Whirlwind

by Barrett Tillman

  Carrier operations against the home islands resumed on February 25 well offshore—190 miles southeast of Tokyo. The tailhookers launched into bad weather and found it miserable over land. The Japanese barely bothered to contest the effort, and sporadic combats over airfields and the capital resulted in U.S. claims of forty-six shoot-downs against sixteen losses.

  Fleet aerologists predicted worsening weather so Mitscher canceled further operations at noon. He hoped to strike Nagoya the next day but roughening seas prevented the force from reaching the intended launch point. Instead, Mitscher aimed for Okinawa, striking opportune targets and conducting photoreconnaissance there on March 1.

  If any Japanese had questioned who owned the Pacific Ocean, Task Force 58 operations in the thirty days after February 10 removed all doubt. Mitscher’s sortie spanned the North Pacific: from Ulithi up to Honshu waters, south to Iwo Jima, westward to Okinawa, and back again—a track of some 5,000 miles without serious opposition.

  March 18

  The fast carriers were not long absent from Empire waters. Following a ten-day respite in Ulithi, Task Force 58 sortied on March 14, Tokyo-bound once more. The mission was to keep the pressure on the home islands, and to start paring the remaining strength of the Imperial Navy.

  With fifteen flight decks deployed in four task groups, Mitscher had nearly as much airpower to throw at the homeland as he possessed a month before. The main difference was that Enterprise was the only remaining night carrier.

  On March 18, the Navy pilots targeted forty-five airfields, as it had been impossible to shut down those briefly attacked in February. With their bases largely undisturbed, Japanese fighters rose in strength to oppose the Americans’ latest effort at winning air superiority.

  Most heavily engaged was Hornet’s Fighting 17. The skipper, Lieutenant Commander Marshall Beebe, led his Hellcats into a half-hour brawl around Kanoya, personally claiming five of the twenty-five victories. It was sweet revenge for Marsh Beebe, who had swum away from the escort carrier Liscombe Bay, sunk in 1943. He offered a vivid contrast to one of his division leaders, Lieutenant Robert Coats, who also earned ace in a day status, but who could not swim, had the need arisen.

  Bennington’s marines had a full day. Twenty Corsairs of VMF-112 flew a sweep to Kanoya East, encountering some twenty Zekes at 19,000 feet. With an altitude advantage Major Herman Hansen’s pilots knocked down five in their initial pass, almost immediately splashing four more.

  By late afternoon the carrier aviators had claimed 126 on the wing, a figure unusually close to the admitted Japanese losses of 110, including thirty-two kamikazes. With the initial goal of establishing air superiority largely accomplished, the next day Mitscher sent his air groups after his prime target: the Imperial Japanese navy.

  March 19

  Japanese bombers and kamikazes rose with the dawn. Taking advantage of a layer of haze, many eluded the American combat air patrols long enough to inflict serious harm upon Task Force 58.

  Early that morning a lone bomber emerged from the overhead blind zone in the group’s radar coverage and nosed down, drawing a bead on Wasp. The bomb exploded belowdecks, killing 101 sailors. Serious fires erupted where aviation fuel lines were severed, but Captain Oscar “Tex” Weller’s well-drilled crew was recovering aircraft less than an hour after being hit.

  Far worse damage was inflicted upon Franklin. “Big Ben” took two 550-pound bombs from another unobserved attacker descending from the clouds. The results were catastrophic: gushing smoke like a nautical volcano, Franklin lay immobile barely fifty miles off Kyushu. In a day-long battle the crew saved the ship, though some 800 men were killed—one in four. She limped to the East Coast to be rebuilt, but never rejoined the fleet.

  Previous recon flights to Kure Harbor south of Hiroshima had located the crown jewel in the emperor’s naval tiara: battleship Yamato, the biggest thing afloat. Therefore, on the 19th, air strikes targeted warships at Kure, Kobe, and the Inland Sea. But first the carriers launched fighters to clear the air over greater Kyushu.

  Major Thomas Mobley took sixteen of Bennington’s marines on a dawn sweep ahead of full-deckload strikes inbound to Kure anchorage, southeast of Hiroshima. The Corsairs had easy pickings the day before, but now they faced the Imperial Navy’s elite.

  Two of Mobley’s pilots noted about twenty fighters above and behind, flying neat four-plane formations. With so many carrier planes airborne, it was impossible to know who was who. The skipper reckoned they were probably friendly but kept an eye on them. Hearing combat on the radio, Mobley turned toward Kure Harbor. The stalkers then saw their chance and they took it.

  About twenty bandits hit the marines from port, then maneuvered to box them in. Two Corsairs went down in the first rush and the rest fought to survive.

  Probably Japan’s most professional aviation unit was the 343rd Naval Air Group, commanded by the legendary Captain Minoru Genda. Best known for his role in planning the Pearl Harbor attack, in December 1944 he had formed the group at Matsuyama on Shikoku with three fighter squadrons and a reconnaissance unit. He recruited a high proportion of veterans, and by March 1945, 20 percent of his fliers were rated as Class A combat pilots.

  The “squadron of aces” flew a promising new fighter: Kawanishi’s big, robust N1K, called George by the Allies. It was the Zero’s antithesis: boxy rather than elegant, strong rather than nimble. With a powerful radial engine, the George was a potent weapon. Fast and rugged, it was capable of nearly 370 mph, bearing four 20mm cannon.

  In its combat debut the 343rd had scrambled from its Shikoku base, bordering the Inland Sea. Fifty Georges took off in three squadrons.

  Amid the confusion the Americans reported four enemy aircraft types but they were all Georges. They were led by Lieutenant Naoshi Kanno, a squadron commander and recklessly aggressive ace.

  Contrary to the bunch that Major Hansen’s squadron had shot up previously, the newcomers were aggressive and capable. They maintained section integrity and, unlike many Japanese, these could shoot. Mobley limped out of the fight with 20mm hits in his cockpit. The next senior pilot was Captain William A. Cantrel, an excellent aviator who had seen only one Japanese plane during his Guadalcanal tour. Now he had a skyful. In a two-minute dogfight the Oregonian shot two Georges but the Japanese scored, too. Cantrel’s Corsair was hit and he sustained a painful foot wound. Yet he regrouped eight of his pilots, mostly flying damaged aircraft, and shepherded them seaward. In the running battle he engaged two more bandits and hit both, driving them off his cripples. One Corsair succumbed to battle damage near the destroyer screen, where the pilot bailed out. The others limped back to Bennington but three were jettisoned, too badly damaged to repair. Cantrell climbed out of his plane and collapsed from loss of blood, eventually receiving a well-deserved Navy Cross.

  The marines were credited with nine kills but lost six F4Us and two pilots. It was a poor bargain: actually Kanno’s “Elite Guard” squadron lost three planes on the mission to other causes. Mobley concluded that Kanno’s men were “the cream of the Jap air forces.”

  After beating up on Bennington’s Corsairs, Kanno turned for Matsuyama, nursing a damaged aircraft. But he clashed with some Yorktown Hellcats intending to strafe his field. Though missing part of one aileron, the ever-aggressive Kanno bent his throttle toward the Americans. He fired at the lead F6F, missed and overshot. Lieutenant Bert Eckard jockeyed stick and rudder and pressed the trigger. He did not miss.

  Kanno’s George erupted in flames. He steered away from land and went over the side, barely in time to pull his ripcord. He landed injured but safe.

  Meanwhile, twenty Japanese fighters from Ozuki and other army fields scrambled to join the growing melee. It was a come-as-you-are event with mixed units and aircraft types, including a fast Nakajima Frank flown by one-eyed transport pilot Sergeant Yukio Shimokawa. They tangled with a like number of Hornet Hellcats, and from there it turned to hash. The Oscars and Franks overlapped the combat area with some of Genda’s Georg
es, resulting in a widespread, even more confusing, dogfight.

  Lieutenant Yoshishige Hayashi’s 407th “Heavenly Punishment” squadron clashed with Essex’s new fighter outfit. VF-83 shot up Matsuyama, firing rockets into decoy targets—wrecked aircraft staked out to soak up American ordnance. The Hellcats did well against the defenders, claiming six and probably downing as many.

  Additionally, elements of the 407th and 701st “Imperial Restoration Unit” engaged in a grueling twenty-five-minute fight with Hornet’s fighter-bombers. Six Hellcats never returned; one ditched and another was jettisoned with severe damage. Three VBF-17 pilots died and three were captured. Conversely, four of Genda’s fliers were killed, including Lieutenant (jg) Yukihiro Watanabe, who had forecast his death three days earlier.

  The Japanese survivors returned to Matsuyama by mid-afternoon, some having flown twice. When Captain Genda tallied the squadron reports he announced a day’s bag of fifty-two Americans. The star was Kanno’s section leader, Chief Petty Officer Katsue Kato. He laid claim to nine kills, all accredited by headquarters. Actual American losses in air combat were fourteen, including those damaged beyond repair.

  In turn, the carrier pilots reported sixty-three kills during the multifaceted Kure mission. Genda’s wing lost fifteen Georges and a recon plane while other units lost nine more. Thus, the air battle was resolved twenty-five to fourteen in favor of the attackers, but the margin was nowhere as lopsided as either side believed.

  Attacks on Kure Harbor

  While the air battles wound down to their violent conclusions, Task Force 58 lofted 158 Helldivers and Avengers at Kure Harbor, escorted by 163 Hellcats and Corsairs. It was a massive enterprise: 321 planes, or nearly as many as the Imperial Navy had put over Pearl Harbor.

  Bunker Hill’s Commander George M. Ottinger was strike coordinator for the main attack, which offered a variety of targets. The mission was briefed to hit Kure’s fuel storage tanks and other installations, but Ottinger had authority to redirect squadrons to more lucrative targets.

  Task force intelligence officers had warned of 160 heavy-caliber AA guns in the target area and hundreds of smaller weapons. It was no exaggeration. As Bunker Hill’s fliers approached Kure, the sky erupted in a mottled kaleidoscope of flak bursts: the usual black amid red, yellow, green, and even purple. The variety represented different batteries using specific colors to spot their bursts.

  Flying ahead of the other Americans, Ottinger surveyed the sprawling harbor. When he saw warships anchored, he radioed new instructions: half of the bombers were to attack the men-o’-war. But moments later, when he discerned the full picture, he ordered all Helldivers and Avengers to hit the biggest ships. It was a Navy bomber’s paradise: seventeen combatants, including three battleships and four carriers.

  “Bunky” Ottinger’s crews took pride of place as the first strikers over the target, picking the juiciest ships for themselves. Skipper of Bombing Squadron 84 was Lieutenant Commander John P. Conn, who identified a Kongo class battleship, undoubtedly the well-traveled Haruna. But a flak hit damaged his electrical system, preventing him from releasing his bombs. He pulled off, seeking another target.

  Conn’s place was taken by Lieutenant (jg) John D. Welsh, who dropped a half-tonner and two 250-pounders. But somewhere in the churning cauldron of flak bursts his SB2C Helldiver sustained a crippling hit. He survived as a prisoner but his gunner drowned. Another Bombing 84 plane ditched with battle damage.

  The Corsairs packed a significant ordnance load including aerial rockets. Major Herbert Long was a veteran of the Solomons campaign and had notched his seventh kill the day before. Now he intended to put the Corsair’s offensive potential to good use against a ship steaming in Kure Bay. He recalled, “I was armed with only five HVARs [high-velocity aerial rockets] and fired them at what I thought to be a small freighter.” Only after his combat film was analyzed did he learn that he had attacked the light carrier Ryuho, which had been damaged in the Doolittle Raid. The chagrined marine said, “Needless to say, I paid closer attention during subsequent ship recognition classes.”

  “Trigger” Long’s aim was good. In concert with other pilots, he inflicted two rocket and three bomb hits on the carrier. The flight deck bulged upward and a boiler room flooded, causing the ship to settle partway on the bottom. Twenty of the crew were killed, and Ryuho never left port again.

  Other air groups piled in, eagerly choosing prestigious targets. For instance, Hornet’s Avenger squadron launched twelve planes and reported fourteen bomb hits on eight ships.

  The World War I battleships Ise and Hyuga, twin sisters of 35,000 tons, had been modified with stern aircraft decks in 1943 but now lacked fuel, aircraft, and aircrews. Orbiting Kure Harbor, Wasp’s Air Group 86 selected Hyuga. Now immobilized and painted shades of gray and green, the hermaphrodite warship was rocked by several near misses but only hit once: a bomb exploded port-side above a boiler room, killing about forty crewmen. Her sister, Ise, bore a garish scheme of two shades of green with yellow, gray, and rusty splotches. Her exotic colors failed to hide her; she was hit by two bombs.

  The third battlewagon, Haruna, was anchored in the roadstead. She merely suffered a grazing hit to starboard.

  Predictably, the few remaining carriers attracted considerable attention. Launched only five months before, the 17,000-ton Katsuragi took a hit in the starboard bow that blew a five-foot hole in the plating and upper deck. Even worse, a near miss opened the hull, flooding one compartment and a fuel tank. Her older sister, Amagi, had been commissioned in August 1944 but never left home waters. A bomb struck the flight deck edge aft while her gunners cheerfully claimed a dozen planes downed.

  The escort carrier Kaiyo spent much of her career in the periscopes of American submarines, surviving at least seven encounters while escorting convoys in 1944. At Kure U.S. aircraft made up the deficit, striking her port-side engine room and starting a fire. The carrier listed to port, and when the flooding reached the dangerous stage she was towed to shallow water to prevent capsizing.

  Among the heaviest hit was light cruiser Oyodo, which absorbed three bombs. She sustained flooding and was towed to Eta Jima, where she was beached. Subsequently she spent three weeks in dry dock.

  Meanwhile, fliers gawked at the 64,000-ton battleship Yamato. Underway in the Inland Sea, she drew the attention of Intrepid’s air group. She sustained damage from a hit on the bridge by a Bombing 10 Helldiver, likely flown by Lieutenant (jg) James B. Davidson. Though his SB2C was hit early in his dive, he pushed through bursting flak from ships and shore to score an observed hit by one of his three bombs.

  While the Americans only inflicted moderate damage, Kure’s flak took a toll of the attackers: eleven Helldivers and two Avengers. But it was far less than most U.S. Navy officers had expected.

  Bunky Ottinger was among three dozen aviators awarded Navy Crosses for March 19 actions but he never pinned it on. Five days later he was killed off Okinawa, one of thirty-one members of the Annapolis class of ’32 who died in the war.

  While disengaging from the home islands the carriers cast their patented aerial net overland to keep the enemy on the defensive. In the wake of the Franklin disaster, “The Big Blue Blanket” largely did its job, as only one destroyer sustained a bomb hit.

  Two days’ claims of 223 enemies downed contrasted with forty-four acknowledged by the Imperial Navy and an unknown number of Japanese army planes. Moreover, the U.S. figure of some 250 aircraft destroyed on the ground was clearly optimistic, but that was beside the point. The aviators had driven home their message, not only to Tokyo but to cynics in navies and air forces around the globe. Powerful, extremely competent carrier groups had completely dominated Japan’s coastal waters and begun the process of clearing the enemy’s skies of meaningful defense.

  However, there was room for criticism. Despite the claims for hits on major warships, the carrier pilots had done poorly. Though enjoying air superiority, they inflicted minimal damage on the major combatants: mere
ly five hits on four battleships, three of which were immobile. A carrier and a light cruiser were badly damaged. In contrast, at Pearl Harbor the Imperial Navy’s elite airmen had destroyed two battleships and a target vessel, and severely damaged six more warships. In any case, Mitscher’s aircrews knew two things: they could do better, and they would be back.

  The Fifth Fleet withdrew from home waters to begin pre-invasion strikes against Okinawa on March 23. But despite the obligation to support the amphibious forces, the fast carriers returned to the Japanese homeland as opportunity permitted. Brief visits on March 28–29 put more tailhookers over southern Kyushu, meeting almost no opposition.

  Action shifted seaward on April 7, about 100 miles offshore. The aviators could hardly believe their good fortune when the Imperial Navy made its last sortie, sending the super-battleship Yamato on a one-way trip to Okinawa, hoping to disrupt the U.S. landings. Swarmed by Mitscher’s squadrons, she was destroyed in a huge explosion resembling a small nuclear mushroom cloud. Her escorting light cruiser and four of eight destroyers also sank beneath the weight of American bombs and torpedoes.

  The fast carriers continued dominating Japanese airspace but could not prevent some kamikazes from getting airborne. Shuttling task groups between Okinawa and Japan, Mitscher kept his fliers occupied in both arenas, and one day’s respite could lead to the next day’s deluge. On April 15, Hellcats tallied just twenty-seven shoot-downs over southern Kyushu, but on the 16th the kamikazes came out in force. Task force fighters claimed 157 kills and still could not prevent the suiciders from mauling Intrepid so severely that she could not be repaired for nearly four months.

  Increasingly, Task Force 58 realized that it needed to sit on the kamikaze nests around the clock to prevent the lethal eggs from hatching. Therefore, beginning May 12, Rear Admiral Ted Sherman’s and Rear Admiral J. J. “Jocko” Clark’s task groups put the home islands of Kyushu and Shikoku in their sights. Two days and nights of counter–air operations began with Enterprise’s Air Group 90 launching nocturnal patrols to keep Japanese night fliers grounded. Big, gregarious Commander William I. Martin was the Navy’s senior night-flying aviator and an innovative torpedo squadron skipper. Now, with a dedicated night fighter and bomber squadron in his experienced hands, he set out to show what his fliers could accomplish in dominating Japan’s nocturnal skies.