There were lots of other landing craft as well—LCTs for tanks, LCIs for infantry, LCSs for support—and landing ships, large enough to travel under their own power, that could carry huge numbers of tanks or soldiers. There was the LSD—landing ship, dock—that served as a floating base for the smaller LC-type craft. Thousands of them were in the process of being loaded all along the Kyushu coastline.
As Pete watched the loading, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that some new streaks of light were coming from the shore out to the fleet. “They’re shooting back, Captain,” he said.
Gilder looked where Pete was pointing. “I believe you’re right. Looks like aircraft.”
The sky continued to brighten, and now they could see the looming bulk of a mountain on shore, just north of their beach. Specks moved through the sky, approaching the fleet, and the snarling sound of aircraft engines reached the ears of the marines on deck. Tracers sparked through the air as navy fighters dove at the enemy planes; the men on the transports cheered as one, then another Jap plane exploded into a bright flash.
Instead of dogfighting with the Americans who tried to engage them, the Japanese fighters shrugged them off and kept flying. They were heading toward the transports. In fact, one was heading in the direction of the USS Warren, the next ship over. Pete waited for the tracers of machine gun fire from the Japanese plane and imagined the marines on the Warren diving for cover, but there were no tracers.
Then, to Pete’s shock, the Japanese pilot flew right into the Warren’s bridge. The plane exploded, taking the superstructure with it. Wreckage and flames scattered over the ship’s deck.
“He did that deliberately,” Captain Gilder said in disbelief.
“Yes, sir,” replied Pete. “That’s what I saw, too.”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Gilder said. “Damn! There goes another one!”
Pete watched with amazement as Japanese planes intentionally crashed into every transport they could hit. And more were coming.
The shore suddenly looked like it was a long distance away.
ABOVE ROADSTER BEACH ZONE, OFF THE WEST COAST
OF KYUSHU, JAPAN, 0525 HOURS (X-DAY, N-HOUR -0035)
Lefty Wayner was comfortable in his role, flying high above the fleet, scanning the skies for enemy aircraft. This air war was a far cry from the desperate battles of 1942, at Midway and in the Solomon Sea, where the enemy planes came against the American carriers in waves, nimble Zeros flying circles around the clumsy Wildcats. Then it had been a fight for survival, a frantic effort to stay alive and to inflict damage upon an enemy with superior equipment, training, and experience.
Things were different now. The Grumman F6F Hellcat—Lefty’s had nineteen little red meatballs painted just below the canopy—had replaced the Wildcat and rendered the air war into a whole new ball game. Whereas the F4F had been slower and clumsier than the Zero, the Hellcat was faster, more powerful, and capable of absorbing punishment that would knock three or four Zeros out of the sky.
Now commander of VMF 48, the fighter squadron aboard the new aircraft carrier Missionary Ridge, Lefty had been piloting an F6F since the end of 1943. In early 1944 he had been flying air protection for the invasion of the Philippines. When Admiral Spruance brought his newly replenished carrier fleet, now protected by the doughty Hellcats, within range of the enemy fighter bases, the Japs had unleashed every land-based plane they had. Flying from fields throughout the archipelago, and from as far away as Formosa, the Nipponese aircraft had swarmed toward the American carriers that were supporting Mac’s landings on the island of Leyte. Lefty had personally shot down three fighters and six bombers in the air battle that had since come to be known as the Luzon Turkey Shoot. He and his fellow pilots, flying from more than a dozen carriers and light carriers, had virtually obliterated the enemy air forces in a bloody day and a half of battle.
From that time forward, the United States Naval Air Forces had ruled the skies over the Pacific Ocean. As Lefty looked at the hundreds of ships below—including four flattops that he could personally see right now, in addition to the two dozen more lying over the horizon—he had no reason to believe that today would be any different.
The sun was already up, and for once the clouds were few, almost nonexistent. Lefty’s eyes scanned the horizon, especially toward the east, toward Kyushu. He could see the land over there, a brown swath of rugged terrain, still in the shadow of the newly risen sun. Any Jap planes coming from there would have to be picked up by radar—there was no way any pilot could see much against that brilliant backdrop.
Sure enough, his radio crackled. “Sheepdog One, we have numerous bogies overland, approaching Roadster from multiple bearings. Go to work.”
“Sheepdog One, acknowledging. Tallyho,” he replied.
“Good hunting,” came the final sendoff from the flight director aboard the carrier below.
Lefty dipped his wings and headed toward Kyushu. The fifteen other fighters of his squadron formed up on him, in pairs, and they all leaned into a shallow dive. They had been patrolling at twenty-two thousand feet so that they could accelerate quickly toward any threat, and within seconds every one of the Hellcats was flying at better than 300 mph, airspeed.
The squadron flew over the transports, hundreds of them, arrayed in ranks several miles offshore. Scattered amid the troop ships were battlewagons and cruisers, continuously firing broadsides at the smoke-shrouded beaches, spurts of flame marking each new volley as it spewed forth. Around the transports, little boats—the landing craft—scuttled about or bobbed in the waves. A rank of these doughty craft was already churning toward the beaches, a white wake trailing behind each boat.
Lefty raised his eyes and immediately picked up the specks of enemy airplanes. Some were sweeping along the beach, coming down from the north. A stream of planes was visible emerging from the interior of Kyushu, flying around the shoulder of one of the great mountains rising just beyond the landing beaches. The commander of VMF 48 led his Hellcats toward this target, the two groups of airplanes converging at a combined speed of more than 500 mph.
The distance closed quickly, and Lefty could see that still more enemy planes were coming into view. They were small, flying low and steady at something under ten thousand feet. The Hellcats were still a few thousand feet higher, diving and converging. The pilot could see that the enemy before him included a surprisingly large number of Zeros and other types of single-engine planes. They were fighters, but they weren’t climbing or otherwise trying to challenge the Grummans for air superiority over the beaches.
The Hellcats continued their dives to intercept, and Lefty’s tracers converged on the nose of the leading Zero. Curiously, even now the enemy pilot made little effort to evade—instead, he put his nose down and tried to fly right past. Lefty was too good a gunner to allow that, and the Jap plane disintegrated in a ball of fire while the Hellcat was still two hundred yards away.
At that distance, Lefty felt the whump of the blast shake his heavy fighter like a child’s toy. What the hell was that? It was a lot more than the fuel tank exploding, he knew. As if the son of a bitch packed his fuselage with explosives before he took off!
Hellcats roared through the enemy formation, shooting steadily. A dozen enemy planes flashed into nothingness, or fell out of formation, trailing smoke. Guns barked all across the squadron as the flight of Grummans dove through the stream of enemy aircraft and banked through tight, high-g turns. As the Hellcats came around, the surviving Japs still made no effort to engage. Instead, they simply plunged away from the fight, spreading out as they neared the unarmored, motionless transports below.
The Americans came after them at full throttle, but before they could close the gap, the first enemy plane flew right into a transport, vanishing in a ball of fire that seemed to engulf half the ship. Another Jap blew up in the air, hit by antiaircraft fire, but then the next one, and the next, plowed into the helpless ships with fierce eruptions of flame.
An
d still more of them were coming off the land.
USS GETTYSBURG (CV-44), ROADSTER BEACH ZONE,
OFF THE WEST COAST OF KYUSHU, JAPAN, 0550 HOURS
(X-DAY, N-HOUR -0010)
Frank Chadwick winced as he read the impersonal communiqué delivered to him on the flag bridge moments before.
0548 HOURS X-DAY
FROM: COMMANDER V CORPS
TO: ALL COMMANDS
SEVEN TRANSPORTS BURNING; TWO SUNK. LANDING STRENGTH SERIOUSLY IMPAIRED. ENEMY EMPLOYING SUICIDE PLANE ATTACKS ON MASSIVE SCALE. MANY HITS FROM TORPEDOES. SUSPECT MANY OF THESE SUICIDE CRAFT AS WELL.
SECOND WAVE AWAY AT ESTIMATED FIFTY REPEAT FIFTY PERCENT STRENGTH.
Rear Admiral Chadwick commanded Amphibious Group Five, part of the Fifth Amphibious Force, commanded by Vice Admiral Harry W. Hill. Fifth Amphibious Force, consisting of Amphibious Groups Four and Five—Four for transportation and landing, Five for naval gunfire and air support—was responsible for transporting and landing V Amphibious Corps. It was in turn part of the United States Fifth Fleet, under the overall command of Admiral Raymond Spruance. The Fifth Fleet was responsible for transporting and landing the entire invasion force. The Seventh Fleet, under Vice Admiral Thomas Kincaid, and the Third, under Vice Admiral Mark Mitchner, provided strategic support, both sea and air. And they reported to Commander, Naval Forces Olympic, Admiral Frank Fletcher. Admiral Nimitz, chief of naval operations, just “happened” to be in the area in case Fletcher couldn’t handle things.
Chadwick also had “dotted line” accountability to the commander of the Fast Carrier Force for Fifth Fleet, Vice Admiral John McCain, who was his normal boss when he wasn’t part of an operation.
Chadwick’s command consisted of two new fleet carriers, the Gettysburg (CV-44) and the Missionary Ridge (CV-48); two light fleet carriers, the Corregidor (CVL-56) and the Normandy (CVL-57); two battleships; three light cruisers; one antiaircraft light cruiser; and seventeen destroyers. He was using the Gettysburg as his flagship.
Now, Chadwick passed the message around and waited for one of his staff to make some useful suggestion. God knows, he couldn’t think of anything they could do to help.
“Admiral, the fighters over Roadster are starting to run low on fuel,” reported the flight operations officer. “I recommend we bring them in and replace them with the combat air patrol standing by overhead.”
“Right,” Chadwick agreed. “Make it so.”
He thought of the life-and-death struggles being waged twenty or thirty miles away, over and around the key beaches in the Roadster Zone. Dammit, they couldn’t even see that battlefield from their position here, safely over the horizon!
It was that frustration that gave rise to a small idea, the only thing he could think of under the circumstances that might make the lives of the fighting men a little less deadly. “Let’s take the fleet in closer. At least, we can make sure our fighters don’t have to drive so far to come back and gas up.”
“You mean, take the flattops in view of shore?” asked Commander Dickens, his chief of staff.
“I mean exactly that,” Chadwick replied. “Get orders to the captains. I want to park my carriers as close this battle as we can get.”
“Sir? Should we call Admiral Hill and request permission?” Dickens wondered aloud.
“Tell him that we’re doing it. I’m staying within the parameters of the plan but bringing my flight decks a little closer to the action.”
“Aye aye, sir,” replied the commander. Already the staff was bustling, cutting new orders, plotting courses, opening communications to the many ships of Amphibious Group V.
As ever in the navy, the admiral’s will be done.
ABOVE ROADSTER BEACH ZONE, OFF THE WEST COAST
OF KYUSHU, JAPAN, 0730 HOURS (X-DAY, N-HOUR + 0130)
Kuroda Akida steered his oka (Cherry Blossom) toward the storm of fire and smoke that sprawled across so much of the sea. His hands were steady on the stick, and the roaring fire of the rocket engine propelled him through the air at blinding speed. He knew that he should feel a sense of deep honor since he had been chosen to die in one of the empire’s most modern, and lethal, weapons.
Yet, surprisingly, he felt kind of numb.
The oka was like a flying torpedo. It had tiny wings and a very powerful rocket engine that currently propelled Kuroda at an unbelievable speed. That engine roared like a steady drum of thunder as it converted fuel to flame, leaving a trail of fire and smoke through the sky. A few moments ago, a pair of American fighters, land-based P-5 Is flying from Okinawa, had tried to give chase but had vanished to the rear as if they had been standing still.
The Cherry Blossom had been carried aloft beneath the belly of a twin-engine Mitsubishi bomber based upon Shokaku. Kuroda had already been aboard, strapped in to his small seat, ready for his mission. The pilots of the bomber had flown bravely out to sea, almost within sight of the American fleet. At the last minute, the oka had been dropped away and the rocket motor ignited.
From that moment on, Kuroda Akida was doomed. The suicide pilot flew what was in effect a flying bomb. He had a very limited supply of fuel and absolutely no way to land—the oka was not equipped with landing gear or amphibious flotation. His orders were to seek out an American transport and destroy it with his final act, a tokko flight for the glory of the Emperor and Japan.
Like many of the tokko pilots flying today and those preparing to fly in the weeks and months to come, Kuroda was a volunteer. Because of his willingness to fly the mission, and the aptitude he had demonstrated on his two training flights, he had been granted this special weapon. The Cherry Blossom had the speed to evade the enemy fighters, and a warhead explosive enough to devastate even the largest American warship. The aircraft was a marvel of technology, powered by rocket engines unlike anything developed in Japan before. Kuroda had heard rumors that German scientists had designed and perfected the engines, and that the plans had been carried halfway around the world, transported by U-boat, to enable his own countrymen to share the lethal technology. He didn’t know if it was true or not, but he found himself believing the tales.
His Cherry Blossom, in fact, was far more deadly than most of the aircraft embarking upon their one-way missions. Many of them were obsolete types, such as the Mitsubishi Zero. At one time the state-of-the-art in fighter plane performance, the Zero had been outclassed years ago by the American Hellcats, Corsairs, and Mustangs. Now the slender, maneuverable Mitsubishis were only fit for carrying virtually untrained pilots on doomed flights against the American fleet. Inevitably, most of those suicide attackers would be shot down before they reached their targets.
Although he had only had two hours of flight training, Kuroda had little difficulty in handling his rocket plane. The engine controls were simple—the rockets were either on or off—and he was traveling at such speed that he wouldn’t need to maneuver to avoid enemy fighters. He experimented slightly with the stick, lifting and then dropping the nose, veering a little bit to port, then back to starboard. He felt confident that he could control the oka well enough to fly it into an American ship.
Before dawn this morning, he had put his affairs in order. He wrote a letter to his mother and father, and then he composed his death haiku: “Divine winds roil the sea./Cherry blossoms bloom, then fade./Enlightened peace reigns.” He and the other young suicide pilots at the base on Honshu, all of them former college students, had drunk a toast to the Emperor, and then to each other. In silence they had trooped into their cockpits, the Cherry Blossoms slung beneath the bombers that would carry them toward Kyushu. The sun was not yet over the horizon when they had taken off, but as the planes climbed they were soon brilliantly illuminated by the warm, bright rays.
Kuroda did not exactly want to die, but—like so many of his countrymen—he had come to realize that he had no choice. The war had already claimed so many Japanese. It seemed reasonable to expect that it would probably claim every one of his countrymen before it was over. It would
claim him today. And if death was inevitable, why not make it count?
To that end, his orders vexed him. A transport was a dull ship, common and pedestrian. He was like a proud hunter who had been told to bag a cow in a dairyman’s pasture. That order, even more than inevitable death, was galling. Kuroda desperately craved to die with a target worthy of his ancestry and his emperor.
Approaching the landing fleet now, the pilot could not help but be impressed by the vast array of ships spread out below him. The little landing boats scuttled back and forth like ducklings, while the great transports sat like giant, motionless turtles. Already the tokko flights had done great damage—Kuroda spotted at least a half dozen transport ships that looked to be completely engulfed by flame. One had capsized, and another was sinking by the stern, still smoking as it slipped beneath the waves. Propelled by his hot-burning rocket, he flew above a flight of single-engine Japanese fighters, watched as they dove, one by one, toward the fleet sprawled below.
Which should he strike? It didn’t seem to make much difference, he reflected in disappointment. All of these long gray ships looked the same. He might as well go for the closest one.
Wistfully, he raised his eyes, scanned the horizon for one last look at the world. When he glimpsed the flat, unmistakable shape on that horizon, perhaps ten miles away, his heart quickened. His hands, on the control stick, trembled like a young hunter’s when he spots a trophy stag almost within range of his gun. Kuroda reacted instinctively, veering slightly, bringing the oka onto a bearing that carried him away from the transport fleet and out toward the open sea.
His original targets were already burning and mostly wrecked, he rationalized. Yet here, before him, was a target worthy of a Cherry Blossom! His flying bomb streaked through the sky, the sleek nose aimed directly for the deck of the American aircraft carrier that had, like a gift from the gods, appeared before him during his last moments on earth.
MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan Page 30
