by Ian W. Toll
The fearsome reputation was undeserved. Truk Lagoon offered a well-protected anchorage for the Combined Fleet, and was suitably located on the sea route between Japan’s southern territories and its home islands—but the Imperial Japanese Navy had never poured much effort or resources into developing its airfields, port facilities, shore fortifications, or repair shops. The comparison to Pearl Harbor was absurd. In 1944 the atoll had a single midsize floating dry dock. There were no major power stations, no piers capable of accommodating large ships, and no underground fuel storage. Damaged ships usually had to make the long passage north to Japan for repairs. Ship-to-shore transfers of supplies and troops were carried out by lighters and other small craft. Truk’s four airfields lacked advanced ground installations and were too small to allow proper dispersal of parked planes. Only in late 1943 did the Japanese navy begin a crash program to expand and extend the airfields. Labor was in short supply, so working parties were drafted from the crews of the warships in the anchorage. “The sailors actually enjoyed the work because it allowed them to go ashore,” recalled an air officer on the carrier Zuikaku.34
In February 1944, the atoll was garrisoned by about 7,500 army troops and another 3,000 sailors and support personnel. Fixed antiaircraft defenses were limited to about forty batteries. Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, who held several important jobs on the Combined Fleet staff, told interrogators after the war that Truk had been little more than a staging area, a way station for ships and aircraft traveling between Japan and the South Pacific. Not until the end of 1943 had there been any concerted attempt to fortify it against attack. In his judgment, the atoll would have fallen easy prey to the sort of amphibious invasion the Americans had just completed in the Gilberts and Marshalls.
Admiral Koga had evidently understood as much, because he pulled most of his major combatant ships out of Truk after the fall of Kwajalein and Majuro. He was forewarned by a reconnaissance overflight on February 4, when two marine PB4Ys flew high over the atoll, and by radio intercepts in the following week, which his staff interpreted as evidence that the American carrier task force was on the move. The planes were sighted and identified, and easily outran the floatplane Zeros that rose to intercept them. Koga gave orders to move most of his larger warships to Palau and thence to Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago of the southern Philippines. Ships began heaving up their anchors and speeding for the exit channels. Koga, in his flagship Musashi, departed for Tokyo Bay with a fleet of cruisers and destroyers on February 10. He was resolved to keep his main fleet intact to fight a decisive battle at some future date. Left in the lagoon anchorages were a handful of light cruisers, destroyers, auxiliary naval vessels, about twenty marus (cargo ships), and five oil tankers. Including small craft, there were approximately fifty vessels in mid-February.
After rendezvousing in Majuro atoll for refueling and replenishment, the American fleet had sortied and taken a westward course on February 12. The striking force included most of the fast carrier task forces under Vice Admiral Mitscher—the greater part of Task Force 58, including five fleet carriers (Enterprise, Yorktown, Essex, Intrepid, and Bunker Hill) and four light carriers (Belleau Wood, Cabot, Monterey, and Cowpens). The nine carriers held an armada of more than 560 planes. The HAILSTONE force also included a powerful surface fleet, including seven battleships. Admiral Spruance, the big boss afloat, was embarked on the New Jersey. Nine submarines had been assigned to take station off the main channels out of the atoll; they would sink targets of opportunity and stand by to rescue downed aviators.
No Japanese snoopers bothered the fleet on its approach to its launch point, less than a hundred miles east-northeast of Truk. The Americans had again achieved an improbable surprise. Before dawn on February 17, five carriers turned into the wind and launched seventy-two Hellcats. Coalescing into a single tremendous formation, the fighters climbed into the west. Less than thirty minutes later they flew over the atoll’s outer eastern cays at altitudes between 16,000 and 22,000 feet. The morning was “clear, cool and beautiful.”35 The air battle for Truk was very nearly over before it began. With an advantage in both numbers and altitude, the Hellcats easily destroyed nearly all the Japanese fighters that rose to intercept them. The fighter sweep shot fifty-six Japanese planes out of the sky and then destroyed another seventy-two on the ground in bombing or strafing runs. Antiaircraft fire was spirited but inaccurate; the American pilots, with several such carrier strikes under their belts, had learned to fly through heavy flak without losing nerve.
Four F6Fs went down in the initial melee, and at least one (according to VF-6 pilot Alex Vraciu) was a victim of friendly fire. “There were dog fights all over the place,” he later said. “I even saw one of our Hellcats shoot another Hellcat down. It was a great deflection shot but . . . one of our guys just shot first before being sure and this other poor pilot was forced to parachute out. In the course of the action, I saw a number of Japanese parachutes in the air.”36
The American airmen had anticipated a much hotter response. They had been told that they might encounter as many as 200 enemy fighters over Truk. As it turned out, there were fewer than 200 aircraft of all types in flyable condition on the atoll’s four airfields. According to estimates given in postwar interrogations, the Japanese had 68 operational airplanes on the Moen field, 27 on the Dublon field, 20 on Eten, and 46 on Param, for a total of 161. Parked on the big field at Eten were some 180 aircraft that were damaged, grounded for lack of spare parts, or immobilized for lack of aircrews. Most would be destroyed on the ground.
Though Admiral Koga had correctly anticipated the enemy’s move against Truk, air and naval forces were not on the alert when the American planes suddenly appeared overhead. According to Masataka Chihaya, a staff officer with the Fourth Fleet, the pilots, ground personnel, and ships’ crews had been kept in twenty-four-hour readiness since the overflight of the two marine PB4Ys two weeks earlier, and had reached a state of collective exhaustion.37 Worse, morale and even discipline had eroded since the withdrawal of the heavy warships. Pilots had refused to climb into their cockpits when so ordered, and many men had gone absent without leave. The atoll’s commander, Vice Admiral Masami Kobayashi, had apparently concluded that the American fleet was still engaged in the Marshalls, and authorized a downgrade in the alert level. On February 16, many pilots and other personnel had left their barracks for R&R. The morning of the American raid found a large proportion of Truk’s aviators asleep in the atoll’s largest town, on the island of Dublon, having partied late into the night at local drinking establishments. Their only means of returning to their airfield on the island of Eten was by ferry, and the ferry could not accommodate all of them at once. Many aircraft, both on Eten and on the airfields of Moen and Param islands, had been disarmed and drained of fuel. Kobayashi’s ignominious failure to keep his forces on alert put an end to his naval career; he was relieved of command and then forced to retire from active service.
The first American dive-bombers and torpedo bombers arrived over the target area while the Hellcats were still engaged in strafing runs. Radio chatter and instructions from the task force directed the dive-bombers’ attention to about thirty ships anchored in the lagoon. James D. Ramage, flying a VB-10 Dauntless, noted that several Zeros flew by him without offering combat. He assumed that they were dispirited by the one-sided results of the air fight and were determined to survive it. It was a syndrome that had become increasingly common during the later stages of the South Pacific air campaign.
The Enterprise dive-bombers dropped 1,000-pound armor-piercing bombs on targets chosen from the aerial photos taken earlier. Ramage’s division was assigned to attack ships anchored in the lee of Dublon Island, one of Truk’s major anchorage areas. The planes hurtled down through flak bursts and smashed the stationary ships. Ramage planted a bomb on the stern of the 13,000-ton Hoyo Maru. Another SBD division targeted the 7,000-ton aviation stores ship Kiyozumi Maru and lit her up; she began foundering immediately. A VT-6 Avenger flew low over an
ammunition ship, the Aikoku Maru, and landed a bomb dead-center amidships. The target went up in a huge, rolling ball of flame that engulfed the plane and destroyed it. The shockwave was powerful enough to rock Lieutenant Ramage’s aircraft, more than 2,000 feet overhead. “It was, I think, the biggest explosion I’ve ever seen, other than the atomic bombs,” said Ramage. “It was just an enormous blast.”38
Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the famed marine fighter ace of the Black Sheep squadron (VMF-214), had been shot down and captured off Rabaul a week earlier. He and several other prisoners of war were flown into Truk while the raid was developing. As the G4M bomber carrying them rolled to a stop, Boyington and his fellow prisoners were thrown out onto the airstrip. They looked up and were surprised to see an F6F Hellcat flying low over the airfield, walking .50-caliber fire across the parked planes. The bomber from which they had just been ejected went up in a sheet of flame. The Americans were shoved into a pit by the side of the airfield, and from this relatively protected vantage point they watched the action overhead and cheered for the attackers. Boyington:
There was so much excitement I couldn’t do any differently. I just had to see those Nip planes, some of the light planes like the Zeros, jump off the ground from the explosion of our bombs and come down “cl-l-l-lang,” just like a sack of bolts and nuts. The planes caught on fire and the ammunition in them began going off. There were 20-mm cannon shells and 7.7’s bouncing and ricocheting all around this pit. Some of these hot pieces we tossed back out of the pit with our hands.39
Later, during a lull in the action, the prisoners were collected from the pit and escorted to another part of the island. Boyington observed, “There were huge pieces of concrete upended, plane parts scattered all over, and the place was a shambles.”40
Wave after wave of American carrier planes arrived over the atoll. Air group leaders circled above and directed attacks. Destruction rained down on airfields, buildings, hangars, and machine shops. Squadrons assigned to attack shipping were armed with armor-piercing bombs; those intended to work over the airfields and shore installations carried incendiary and fragmentation clusters. Torpedoes tore into ships anchored in the lagoons and ships running for the exit channels. Parked planes were wiped out on the ground. By midday, several of the afternoon strikes encountered no air opposition at all.
Japanese fighters orbiting to the east of the lagoon pounced on a few Hellcats as they flew back toward the task force. The rudder section of Woodward M. Hampton’s F6F was shot away during a strafing run over one of the airfields. When he flew over the northeastern reefs, his Hellcat was ambushed by two Zeroes. He attempted to escape by steering into a cloud. “I was heading now in a northerly direction and continued on the same course while being attacked, unable to turn or counteract the moves of the enemy,” he wrote in his action report. “The plane was continuously hit by enemy fire and was slowly being shot to pieces.”41 Hampton’s cockpit was riddled with 20mm rounds, destroying most of his instruments. His flight goggles were shot off his head. He concluded his cause was hopeless, but he resolved to take at least another enemy fighter with him. When one of his assailants overran him in a high side run, “I pulled the nose of my plane up until I was on him and gave him a sharp burst from which he burst into flame.” The second plane then turned away, and Hampton flew on to the east. Spotting the outer screening ships of the American task force, he made a violent water landing and managed to get free of the cockpit “after submerging for what seemed like a great depth.” As he broke the surface and filled his lungs, Hampton was relieved to see a friendly destroyer bearing down on him.42
Several downed pilots were rescued in similar fashion. Destroyers and submarines had been stationed as lifeguards around the atoll. The submarine Searaven rescued three Yorktown aviators several miles north. An Essex F6F pilot, George M. Blair, parachuted into Truk Lagoon. Since no American ships could penetrate the channel entrances (which were mined), Blair assumed he was as good as captured. A Japanese destroyer bore down on him, but it was driven off by several other planes of his squadron. Blair was rescued by an OS2U Kingfisher catapulted from the cruiser Baltimore. The floatplane made a daring landing on the lagoon and flew back to the task force without mishap. More than half of all American aircrewmen shot down during the two-day action were safely recovered. In many cases, friendly airplanes circled low over the life rafts until a floatplane or destroyer arrived on the scene.
Under relentless air attack, several Japanese ships cast off their moorings and got underway at high speed. The light cruiser Katori and destroyer Maikaze fled the lagoon through the north passage, but the pair was chased by a division of TBFs and struck by several 500-pound bombs. By noon the Katori was down by the stern and the Maikaze was ablaze. Circling above, with his bombs expended, Lieutenant Ramage attempted to direct newly arriving bombers to deliver the killing blow on the two cripples. But Admiral Mitscher, identifying himself by his call-sign “Bald Eagle,” got on the circuit and ordered all planes to stay clear. “Do not, repeat do not, sink that ship. Acknowledge.”43 The flight leaders were perplexed. Why should they leave the crippled enemy ships alone?
The reason was soon evident. Admiral Spruance had chosen to bring a column of surface ships into the waters immediately north of the atoll. This force included the battleships New Jersey and Iowa, the cruisers Minneapolis and New Orleans, and four destroyers. Mitscher was anxious to avoid a misidentification that might result in friendly fire. Moreover, Spruance was evidently keen to have his big guns finish off any cripples they found in their path. The Minneapolis and New Orleans sank the two immobilized ships with three or four salvos. The New Jersey narrowly avoided two torpedoes launched by the sinking destroyer. The American ships closed and offered to pick up survivors, but almost all the Japanese sailors took their own lives rather than submit to capture. The warships continued in a full counterclockwise circuit of the atoll and retired to the eastward after nightfall. They fell in with Mitscher’s carriers at dawn the following morning.
Spruance’s decision to bring a surface task group into the combat area was not popular with the aviators. In their view, the surface units were not needed at Truk and only got in their way. Mitscher was obliged to provide ten F6Fs from the Cowpens to fly combat air patrol over Spruance’s column. Those Hellcats could have been more profitably employed in strafing runs, and their obligation to cover the slow withdrawal of the warships forced several pilots to make dangerous night recoveries. The Iowa was bombed by a Japanese plane, but suffered little damage. Her gunners fired on and destroyed another plane, which proved to be an American SBD; both the pilot and his back-seater were killed. With an ugly turn of luck, one or more of the ships in Spruance’s column might have run into a torpedo, an event that could have cost him his command. The ordinarily conservative fleet commander had behaved with impulsive bravado, and for no better reason than a blackshoe’s inborn desire to claim a piece of the action for the big guns. Admiral Sherman’s tactful conclusion was that “this expedition accomplished little and only complicated the attacks by the carrier planes.”44 Lieutenant Ramage was less gentle: “So the big battleships finally drew blood against a cruiser that was almost dead in the water. It must have been a great victory.”45
Carl Moore, the Fifth Fleet chief of staff, was later asked to explain Spruance’s reasoning. As always, Moore was candid. The boss was on a sightseeing expedition. “Well, I think it was a matter of curiosity. . . . I think Admiral Spruance was as much interested in taking a look at Truk as he was in hunting for Japanese ships.”46 Moore also speculated that the chief may have been motivated to taunt the Japanese by operating the flagship within plain sight of their largest naval base outside the home islands.
That night, a flight of Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo planes stalked the American task force. The intruders had not flown from Truk—their origin has never been conclusively determined, but it is likely they launched from either Rabaul or Saipan. Night fighters attempted to inte
rcept them but could not find them in the darkness. A few minutes after midnight, one of the prowlers roared low over the flight deck of the carrier Intrepid. The incident spooked the crew, and Admiral Alfred E. Montgomery of Task Group 58.2 ordered a hard port turn to throw off the attackers. But the B5N had already dropped its torpedo, and while the Intrepid was still in its turn, an explosion astern sent a powerful shockwave through the hull. The torpedo had struck the carrier’s vulnerable starboard quarter. Eleven of her crew were killed and another seventeen wounded in the explosion. Damage-control parties sealed off the flooded compartments, and the ship could make way under her own power, but her rudder jammed and kept her in a helpless turn. She nearly collided with the Essex. She was in no danger of sinking but could not keep pace with the task force; she withdrew to Majuro and thence to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco for repairs.
At 2:00 a.m. on the eighteenth, the Enterprise launched a flight of twelve radar-equipped TBF Avengers to attack the surviving Japanese ships in Truk Lagoon. Each aircraft was armed with four 500-pound bombs. The concept of a low-altitude night attack, with the planes guided to the targets by radar alone, had been studied and discussed but never attempted. It required the pilots to navigate to Truk on instruments. Once over the lagoon, they circled over the anchorages until radar echoes provided an image of the targets. The mission was a tactical breakthrough, unprecedented in the annals of aviation or naval history. Lieutenant Commander William I. Martin, who had trained the airmen, called it “a real classic.” He recalled:
Radar displays at that time required an operator to do a great deal of interpreting. It was like learning a new language. Instead of it being a polar plot, looking down on it like a map, the cathode ray tube just gave indications that there was an object out there. After considerable practice, a radar operator could determine that there was a ship there and its approximate size. You related the blip on the radar scope to the image of the ship.47