Their Backs against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II

by Bill Sloan

  After four months the ship was ready to go. “There were two fleets, the Third Fleet and the Seventh Fleet. We were with the Third Fleet—all the new stuff, battleships like the New Jersey and Wisconsin, and all the new carriers. We stayed with the fleet. We went everywhere with them, slightly in back. Our first trip was to the Aleutians,” Bazar said. “They needed the fuel for airplanes and oil for the ships. So we went up to the Aleutians in the month of January. That was a disaster. We spent a month there. When all the ice froze on that ship, everything was frozen. We had to chip the ice off the walkways. We put ropes in walking areas, something to hang onto so you didn’t slip.”

  He was gone for about two months, sometimes as much as three. He accumulated six separate battle stars for the invasions he was in. Hawaii was his next stop. He saw a bunch of old buddies from the 27th Division, guys from Troy and Albany. Then he found out what was coming up next:

  The invasion of Saipan.

  chapter 5

  The Marianas Turkey Shoot

  FEW IF any of the Marines and soldiers who captured Aslito Airfield had any idea that something happening several hundred miles across the ocean would have a resounding effect—not only on the outcome of the Battle of Saipan but on the entire Pacific War.

  It was one of the greatest naval air battles of all time. It went into the history books as the Battle of the Philippine Sea, but it came to be known to those who fought it as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.”

  There was a strong feeling among Japanese naval commanders that if they could force a meeting between Japan’s First Mobile Fleet and the US Fifth Fleet’s Task Force 58, they could not only save Saipan—at least for the time being—but also inflict heavy damage on the US Navy. They called the plan Operation A-Go.

  The plan had some serious flaws. Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, head of the First Mobile Fleet and considered by Americans to be one of Japan’s top naval commanders, thought he had more than 480 land-based planes in the southern Marianas. But many of these planes were only myths. They had been destroyed before Operation A-Go could be put into effect, although Japanese officers on the islands continued to insist they existed. Not only that, but these nonexistent planes were supposedly inflicting heavy damage on the Americans.

  More experienced pilots and speedier, deadlier, more resilient aircraft were other factors in Americans’ favor. The planes of early 1942 were a world apart from the planes of mid-1944. For example, in one of the first clashes of the day, on 19 June, thirty American fighter planes shot down thirty-five enemy aircraft. The only plane the United States lost was one Hellcat fighter. The Grumman Hellcat had quickly become the Navy’s dominant fighter.

  In addition to Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher’s task force—fifteen carriers with nine hundred planes—US submarines provided another crucial advantage. On 13 June the American submarine USS Redfin spotted a major portion of the Japanese fleet—six carriers (out of a total of nine), four battleships, eight cruisers, and too many destroyers and other ships to count. They were all heading north at full speed. In preparation for a potential battle, Mitscher ordered Task Force 58 to refuel ahead of schedule. Meanwhile Admiral Chester Nimitz at Pearl Harbor increased submarine and aerial surveillance of the area near the Philippines. Two days later an American submarine reported the movement of the Japanese fleet in San Bernardino Strait in the Philippines. Slowly but surely a series of events were leading to a big showdown.

  On 16 June Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, who commanded the Fifth Fleet, informed Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner and General Holland Smith of the situation: “The Japs are coming after us,” he told them. “They’re out after big game… the attack on the Marianas is too great a challenge for the Japanese Navy to ignore.”

  An hour later Ozawa’s first attack sent sixty-nine planes to attack Task Force 58. American radar picked up the planes, and Hellcats were in the air quickly. The results were devastating.

  Lieutenant Alex Vracui dove on a flight of thirty enemy planes from two thousand feet above them and continued firing. Vracui was the Navy’s ranking ace, with a dozen miniature Rising Suns stenciled on his Hellcat’s fuselage. There were about to be six more.

  “Scratch one Judy [Navy lingo for enemy aircraft],” he reported. A short time later he radioed, “Splash number six.” He had shot down six enemy planes in a matter of just eight minutes.

  When Ensign Wilber “Spider” Webb spotted a large patrol of Japanese planes over Guam, he quickly made contact with the carrier USS Hornet and told them, “I’ve got forty Japs surrounded and need help!” He shot down six of them before he veered away.

  Ozawa sent a second wave of 110 planes around 0900 and ended up losing 79 of them. About an hour later he sent a third wave of 47 planes and lost 7. Finally, at 1130 he sent 82 planes more. He lost 73, many of which crashed as they tried to land at Guam’s Orote Field for refueling.

  Americans, of course, also had their own losses. On 13 June, even before the landing on Saipan, Lieutenant Commander Robert Isely, the commanding officer of VT-16, the torpedo squadron aboard the USS Lexington, was leading his squadron of Avengers in attacks on Aslito Airfield when he was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire and crashed in flames. The airfield was subsequently renamed Isely Field in his honor.

  Estimates of Japanese plane losses that first day vary. Mitscher, head of the Fast Carrier Task Force, counted 383 planes shot down. Other estimates placed the Japanese losses as high as 476.

  More than that, the Japanese lost hundreds of experienced pilots. Even if the planes could be replaced, the experienced pilots could not. It was a devastating blow. In a day’s time Japan had placed itself in a precarious position. Now it would always be short of planes, the men who flew them—and the mighty carriers that ferried them around.

  Ozawa’s flagship, the mighty Taiho, the largest carrier in the Japanese fleet, was hit by only one of the six torpedoes fired by the US submarine Albacore. Ozawa didn’t know that gas fumes were accumulating below decks in the area where the US torpedo had damaged the hull of the carrier, and the Taiho continued to move with no apparent damage. More than eight hours later the Taiho exploded and went to the bottom of the sea with 1,650 crew members.

  Another submarine, the USS Cavalla, with Commander Herman Kossler in charge, was shadowing Japanese ships when he spotted an almost unbelievable sight. At 1052 Kossler raised his periscope and found himself looking at a picture that was almost too good to be true: the carrier Shokaku, the pride of the Japanese carrier fleet, which had served continuously since the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It was so close that Kossler thought he could reach out and touch her.

  He could see three more ships: two cruisers ahead on the port bow and a destroyer about a thousand yards on their starboard beam. He decided to concentrate on the carrier and take his chances with the destroyer. They fired a spread of six torpedoes, and by the time the last torpedo was leaving the tubes, they already had nosed down for a deep dive.

  The Japanese destroyer hunted for the Cavalla for the better part of three hours, but the sub made a narrow escape. At least one of its torpedoes had found its target: at 1510 the Shokaku blew up in an enormous explosion and sank immediately.

  WITH JAPAN’S OVERWHELMING defeat becoming obvious, Admiral Spruance, commanding the Fifth Fleet, decided to take the offensive. After conferring with Mitscher, he planned to launch an air attack on the late afternoon of 20 June. It was already midafternoon when Mitscher learned the exact location of Japan’s First Mobile Fleet. Ozawa was sailing northwest, away from Task Force 58, but the US Navy command assumed it planned to return for another round on 21 July.

  Mitscher’s 216 planes from ten carriers were in the air by about 1830—in the amazing space of about ten minutes. “Give ’em hell, boys! Wish I were with you!” Mitscher told his pilots.

  But by now the Japanese fleet was already further away than Mitscher had expected. For a few moments he toyed with the idea of calling back the planes, but after rechecking the charts
he dumped the idea. After flying almost three hundred miles, the American pilots didn’t reach the Japanese fleet until it was almost dusk. Their new position would suck up the last ounce of fuel and force most of the US planes to land at night. But with the sky brilliant with orange and red clouds, the Hellcats struck, and Ozawa launched his last eighty planes to protect his ships.

  Lieutenant George Brown led one of the US attack squadrons, and as his TBF Avenger (designated TBF for aircraft manufactured by General Motors) dove toward the carrier Hiyo, he flew through a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. His friend, Lieutenant J. D. Walker, watched him descend through the smoke.

  Brown’s plane took the brunt of the Japanese fire. Shell after shell struck home, and suddenly it began to burn. Brown’s two crewmen bailed out to escape the flames, but Brown flew straight toward the carrier. “Brownie pushed on,” said Walker, “and pretty soon the flames went out, leaving his plane black and his recognition marks burned away. He reached the dropping point and released the torpedo straight and true.”

  Brown died in this action, waving a shattered arm to his friends as his plane wavered and plunged into the blackness below. While the Japanese concentrated their fire on Brown, another Avenger, flown by Lieutenant (junior grade) Warren Omark, dropped a torpedo that found its mark. The Hiyo spouted flames immediately, and fires broke out from one end of her to the other. She lit up the darkening sky like a giant torch, and then the explosions started, each of them sending columns of fire high into the night sky. The Hiyo went down by the bow with her propellers clearly visible, sticking up above the water.

  Some of the USS Hornet’s fourteen planes attacked the carrier Zuikaku, Admiral Ozawa’s flagship after the Taito was torpedoed, and damaged her so seriously that Ozawa thought for a time that he would have to abandon ship again. But as men were going over the side to escape, the fires were miraculously brought under control and the order to abandon ship was rescinded. The carriers Chiyoda, Junyo, and Ryuho were damaged but stayed afloat.

  As US planes headed back to the carriers, the planes started to run out of fuel, and Admiral Mitscher made the decision to violate the Navy’s “lights out” rule to guide the planes home.

  The overwhelming danger was that a Japanese submarine might intrude into the picture and spoil everything, but Mitscher had no way of knowing this, and he took an awesome chance. But luck held for Mitscher that night, and no Japanese submarines appeared. Part of the reason for that was the excellent search job US destroyers and aircraft had already conducted in the area. At least two enemy submarines had been destroyed in this sector several days earlier, but Mitscher had no way of knowing whether other submarines might be nearby.

  Mitscher’s decision to hit the lights was a brave one, and the pilots and their crew remembered it well. In doing do, Mitscher, in his own words, was “facing the worst disaster in naval-aviation history.”

  As the planes approached, Rear Admiral Joseph “Jocko” Clark, the group commander of four carriers, turned on the deck lights and pointed searchlights into the sky to act as homing beacons. Mitscher ordered all the ships in Task Force 58 to do the same, turning on every light aboard. He also ordered star shells fired into the air and used vertical searchlight beams to guide the planes in. He spread the word that any plane could land on the closest available carrier. In all it was a decision that Clark later called “one of the war’s supreme moments.”

  As one of the pilots, Lieutenant Commander Robert A. Winston, observed, “The effect on the pilots left behind was magnetic. They stood open-mouthed for the sheer audacity of asking the Japs to come and get us. Then a spontaneous cheer went up. To hell with the Japs around us. Our pilots were not to be expendable.”

  Despite the lights, many planes were ditched that night, and along with them, forty-nine crewmen lost their lives. As the darkness closed in around them, they flew through squall lines and heavy clouds, which made the enclosing darkness ever blacker. Many of the planes had lost their radios, and the circuits were jammed with pilots asking directions.

  The returning planes were to be guided in by radio beams, and about a hundred miles out they began to pick the beams up. But knowing where an aircraft carrier was located and making it back to its deck were two entirely different matters. Darkness had settled in before eight o’clock, and the skies were overcast, which hampered the pilots even more.

  Roughly halfway back to the carriers the first of the planes began to ditch. The first to go down were those that had suffered damage in the attack, particularly the ones that had lost a wing tank or had gas tanks punctured. An hour after dark the planes started arriving over the carriers—and then real confusion set in. Pilots unused to making night landings plowed their planes into the barriers and fouled up the decks.

  Pilots behind them received a wave-off from the signal officer. In desperation the waved-off pilots, seeing their gas gauges hovering near zero, had to find other carriers to take them aboard.

  Of the dive bombers from the USS Bunker Hill, only one managed to land on a carrier at all. It was piloted by Lieutenant (junior grade) Kenneth Holmes, who landed on the USS Cabot at 2120 that night with twenty gallons of fuel left. Holmes’s plane was the only one out of twelve Bunker Hill dive bombers to return undamaged from the raid.

  The Bunker Hill’s torpedo bombers were a little luckier. Three of them managed to land on other carriers, although one landed on the Enterprise with a resounding bump. When the plane had stopped and the crew disembarked, a plane handler took a reading on the gas tank. It registered zero.

  Fighters had far better luck than the heavier planes. The USS Bataan launched ten fighters for the strike. All but one returned safely and landed aboard their own carrier.

  A pilot who was sent up in a night-flying Hellcat to help guide the planes in said the scene was like “a Hollywood premiere, Chinese New Year’s and the Fourth of July, all rolled into one.”

  Much later Admiral Spruance would analyze the battle in these terms: “As a matter of tactics, I think that going after the Japanese and knocking their carriers out would have been much better and more satisfactory than waiting for them to attack us, but we were at the start of a very important and large amphibious operation, and we could not afford to gamble and place it in jeopardy.”

  When Mitscher tallied up reports from the carriers late that night, he found that Task Force 58 had lost 100 of 216 planes in the action. The overwhelming majority were lost on the trip home. Only 20 could be identified as shot down by enemy planes or gunfire from the ground. A total of 209 men had gone into the water by the end of the day, and only 101 had been rescued. A final total showed that all but 49 pilots and crewmen were recovered during the next day.

  The Japanese lost three carriers—a third of their carrier force—and approximately four hundred airplanes and 445 crewmen. Ozawa was left with only about thirty-five of the one hundred planes that were available that afternoon. Worse yet, he was left with almost no experienced pilots.

  Admiral Spruance steamed after the departing Japanese, but he found no crippled ships, despite a report from a plane shadowing the enemy force that some of Ozawa’s ships were trailing oil, suggesting that some were badly damaged. He finally turned back toward Saipan when his armada was about 550 miles from the Philippines.

  That evening, 21 June, Ozawa called his senior staff officer into his cabin and dictated a letter to Admiral Toyoda Soemu, the commander in chief of the combined fleet, offering his resignation. He expressed the deepest regret that he had lost this opportunity to lead Japan to victory—a defeat he ascribed to his own inadequacy and to the pilots’ lack of training. The resulting loss of planes and pilots would haunt the Japanese for the duration of the war in the Pacific.

  Admiral Soemu, after consulting with the navy minister in the Tojo Cabinet, refused to accept Ozawa’s offer to resign, and on 22 June the remains of Ozawa’s defeated and dispirited mobile fleet anchored at Nakagasuka Bay at Okinawa.

  With Ozawa’s ships out of
range, Admiral Spruance ordered Task Force 58 to return to Saipan. The skill and intrepid courage of his aviators had made this day one of the all-time high points in the history of American arms. From this point on to the end of the war, US combat aircraft would never be outnumbered.

  chapter 6

  Smith vs. Smith

  THE BIGGEST STORY, by any measure, to come out of the Battle for Saipan—at least where US newspapers and magazines were concerned—would be the controversial “showdown” between Marine General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith and Army General Ralph Smith.

  It was a slow news day when the story first broke, a period of relative quiet on both the European and Asiatic fronts. The Normandy invasion was into its third week, with Allied armies hammering their way through the hedgerows of France. And the American forces in the Pacific were very much in the driver’s seat against the Japanese on Saipan, where they were only a day away from declaring the island secure.

  William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner unveiled the story on 8 July under front-page headlines that proclaimed, “Army General Relieved in Row over Marine Losses.” The article, composed mainly of rumor and innuendo, alleged that Ralph Smith had “openly expressed” a negative opinion concerning battle tactics used by the Marines and strongly indicated an open disagreement between himself and Holland Smith—which was blatantly untrue. A later story in Hearst’s New York Journal-American said that Ralph Smith had accused Holland Smith of a “reckless and needless waste of American lives.” This also was untrue.

  As the story unwound, Ralph Smith was repeatedly accused of saying that the Marines were much too reckless with the lives of American servicemen—though he never actually said anything at all. The writers said it all for him. Up until the time he died in 1998, at age 104, he still remained mostly silent on the subject.