Whirlwind

by Barrett Tillman

  Despite all the rescue efforts, nothing was certain. The 531st Fighter Squadron watched while one of its pilots climbed into one of the air-dropped boats only five miles offshore, expecting him to crank up the motor and head out to sea. But the pilot could not get the outboard started, and when the Mustangs had to leave, the Japanese came out and took him. Quite naturally, that caused a sensation back on Iwo where all available boats were checked. “Sure enough, none of them would start,” Harry Crim recalled. “Needless to say, boat maintenance picked up after that.”

  One of VII Fighter Command’s lingering concerns was that many new pilots had little or no idea of how to survive in the water. After watching one of its men drown because he couldn’t get out of his parachute harness, the 21st Group urged a weekly training program that included tossing pilots out of a boat while instructors stood by to demonstrate or lend a hand.

  It was said that some pilots were so satisfied with the rescue service that they came back for more. Lieutenant Frank Ayres limped his gimpy Mustang almost 500 miles back from the first Tokyo mission before he had to bail out over a destroyer. Two and a half months later, after battling three enemy fighters, Ayres again hit the silk over a lifeguard submarine and landed so close that he didn’t have time to inflate his rubber raft.

  By mid-August the Pacific command had fourteen submarines, twenty-one flying boats, nine super-dumbo aircraft, and five ships deployed for air-sea rescue. In all, some 2,400 men were assigned to the effort—one-quarter of the number engaged in flying B-29 missions.

  Whatever the assets, a successful rescue effort involved equal commitment between men determined to live and other men—usually strangers—determined to save them. That was proven on June 26 when B-29s attacked the Nagoya Arsenal. The only loss over the city was to flak, erratically described as “heavy, meager to moderate, inaccurate to accurate.”

  Leading the mission was the 39th Group’s commander, thirty-nine-year-old Colonel George W. Mundy. A West Point classmate of Rosie O’Donnell, he had graduated in the same pilot class as Curt LeMay. Like most airmen of that vintage, Mundy rose fast. At the time of Pearl Harbor he was a major but he pinned on his eagles the next year and took over the group in March 1945.

  The Nagoya mission was Mundy’s fifteenth. He flew with Major John Miranda’s crew in the daytime strike, bombing at 24,000 feet. City of Galveston took two crippling hits from 120mm flak that shot off six to eight feet of the right wing, jammed the bomb bay doors open, and damaged two engines. With no chance of making base, the pilots got the crippled bomber headed out to sea.

  Meanwhile, radio problems prevented City of Galveston from transmitting normally so another B-29, Lord’s Prayer, acted as radio relay, contacting the lifeguard submarine. The escorting bomber was flown by First Lieutenant Robert L. Spaulding, at twenty-three probably the youngest aircraft commander in the group. Miranda called, “Bob, get me to a sub.” Spaulding’s navigator, Lieutenant Edward S. Edmundson, immediately went to work, calculating that the City needed to turn from its southerly course to due west.

  Precise navigation was crucial, as the stricken bomber could not maintain altitude, and an error in the course to the sub would put the crew in the water short of safety.

  Nevertheless, Edmundson hit the position spot-on, with only 2,000 feet altitude to spare. There, eight miles offshore, Mundy and Miranda held the faltering bomber wings-level while the crew bailed out near the submarine Pintado. The pilots jumped seconds before the plane dropped into a spin.

  Aboard Pintado, an officer recorded the scene. “We came in sight of a burning aircraft, plunging helpless into the sea. As we looked up into the sky, following the burning smoke screen, twelve men were merrily gliding down towards the sea. . . . The two sister airplanes that were giving us air cover dipped their wings in a ‘well-done boys’ and disappeared, homeward bound.”

  Miranda and Mundy got out at nearly the last moment—about 800 feet. But in forty minutes the submarine scooped up the dozen Army men, who enjoyed a mixed reception. The sailors quickly “commandeered” everything resembling a souvenir, from sunglasses to pistols, but the airmen did not object overmuch. As Mundy observed, “You don’t come out with a thing except your life.”

  Later Miranda’s crew expressed its gratitude by christening a new B-29 USS Pintado. It was probably the only time an airplane was named for a submarine.

  Bomber crews represented nearly a dozen lives, but extraordinary efforts were made to save one American from the Japanese or from the sea, and no better example exists than Captain Edward Mikes. On August 3, as the 506th Fighter Group strafed near Atsugi, Mikes’s Mustang took a lethal hit in the engine. The Merlin ran long enough to get him to the bay, where he bailed out. Once in the water he lit a flare to mark his position four miles offshore.

  Capping the “splash,” another P-51 pilot called Jukebox 70, the B-17 rescue aircraft standing by with a droppable boat. But the Japanese also were interested. A picket boat that ventured from Misaki was promptly sunk by Mikes’s guardians, but enemy aircraft were reported inbound.

  Meanwhile, Jukebox arrived, flown by Second Lieutenant Burt Klatt with an eight-man crew. On the first pass over Mikes the twenty-seven-foot boat refused to drop so Klatt banked around for another try. Finally the boat fell free on the third pass—just as bandits were reported inbound.

  At the same time the submarine Aspro had been summoned, with Lieutenant Commander James H. Ashley, Jr., coordinating the multitiered efforts after the B-17 departed. The sub skipper had contact with the Mustangs as well as two navy Privateer patrol bombers that had just sunk a coastal transport.

  About then, Japanese fighters arrived. Lieutenant Yutaka Morioka, who had lost a hand to B-29 gunners, led three other Zeros from Atsugi. He led the bounce on the top-cover Mustangs orbiting at 1,500 feet. One P-51 spun into the water on the first pass, and the fight degenerated into individual tail chases. Morioka latched on to another American but the intended victim put the spurs to his Mustang, leaving the Zero in his slipstream.

  Undeterred, Morioka led his flight down to investigate the strange boat and recognized it for what it was. Making repeated runs, the Zeros fired more than 1,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition into the hardy vessel, which remained afloat though Mikes sustained minor wounds. When the Privateers turned toward the action, the Japanese departed, low on ammunition.

  But the fight was not yet finished. Mikes was mere yards from Aspro when a Japanese floatplane clattered overhead, forcing the sub to “pull the plug” and dive. The two Privateers, led by the aggressive Lieutenant Commander Raymond Pflumb, met the intruder head-on and shot it down in flames.

  Minutes later Aspro surfaced, as Ashley had seen the fight through the periscope. Just as Mikes prepared to hop aboard, another enemy floatplane dropped in, scoring near misses on the sub. Again Ashley took her down, still without Mikes, and again Pflumb’s team dispatched the intruder.

  Finally, nearly two hours after bailing out, Ed Mikes scrambled aboard Aspro. His first words were, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Four Japanese fliers and one American had died in the rescue of Ed Mikes. In 1991 he met his one-handed enemy, Yutaka Morioka, who said, “I’m very sorry about our first meeting.” Then Morioka grinned. “You are alive today because our shooting was bad!”

  In such meetings among once bitter enemies, perhaps both sides could agree that in war the greatest victory lay in survival.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Harbor War

  BLUE-EYED, WHITE-HAIRED ADMIRAL Chester Nimitz commanded the Central Pacific Theater and the U.S. Pacific Fleet from his headquarters on Guam. He had assumed the latter title on the last day of 1941 and steadily built his command from the oil-scummed waters of Pearl Harbor into the greatest naval striking force of all time.

  Now, in 1945, America had carried the war to Japan’s home islands, and that summer the Army Air Forces and Navy, concentrating on the enemy’s vulnerable coastline, launched “the harbor wa
r.”

  As an island nation Japan was vulnerable to blockade. It imported most of the essential materials for an industrial nation, including food, 80 percent of its oil, and 90 percent of its iron ore plus other strategic materials. Pacific Fleet submarines had preyed upon Japan’s merchant marine with increasing success since 1943, and after two years Tokyo was feeling the strain. Nimitz intended to push the enemy over the edge. But he needed the Army’s cooperation to do it.

  The Committee of Operations Analysts in Washington supported Nimitz’s request for a B-29 aerial mining campaign. After initial reluctance, Curtis LeMay agreed to devote part of one wing to laying mines in Japanese waterways. The operation began in late March 1945 and almost immediately proved itself. Today it remains one of the least known, most efficient, and cost-effective air campaigns in history. The airmen called it Operation Starvation.

  Operation Starvation

  Institutionally the AAF considered mining “the Navy’s job” and saw little in the mission to enhance the airmen’s goals. Strictly speaking, that was correct: mining choke points did nothing to reduce urban-industrial areas to smoking rubble, and there would be little to show for the effort. But beyond the parochial considerations of service pride, B-29 mining had both immediate and long-range benefits: it reduced Japan’s already dangerously low level of strategic imports—and it helped end the war.

  Having expressed his reservations about mining, once the order came down, LeMay said “Yes, sir,” and raised B-29 mining from Hansell’s previous group-strength effort. When the 313th Wing arrived in January 1945, LeMay immediately put Brigadier General J. H. Davies’s command to work, training for low-level, over-water night flying. Three years older than LeMay, the boyish, slender Davies was well qualified for the job: he had flown bombers since 1932 and commanded two combat groups, beginning in the dismal Philippine days of 1942 when he led “maximum effort” missions of three planes. One of the few commanders truly loved by his men, Davies was highly regarded as “a motivator and organizer.”

  The timing was fortunate. With mining to begin around April 1, LeMay would have an extra four groups just as support of the Okinawa landings occurred. Therefore, he could have it both ways: comply with Nimitz’s and Arnold’s directives without diminishing either.

  The prime choke point was obvious from a quick look at the map. Shimonoseki Strait between Kyushu and Honshu was the only outlet from the Inland Sea to the Sea of Japan. The Americans also monitored the eastern straits flanking Shikoku.

  On the afternoon of March 27, “Skippy” Davies shoved his throttles forward and rolled down Tinian’s runway with 103 bombers behind him. In Operation Starvation’s debut, ninety-two Superfortresses dropped mines in their designated areas while three never returned. From that night on, Japan’s remaining large warships shunned Shimonoseki.

  Three nights later eighty-five more “miners” placed their loads in the strait. Aerial reconnaissance was enthusiastically received on Guam: initial reports showed a 75 percent reduction in shipping transiting Shimonoseki. It looked as if the original minefields would be sufficient for up to two weeks, while much smaller missions mined the Kure-Hiroshima area containing Japanese fleet units.

  Most mining missions required flying 3,200 miles round-trip, permitting a payload of 12,000 pounds of mines. The common types were 1,000- and 2,000-pound weapons, depending on availability. But they had to be delivered accurately, and aircrews were required to fly straight and level along predictable paths within reach of guns from shore. Though tension ran high among bomber crews, losses were blessedly low.

  However, casualties were unavoidable, and all left a gap. On the night of July 9, the 6th Group lost a revered squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Elmer Dixon. Flight engineer Virgil Morgan recalled him as “an outstanding leader who had completed a North Africa tour before joining the Sixth.” Dixon was flying with the crew of Take It Off, a new plane that had not received black paint on the undersurfaces. Caught by searchlights, it was hit by flak and/or fighters, then exploded. Dixon was “very popular with the enlisted men for his willingness to talk and listen to us,” said Morgan.

  Originally mines were fitted with magnetic or acoustic detonators, but many fell on land and, lacking self-destruct fuses, were examined by Japanese engineers. A countermeasures officer recalled, “On 27 May we recovered 30 mines and . . . we discovered the magnetic pressure type.” Shortly thereafter a low-frequency acoustic detonator was introduced, further complicating Japanese defenses.

  Radar worked reasonably well for delivering mines. Sharp pictures were readily displayed because land and sea contrasted best on radar scopes, though bombardiers had to use “offset bombing” from identifiable landmarks since the water provided no aim point. The greatest complication was accurately assessing wind velocity, as the parachute-retarded mines could drift considerably when dropped from 5,000 to 6,000 feet.

  Starvation became a joint operation between XXI Bomber Command and the Naval Mine Modification Unit on Tinian. The “ordies” provided the “flyboys” with a variety of options ranging from delay fuses to ship counters and various settings for magnetic and acoustic detonators. Throughout the campaign, the Americans fought a seesaw war, seeking optimum balance between effectiveness in sinking ships and difficulty in sweeping mines.

  The campaign progressed through five stages, each targeting specific areas while “reseeding” previous minefields. Only five additional missions were launched through April, averaging just ten bombers each. Consequently, most of the 313th Wing continued with conventional bombing attacks.

  Colonel Robert A. Ping’s 505th Group became LeMay’s designated hitter for mining, and in the words of a postwar study “became expert in its task.” From May to July Operation Starvation averaged twenty-five to thirty bombers per night as about one-fourth of the 505th’s total sorties laid mines.

  In July the miners achieved a near total blockade of Shimonoseki, Honshu, and Kyushu, plus some Korean ports. The campaign put the cork in Tokyo’s bottle—that summer the food situation approached critical.

  The results exceeded expectations as losses to mines rocketed from eighteen ships sunk in April to more than eighty each in May and June. Shimonoseki traffic fell 90 percent between March and July while tonnage entering industrial ports dropped from more than 800,000 in March to a quarter-million in July. Imports of selected commodities that ran over 20 million tons in 1941 were halved in 1944, plummeting to 2.7 million tons through June 1945.

  Operation Starvation did not totally eliminate imports to Japan but it reduced them below minimum acceptable levels. Japan’s inadequate road and rail networks forced increasing reliance upon coastal shipping, which was adversely affected by mining.

  B-29 mines sank 293 ships from late March to mid-August, averaging two a day. Furthermore, Japanese shipyards became clogged with damaged vessels awaiting repair. Eighteen of the nation’s twenty-one large repair yards were bottlenecked in the Inland Sea or on the east coast. Japan’s admiralty had no option but to close its Pacific ports. That left only the west coast harbors to receive what little cargo survived the perilous voyage from China or Korea. The result was a huge dent in the emperor’s remaining merchant marine, which represented about 60 percent of shipping losses from April through August.

  Lacking anything like sufficient minesweepers, the Imperial Navy simply could not clear enough minefields to keep choke points open. LeMay ensured that fields were resown often, and in sufficient density to prevent more than a trickle of ships from getting through.

  Perhaps 20,000 Japanese and nearly 350 vessels were engaged in minesweeping efforts, which were largely ineffective. Radar, searchlights, and underwater sound equipment were used in spotting mines but located just 30 percent of those dropped. Furthermore, sometimes two months were needed to counter a new type of mine.

  After the war Captain Rokuemon Minami described Seventh Fleet problems in Shimonoseki Strait: “Due to the fact that the United States did not use mines
extensively during the first years of the war, the Japanese allowed their research efforts to relax and consequently were in no way prepared for the saturation type of attack that was delivered in Japanese waters in the spring of 1945.” He added that sometimes traffic in the straits became so congested that it was necessary to force ships through regardless of losses.

  The 313th Bomb Wing performed one of the significant feats in air warfare, but due to the sensitive nature of its mission, it received little attention. Operation Starvation met the doctrinal concept of economy of force: maximum damage to the enemy for minimum expenditure of effort, lives, and treasure. In forty-six missions Davies’s crews delivered 12,000 mines, losing 103 fliers and fifteen aircraft from 1,500 mining sorties. Even more remarkably, just nine of the B-29 losses were due to enemy action.

  Accolades came from all quarters, not least from on high. In April Nimitz wrote LeMay expressing profound gratitude for Starvation, calling the results “phenomenal.”

  The greatest tribute came from Captain Kyzue Tamura, head of the Imperial Navy Mine Sweeping Section, who had studied physics and served as naval attaché in Rome. “About 1 April your mines changed from a nuisance to a problem. We increased the aircraft and searchlight units attached to certain areas such as Niigata and Shimonoseki at the expense of the cities. . . . The use of aircraft units against dropping of mines by B-29s was more important than protection of the cities because the life lines from the continent which furnished food and supplies were of first priority. The result of the mining . . . was so effective that it eventually starved the country. I think you probably could have shortened the war by beginning earlier.”

  Fast Carriers Versus Japan

  The invasion of Japan began on July 1, 1945. On that Sunday, Task Force 38 steamed from its Philippine anchorage, launching Phase One of Operation Olympic, the run-up to the Kyushu invasion planned for November. A series of strikes lasting into mid-August would establish air supremacy over the home islands, setting the stage for Operation Coronet, the Honshu landings.