These troopships and their escorts made up General George S. Patton’s diversion force, the mostly mythical Third United States Army Group that was a reinforced corps in actual strength. It would approach Honshu ahead of the main amphibious force. Operation Coronet planners had decreed that Patton’s XIII Corps would embark from Okinawa on September 11, ten days before the scheduled landing. While the number of transports was small when compared with the vast fleets assembled for Operation Olympic, the escorting fleet of warships was unprecedented.
The invasion planners devoutly hoped that when the enemy saw the level of bombardment and air cover swarming from these ships, he would be certain that this armada represented the main attack and redeploy the Japanese ground troops to meet the threat, while the main body—consisting of two very real armies, the First and the Eighth—approached the enemy homeland unseen and unsuspected.
Patton, brusque and profane, ordered his ships, troops, and tanks ready to go a full twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. Posing as the Third United States Army Group, or TUSAG, was the XIII Corps, consisting of the 13th and 20th Armored Divisions, a regimental combat team drawn from the 1st Marine Division (RCT-1), and the 32nd Infantry Division. Patton hoped to fool the Japanese into believing XIII Corps was actually two full armies. It was a dangerous mission, maybe even one step short of suicide, though Patton’s unlimited self-confidence provided hope.
Patton had already improved the situation. Originally, the XIII Corps didn’t even have the infantry division. The change had come about during advanced planning sessions, after the general had suggested, with unusual tactfulness, that he would need them to consolidate the landing zones.
He intended to put his tanks ashore as quickly as possible, so that his armor could strike out across the countryside. The 32nd Division was a fine unit, consisting of National Guard veterans of battles on New Guinea and in the Philippines. Their strength more than tripled the number of foot soldiers under Patton’s command.
For all that MacArthur was trying to humiliate Patton by making a four-star general do the job of a corps commander, the diversion was still a good idea, and its success was in everyone’s interest. In the end, the Supreme Commander had even agreed to designate one division of the floating reserve, the 104th Infantry, to reinforce Patton’s beaches if necessary.
One way or another, Patton intended to fight the hell out of the Japanese with whatever he was given, and he was confident, he had told the men of his command, that “these cocksucking Nip fuckers will be piss-soaked and shitting in their pants after they’ve tangled with Georgie Patton’s boys.”
Everyone assured everyone else that there wasn’t anything superstitious about the “13” in XIII Corps. However, men assigned to Patton began to refer to themselves as “Unlucky Forward,” a play on the nickname of Patton’s European headquarters.
It was pretty certain that the enemy counterattack would make things very hot for Patton’s men. Compared to the reinforced army landed on Kyushu for Operation Olympic, and the two entire armies that would be under MacArthur’s command for Operation Coronet, Patton’s force was remarkably small.
Because it was intended as a diversion, not only was the XIII Corps landing before the rest of the Coronet forces, but it was landing much farther to the north. The beaches were in the vicinity of Iwaki, some 120 miles north of the capital. Tokyo, of course, was the stated objective for the whole operation. Thirty-six hours after the diversionary “army group” came ashore, the two armies under the Supreme Commander’s direct control would land very close to the capital. The hope was that Patton’s noisy and violent assault would distract the Japanese high command from the invasion’s true objective.
As the ships were loaded and the last supplies hoisted aboard, the weather reports indicated a large storm brewing far to the south. But the sky over Okinawa was clear and blue, so the admirals and generals of Patton’s force took little note of the distant storm. After all, they were sailing north.
So it was that XIII Corps departed from Okinawa upon smooth and balmy seas. Winds were noticeable but not dangerous. As the last of the transports cleared the breakwater on the harbor at Hagushi Bay, the commanding general stood upon the bridge of his flagship, the heavy cruiser Indianapolis. Patton held binoculars to his eyes and watched his fleet steam past.
When the captain ordered the Indianapolis to make flank speed, the general turned to his chief of staff, General Gay, and nodded in satisfaction. His mouth tightened in contemplation, then creased into a broad grin.
“All in all,” he said, “the hand that MacArthur dealt me isn’t nearly as rotten as he thinks it is. I’ve got this feeling that the gods of war are going to smile on me once again, Hobart.” He grinned and slapped his chief of staff on the shoulder. “I guess the big question is whether you’re riding with George Armstrong Custer at Little Big Horn or Leonidas at Thermopylae.”
General Hobart Gay wisely did not point out that even at Thermopylae, Leonidas and all his men died.
On an otherwise nondescript troop transport, Captain Pete Rachwalski, commanding a new Charley Company—this one part of Marine Regimental Combat Team One—sat back with his copy of the February 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, another present from Ellis, and started rereading the “Venus Equilateral” story for what must be the fiftieth time.
Only four weeks earlier, Pete had been rotated out of Kyushu, happy to have survived once again and to have brought at least a few of his men out of the campaign with their lives. On Okinawa the “fully recuperated” Corporal Coad had rejoined the company. “That million-dollar wound, Captain?” he had remarked. “Turned out to be worth about a buck twenty-nine.”
“Welcome back, Sergeant Coad,” Pete replied, certain that the promotion would be approved.
Not two days later, he’d been pulled away from his unit. It seemed someone in the Marine Corps felt that a maverick who got a battlefield promotion from NCO to officer ought not to be around marines who knew him before. That part he didn’t mind so much, but he found that his new unit had gotten swept up in this “diversion force” nonsense. Morale had plummeted, but these men were marines. They would do their duty—but not without a few choice comments.
As for Pete, he knew he was fucked. But he was an officer now, which meant he didn’t get to bitch about it to the other men in his company. He leaned back against the bulkhead, closed his eyes, let the sun warm his face.
At least, he tried to console himself, the weather looked pretty good.
A baritone voice was singing. The tune was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but the words were different: “…and while possibly a rumor now/Someday ’twill be a fact/That the Lord will hear a deep voice say/‘Move over, God, it’s Mac.’/So bet your shoes/that all the news/that last great Judgment Day/Will go to press/In nothing less/Than Doug’s communiqué.”
The marines around the singer laughed. One observed, “Well, at least we’ve got our own god to match Hirohito. The Japs think Hirohito’s god, don’t they?”
“How about Jesus, you fucking moron?” an indignant believer shouted. “We’ve got Mini”
“It’s a joke, asshole,” protested the marine who’d made the reference.
If that little argument didn’t quiet down quickly, Pete was going to have to go over and take official notice of it. Besides, they’d missed other gods. Mars, the god of war. Neptune, god of the sea.
The forces of nature were like gods, especially compared to men.
• THURSDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 1945 •
PHILIPPINE SEA, 300 MILES EAST OF LUZON, 1522 HOURS
The Kami Kaze meandered across the vastness of the central Pacific. The path of the storm curved northwest, crossing over the Caroline Islands, gusts continuing to build in strength as more and more moisture was pulled into the spiraling low. Winds were now approaching eighty miles per hour, and rain fell by the bucketful.
Humans on the islands in the path of the storm fortified their homes, built dike
s and drainage ditches, and finally took whatever shelter they could find from gusts that lashed trees, tore at roofs, and sent great waves crashing against the shore. There was nothing else for them to do beyond waiting out the looming storm. It would come, then it would soon pass away from them.
A few fishing boats and interisland ferries were caught at sea, where they were tossed like toys. Some, too slow to reach port, were lost. A freighter bearing supplies from Hawaii to Manila sank when her back was broken by a monstrous wave. A tanker bound for Luzon capsized two hundred miles east of Mindanao, spilling human beings and precious aviation gasoline into the uncaring sea.
A U.S. Navy PBY approached the storm from the west, flying into the windy, rain-lashed limbs of the great system. The pilot reported a shockingly low barometric pressure reading—barely a fraction above twenty-eight inches of mercury—and then declared his intention to fly farther into the weather system. That was the last transmission from the plane. No wreckage was ever found.
By now, the storm had taken on a life of its own. Winds reached out, howling and flailing, for hundreds of miles in every direction. Swirling with that imperious counterclockwise sweep, its gusts lashed the surface of the ocean, sending flood tides surging onto the low-lying islands of Melanesia. Water spewed from the heavy, moist clouds, pounding relentlessly over land, the accumulation building inch after deadly inch. Floods were common, and those people and animals that could not find some high ground on these low islands were in peril of death.
Moving north and west now at something like twenty miles an hour—the cruising speed of a warship—the storm swept past the Palaus, curving slightly, angling still more toward the north. The Philippines were the next barrier before it, but they were narrow islands around warm seas. They would not slow it down.
This Kami Kaze was a full-fledged tropical cyclone now. In the western Pacific, this kind of storm was called a typhoon.
• FRIDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 1945 •
MANILA BAY, LUZON, PHILIPPINES, 0800 HOURS
(OPERATION CORONET, Y-DAY −7)
The Supreme Commander had made it clear to everyone from army commanding generals and fleet admirals to the meanest buck privates and swabbies: delay, whether from weather or enemy action, would not be tolerated. It was perhaps a measure of his reputation or willpower that no one questioned his assertion. Instead, every man bent his back to the task of making sure that the great armada sailed from Manila on time.
Rain lashed the murky waters of the vast bay, and the wind—out of the northeast—continued to pick up power and speed. This was not yet the full brunt of the storm, for the center lay hundreds of miles to the east. Nevertheless, local gusts exceeded twenty-five miles an hour, and forecasts called for a steady increase in the strength of the storm, which now included winds approaching a hundred miles per hour surrounding the eye. If those meteorological predictions proved accurate, within a day and a half the seas would be dangerously rough for any ships attempting to leave the protected waters of Manila Bay.
Navy forecasters had already categorized the storm as a typhoon. They had even gone so far as to plot its course—a very new tactic in the field of meteorology—determining the heading to be north by northwest on a compass bearing of approximately 320 degrees. If it maintained that path, it would cross the Philippines directly over Leyte or Luzon and then make landfall on the mainland somewhere south of Formosa. There, it could be expected to dwindle and die as its source of moisture—the warm central Pacific—fell behind.
But when it reached Luzon, it would pound the Philippine archipelago for days. While the huge fleet would be relatively safe in the shelter of one of the finest natural anchorages in the world, the invasion would inevitably face delays if those ships had not already departed. The XIII Corps was already at sea and could be called back only with great difficulty. There was one glimmer of good news: additional information, again provided by those navy forecasters, suggested that the full brunt of the typhoon would not strike Luzon for some forty-eight hours.
The scheduled hour of departure was still twelve hours in the future when the latest weather reports came in to SWPA headquarters, now established on the bridge of the light cruiser Nashville, the fourth ship of that name. There was only one man who could make the decision, and so the General did.
MacArthur ordered the remaining loading to continue at double time and moved up the departure to 2000 hours September 14. As the work in the harbor proceeded at an increasing frenzy, the Supreme Commander ordered his admirals to alter the projected route of the invasion force, directing it to travel farther east than originally planned. The ships would make the course change as soon as they passed around the northern tip of Luzon. This would bring the great amphibious fleet to its landing beaches within the time frame required and carry the ships as quickly as possible out of the projected path of the typhoon.
Already the antisubmarine force had put to sea. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, and coast guard cutters patrolled the waters off Manila Bay and north past Formosa and beyond. Relentless hunters using the most modern sonar and antisubmarine warfare technology, they scoured the seas. Many Japanese submarines were found and destroyed, and the rest were driven so deep that they would not be able to observe the great armada as it sailed past.
Within the bay, many ships were already fully loaded, anchored in long columns, ready to sail. The transport ships of this huge amphibious fleet bore the troops of the First and Eighth armies, commanded by Generals Harmon and Eichelberger, respectively. Under MacArthur’s overall direction on scene, they would land in the vicinity of Tokyo—First Army just to the south of Tokyo Bay, and Eighth on the Hanto Peninsula, due east of the capital—thirty-six hours after Patton’s faux army group, the XIII Corps, had landed a hundred miles to the north.
The accompanying warships of the amphibious fleet’s escort numbered fewer than the ships escorting the XIII Corps, especially in the area of fast carriers, since virtually all of the big flattops had sailed north with Patton. This was all part of the deception, however. In fact, the plan called for all of the fleet carriers to detach one day after the diversionary landing. At that time, they would head south and offer air support to the assault of MacArthur’s main body.
In Manila, the approaching typhoon affected every aspect of the departure. Several barges and tenders overturned, and a dozen crewmen drowned. One transport suffered a ruptured hull when it was pitched against the stone quay by a sudden, surging wave. Because of the conditions, final loading operations were suspended at 1530 hours.
“If we don’t have it aboard, we don’t need it!” the Supreme Commander was heard to announce.
Naturally, everybody agreed. The fleet steamed forth from Manila Bay under the onslaught of thirty-mile-per-hour winds and the relentless drumming of the rain. The armada passed Corregidor and Bataan in file well before sunset.
These two positions, soaked in the history of this war, had been returned to American hands more than a year before. Now, none of the shipboard men could so much as see them through the rainy evening’s murk.
Once the ships emerged from the bay, they turned to the north and steamed past the western shore of the large island of Luzon. The mass of land gave some protection from the wind, but the weather was sufficient to buffet the ships mightily. The gale came at them from the starboard bow, at an angle that rocked the flat-bottomed vessels with stomach-churning violence.
It was a rocky ride for the better than one hundred thousand men—most of them landlubbing soldiers—on the vessels of the invasion fleet as they rolled through the rough waters west of Luzon. For the long night, the weather only increased, and many men simply prayed for relief from seasickness or, failing that, a quick and merciful death. At dawn, the ships rounded Cape Bojeador on the northwestern tip of the island, and here the entire fleet altered course to the east. They followed the Bubayan Channel all the way past the northern coast of Luzon.
They were on the flank of the typhoon now, as the
great body of the storm approached the Philippines to the south. The wind was stronger than ever. But here, at least, the ships drove directly into the teeth of the storm. The waves rose higher than they had farther south, but the ride was marginally better because the bows of the vessels met those surging seas head-on.
The center of the typhoon made landfall at Legaspi, the southernmost city on Luzon. A storm surge of more than a dozen feet flooded several barrios, and almost a hundred people perished. Winds exceeded 120 miles per hour, tearing the tops off buildings, flattening whole neighborhoods. The steeple of a church more than three hundred years old collapsed, destroying a row of shops.
The invasion fleet emerged from the Bubayan Channel during a rainy, windy dawn. The ships churned forward through waves that, while still rough, had grown measured and predictable. The rain ceased before 0900, and the winds died down throughout the rest of the day as the fleet sailed into the Philippine Sea.
True to the meteorologists’ forecasts, the weather continued to ease. The rain and wind let up, and by Saturday evening, the troops—and the Supreme Commander—were treated to a beautiful sunset, brilliant reds and pinks and blues breaking through the clouds in the west.
• WEDNESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 1945 •
EAST CHINA SEA, 1419 HOURS
The Kami Kaze howled like a cruel and triumphant god. The rampaging deity was unstoppable, irresistible, a power beyond understanding. Dumping rain by the ton, with winds spiraling now at better than 140 miles per hour, the typhoon spread its limbs to embrace and to hammer the ocean and the land. It drove onward, purposeful, driven, determined—but capricious as well.
The Philippines lay behind it, whole mountainsides denuded of trees by flood and mudslide, villages carried away by storm-swollen streams. Coastal towns, especially along the eastern shore of Luzon, had been pounded by storm surge waves rising fifteen or twenty feet in the air. Where the shore was flat, those waves had swept inland for miles.
MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan Page 48