Even as the Colombo raid continued, a radio message from one of his reconnaissance planes to the southwest was handed to Admiral Nagumo. The message read: “Two enemy destroyers sighted. Heading south-southwest. Speed twenty-five knots.” The enemy ships were placed at approximately three hundred nautical miles south-southwest of the air battles raging over Colombo. As there were no longer any worthwhile targets in the blasted British port, Nagumo immediately launched every available dive bomber on his carriers, which had been held in readiness for a possible second attack against Colombo. Destruction of the destroyers would complement the Colombo attack.
Led by Lieutenant Commander Takashige Egusa, Air Group Commander of the Soryu, the eighty Type 99 Val dive bombers began their hunt for the two destroyers. Even as the planes raced toward the enemy ships, Admiral Nagumo received a corrected message. The enemy vessels were not destroyers as originally reported, but actually cruisers.
On the flagship Nagumo’s staff officers waited for word from the dive-bomber force. Finally the first report from Lieutenant Commander Egusa was handed to the admiral.
“Sighted enemy vessels.”
“Get ready to go in.”
“Air Group, 1st Cardiv, take the first ship; Air Group, 2nd Cardiv, take the second ship.”
Several minutes passed without further messages. Then:
“Ship Number One has stopped. Dead in water. Listing heavily.”
“Ship Number Two is aflame.”
“Ship Number One has sunk.”
“Ship Number Two has sunk.”
The entire attack involved only nineteen minutes, from 1:40 to 1:59 P.M. (Tokyo Time). Reconnaissance photographs of the two ships under attack identified them as the British cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire.
Commander Egusa’s dive-bomber force established an all-time record in bombing accuracy in the destruction of the two cruisers. Perhaps the bombing conditions were perfect; whatever the reason, every bomb literally either struck the enemy ships or scored a near miss. So thick were the explosions from the rain of bombs that many plane crews could not determine whether they had actually released their missiles. Only after all our planes had assembled in formation and the pilots could visually check the racks of other planes could we tell whether or not several planes were still armed.
Following the Colombo attack and the sinking of the two cruisers, the Nagumo Force regrouped and moved eastward, planning to attack Trincomalee on Ceylon on April 9. Again, we encountered the far-searching British patrol bombers; on April 8 a flying boat sighted our fleet and reported its finding to enemy headquarters. Admiral Nagumo again anticipated heavy fighter-plane opposition, and ordered another maximum-strength assault to be flown.
Early on April 9 125 bombers and fighters thundered against Trincomalee. The enemy obviously expected our attack, for the harbor was empty of major shipping and “a large number” of fighter planes met our aerial formations head on. Our post attack tabulations indicated that the Zeros shot down fifty-six enemy fighters, including ten Hawker Hurricanes. (Postwar investigation revealed that the British lost nine out of eleven Hurricane fighters this day.) Our bombers sank one merchant vessel, damaged several other ships, and set aflame harbor installations.
For the first time since the opening day of the war, enemy bombers attacked the Nagumo Force’s aircraft carriers. Even as our formations bombed Trincomalee, nine British Blenheims made a daring assault against our warships. None of the twin-engined bombers succeeded in their attack; Zeros destroyed the entire enemy force.
We were to be still further elated by the events of the day. Admiral Nagumo could not believe that Trincomalee had not harbored major British warships; these same vessels, he reasoned, upon receipt of yesterday’s patrol bomber report had fled Trincomalee for the greater safety of the open sea. Simultaneously with the raid against the enemy harbor, our reconnaissance planes fanned out in a wide search for the ships which the admiral was convinced were in the area. His efforts did not go unrewarded, for the flagship deck soon received the electrifying news that a reconnaissance plane had sighted the British aircraft carrier Hermes, accompanied by a single destroyer (later identified as the Vampire), close to Trincomalee.
Again Nagumo launched his eighty Type 99 dive bombers under the command of Lieutenant Commander Egusa. Led to the long-sought British carrier, the dive bombers plummeted from the sky in devastatingly accurate attacks. Hit after hit wracked the two enemy warships, and more often than not flames and smoke rather than the slender plumes of near misses billowed upward. Our planes were literally unopposed and swarmed furiously over the warships. Egusa’s men once again achieved an incredible percentage of direct bomb hits; so unusual was this accuracy, unparalleled even in future operations, that to calculate the number of hits we had to count the misses and subtract these from the total number of bombs released!
Within ten minutes of the first bomb drop, the Hermes was a gutted, flaming hull, its deck ripped to splinters, its sides shattered by bomb explosions. Five minutes later, only fifteen minutes after the first dive bomber dropped from the sky, the Hermes slipped beneath the waves. The Vampire was already gone, literally torn into great pieces of wreckage. With their remaining bombs, Egusa’s men sighted and sank an enemy merchant ship and two smaller vessels.
Our planes were establishing new records and changing the accepted concept of sea-air warfare. At Pearl Harbor a limited number of fighters and bombers from this same fleet broke the back of American battleship power; off Malaya for the first time in history our planes sank enemy battleships without the aid of surface vessels; and, today, for the first time, aircraft without the support of surface vessels had sent a carrier to the bottom.
Lieutenant Commander Egusa was my (Okumiya’s) classmate both at Etajima (the Japanese Annapolis), and in the Navy Flying School at Kasumigaura. We both were Navy senior dive-bomber pilots. Shortly after the Indian Ocean Operation, in which Egusa figured so prominently, we were able to have a reunion in Japan. At the time, as an air staff officer of the 2nd Carrier Task Force, I was preparing for the Midway and the Aleutian Operations; I asked my old friend how his planes had sunk the British warships.
Egusa looked at me and shrugged. “It was much simpler than bombing the Settsu. That’s all.”
The Settsu! Simpler than bombing Japan’s old target battleship!
With the Indian Ocean Operation concluded with these brilliant victories, the activity of the famed Nagumo Force, which had swept aside all enemy opposition from Pearl Harbor to Ceylon, came to its end. Our gains were consolidated, and now there were new tasks for the powerful naval and air units. We who knew intimately the actions of these battles realized only too well that the greatest single factor contributing to our victory was the superior performance of the Zero fighter airplane. Except in the battle in which our torpedo and level bombers destroyed the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, our bombers were able to cause such havoc only because the Zero had won control of the air. Perhaps only a few of us were cognizant of the fact, but the Zero had become the symbol not only of our land-and sea-based air power but of the entire Japanese military force.
CHAPTER 12
The Coral Sea Battle
PRIOR TO THE OUTBREAK of hostilities between Japan and the United States, the majority of the Navy’s high-ranking officers foresaw defeat for our surface vessels in a showdown struggle against America’s powerful array of warships. Because our naval carrier-and land-based air forces so aggressively attacked and pursued the enemy, however, we gained a tremendous, if unexpected, margin of victory. As early as the first week of April of 1942, an incredible four short months after the explosive outbreak of war, the Navy completed its pre-arranged First Phase Operations. We roamed the greater part of the Pacific and the Indian oceans, securely entrenched in our conquests, and our naval air and surface forces kept the enemy at a respectable distance.
To the disappointment of many naval officers (and to the relief of others), our
carrier force had failed to engage the American aircraft carriers in combat since the opening of hostilities. Once they saw the outstanding superiority of the Zero fighter sweep aside all enemy opposition, the majority of our officers looked forward to the first carriervs.-carrier engagement. By April of 1942 we had caught and destroyed only the U.S. seaplane tender Langley south of Tjilatjap, Java, and the British aircraft carrier Hermes off Trincomalee of Ceylon Island.
Following the successful Indian Ocean Operation, we planned an offensive campaign against the Solomon Islands and the southeastern part of New Guinea. Our major goal in this offensive was the capture of Port Moresby on the latter island, which was the only air base from which enemy planes continued to strike back at our still-advancing forces. By capturing this vital enemy airfield, we would eliminate the air threat to Rabaul and Kavieng. Parallel to this operation, other surface forces would support an Army invasion against Tulagi in the southern Solomons. We needed Tulagi as a base of operations from which we could subsequently strike out at New Caledonia and Fiji.
Intelligence reported that it was very likely that an American surface force, centering about at least one aircraft carrier, was at that time in the Coral Sea area, and that this fleet could seriously threaten the projected Solomons and New Guinea actions. Admiral Yamamoto directed the 5th Carrier Division of the Nagumo Force, then returning to Japan after the Indian Ocean Operation, to participate in the new campaign. Under command of Rear Admiral Chuichi Hara, the 5th Carrier Division embraced the two powerful, large-type aircraft carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku.
The impending attack received the code name “MO” Operation. Vice-Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, then Commander in Chief of the Fourth Fleet in the Central Pacific, was transferred and assigned to head the MO attack. Inoue had under his command the imposing force of two large carriers, one small carrier, one seaplane tender, six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and other vessels, which totaled seventy ships. Supporting his carrier-based aviation were 120 land-based bombers and fighters. Inoue broke up his forces into three groups; the invasion force, the carrier task force, and his land-based air units.
By May 3 Tulagi was in our hands. With the island secured by our ground forces, the fleet moved out to its attack positions. Vice-Admiral Inoue, overall commander of the MO Operation, remained at Rabaul aboard his flagship, the light cruiser Kashima. Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto assigned the four heavy cruisers Aoba, Kako, Furutaka, and Kinugasa to Shortland Anchorage in the central Solomons; these vessels remained under his direct command. He dispatched to Rabaul the light aircraft carrier Shoho with sixteen Zero fighters, twelve Type 97 Kate attack bombers, and other planes. Eleven transports anchored within Rabaul Harbor to take on the Port Moresby Army Invasion Force; small warships cruised nearby as escorts. And at Deboyne, Admiral Goto had the seaplane tender Kamikawa-Maru with four Type-Zero reconnaissance seaplanes, and eight Type-Zero observation planes.
Vice Admiral Takeo Takagi, the 5th Cruiser Division commander, became commander of the Carrier Task Force. Takagi retained under his direct orders the 5th Cruiser Division’s heavy cruisers Myoko and Haguro, and assigned to Rear Admiral Chuichi Hara the command of the 5th Carrier Division’s Shokaku and Zuikaku. Each of the two carriers had twenty-one Zero fighters, twenty-one Type 99 Val dive bombers, and twenty-one Type 97 Kate attack bombers. Six destroyers and other auxiliary vessels supported the carrier force.
With the Indian Ocean campaign completed by mid-April, Hara steamed at full speed for the Solomon Islands, arriving in the eastern seas on May 5.
Under the direction of Rear Admiral Sadayoshi Yamada, commander of the 25th Air Flotilla, the supporting land-based air force, consisting of sixty Zero fighters, forty-eight Type 96 twin-engined Nell bombers, sixteen Type 97 Mavis flying boats, and ten small-type seaplanes, assembled at their various bases. The majority of the land-based planes flew into Rabaul and its supporting installation at Lae. Approximately half the flying boats and seaplanes operated from Rabaul Harbor, the remainder from Tulagi and Shortland.
Even as we prepared feverishly for the Shortland thrusts of our combined land-sea-air forces, the day following the capture of Tulagi, May 4, eighty enemy bombers and fighters attacked our fleet units in morning and afternoon waves. There was a strong possibility that the enemy realized our intentions, for his attack was unusually fierce and damaging. We lost the destroyer Kikuzuki and several planes to the enemy bombers.
For the first time, however, we confirmed the existence in the vicinity of American aircraft carriers. It appeared as if the time were drawing near for the first clash between American and Japanese carriers.
On the same day, the transport convoy for the Port Moresby invasion left Rabaul. Twenty-four hours later, Admiral Goto’s warships slipped out of Shortland. The fleet units would rendezvous at sea and assemble their forces for the final assault against Moresby. In concert with this operation, Admiral Takagi’s carrier task force skirted the southern end of the Solomon Islands, and at noon of the fifth steamed to the west of the island group. Moving at full speed, the carriers raced to cover the southern flank of Goto’s invasion forces.
At 0810 hours on the morning of May 6, a Mavis flying boat of the Yokohama Air Corps sighted an enemy surface force six hundred miles south of Tulagi. The plane’s crew reported at least one aircraft carrier supported by nine other vessels.
Several hours later a single enemy four-engined B-17 bomber attacked Admiral Goto’s invasion fleet. We presumed that the enemy bomber flew from Port Moresby, and we feared that the troop-laden transports might soon be attacked by enemy bombers. To protect his vulnerable transports, Admiral Inoue ordered the troopships to change course and proceed due north, in the hope that this sudden shift in course would conceal the fleet from the enemy reconnaissance planes he knew would be scouring the ocean. Expecting that he would most likely engage the enemy on the following day, Takagi refueled his ships at sea on the evening of May 6.
Early on the morning of May 7 we launched an intensive search for the enemy carriers and other surface vessels. Our reconnaissance planes flew from Rabaul, Shortland, and Tulagi; other planes from the Kamikawa-Maru at Deboyne, the three carriers, and the heavy cruisers took to the air to participate in the search.
We did not have long to wait. At 0532 hours a Kate bomber sighted a single enemy carrier and three destroyers two hundred miles south of the Shokaku. Admiral Takagi ordered Admiral Hara immediately to dispatch every available airplane from his two carriers in an assault against the enemy fleet unit. At 0610 hours Lieutenant Commander Kakuichi Takahashi left the carriers with an air attack group of eighteen Zero fighters, thirty-six Type 99 Val dive bombers, and twenty-four Type 97 Kate torpedo bombers.
Thirty minutes later, at 0640, with Takahashi’s bombers and fighters racing toward the enemy ships, one of the heavy cruiser Kinugasa’s Type-Zero reconnaissance seaplanes of Admiral Goto’s fleet sighted another enemy group. A single large carrier and ten other vessels steamed only two hundred miles south of the Kinugasa, or two hundred and eighty miles northwest of Admiral Takagi’s position.
Unfortunately, the rich prize of a second American carrier could not be attacked. With only a minimum force of planes to protect his own two carriers, the admiral was forced to wait for the return of Takahashi’s sixty bombers and eighteen fighter planes. He could only hope that the first carrier under attack would be destroyed and that, after hasty refueling and rearming, the group could take off again to raid the second enemy carrier.
The Fates decreed otherwise. At 0935 Commander Takahashi reached the position of the enemy fleet unit, as it had been reported by the Kate. The carrier and its three escorting destroyers could not be seen. The formation spread out and searched the ocean surface in vain. Convinced finally that no carrier was in the area, Takahashi ordered his planes to bomb and torpedo a large tanker and a destroyer discovered in the area. The two enemy ships quickly went down beneath the hail of bombs and torpedoes. We later
identified the tanker, originally mistaken for the aircraft carrier, as the Neosho, and the destroyer escort as the Sims.
Even as Takahashi’s planes returned to the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, lookouts aboard Admiral Goto’s carrier Shoho excitedly reported many approaching American bombers and fighters. An estimated ninety-five enemy bombers and fighters plunged from the sky in a devastating raid against the hapless Shoho. With most of its Zeros airborne over the transport convoy, and with only a few remaining fighters to intercept the large enemy force, the carrier was virtually helpless. Heavy bombs and torpedoes split the vessel, and the Shoho soon went down. She was the first Japanese carrier to be lost in the war.
In view of the great number of enemy carrier-based aircraft which had destroyed the Shoho, Admiral Takagi reasoned that he faced at least two large enemy aircraft carriers. As soon as his first attack force had returned from their “wasted” mission to the south, mechanics refueled the planes and loaded bombs and torpedoes to prepare for an immediate raid against the American force.
Takagi faced a number of difficult obstacles, for the enemy fleet was believed to lie at least three hundred and fifty miles west of his own position, beyond the normal attack radius of his carrier planes. Further, even if he launched his planes at once, the waning afternoon meant that on their return his planes would reach their carriers after dark. The single-seat Zeros, unequipped for night flying, had to be dropped from the attack group.
At 1430 hours, a second attack group of twelve dive bombers and fifteen torpedo bombers led by Lieutenant Commander Takahashi took off to attack the enemy ship. Takagi planned to send his planes in at twilight, when the shadowy light would hamper the enemy antiaircraft gunners. The bombers ran into heavy intermittent rain squalls and, even as they fought their way through between the towering cloud formations, the sun slipped below the horizon. It was impossible to locate the enemy vessels under these conditions, and reluctantly the commander gave up the search to return to his own carriers.
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