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Task Force 58: Into The Marianas

The fighting in the Central Pacific intensifies; the American carriers have moved in close to Saipan, Mariana Islands, for a strike before the coming invasion.

When he became Commander in Chief, Combined Fleet, Toyoda rather bluntly said, "The war is approaching areas vital to our national security. Our situation is one of unprecedented gravity. There is only one way of deciding this struggle in our favor." The Americans must be stopped, once and for all, in the Marianas.

As the Imperial Navy made preparations for an all-out effort to stop the enemy, Minister of the Army and Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo criticized the Navy's efforts as "hysterical" and refused to permit the use of Army aircraft in the Marianas. Toyoda could do nothing, then, but alert and deploy his naval forces. He would co-ordinate his carrier force, under command of Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, with the land-based forces of Vice-Admiral Kakuji Kakuda. Kakuda's headquarters were on Tinian and his planes were deployed through the Marianas, the Carolines, Iwo Jima, and Truk - a total of about a thousand.

The Palau anchorage having been rendered unwholesome by the marauding American carriers, Ozawa awaited developments at Tawitawi, in the Sulu Sea, just west of the southern Philippines. Under Ozawa's command was the largest fleet assembled since the attack on Pearl Harbor: seventythree ships, including nine carriers, among them the new heavy carrier Taiho. Never before in Japanese naval history had such a heavy concentration of battle planes been assembled. There were nearly 450 planes - Zekes, Kates, Vals, and the newer Nakajima Tenzen ("Jill") torpedo bomber and the not quite so new Yokosuka Suisei ("Judy") dive bomber. The latter two planes were designed to replace the aged Kate and Val.

To meet the rampaging American forces, Ozawa had divided his aerial forces into three carrier divisions. The 1st, under his command, consisted of the three heavy carriers Taiho (the flagship), Shokaku, and Zuikaku (the two surviving veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack). Stationed aboard these carriers were the pilots of the 601st Kokutai (Air Corps). Rear Admiral Takaji Jojima commanded the 2nd Carrier Division: the light carriers Hiyo, Junyo, and Ryuho, carrying the 652nd Kokutai. The 3rd Carrier Division (Rear Admiral Sueo Obayashi) was assigned to the main body, which consisted also of battleships and cruisers which were to deal with the American fleet. Obayashi commanded the light carriers Chiyoda, Chitose, and Zuiho (653rd Kokutai). With so vast an accumulation of air power plus the assistance which might be expected from Kakuda's land-based planes, Japanese naval officers anticipated a great aerial slaughter of the Americans. This was planned to be finished by the battleships of Vice-Admiral Takeo Kurita's force, which included the great Yamato and Musashi, two of the world's most modern battleships. An exhilarating excitement gripped the young pilots as they waited impatiently for the word to leave Tawitawi.

Even these young, untried, inexperienced, and illtrained warriors were inclined to a touch of "victory fever." Only the veterans awaited the coming battle with reservations. The training of the pilots aboard the nine carriers, excepting a handful of experienced leaders, was tragically inadequate, ranging from as little as two months to a maximum of six. But lack of experience began at the top, for Ozawa had never taken part in a carrier battle. He was to oppose Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, who had proved himself at Midway. Directly opposing Ozawa was Vice-Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's formidable Task Force 58. Mitscher not only had quality - better-trained men, better aircraft, his own battle shrewdness - on his side, he also had overwhelming, American-made quantity, as Yamamoto had foreseen.

Early in June 1944 Task Force 58 began its approach upon the southern Marianas. Only cliches could do it justice: "massive array of sea-air power," "the greatest armada ever assembled," for as "far as the eye could see" - and beyond - great, warlike ships churned through the Pacific. There were seven heavy carriers (the Hornet, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, Wasp, Enterprise, Lexington, and Essex), eight light carriers (the Bataan, Belleau Wood, Monterey, Cabot, San Jacinto, Princeton, Cowpens, and Langley), seven new battleships, eight heavy cruisers, thirteen light cruisers, and sixty-nine destroyers. This does not include those ships directly assigned to Vice-Admiral Richmond K. Turner's amphibious forces, which would invade Saipan, then Guam, and then Tinian. Among the ships of Turner's force were several old battleships which had been damaged at Pearl Harbor, besides eight of the smaller escort carriers.

But before the landings could be made Mitscher's planes must begin clearing away Japanese aerial potential in and around Saipan. Leaving Majuro anchorage on June 6, 1944 (the same date but because of the International Date Line the day before the Normandy landings in Europe), Mitscher put to sea. His carriers transported about double the number of aircraft Ozawa had on his carriersover 890 planes, the bulk being Hellcats, plus Avengers, Dauntlesses, and the new Curtiss SB2-C "Helldiver." Pilots, incidentally, disdained the public relations name of the plane and preferred calling it simply the "2C."

According to plans, the amphibious forces, Marine and Army, would go ashore on Saipan on June 15. Three days before, Mitscher's carrier planes were to sweep over the Marianas airfields, bringing up the curtain on the operation. However, on the tenth Japanese air patrols spotted the approaching carriers; Toyoda, long suspecting, at last knew. Commander in Chief, Combined Fleet, had formulated his own plan: he hoped to lure the American fleet into the waters off the western Carolines (southwest of Guam). There, roughly in the vicinity of the Palau Islands and other Japanese bases (Yap and Woleai), with his vast aerial force he would annihilate the American carriers. Toyoda expected the landings at Palau and tended to regard any Marianas operations as diversions masking MacArthur's New Guinea moves.

But Mitscher's main task was to prepare the way for and cover the landings in the Marianas; it would be difficult, however alluring, to entice him into the western Carolines. In fact, as soon as he realized that Japanese reconnaissance planes had found Task Force 58, Mitscher put on speed and steamed ahead for the Marianas. By the afternoon of June 11, though still about two hundred miles east of the Marianas, Mitscher launched his first fighter sweep - the Hellcats being guided to the targets by the better-equipped (in terms of navigational instruments) Avengers.

Although the Japanese had been aware of TF 58's presence, they were apparently preparing for the customary dawn attack for the next day. Also, undoubtedly, they were preparing for a snooper attack on the carriers that very evening. About two hundred Hellcats swarmed down upon Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, destroying planes on the ground and in the air. About 150 Japanese planes were erased from Kakuda's ground-based air forces in the Marianas, crippling all possible strong air retaliation. The first night off Saipan was free of Japanese attack.

The next day American destruction of airfields and other installations continued, and on the thirteenth the battleships started pounding the landing beaches. On this day, also, the Japanese fleet left Tawitawi and proceeded northward. Obviously the Americans intended to invade the Marianas (which had been the prediction of Commander Chikataka Nakajima of the Naval Intelligence Staff) and not Palau (as the Staff, in general, believed). Immediately canceled was Operation Kon (a plan to retake the importantly strategic island of Biak, off the northwest coast of New Guinea, which had fallen to MacArthur's forces), and Toyoda ordered Ozawa to proceed at full speed for Saipan - about two thousand miles away. At the same time Kakuda's land-based planes were ordered to hold off the Americans until Ozawa's forces arrived.

By this time about five hundred planes had been destroyed and with the remaining handful there was little resistance forthcoming, at least not from the air. On June 15 Marines and Army infantrymen (2nd and 4th Marine Divisions; 27th Infantry Division) struck the beaches of Saipan. They had been properly cautioned by Navy manuals and talks. The troops were warned to beware of sea life ringing the island: "sharks, barracuda, sea snakes, anemones, razor-sharp coral, polluted waters, poison fish and giant clams that shut on a man like a bear trap."

An officer read off, according to regulations, the joys of life ashore: leprosy, typhus, filariasis, yaws, typhoid, dengue fever, dysentery, saber grass, insects, snakes, and giant lizards. "Eat nothing growing on the island," he continued reading; "don't drink its waters and don't approach the inhabitants." The End. "Any questions?" A hand was raised. The officer nodded. "Why don't we let them keep the island?"

Unlike Japanese Naval Intelligence, the young American Marine had never heard of the B-29. On Saipan, northernmost of the islands coveted by the Americans, the Japanese had constructed Aslito Field. At the northern end of the island - that is, opposite to the end on which Aslito lay - another airstrip was being set up. It was because of these air bases, primarily, that the Americans did not want the Japanese to keep the island, and for which the invading troops were expected to risk the nearly countless hazards of life in and around Saipan.

Besides these natural perils there were Lieutenant General Yoshitsugo Saito's thirty thousand troops. Also on Saipan as Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, in command of all Japanese Marine and naval units in the area, was Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the reluctant hero of Pearl Harbor. Nagumo agreed with others in the Japanese High Command: the Americans were aiming for Palau. Meanwhile Saito, grumbling because the Navy had lost supply ships and troop ships to American submarines, did the best he could to prepare "to destroy the enemy at the water's edge."

The day before the landings began Nagumo, having witnessed the aerial strikes of the previous four days, hedgingly proffered a prediction and a definition. "The Marianas are the first line of defense of our homeland. It is certain that the Americans will land in the Marianas group either this month or the next." They landed, of course, the next day. "Where are our planes?" lamented tank man Tokuzo Matsuya in a characteristic query. "Are they letting us die without making any effort to save us? If it were for the security of the Empire we would not hesitate to lay down our lives, but wouldn't it be a great loss to the Land of the Gods for us all to die on this island? It would be easy for me to die, but for the sake of the future I feel obligated to stay alive."

Marine Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith, in command of the ground troops for the invasion, found that "Saito met us at the beaches at Saipan in approved Japanese fashion, and our hopes of quickly expanding our beachhead were somewhat dampened ... The long twenty-five-day continuous attack against strongly entrenched and fiercely resisting troops on Saipan proved the most bitter battle in the Pacific up to that time." Intense mortar and artillery fire, plus suicidal, screaming night attacks by the Japanese, made life ashore dreadful and, for many, short. By June 18, however, Aslito Field fell to the Army's 27th Division. On June 22 Thunderbolts of the 19th and 73rd Squadrons of the 318th Fighter Group, catapulted from the escort carriers Manila Bay and Natoma Bay, landed at Aslito to join the Navy planes already there. By this time the field was renamed Isley Field, in honor of Commander Robert H. Isley, commander of the Lexington's torpedo planes. Two days before the Saipan landings Isley's Avenger was hit by antiaircraft fire over Aslito and crashed in flames onto the field itself. From Isley Field the Seventh Air Force Thunderbolts engaged in close-support operations, blasting away at Japanese positions in front of Marine and Army troops. Once established in the still beleagered airfield, the P-47s, when not engaged in sporadic air battles, bombed and strafed Japanese positions on Saipan and Tinian. By July, when the fighting on Saipan ended, the Thunderbolts of the 318th Fighter Group were armed with yet another weapon, at first popularly called the "fire bomb." Thcse were the first of the frightfully effective napalm, diesel oil, and gasoline mixtures (later napalm and gasoline), which when dropped in wing and belly tanks from about fifty feet upon Japanese strong points (particularly caves) created a havoc of flame.

Meanwhile, even as American troops went ashore on Saipan, word was flashed from the submarine Flying Fish that a large Japanese carrier force had been sighted in San Bernardino Strait, headed for the Marianas. The next day, June 16, Seahorse, another submarine, sighted more ships off Surigao Strait. Spruance knew then that the Combined Fleet was coming out in full force. He immediately canceled the proposed June 18 landing on Guam (although not the June 16 air strikes upon Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands and Chichi Jima in the Bonins, south of the Japanese homeland).

American submarines, which were to play an important role in the impending "decisive battle," tracked the Japanese fleet, waiting for the moment when they might launch their fish. Spruance positioned his carriers by June 18 about 160 miles west of Tinian. On this same day - the day that Aslito Field fell - Ozawa's forces had arrived at a position about 500 miles west of Saipan. The opposing fleets by June 19 were about four hundred miles apart.

Ozawa, therefore, had the advantage. His planes, thanks to the lack of armor plating and the lack of the heavy self-sealing fuel tanks, enjoyed a greater range than the American carrier fighters. Even before his carriers came within range of the American carriers - Ozawa's major targets - he could launch his planes, which, after combat, could land on the Marianas airfields (excepting, of course, Aslito). Japanese search planes, meanwhile, sought out the American fleet as the Japanese carriers made preparations to hurl total destruction upon Spruance's carriers.

June 19 dawned clear over the American carriers. The night before, the pilots had been disappointed because Spruance would not authorize Mitscher, in tactical command of the carriers, to speed westward to intercept the Japanese. Spruance had in mind that the primary mission of Task Force 58 was to cover the Saipan invasion. If the carriers were too far west, there was always a possibility of Japanese ships coming in to pound the Americans from the sea. Aboard the Lexington, his flagship, Mitscher was reported to have stalked into his sea cabin to blow off steam in private. On the Enterprise Captain Matthias B. Gardner, complying, said nothing but is reported to have "hurled down his hat and stomped on it." (Spruance was later criticized for holding his carriers near Saipan and not taking the offensive on June 18. Critics, however, ex post facto as usual, possessed certain vital information which at the time the Japanese were not bestowing upon Spruance.)

Mitscher's eager pilots, however, would not lack for action on the nineteenth. An early morning strike on Orote Field on Guam was mounted to keep that base neutralized in the event that the impending battle materialized. About thirty Wildcats pounced on the already beaten-up field; a rather surprising antlike activity seemed in progress as Japanese planes were pushed out of revetments and put into the air with frantic resolution. The Wildcats began the morning's decimation, shattering the Japanese planes, barely air-borne, out of the bright morning sky.

In about an hour and a half of fighting, the American combat air patrol shot down thirty-five of Kakuda's land-based planes, which had up to that morning escaped previous attacks. Meanwhile, tension aboard the carriers mounted as Mitscher wondered about the location of the Japanese carriers.

Ozawa had begun launching his planes at dawn, search planes and bombers (a total of seventythree), which fanned out into a squally sky to look for the American fleet. The imperfect weather over the Japanese ships, stretching nearly to the American dispositions, was a disadvantage to the inexperienced Japanese pilots. Animated with patriotism and little else, they were led like strangely pugnacious sheep to slaughter. Ozawa's first raid, led by Lieutenant Commander Masayuki Yamagami, began taking off at daybreak and vanished into murky eastern sky. Then Ozawa waited. He could afford to, for his ships were still beyond the range of Mitscher's carrier planes.

He was determined to make a thorough job of the Americans, so even as the planes of the first raid were taking off the van carriers of the 3rd Carrier Division, the planes of the 1 st Carrier Division began launching also. Forty-eight Zekes, fifty-four Judys, and twenty-seven Jills took off from the Zuikaku, Shokaku, and Taiho. From the bridge of the latter, Japan's great new carrier, Ozawa observed the air swarming with planes. The Taiho was a gigantic vessel of more than sixty-four thousand tons. Launched just three months before (April 4, 1944), the Taiho was considered unsinkable.

As the last plane left the deck of the flagship a torpedo track was discovered knifing through the water at the Taiho. Warrant Officer Sakio Komatsu, whose plane was in the last wave, saw the churning line in the water and died believing he had saved the flagship by diving into the torpedo, detonating it. But that was not the only "fish" which had been ejected from the torpedo tubes of the Albacore, an American submarine in the area (under command of J. W. Blanchard), and despite attempts to turn the Taiho, it was struck. The blow jammed an elevator and fuel piping ruptured, filling the hangar space below decks with fumes. A single spark did the rest, for within six hours the Taiho was ripped by a splintering explosion. A mass of flames from stem to stern, the Taiho turned over and sank.

Admiral Ozawa in the meantime had moved to another ship, the heavy cruiser Haguro. He was an unhappy man, for even while the Taiho reeked with impending doom yet another carrier was attacked - this time the Skokaku, which became the victim of Lieutenant Commander H. J. Kossler's submarine Cavalla. The Shokaku sank even before the Taiho.

Before these misfortunes, however, Ozawa had launched about four hundred planes in four attack waves. The first of these was detected by American radar when they were almost 150 miles away, at Guam. When the first blips of aircraft apparently approaching from the open sea appeared on the radar screens, it was Mitscher himself who took the microphone of the TBS (Talk Between Ships) and initiated what would come to be called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot." "Hey, Rube!" echoed through the fleet, alerting pilots to scramble and antiaircraft gunners to prepare their guns. Great rings of destroyers and cruisers, guns pointing skyward, had been formed around the carriers in four large groups spread over hundreds of square miles to the west of the Marianas.

The old American circus battle cry activated the carriers, and the Wildcats that had been over Guam turned about and raced out to sea. They would intercept the oncoming Japanese, but Guam continued to suffer under bombers and torpedo bombers. At 10:07 A.M. the ticker tape on the Lexington read: "Unidentified planes have been picked up bearing 333°, 45 miles away." Hellcats from the Essex, Cowpens, Bunker Hill, and Princeton vectored in upon the oncoming planes - the scouts and scout bombers of the Japanese 3rd Carrier Division. In the first skirmish, well to the west of the American carriers, about twenty-five Japanese planes (of seventy-three) were splashed into the sea. The survivors continued on resolutely, only to be met head on by another formation of Hellcats - sixteen more Japanese planes fell into the sea. Those still flying (about thirty) broke through the battle line (the battleships and destroyers that stood fifteen miles in the vanguard of the carrier formations). One of the bombers scored a direct hit upon the South Dakota, but not one Japanese plane reached the carriers. Of the original seventy-three only twentyfour survived for the time being. Some crash-landed on Guam and others returned to their own carriers.

Edward Jablonski. : From Guadalcanal to Saipan, the war in the air over the Pacific. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. 1971.

Second World War Carrier Campaigns This book provides an authoritative and concise account of aircraft carrier operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of World War II. You'll read of early wartime experiences; of aircraft operations in support of convoys; of the devastating battles of the Pacific, including The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot and the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa; and of the changes made to carrier and naval strategies as the war progressed.

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