm Landings Page 9
