by John Prados
While Lieutenant Solberg pored over the aerial photos, Admiral Marc Mitscher pulled the fleet from Palau to get it refueled for the Manila strike. Task Group 38.4 crossed the equator on September 19 and, having traveled farther in order to blast the Bonin Islands, would return to Manus for resupply. On the Enterprise, Chief Radioman D. C. Gensel took up the scepter as Neptunus Rex to initiate the latest batch of pollywogs. Other sailors focused on the airplanes and munitions to be used at Manila.
Aboard Mitscher’s flagship Lexington, the air officers scratched their heads trying to predict wind direction the morning of the attack. Off the Philippines’ east coast, prevailing winds tended to blow from either north or south in the morning. Which direction made a difference because the carriers needed to be downwind to launch aircraft. Marc Mitscher, an experienced old salt, got the wind right.
The photography suggested Luzon would be a target-rich environment. There were nineteen Japanese air bases there alone, including Nichols and Clark fields, familiar to the U.S. Far East Air Force (now MacArthur’s 5th Air Force) from 1941. Intelligence estimated their capacity at more than 1,000 planes. Manila had a huge harbor. Radio intelligence revealed the city had the headquarters of the Imperial Navy’s Southwest Area Fleet and its First Air Fleet, as well as the Japanese Army’s 4th Air Army and the 14th Area Army. Task Force 38 crept up on the big island. Halsey would attack with three groups. Admiral Davison’s carriers would return to port for fuel. But the day of September 21 dawned foul. Neither Chief of Staff Arleigh Burke nor the air officer, Commander James H. Flatley, wanted to put up airplanes in this muck, especially without knowing the weather over Manila itself.
Admiral Mitscher solved the dilemma. He sat in a chair on the wing of the bridge—his customary station in all but the worst weather. Commodore Burke groused about having to rely upon the guesses of weathermen. “The hell you do,” the boss piped up. “Keep our radars going, and as soon as we see enemy airplanes in the air, we launch.”
Unbeknownst to the Americans, the Japanese had intended their own air attack. Lieutenant General Tominaga of the 4th Air Army wanted action to help the Palau defenders. He inspected Clark Field the night of the twentieth, to stoke morale among his crews. The Japanese at the time gave JNAF responsibility for air searches over the ocean, so the Navy put up the first parcel of airplanes the morning of the twenty-first to find the Allied invasion fleet to the south.
The task force carriers flew their strikes from just forty miles off Luzon’s coast. Air Group 15 leader David McCampbell again led the initial wave, off the Essex at 8:05 a.m. He flew a new-model Hellcat, improved for ground strikes with the installation of underwing rocket pods. The other aircraft of Fighting 15 were also of this type. Bombing 15 flew SB-2C Helldivers. Some carried 1,000-pound bombs for the concrete runways at Clark and Nichols. Others bore 250-pound bombs in numbers to shatter grounded airplanes and blow up personnel. The TBM Avenger torpedo planes of VT-15 had become used to constantly being armed with bombs. On this day, they carried torpedoes for the first time since leaving Pearl Harbor. There were thirty-six Essex aircraft and an equal number from the Lexington. The strike aircraft would drop “window” as they approached. Baled strips of tinfoil, cut to sizes related to radio wavelengths, would generate false returns on air defense radars. The Americans took every precaution.
The night before the attack, Halsey called in the New Jersey’s Filipino stewards—Filipinos and African-Americans held many of the steward billets in the U.S. Navy—and showed them on a chart the targets that would be hit. Halsey knew his Filipinos had relatives in Manila and would fear they might be injured, or worse. Benedicto Tulao, who had been with the admiral for years, was chief steward. He asked, “Those are Japanese installations there, sir?”
“Yes,” the Bull answered.
The steward boomed as he declared, “Bomb them!”
Confusion abounded in Manila when American warplanes appeared overhead. Japanese officers conducting a tour bragged of the power of their air force—until those planes began dropping bombs. Near Rizal Park (then Wallace Field), eleven-year-old James Litton was visiting his friend Henry Chu at the latter’s home when both boys saw airplanes practicing maneuvers. They knew this was different when one of the planes began burning up. Then they saw the tracer bullets. Litton watched a dive-bomber dropping almost vertically on a Japanese ship anchored in the south harbor. Chu grabbed him and they both ran to an air raid shelter. Another schoolboy watched from his rooftop near the Quiapo Church. An American plane flew so low, he and his friends could see the faces of its three aviators.
Seaman Jack Miller was a gunner in one of the Helldivers. His plane, of Lieutenant Commander J. F. Rigg’s Bombing 15, flew on the second and fourth missions that day. The crews were briefed that the Japanese had more than 500 planes and fifty cargo ships in the harbor. The briefers assessed naval strength at a pair of battleships with eight heavy and nine light cruisers plus lots of destroyers. The reality proved different. Seaman Miller saw a convoy of tankers as they moved in, but no battleships or cruisers.
At the Nichols and Clark air bases, the Americans had a field day, strafing and bombing for ten minutes before the Japanese got their first interceptor into the air. The JNAF 201st Air Group put up forty-two Zeros and claimed twenty-seven enemy destroyed but lost nearly half their own aircraft. Among the JAAF, losses included a squadron leader plus the executive officer of another unit in the 22nd Air Regiment, along with more than twenty warplanes. Early the following morning a formation of seven Ki-61 fighters from the 22nd would be obliterated by attacks from 100 U.S. planes.
For the Hornet’s Air Group 2, Lieutenant Commander Buell was about to lead its strike package on the second-wave attack when he was recalled to flag plot. Admiral Jocko Clark told him that planes were being shot up by a Japanese destroyer that had planted itself in the middle of the bay. Flak positions on the shore strengthened her defenses. Clark asked Buell to go after that ship and he did. Planes of Bombing 2, the “Sea Wolves,” finished off the Satsuki. Buell would receive the Navy Cross for this exploit.
Not the whole day would be a cakewalk. Pilots of the Enterprise torpedo squadron, VT-20, were plagued by weather. Prevailing winds obliged the carriers to sail away from them while they flew their mission. They had to fly around the storm on the way to Manila and on the return. No one expected that. Lucky pilots alighted on Enterprise with an average of ten gallons of gas apiece. The most skillful, Ensign Eugene E. “Roddy” Roddenberg, had thirty-five gallons left. Luckless aircrews ended up in the drink, putting their TBM Avengers down in Pacific waters and hoping for rescue. One Avenger made it to a different carrier and managed to land, only for its engine to cough to a stop while taxiing away from the arresting gear. Lieutenant Paul W. “Herr” Schlegel, also forced to land on another ship, had the worst experience, with his engine giving out during the approach for his second pass. Herr Schlegel had to make a “dead stick landing”—one in which the airplane has no power.
The U.S. declarations for destruction—110 aircraft shot down, 95 destroyed on the ground—were exaggerated. First Air Fleet on September 23 had been reduced to 25 Zeros and 38 other aircraft. That limits the loss to less than two dozen. Adding the attrition among JAAF warplanes does not tally to the American number. U.S. fliers had been briefed on a pair of battleships and a passel of cruisers at Manila. The top secret claims reported to President Roosevelt—and instantly released to the press—include a dozen ships sunk (one by submarine) and thirty more damaged. None had been a battlewagon or a cruiser. The largest warship sunk was the Satsuki. Two other destroyers listed do not correspond to any Imperial Navy losses. Probably the most disastrous aspect for the Japanese would be attrition among their tankers and oilers. Task Force 38 claimed five of assorted sizes sunk plus two more damaged. Japanese records reveal nine tankers down or wrecked, either at Manila or in the convoy.
Admiral Mitscher’s plan had been for a two-d
ay extravaganza, hitting Manila and the air bases four times each day. Instead, on September 22 the weather closed in. Aboard the Essex sailors talked about a typhoon bearing down on Luzon. Mitscher ran two early strikes that morning, but the lack of targets and the weather made him change his mind. Teraoka’s First Air Fleet mounted a feeble counterattack—six strike planes escorted by nine Zeros and led by Lieutenant Suzuki Usaburo. Half a dozen of Suzuki’s planes never made it back, and although the Japanese believe they reached and struck the Big Blue Fleet, U.S. accounts note the lousy atmospheric conditions, not any JNAF attacks.
The ever-aggressive Halsey, wanting, despite the weather, to take advantage of Task Force 38’s position off the Philippines, conceived the idea of mounting a different attack, one at Coron Bay in the Calamians, to the southwest of Mindoro. Third Fleet intel officers were telling Halsey that the Japanese used Coron Bay as a way station to shuttle ships, especially their precious oil tankers. Here, they could hole up at a base, briefly stopping between the oil ports in Indonesia, then continue to Manila en route to Japan. It remains unknown whether the more important intelligence on Coron resulted from photo reconnaissance or radio intercepts.
Mick Carney invited Commodore Burke over to flagship New Jersey to talk. Halsey employed the breeches buoy, having Burke cross from the Lexington. While the task groups refueled following the Manila strikes, Burke and Halsey deliberated. The Bull especially liked the idea because Coron Bay was a likely bolt-hole for Japanese ships fleeing Manila. Planes with extra fuel tanks, Burke calculated, might have just enough legs to make Coron, a 300-mile flight from San Bernardino Strait, the nearest point in the Pacific.
Slew McCain’s Task Group 38.1 and Ted Sherman’s 38.3 cooperated in the mission. Harold Buell led Hornet’s strike package. It would be the last operation for Air Group 2, who called themselves “the Rippers.” Hellcats carried wing tanks and 500-pound bombs, followed by SB-2C Helldiver dive-bombers. On this day Buell’s SB-2Cs performed excellently. The tally included a pair of oilers, half a dozen supply ships, a couple of escorts, plus the seaplane carrier Akitsushima, which had survived close encounters with Allied fleets since the Battle of the Coral Sea.
SPYING ON THE JAPANESE AIR FORCE
Chester Nimitz got most of his exercise walking Makalapa Hill. His house lay only 300 or 400 yards from CINCPAC headquarters, but on most days, the admiral would turn down one street or another to continue his walk. This allowed him to keep up with the intel.
Luther and Julianne Dilley, at 8A Kamakani Place, were not the only folks from FRUPAC or JICPOA to reside on Makalapa. The homes of staffers and the intelligence crowd dotted the hill. Intelligence chief Captain William B. Goggins shared a house with John Redman, CINCPAC’s communications chief. Marine Major Alva Lasswell, who had made the crucial translation of the intercept that led to the ambush of the Japanese admiral Yamamoto—as well as a big contribution to the Midway victory—lived in another. Lasswell bunked with Tom Steele, yet another code breaker, and occasionally they were joined by Ham Wright, one of FRUPAC’s best. Their house lay at the corner of a street where Nimitz often diverted from his route in the morning. When the admiral reappeared and rounded the corner to head for CINCPAC, Lasswell often joined him for the last hundred yards, going on to his own office while Nimitz disappeared into CINCPAC. The brief walks were a perfect opportunity to trade notes on matters of interest. The intel folks learned about stuff like President Roosevelt’s visit, and the admiral got a heads-up on important intelligence issues.
Two issues that boiled through the summer and fall of 1944 would have direct bearing on the Philippines invasion. One concerned security. Officers worried that the weekly summary bulletin on Japanese strength, based on Ultra and put out by JICPOA, circulated too widely and endangered the secret of the code breaking. To correct this, the bulletin series was abolished at the end of June and replaced by a set of weekly summaries issued from CINCPAC (but still based on JICPOA information). This gave CINCPAC the opportunity to widen the scope of situation reports, giving increased importance to overhead photography. But the CINCPAC publication also moved the locus of reporting away from the intelligence analysts, robbing the spooks of their direct dominance of the papers.
The arm’s-length relationship assumed greater importance in the context of the other headache, the continuing dispute over estimates of Japanese aircraft strength, which had already been going on for months. The Enemy Air Section of JICPOA, in combination with the Estimates Section, assembled CINCPAC’s assessments of the Japanese air force. As seen earlier, Jasper Holmes defended these against charges from the Office of Naval Intelligence that Pearl Harbor’s estimates were wrong. In May, an ONI note stung Holmes, who retorted to his opposite number in Washington, William J. Sebald, insisting, “We have never made a dishonest estimate.”
A Japanese Navy captain had been captured in China and was being interrogated at Fort Hunt near Washington. His information provided a new basis for the air estimates, but Pearl Harbor could not seem to get hold of details beyond Sebald’s notes. Early in September, just before Bill Halsey’s first series of Philippine air strikes and his recommendation to accelerate the invasion, Sebald told Holmes that the CINCPAC situation reports were very well done. But in the same letter, the ONI informed Pearl Harbor that its own intelligence furnished a more realistic picture of Japanese air strength. So JICPOA ultimately lost its battle to OP-16-V of the Navy Department. Aircraft numbers disappeared from the CINCPAC situation reports. For a time, the Enemy Air Section merely maintained its files. Finally it gained renewed importance as the main center for technical details of Japanese aircraft.
Driving JICPOA off the field left only the ONI strength estimates plus those from MacArthur’s command, which both Washington and Pearl Harbor felt were excessive. (In an August 12 estimate the Seventh Fleet Intelligence Center put Japanese naval aircraft in the Philippines at 588. ONI on August 10 recorded practically none.) In its September 7 estimate the air intelligence staff in Washington credited the Japanese in the Philippines with 368 Navy and 389 Army warplanes. A week later, after Halsey’s Third Fleet was supposed to have eliminated nearly 300 more, ONI estimated Japanese planes at 393 Navy and 366 Army. The American analyses careened between over- and underestimating. The ONI strength tabulation closest to Halsey’s round of Manila strikes—this was supposed to have eliminated more than 200 additional airplanes—came out on September 28. The ONI now credited the Japanese with 185 Navy and 182 Army aircraft. Postwar studies indicate that the air strength at that date of all the Japanese services combined stood at less than 200. Japanese sources record that after strenuous efforts at reinforcement, on October 1 Admiral Teraoka’s First Air Fleet alone had risen to 230 aircraft, including 132 Zeros, roughly 60 percent of them flyable.
• • •
THE JAPANESE WERE hurting. There should be no doubt about that. But the slaughter of their air forces was not so great as Bill Halsey, his aviators, or the Allied intelligence staffs imagined. And the paucity of Japanese warplanes in the sky owed as much to conservation of strength as it did to destruction at Allied hands.
Imperial General Headquarters had done its sums. The calculations were straightforward. Allied advantages were such that only the most intense concentration of the available forces would damage them. The front-line commanders had orders to preserve their forces to the greatest extent possible. The Third Fleet had been in Philippine waters over five days, off Palau for three, one of its task groups in the Bonins—close enough for surface ships to bombard the Japanese-held island. Still the Imperial Navy did not send its Sea Eagles against Halsey’s ships. The Allies, exulting over their massive results so easily accomplished, missed that point.
CHAPTER 4
BEST-LAID PLANS
Lieutenant Solberg returned to the New Jersey as she rode at anchor in Ulithi’s deep lagoon, restocking in preparation for Admiral Halsey’s next foray. By now, the preliminaries were accele
rating for a Leyte invasion. Before the landings Bull Halsey needed to smooth the way by smashing Japanese air strength, much as he had just done in the Philippines. In particular this endeavor would involve strong blows against Taiwan, the most important locus of Japanese power and Tokyo’s link to the southern islands, including the Philippines, and at Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands. The Third Fleet would range the waters from Japan to the Philippines and hack away at this aerial pipeline. It had become a standard feature of Allied amphibious tactics to strike that kind of preparatory blow.
Lieutenant Solberg brought the latest secret pouch from Pearl Harbor to the New Jersey. These CINCPAC pouches contained instructions from Admiral Nimitz not suitable for radio dispatches, private correspondence among top commanders, or intelligence packages and target files from the Zoo. Admiral Halsey reviewed the documents as he made his plans. This time around, the JICPOA folks had a bombshell. It was a report from General MacArthur’s Nisei intelligence staff, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. The contents were explosive, and the implications went beyond Halsey’s powerful preinvasion gambit.
THE Z PLAN
Strange entities abound in war, and the outfit known as the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) was a perfect example. The inspiration of Colonel Sidney F. Mashbir, an Army language officer whose interest in espionage went back to 1904, ATIS was focused solely on Japan. As a Boy Scout, Mashbir had been a bugler at an encampment with the Arizona National Guard and became enthralled with covert affairs when he read a spy story while waiting for a train. A decade later the young Mashbir worked for the Army’s John J. “Black Jack” Pershing in a quasi-covert operation from the southwestern United States into Mexico, and after World War I, he had become interested in Japan. He’d started on a compendium bibliography of things Japanese only to have his work wiped out in Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.