That left light flak, and it worried him. Like all airmen, LeMay retained a healthy respect for the Luftwaffe’s 20mm to 37mm flak guns. Expertly manned and scientifically arrayed to destroy whatever crossed their sights, they took a fearsome toll of Allied aircraft from 1940 onward. But almost nothing was known about Japan’s light AA weapons: neither numbers, locations, nor capabilities.
Undeterred, the bomber chief got down to details as small as intervalometer settings for spacing bombs from various heights, and came to a conclusion. Nobody had ever thought of flying four-engine aircraft over an enemy city at low level—at night. Therefore, the defending gunners would never expect it. As for night fighters, LeMay was dismissive. The few that Japan possessed were nowhere as numerous or as effective as Germany’s practiced bomber killers.
Still, it remained a major gamble. If he was wrong, LeMay stood to lose a sizable portion of his force, and with it his position, his reputation, and—worst of all—hundreds of his airmen who relied upon his judgment for their survival. But even that paled next to the looming specter of an invasion of Japan, with hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake.
Curt LeMay pondered the odds and thought deeply one more time. Then he rolled destiny’s dice.
CHAPTER FOUR
From the Sea
BENEATH LEADEN GRAY skies, skirting squall lines and snow showers, the Hellcats and Corsairs crossed the Honshu coast, cruising at high speed toward Japanese airfields. The pilots had been briefed to expect the biggest air battle of the war, a significant warning considering the scale of the largest previous tangles with enemy fliers: more than 300 Japanese had been shot down on June 19 off the Marianas and well over 200 on October 24 at Leyte Gulf.
Anticipating large, confusing swarms of friendly and hostile aircraft, the Americans had painted yellow bands on the noses of their carrier planes for quick identification. Aircrews were only informed of operation plans in four-hour increments, limiting the information they could impart if captured.
As the first fighter sweep crossed the coast with master armament switches on and gunsight rheostats turned up, the F6F and F4U pilots scanned the cloudy skies, searching for dark green planes bearing rust-red Hinomaru suns. The flattop aviators expected to shoot their way into Tokyo.
The presence of American carrier planes in Japanese airspace on Friday morning, February 16, 1945, signified far more than met the eye. The U.S. Navy’s debut over the home islands provided strategic cover for one of the most important amphibious operations of the war: the impending Iwo Jima invasion.
Sixty miles off Honshu the greatest assemblage of naval power on the planet stood by to launch follow-up strikes. Tokyo was about to confront the challenge of American carrier aviation—at once the Army Air Forces’ partner and rival in the air war against Japan.
Building an Air Navy
Thirty-four months after the Doolittle Raid, America’s huge industrial capacity had produced the Fifth Fleet, dwarfing to insignificance the pinprick attack launched from USS Hornet (CV-8) in April 1942. The fleet’s striking arm, Task Force 58, counted sixteen fast carriers (all capable of more than 30 knots) plus eight battleships, fifteen cruisers, and seventy-seven destroyers under Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher.
Mitscher’s 116 warships totaled 975,000 combatant tons with some 1,200 aircraft—probably more striking power than could be deployed by the earth’s other navies combined. Nearly all the ships were new: more than eight in ten had been commissioned since Pearl Harbor.
The fast carriers—marvels of concept, design, and construction—represented more than two decades of argument and experimentation, trial and error. But the challenge of building them was no clean-cut engineering problem to be solved solely with drafting boards and slide rules. The task required an evangelic commitment by a generation of aviators, and some of those evangelists left their blood on narrow wooden decks in proving their beliefs.
The Navy had at least as much institutional investment in carriers as the AAF did in heavy bombers. But there were profound differences. For example, navies nearly always opposed other navies whereas strategic air forces sought to destroy enemy cities. For another, navies tend toward an evolutionary progress—sometimes spanning centuries, as with the ship of the line—whereas air forces are by definition revolutionary. In the forty-two years between Kitty Hawk and Hiroshima, the most significant change in navies was due to aviation.
Shipboard takeoffs and landings had been demonstrated in America in 1910–11 but only the Royal Navy had developed a workable if rudimentary system in 1917, launching from platforms erected on battle cruisers. The first true aircraft carriers with flight decks unimpeded by superstructure appeared with His Majesty’s Ship Argus (1917), United States Ship Langley (1922), and His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ship Hosho (1923).
The timing in Japan and America was not wholly coincidental. In 1921–22 the Five-Power Naval Treaty among the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan limited the tonnage (and therefore, numbers) of capital ships. Since carriers were still an unknown quantity, and not deemed major combatants, the conferees allowed conversion of battleships and battle cruisers to flattops. The United States and Japan especially made use of that exception.
Dating at least from 1906, American strategists anticipated conflict with Japan, and produced a succession of contingencies. They became War Plan Orange, which envisioned a battle of the dreadnoughts in mid-Pacific. Orange evolved into Rainbow Five, the plan current in December 1941. Aircraft carriers had been gradually folded into the plans, evolving from merely scouting into active combat roles.
The task facing the naval airmen was twofold: to develop a viable means of operating shipboard aircraft for attack missions, and to gain a place at the nautical table amid the resistance of “the gun club,” the battleship traditionalists who envisioned any future sea war as a replay of Jutland in 1916. The rivalry was compounded by vastly reduced peacetime budgets, especially in the Depression years of the 1930s.
Institutionally, naval aviation’s biggest problem was a lack of seniority. Though the first naval officers had earned their wings in 1911, thirty years later very few had risen high enough to set policy. In fact, the two leading advocates of carrier development were products of the pre-aviation Navy.
Rear Admiral William A. Moffett established the Bureau of Aeronautics in 1921. He had graduated from Annapolis in 1890, eight years before the Spanish-American War. He fought at Manila Bay and received the Medal of Honor for action in Mexico in 1914.
Blessed with uncommon vision, Moffett grasped the potential of naval aviation as a battleship captain in World War I. He took note when Billy Mitchell’s fliers rocked naval orthodoxy to the keel by sinking the captured German Ostfriesland in 1921. Though a soft-spoken Carolinian, Moffett’s tough-minded attitude gained him recognition as the father of naval aviation. He secured control over not only technical matters and acquisition, but also personnel. Moffett proved indispensable, remaining as chief of BuAer until 1933, when he died in an airship disaster.
The other major influence in naval aviation was slender, bearded Joseph M. Reeves, an Annapolis athlete credited with inventing the football helmet. Four years junior to Moffett, Reeves also went the battleship route, seeing action against the Spanish at Santiago Bay.
Between 1914 and 1923, Reeves commanded a cruiser and two battleships, establishing himself as a card-carrying member of the gun club. But after attending the Naval War College he was drawn to flying. In 1925, at the advanced age of fifty-one, he completed the aerial observer’s course, qualifying him for aviation leadership. Later that year, as commander of the Pacific Fleet’s air component, he flew his flag in USS Langley, America’s first flattop.
Probably no one did more to develop carrier tactics than “Billy Goat” Reeves. With his white Vandyke he was instantly recognizable to fliers and sailors alike. His four years with Langley were seminal; he experimented with procedures and techniques that would become standard in World Wa
r II. More embarked aircraft, faster operating tempos, and offensive missions rather than scouting all evolved on his watch. By the time he transferred out in 1931, the carrier navy was well on its way with two 33,000-ton giants, Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3). Reeves retired as a vice admiral in 1936 but was recalled to duty in 1940, serving in Washington throughout the war.
Naval airmen spent the 1920s and 1930s determining how best to integrate carriers into surface fleets, optimizing the roles of reconnaissance, observation, and attack. Eventually the world’s navies hit upon four basic roles for tailhook aircraft: scouts, torpedo planes, dive bombers, and fighters. The institutional differences were most notable in Britain, where the Royal Air Force retained control of naval aircraft until 1937. In contrast, American and Japanese naval aviators were fully integrated into their fleets.
In the 1930s, U.S. naval aviation’s seniority problem became so acute that older officers were run through flight training to fill the expanding number of aviation billets. The JCLs or Johnny Come Latelys included William Halsey and John S. McCain, both fifty-two when they pinned on their wings. More senior was Ernest J. King, a sour but formidably capable officer qualified in both submarines and aviation, who became chief of naval operations in 1942.
At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. Navy had seven large carriers, four of which were sunk in 1942. But America’s vast industrial base began making up the deficit even as the battles roiled around islands called Midway and Guadalcanal.
Arguably the most nearly perfect instrument of sea power was the Essex class carrier, eleven being ordered in 1940’s massive naval budget. The name ship, designated CV-9, was commissioned in December 1942, setting the pattern for all her twenty-three sisters. She displaced 27,100 tons, carried eighty to 100 aircraft, and could make 32 knots. Cruising at 15 knots, she had fuel for 15,000 nautical miles, affording a fast, long-ranged offensive punch almost ideally suited to the Pacific Theater. The United States could not have successfully prosecuted the war without the Essexes, and for longevity the American taxpayer probably never got a better bargain.
Apart from the Essexes, American shipyards worked overtime to turn out smaller fast carriers. Nine light cruiser hulls were hastily modified to produce the Independence class CVLs, all delivered in 1943. At 10,600 tons displacement, they embarked some thirty-five aircraft and were capable of 31 knots. Shorter ranged than their CV stablemates, the Independences could cruise 13,000 miles at 15 knots. Though in combat from 1943 onward, and despite frequent battle damage, only one was sunk—testament to the soundness of the design.
In February 1945 the industrial miracle of the American home front manifested itself on Tokyo’s doorstep, with promise of more to come.
The Tailhook War
The Fifth Fleet was in the calm, capable hands of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, victor at Midway in 1942 and Philippine Sea in 1944. But the hand on the helm of Task Force 58 was Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, who had been flying since 1916. Just turned fifty-eight, he was a small, slight officer with a soft voice and almost diffident manner. He had made a hash of his tenure as first captain of Hornet, even allowing for her role in the Doolittle Raid. His tendency toward cronyism and inattention to detail nearly cost his career after the Battle of Midway, but he had already been selected for promotion, and he rebounded nicely.
By 1945, “Pete” Mitscher was the world’s most experienced—and most successful—carrier admiral. With few interludes he had led the Fast Carrier Task Force since January 1944, gaining significant victories from the Central Pacific westward. His greatest triumph had been won in June 1944, the lopsided victory known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. The seeds of that victory sprouted ashore, producing B-29 bases before year’s end.
For all his success, Mitscher needed hand-holding. Even his admirers conceded that “He wasn’t real bright,” and he proved surprisingly reluctant to try new equipment or techniques—an ironic turn for a pioneer naval aviator.
The task force staff worked hard to fill in what the admiral often omitted. Much of the credit went to his chief of staff, Captain Arleigh Burke, an extraordinarily astute “black shoe” surface officer who had made his reputation as a destroyer skipper in 1943. But he won over the sometimes parochial aviators who sported brown shoes as a badge of honor and became known as “Thirty-one Knot Burke” for his press-ahead style of leadership.
Task Force 58 was organized into five task groups, typically each with three Essex class carriers and an Independence class light carrier. Riding those sixteen flattops off Honshu were 1,187 airplanes: 895 Hellcat and Corsair fighters, 201 Avenger torpedo planes, and ninety-one Helldiver dive bombers.
In order to provide more fighters to repel kamikazes, Bennington, Bunker Hill, Essex, and Wasp each received two Marine Corsair squadrons. It was a last-minute decision, and fitting into Navy air groups took some comradely adjustment. As one marine ruefully noted, “We were invited to one of their poker sessions and didn’t even have time to warm up the chairs before we were flat broke!”
Short on instrument flight time and carrier experience (one marine went to war with one shipboard landing in his logbook), the leathernecks nonetheless took the inevitable losses as part of the steep learning curve inherent to tailhook aviation.
The Pacific Fleet’s two oldest carriers—the battle-wise Enterprise and Saratoga—represented a capability unique in all the world’s navies. Led by Rear Admiral Matthew Gardner, they fielded specially trained night-flying air groups. Gardner, previously skipper of the Big E, had the potential of keeping carrier aircraft over Japanese bases around the clock, and he intended to prove it with his ninety-six fighters and thirty-nine bombers.
On February 10, Task Force 58 had departed the fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands, nearly 550 miles southwest of Saipan. With an immense lagoon covering 200 square miles, it was a natural base, fully developed after U.S. forces landed in September 1944. Ulithi lay 1,700 miles south of Honshu, putting naval airpower within range of Tokyo itself.
* * * * *
Most carriers provided a supportive environment for their air groups. One of the best examples was contained in the end-of-cruise report from the commander of Air Group Six aboard Captain Robert F. Hickey’s Hancock. “During the period 9 March 1945 to date, while Air Group Six was aboard . . . it is the opinion of the squadron commanders and the air group commander that nowhere could one find a closer feeling than existed between the ship’s officers and enlisted men and the air group. The air group felt that the Hancock was their ship just like in peace time days.”
That report was submitted by Commander Henry L. Miller, who had taught the Doolittle Raiders everything they needed to know about carrier takeoffs in 1942.
Some others were not as supportive, and the new Shangri-La, under Captain James D. Barner, was certainly among the worst. Recalled one veteran, “The relationship between the ship and the air group was not a good one. It may have been one of the worst in the Pacific.” The feud began during the ship’s shakedown cruise when the executive officer was outraged to discover liquor aboard. He confiscated all the bootleg booze, declaring that anyone who wished could reclaim it—and stand court-martial. Thereupon the devil’s brew was taken to the fantail where “it was publicly smashed and dumped over the side.” Relations between the senior ship’s officers and the air group continued downhill from there.
To Japan
As Task Force 58 pounded north through roughening seas, Spruance took advantage of the poor weather to shield his approach from the Japanese. During the twelve-hour run-up to the launch point, carrier aircrews sorted out their equipment, and many donned long underwear against the North Pacific weather. Half of the air groups were new to combat, and Pete Mitscher had taken pains to prepare them as well as possible. His staff had issued notes on tactics and operational procedures, including the latest information on Japanese defenses.
Though of mixed quality, intelligence had come a lo
ng way since the Doolittle Raid. one pilot recalled, “The maps were good geographic and strategic target aids, but most recent tactical info was sparse and not very accurate.”
Some old Pacific hands had waited a long time for a look at Tokyo. They included Lieutenant Commander Fritz E. Wolf, flying off Yorktown. A prewar Navy pilot, he had joined Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers and returned home credited with downing four Japanese planes. Unlike most of the naval aviators in the Tigers, he reentered his parent service and wangled another combat assignment. He assumed command of Fighting-Bombing Squadron 3 a week before his twenty-ninth birthday.
Commander Charles Crommelin, skipper of Air Group 12 on Randolph, had been chasing “meatballs” since 1943. The Pacific War was a family affair for him and his four brothers, all of whom not only served in the Navy, but graduated from Annapolis (1923–41), an all-time record.
A few pilots had seen the other half of the global war, like Fighting Squadron 4’s Lieutenant Dean Laird. Flying a Wildcat, the lanky Californian downed two German planes off Norway in october 1943. Lieutenant Donald A. Pattie, commanding San Jacinto’s bombers, had been the first American to land in Vichy-occupied Morocco in November 1942.
on the evening of the 15th at least one carrier prepared to load napalm bombs for use against the Imperial Palace and surrounding area, “but plans were aborted at the last minute.” Later the squadrons were told that the palace had no military significance, though a few aviators grumbled at what they considered a missed opportunity.
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