The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  Photographer’s Mate Al Cooperman, stationed in the catwalk, had captured the moment that the enemy plane was struck by 40mm fire. The photograph, one of the most famous of the Pacific War, depicted the aircraft disintegrating in midair. Clark ordered a copy distributed to each member of the crew. Life magazine later featured the photo as its “Picture of the Week.”109

  Task Force 50 had needed more than a little luck to escape serious damage, and all were unnerved by the sudden appearance of two waves of attackers in broad daylight. The Yorktown’s gunners had peppered the San Francisco badly, killing one man and injuring twenty-two. Her skipper, A. Finley France Jr., knew that the friendly fire was unavoidable and deliberately did not report the incident out of consideration for Clark’s chances of promotion to flag rank. Pownall apparently drew the same conclusion, because he never raised the issue of Clark’s failure to obey his order to cease fire.

  The task force launched a large combat air patrol and braced itself for more attacks. Clark would have liked to turn the formation around and launch another strike against Kwajalein, but Pownall was definitively committed to getting his ships out of there. At three in the afternoon, the Wotje strike returned and landed aboard. The task force rang up 25 knots and raced north. The weather was now working against the Americans. The destroyers labored heavily in rough seas, forcing Pownall to slow the entire task force to 18 knots. In addition, the sky was clear and visibility unimpeded, offering the fleeing ships no opportunity to hide from aerial snoopers.

  Clark was thoroughly disgusted with Pownall’s decision to run. The midday air attack, in his view, had proved his point that the task force should have remained off Kwajalein and slugged it out with the Japanese. He repeatedly smashed his fist down on the chart table and exclaimed, “Goddamn it, you can’t run away from airplanes with ships!”110

  Those sixty-odd G4Ms on Roi had not yet appeared, but they could be expected to attack in darkness. Sure enough, the radar screens began to light up shortly before sunset. They depicted a large number of blips flying in expanding search squares. At 7:45 p.m., Bettys and Kates first made contact with the Essex group. For the next several hours, wave after wave of enemy planes tracked the ships, dropped parachute flares, and launched torpedoes. What followed, as recorded in the Essex cruise book, was “the longest sustained night torpedo attack of the war to date. For seven and a half hours, enemy planes were continually pressing attacks, and Essex personnel remained at battle stations until two o’clock the next morning—almost 24 hours after starting the attack on the atoll.” 111 Antiaircraft fire repeatedly lit up the sky in a fantastic spectacle and took down dozens of attackers. A three-quarter moon rose in the east and illuminated the task force and its long white wakes. Many torpedoes missed narrowly; no ship in the group was hit.

  The cruisers New Orleans and Oakland steamed directly ahead and astern of the Yorktown. The formation turned sharply and in unison, starboard and port, as the attackers bored in toward the center, always aiming for the high rectangular shape of the big carriers. Two torpedoes missed the Yorktown narrowly—one astern and the other across the bow. When radar tracked a very large wave approaching from the south, Captain Sol Phillips of the Oakland asked permission to drop back, light up the ship, and draw off the attackers. The request was granted, and the Oakland doggedly shot down perhaps a dozen G4Ms with her formidable antiaircraft weaponry. At a few minutes after 11:23 p.m., several flares appeared to port, and another G4M penetrated the outer screen to the northeastward. As the plane roared in, just 15 feet above the sea, the big antiaircraft guns held fire for fear of hitting American ships. Clark ordered a hard right turn into the teeth of the attack. The plane released its torpedo at about 1,000 yards off the starboard bow, then zoomed low over the Yorktown’s flight deck. The torpedo ran straight but Clark had time to steer away, and it crossed the bow with ample room to spare. The retreating plane was taken down by the carrier’s port-side guns. Another followed, also flying over the Yorktown, its machine-gun tracers cutting a path across the flight deck, and flew on toward the Lexington. The plane made a good drop and veered away. About twenty seconds later, a powerful blast sent a tower of flame up the Lexington’s stern. She lost steering control and was forced to reduce speed. Pownall immediately ordered the entire task force to slow, and the screening ships closed around the wounded ship.

  The attackers continued to come on, singly or in pairs, and pierced the outer destroyer screen every few minutes. A wall of flak met any plane that approached within 2,000 yards of the Lexington. The volume and accuracy of the antiaircraft fire apparently dampened the pilots’ spirits, because many G4Ms seemed to turn away early, or made premature and poorly aimed torpedo drops. The Lexington’s crew rigged emergency steering gear and had her underway shortly after midnight.

  The moon set at 1:27 a.m., and the attacks petered out. By two, there was no sign of enemy planes in sight or on the radar screens. The task force secured from quarters and continued north at high speed. The gunners curled up on deck and slept next to their weapons. A large combat air patrol launched at dawn, and the task force braced itself for another air attack, but none came. At last they were out of range.

  Clark was exhausted and on edge. He was relieved to have avoided a crippling torpedo hit, but deeply disappointed by the task force’s failure to destroy enemy airpower in the Marshalls, a goal he believed might have been achieved with more vigorous tactics.

  During the three-day run back to Pearl Harbor, Clark hatched a strategy to oust Baldy Pownall from his job as commander of the fast carrier task force. He and several members of his staff penned a memorandum laying out the case against Pownall, citing several specific decisions that had betrayed a lack of aggressiveness. This paper, which was not signed, would be circulated among senior officers on the CINCPAC staff. Clark also collected aerial photographs of the G4Ms parked on the airfield at Roi. Even after having seen the photos, Pownall had ruled against urgent bids to return and pulverize the planes before they could attack the fleet. The memorandum did not directly address the issue of Pownall’s nerve, but in conversations with colleagues Clark denounced the admiral as a “yellow son of a bitch.”112

  Clark went even further. An air intelligence officer on his staff, Lieutenant Herman Rosenblatt, was well-connected in Washington. Rosenblatt had been an attorney in his civilian life prior to joining the navy, and had done legal work for the Roosevelt family. He knew the president and first lady and was personally close to two of their sons. Sam Rosenman, one of FDR’s most trusted aides and speechwriters, was Rosenblatt’s uncle. With Clark’s approval, Rosenblatt phoned the White House from Pearl Harbor and urged that Pownall be transferred out of his command. He then flew back to Washington and spread the complaints about Pownall throughout official Washington.

  The campaign verged perilously close to mutiny. It might have easily boomeranged on Clark, perhaps even ruining his hopes of promotion to flag rank. Criticizing one’s superior officer behind the scenes was contrary to the “navy way,” but opening a back channel to the commander in chief was beyond the pale. In a postwar interview, however, Clark was unrepentant. “I was very fortunate in having a pipeline to the president,” he said. “[Pownall] had a chance to score a victory, and he passed it up. I think many commanders make mistakes, and I guess maybe I made some myself, but if you don’t have the will to win, you have no business in the war.”113

  Clark’s attack on Pownall was probably moot. Nimitz had monitored the admiral’s performance closely. Rear Admiral Kauffman, who had been sent along on the mission to observe Pownall firsthand, provided his confidential recommendation that Pownall be relieved. Leading brownshoe admirals in Pearl Harbor, notably John Towers and Forrest Sherman, had already concluded that another man should command the fast carrier task force. Pownall was relieved on January 3, 1944, and replaced by Rear Admiral Marc “Pete” Mitscher, one of the best-liked and most respected senior aviators in the navy.

  Nor did Jocko Clark’s hig
h jinks do any damage to his career. He received a Silver Star for his performance as captain of the Yorktown. On the first day of 1944 he was promoted to rear admiral. A week later he was given command of one of Mitscher’s carrier divisions. His flagship was to be the new Hornet.

  Chapter Twelve

  CHESTER NIMITZ WAS NOT ONE TO FLAUNT THE POWER OF HIS towering rank. In presiding over discussions at his headquarters, the CINCPAC was usually content to listen more than he spoke. He elicited the reasoned opinions of planners and commanders; he allowed a full airing of objections and criticisms, unimpeded by a stifling deference to rank or seniority; he shepherded his subordinates toward consensus before fixing his signature to operational orders. Rarely had he overruled his leading advisers, and never over their unanimous opposition.

  But on December 7, 1943—the second anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—when the commanders who had recently returned from GALVANIC convened at the conference table in his headquarters, Nimitz announced that he had chosen a daring bypass strategy for the next phase of the central Pacific campaign. The Fifth Fleet would steam directly into the heart of the Marshalls and land amphibious forces on the giant atoll of Kwajalein. Japanese-held atolls and airfields to the south and east—Maloelap, Wotje, Mille, and Jaluit—would be bombed and shelled into oblivion, but they would not be seized until later, if at all.

  It was a more ambitious gambit than Ray Spruance, Kelly Turner, or Holland Smith had envisioned, and the three united in resisting it. Spruance was concerned that the islands bypassed to his rear would threaten sea communications from Hawaii and the Gilberts. The Japanese would fly planes into the bypassed airfields and use them to harass the transports and auxiliaries as they attempted to supply the fleet and its new advanced bases. Moreover, the fast carriers had already been assigned to raid Japanese bases to the south, and once they were gone, Spruance would not have enough airpower to maintain pressure on the bypassed airfields. Holland Smith, having returned from the devastation of Tarawa with sharp opinions, wanted to concentrate the entire Amphibious Corps on a single objective in the southeastern Marshalls. He would have two divisions for the next invasion, and did not want them divided.

  But Nimitz was paying close attention to intelligence derived from reconnaissance flights and radio intercepts. The Japanese had poured reinforcements into the outer (eastern) Marshalls at the expense of Kwajalein. The latter would be a much easier nut to crack, and the bypassed islands could be tolerably neutralized with steady air pressure and local control of the sea. “We’re going into Kwajalein,” said Nimitz. “The Japanese aren’t expecting us there.”1 The CINCPAC held firm against the objections of his subordinates. When the issues had been fully aired, he implied that if the existing fleet and amphibious commanders didn’t want to go into Kwajalein, he would assign the task to others who did.

  Nimitz’s bold approach was to be vindicated by subsequent events. The Japanese navy did not anticipate the move against Kwajalein. Commander Chikataka Nakajima of the Combined Fleet staff told American interrogators after the war, “There was divided opinion as to whether you would land at Jaluit or Mille. Some thought you would land on Wotje but there were few who thought you would go right to the heart of the Marshalls and take Kwajalein. There were so many possible points of invasion in the Marshalls that we could not consider any one a strong point and consequently dispersed our strength.”2

  Forward fleet bases were to be had in the Marshalls. The region’s capacious atolls offered protected anchorages large enough to accommodate the entire Pacific Fleet. Hawaii was thousands of miles behind the front lines and growing steadily more distant with each new westward thrust. The fast carrier task force had extraordinary mobility and reach, but the long voyage back to Pearl Harbor for provisions and repairs cut short its forays and inhibited its seakeeping potential. When operating far to the west of Pearl, Jocko Clark recalled, “you would hit three days at most and go back, so you couldn’t hit more than once a month or once every six weeks.”3 With these considerations in mind, Spruance asked for permission to take the atoll of Majuro, 270 miles southeast of Kwajalein. Majuro’s large, placid lagoon would offer a protected fueling area and a superb advanced base for the mobile floating logistical forces of Service Squadron Ten. Nimitz assented.

  Holland Smith, wary of Japanese defenses on Majuro, was determined not to disperse his landing forces. But the latest and best intelligence indicated that the Japanese had pulled most of their troops out of the atoll. In a December conference at CINCPAC headquarters, Nimitz turned to Ed Layton, the fleet intelligence officer, and said, “Tell General Smith how many Japanese are there, the number you told me this morning.”

  “Six,” Layton replied.

  “Six?” Smith said. “You mean six thousand.”

  “No, six,” insisted Layton. Radio eavesdroppers had intercepted a ration report indicating that the remaining garrison on Majuro was consuming six rations per day. Based on that and other intelligence, General Smith was persuaded that a single battalion would be more than sufficient to overrun Majuro.4

  Nimitz advised Admiral King of his plans on December 14. The operation was given the code name FLINTLOCK, with D-Day on both Kwajalein and Majuro set for January 31, 1944. Spruance would remain as commander of the Fifth Fleet, Turner as commander of Amphibious Forces, and Holland Smith in charge of the assault corps. Task Force 58, which now consisted of twelve carriers embarking more than 700 planes, would establish temporary air supremacy over the entire region. Beginning two days before D-Day, the carrier planes would rain devastation down on the airfields on Kwajalein and those in the southeastern Marshalls.

  THE TASK FORCE 58 that put to sea for FLINTLOCK was nearly twice the size of the force that had struck the same atolls less than two months earlier. The armada of flattops and screening ships, 217 vessels in all, had expanded so suddenly and spectacularly that it seemed a different entity altogether, as indeed it was. Veteran dive-bomber pilot Harold Buell, circling above in his SB2C, “could not look over the huge fleet, stretching as far as eye could see, without a shiver going up my spine.”5

  Task Force 58 was now separated into four task groups. Each was a small fleet in itself, steaming in a semi-autonomous circular cruising formation, and commanded by a rear admiral. The task groups remained adjacent to one another, near enough to provide mutual support but far enough apart to avoiding running afoul when conducting flight operations or maneuvering against air attack. As the Iowa-class battleships entered service, they were deployed fore and aft of the carriers at the center of the formations, adding their formidable antiaircraft firepower to the defense of the vulnerable flattops. Most of the battleship admirals were senior to the aviation admirals, and under traditional concepts of seniority they should have run the show—but Nimitz and King had long since decreed that a brownshoe admiral must command each carrier task group, and the rule was adopted without fuss.

  “I think that for anyone that participated in the war, there were actually two wars,” said Roger Bond, a veteran quartermaster on the Saratoga. “If you went out to the Pacific after, let’s say, January of 1944, you had a completely different experience and viewpoint than those before, because it really was two different operations.”6 The carrier duels of 1942 had been tense fencing matches in which the fortunes of war had often turned in unexpected directions. Opposing task-force commanders had played cat and mouse with weather fronts, always maneuvering to gain the most tactically favorable position with respect to the enemy. The impulse had always been to stay on the move, to get in and get out, to hit and run. In 1944, Task Force 58 could simply take station off an enemy-held island and batter its airfields into oblivion, brushing off the risk of counterstrikes. The immense size of the task force ensured its omnipotence in whatever part of the ocean it occupied. Hundreds of F6Fs won and maintained complete air superiority through the daylight hours. Improved radar systems and increasingly efficient Combat Information Centers provided ample warning of incoming enemy pl
anes. Screening ships carried more and better antiaircraft weapons, and the introduction of the proximity fuse (which detonated the shell upon detecting the enemy aircraft in proximity) rendered those weapons much more lethal. Destroyers, steaming at the outer edges of the task groups, employed better sonar systems and had refined their tactics against enemy submarines. The remarkable logistical capabilities of Service Squadron Ten permitted the carrier forces to remain at sea for six to eight weeks without putting into any port or anchorage, which in turn expanded their range and mobility. The big ships fueled at sea, took on ammunition at sea, and replenished provisions at sea. Replacement aircraft were ferried out to the western Pacific on jeep carriers and flown aboard whenever they were needed. C. S. King, a chief yeoman on the Hornet, spent more than a year and a half on the ship without ever once setting foot on shore. He could have taken liberty at a recreation area on any number of atolls, but never felt the need: “I spent an ungodly amount of time out there in the Pacific without ever leaving the ship. I didn’t really notice it. . . . I just felt at home at sea. I really did. I felt like that’s what the Navy’s all about.”7

  Airstrikes on enemy airfields always commenced with a fighter sweep. Elements of several different Hellcat squadrons coalesced into a tremendous air formation, typically numbering sixty or seventy aircraft. The pilots flew in compact formations, often with little more than 3 or 4 feet between wingtips. They arrived over the target at high altitude and dove on any Japanese fighters that rose to meet them. With decisive advantages in speed, defensive armor, and firepower, the F6Fs made short work of their adversaries. David S. McCampbell, the most prolific navy ace of the Second World War, led his Essex Hellcats into several major air battles in 1944. He always made a point of targeting the enemy leaders first—“it may throw the rest of the pilots off a little bit, disrupt the formation.” According to McCampbell, the Hellcat squadrons had no use for the “Thatch Weave,” a tactic designed to compensate for the F4F Wildcat’s inferior speed and maneuverability against the Zero. The F6F was a better aircraft than the Zero in every respect, and therefore suited to more aggressive tactics. One quick burst of .50-caliber fire, aimed into the Zero’s vulnerable wing-root, and “they would explode right in your face.”8 By early 1944, these initial fighter sweeps usually wiped the sky clean of Japanese fighters, and when the dive-bombers and torpedo bombers arrived some minutes later, they encountered little or no remaining air opposition.