by Robert Gandt
Action was light for the next few days while Mitscher reorganized his task force into three task groups, leaving one—TG 58.2—to protect the wounded Franklin, Enterprise, and Yorktown as they limped to Ulithi. The only combat missions being flown were those by CAP fighters and a few sweeps over the enemy airfields to keep the Japanese fighters grounded.
Off Okinawa, the armada of attack transports and landing craft was swelling in numbers as new arrivals came from their staging bases at Ulithi, Leyte, and Saipan. Two naval bombardment forces under Rear Adm. Mort Deyo had moved in toward the western shore of Okinawa, and the big guns of Deyo’s battleships and cruisers were shelling Japanese positions, preparing the landing zones for the coming invasion on April 1.
Aboard Intrepid, Johnny Hyland took advantage of the breather to evaluate his air group’s performance. In a dizzying two days of action, his pilots had bombed, rocketed, and strafed targets up and down the coasts of the Japanese home islands. There had been losses, some of them avoidable. Hyland’s own wingman, George Tessier, had run out of fuel and put an expensive Corsair into the sea. Several others, including Erickson, had come close to joining him in the water.
It was one of several lessons that were being learned the hard way. Long-range mission planning, particularly fuel management, would take some fine-tuning.
Hyland had also been surprised at the numbers and tenacity of the Japanese fighters who rose to meet them during the strikes on Japan. The Japanese fighter pilots who dueled with Erickson and Hill were skilled airmen, not the neophytes who were flying the suicidal kamikaze missions.
To Hyland, it was an ominous sign. It meant the Japanese were keeping their best airmen in reserve. They were hoarding them for the battle to come.
10 THUNDER GODS
KANOYA AIR BASE, KYUSHU
MARCH 21, 1945
Ohka. It meant “cherry blossom,” and the poetic name disguised a deadly purpose. The men who volunteered to fly the Ohka had never imagined such a thing before they saw it. The Ohka was both a giant leap in technology and a crude attempt to change Japan’s fortunes late in the war.
The Ohka was a manned bomb, 19.7 feet long, with wings that spanned 16.4 feet. The flimsy craft’s fuselage was constructed with a metal alloy, and the stubby wings were made of wood. The cockpit bulged from the top of the fuselage as if it were stuck there as an afterthought.
The Ohka was intended to be lugged beneath a twin-engine Mitsubishi G4M bomber and released 55 miles from its target. The pilot would glide the craft until he was within range, then he’d ignite the three rocket motors, which would hurtle the Ohka to over 400 knots, faster than any pursuing American fighter. The Ohka carried enough explosive power—a 1,200-kilogram (2,646 lb.) bomb—to devastate virtually any warship. The exotic craft was the brainstorm of an enigmatic navy ensign named Shoichi Ota, who presented the idea to the naval general staff in July 1944. Ota’s timing was perfect. The high command was still reeling from the extermination of Japan’s naval air forces at the air battle off Saipan called the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The admirals were receptive to any idea that sounded like a wonder weapon. The Ohka stirred in them a fresh excitement.
The weapon’s very existence was kept secret. The idea was controversial, even to the bushido-inclined officers of the high command. It was one thing to send men to their deaths in conventional warplanes; it was another to actually construct a fleet of aircraft for the express purpose of immolating the pilot.
The first Ohka unit, the 721st Naval Flying Unit, took the name Jinrai Butai—Divine Thunder Corps. The pilots selected to fly the Ohka gave themselves an equally grandiose name—Thunder Gods. The commander of the Jinrai Butai was a veteran naval aviator, Capt. Motoharu Okamura, who had fought in almost every battle since the war began and was one of the early proponents of tokko warfare.
By August 1944, Okamura was recruiting volunteers. Okamura’s candidates were given only cursory information: a special new weapon was being developed that could turn the tide of the war. The volunteers who flew it might be able to save Japan.
There was no shortage of volunteers. By now, the stench of defeat was in the air, and young Japanese fighting men were filled with a mixture of frustration, anger, and a desire to strike back at the hated enemy. Okamura likened his volunteers to a swarm of bees. “Bees die after they have stung,” he explained.
The Thunder Gods began their training at the Konoike air base, northeast of Tokyo. After rudimentary training in tokko tactics in conventional fighters, they received their graduation flight—an actual practice drop from a Betty bomber mother ship.
The graduation flight was almost as dangerous as the real thing. The trainer was a version of the Ohka loaded with ballast instead of rockets and a warhead, and it was fitted with a skid so it could land back at Konoike. It was a wild two-minute plunge back to earth. Several graduation flights ended in disaster, strewing metal and wood and pieces of the pilot over the airfield.
The Jinrai Butai had a fleet of specially configured Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers. The new version, the G4M 2E, had its bomb bay doors removed to accommodate the Ohka and was wired for communications between the Ohka pilot and the Betty crew. A panel of red and green lights was installed in the bomb bay for transmitting last-minute orders.
The Jinrai Butai would also require fighters, lots of them. The vulnerable Betty bombers were even more vulnerable with the Ohkas strapped to their bellies. Until they shed their loads, they were sitting ducks for Hellcat and Corsair fighters.
Unlike most tokko volunteers, the Thunder Gods had to endure an agony of waiting. Nearly six months would pass after their training before any flew a mission. When the day finally came for them to die for the emperor, it was not in the way they had expected.
On the morning of March 21, Vice Adm. Matome Ugaki stood gazing into the sky over Kanoya. The cloud cover was gone and, at least for the moment, so were the enemy airplanes.
This would be the day. For the past three days he had been waiting for the chance to send the Jinrai Butai into the battle. Each day the enemy’s carrier-based warplanes had raided the airfields on Kyushu, including Kanoya, destroying every airplane they could find in the open. They’d cratered runways, destroyed hangars, and generally raised hell with his Fifth Air Fleet. There had been no opportunity to assemble the Ohka rocket-powered missiles, the Betty bomber mother ships, and the fighters that would fly cover.
According to reports from search planes, the American carrier task force was pulling back to the south. To Ugaki, it was a clear signal that they were preparing for the expected invasion of Okinawa. After six months of training and waiting, the time had come to launch the Thunder Gods against the enemy carriers. The Betty bombers were being loaded with their Ohka cargoes. The pilots had burned their old uniforms and donned new ones. Each had written a final letter and placed locks of his hair and nail clippings in a box to be delivered to his family.
Then the commander of the Divine Thunder Corps, Captain Okamura, burst into Ugaki’s headquarters. Okamura had just come from the flight line. There was not nearly enough fighter protection for the plodding mother ships and the Ohkas beneath their bellies. “Can’t we have more fighters?” he demanded.
The answer was no. Ugaki’s chief of staff, Rear Adm. Toshiyuki Yokoi, informed Okamura that he was getting all the fighters they had left. The last three days of combat had decimated the squadrons. The most they could muster was fifty-five fighters.
Okamura was furious. It wasn’t enough. The attack would have to be canceled.
Admiral Ugaki slumped in his chair while he considered the matter. He understood Okamura’s feelings. Okamura had shepherded the Ohka project through its inception. He had a personal bond with each of the young Thunder Gods, and he didn’t want to see them slaughtered for nothing.
But Ugaki felt the time for action slipping away from them. His reconnaissance and intelligence reports all led him to believe the American carriers could be caught by surprise, even in broad d
aylight. He was certain that they still had no awareness of the Ohka weapon.
The admiral rose from his chair and clasped Okamura’s shoulder. “If the Ohka cannot be used in the present situation,” he told Okamura, “there will never be another chance for using it.”
Whether it was true or not didn’t matter. A look of grim resignation settled over Okamura’s face. “We are ready to launch the attack, sir,” he said, and stormed out of headquarters.
Returning to the flight line where the 18 G4M Betty bombers were being readied, Okamura was in a rage. Admiral Ugaki was not an aviator. He could not possibly understand the grave risk in sending the bombers with their unreleased Ohkas against the enemy fleet without a protective umbrella of fighters.
As he joined his young pilots waiting to depart, he reached a decision: he would personally lead the attack.
He hadn’t counted on Lt. Cmdr. Goro Nonaka, the officer already assigned to lead the mission. Nonaka was a charismatic leader, a cult figure famous for telling his volunteers, “All right, you little gods, you’ve had the balls to come this far, now we’ll see if you can go all the way!”
Nonaka was even more enraged than Okamura. “Is it, sir, that you lack confidence in me? This is one time I refuse to obey your order.”
In the Imperial Japanese Navy, such impertinence could result in arrest, or worse. But these were extraordinary times. Okamura understood Nonaka’s feelings, and he acquiesced. The younger man could have his moment of glory.
It was midmorning when Admiral Ugaki gave the order for departure. Each of the Thunder Gods was wearing a ceremonial hachimaki—a white headband with the symbol of the rising sun. Nonaka gave Ugaki a farewell salute, declaring, “This is Minatogawa!” Minatogawa was an ancient shrine erected to the fourteenth-century hero Masashige Kusunoki, who supposedly said before his samurai death, “Would that I had seven lives to give for my country!” Nonaka intended to follow Kusonoki’s example.
To the steady roll of the traditional warriors’ drumbeat, the Thunder Gods ran to the bombers. One after another, the engines of the Betty bombers coughed and rumbled to life. They taxied as fast as possible toward the runway. It was critical that they not be caught in the open by another enemy air attack.
Solemnly Ugaki watched the bombers lumber into the sky. Of the eighteen Bettys, sixteen were carrying Ohkas, and two others were specially equipped for navigation. Close behind went the fighter escorts. As the last one left the runway, Ugaki was informed that because of mechanical problems only thirty fighters were now escorting the bombers.
Then came worse news. Fresh reconnaissance reports indicated that the enemy task force now amounted to three complete carrier groups. It meant that fighter resistance would be even heavier than they had estimated. Ugaki’s senior staff officers urged him to recall the attack force.
For good or ill, one of the traits that had distinguished Ugaki from his fellow admirals was his reputation for decisiveness. When he chose a course of action, he stayed with it.
Today would be no different. The Thunder Gods would proceed to their target.
The bombers flew southward toward the U.S. fleet. Burdened by the 4,700-pound Ohkas protruding from their bomb bays, the Bettys could make no better than 140 knots, nearly 60 knots slower than their normal speed. En route, the fighters escorting them were further reduced in number when several were forced to turn back with engine problems, mostly because of the low-grade fuel they burned.
Fuel was an ongoing problem for the Imperial Japanese Navy, particularly for the sensitive, high-powered radial engines that powered the Zero and George fighters. Because aviation gasoline was in short supply, fuel was being synthesized from coal and organic substances such as pine roots. Now engine failures were occurring at an alarming rate.
While the Bettys droned toward their targets, Ugaki and his staff hovered over the radio in their underground operations office. An hour ticked past. They heard nothing. The time neared when the Ohkas should have been released from the mother ships. Still nothing.
Ugaki worried about their dwindling fuel supply. He gave the order that if they hadn’t yet sighted the enemy fleet, they should proceed to Minami Daito, a Japanese-held island about 200 miles east of Okinawa and close to the bombers’ estimated position.
There was no reply. It was not a good sign.
Lt. (jg) Dick Mason was the first to spot them. The bogeys were at nine o’clock low, about 11,000 feet. As Mason and his flight drew closer, he saw that they were Betty bombers, and they had fighter escorts.
Dick Mason was a slim, garrulous young man from Brookline, Massachusetts. He was one of the squadron’s handful of combat veterans, a transplant from the old Grim Reapers squadron on the Enterprise to the re-formed VF-10 aboard Intrepid. The Tail End Charlies liked flying on Mason’s wing.
On Mason’s wing was Ens. Don Oglevee, and with them was their second section, Lt. Jim Dudley and Lt. (jg) Eddie Mills. The four VF-10 Corsairs had been on their CAP station at 18,000 feet over Intrepid’s task force when the call came from the FIDO. Mason had acknowledged and shoved his throttle forward, swinging his division northward for the intercept.
Spotting the incoming Betty bombers, Mason observed that they appeared to be uncharacteristically slow. They were plodding along as though they were on a leisurely sightseeing trip. A flight of F6F-5 Hellcats from Yorktown was already on the scene, and now they were mixing it up with the Japanese fighters.
Mason kept his flight high until they were almost directly above the Japanese formation. Then he rolled his Corsair inverted and dove nearly straight down on the enemy formation. One after the other, his wingmen followed Mason down.
The attack from above took the Japanese formation by surprise. Normally, a disciplined formation of bombers could put up a formidable defensive fire, each supporting the other. Each Betty had a 7.7-millimeter gun in the nose, one in a turret atop the fuselage, another in a waist turret, and a deadly 20-millimeter cannon in the tail. But now that they were scattered like quail, each slow-moving Betty was on its own.
As the Corsairs swept down through the bombers, one of the escort fighters, an A6M Zero, tailed in behind, trying for a shot at the Tail End Charlie, Eddie Mills.
He was too late—and too slow. Mills’s diving Corsair left the slower Japanese fighter behind, but one of the Yorktown Hellcats spotted the Zero and locked on to his tail. Seconds later the Japanese fighter exploded.
Bottoming out of their dive, the Corsairs soared back up for another pass on the fleeing bombers. Again the Corsairs tore into the bombers with their .50-calibers. While Mason went after one of the Bettys diving away from the formation, Oglevee slid in behind another, hammering it with machine fire from dead astern.
It was then, seeing a yellow twinkling light from the tail of the Betty, that Oglevee remembered the Betty’s tail gunner. An instant later he felt the metallic pinging of the 20-millimeter bullets on the Corsair’s airframe.
The mano a mano duel—Oglevee trading fire with the tail gunner—lasted for several seconds. Oglevee kicked his rudder pedals, spraying machine gun fire across the Betty’s tail while the gunner fired back.
Abruptly the duel ended. Oglevee saw the glass shatter in the Betty’s tail turret. Seconds later, the bomber’s right wing separated, and the Betty rolled into a death spiral toward the ocean.
The other two Corsairs were having similar results. The fight was turning into a turkey shoot. The remaining bombers were jinking, turning, and skidding in futile attempts to save themselves. More Hellcats were joining the scrap, all eager to pick off surviving Bettys.
Trails of smoke were arcing toward the ocean, marking the funeral pyres of Japanese bombers. A few of the Bettys had turned back to Kyushu, and others were trying to make it to a nearby cloud bank. Most of the Zeroes had disappeared, either shot down or chased away.
The Corsairs were out of ammunition. Oglevee had lost sight of his leader, Dick Mason, so he pulled up above the fray, where he was joined by
Mills and Dudley, the other two pilots in their division. The melee was almost over, and fighters from other carriers had shown up to pick off the few remaining Japanese stragglers.
But Dick Mason was missing. The last they’d seen of him was during their final dive through the formation of Bettys. The three Tail End Charlies circled until they were low on fuel, then headed back to Intrepid, still wondering what happened to their leader.
They never found out. No trace of Dick Mason was ever discovered.
Back in their ready room, the three Corsair pilots tried to describe what they had seen. There had been something different about these Betty bombers. They were slower and less maneuverable than they should have been. Several pilots reported observing a peculiar object protruding from the bellies of the bombers.
Whatever it was, it went down with the Bettys. Not a single one made it through.
Admiral Ugaki’s masklike expression remained unchanged while he listened to the reports. None of his eighteen Betty bombers had returned to Kanoya. Only a few Zero pilots had survived to tell the story.
The first mission of the Thunder Gods had ended in disaster. American fighters had pounced on the slow-flying bombers when they were still 60 miles from the enemy task force. When the first few bombers were shot down, the rest scattered, and it became impossible for the Zeroes to protect them.
Some of the Bettys jettisoned their Ohkas, but it didn’t save them. One by one they were shot down in flames. A few tried to hide in the clouds, but each was caught and destroyed. The battle was over in ten minutes.
Gloom settled like a pall over the air fleet headquarters. Only a few hours before they had been cheering, saluting, and waving farewells to the noble young Thunder Gods. The last words of the indomitable Goro Nonaka—“This is Minatogawa!”—had sent a surge of pride through every man on the field. Now sixteen Thunder Gods, including Nonaka, were gone. Their sacrifice had accomplished nothing.
