But King was only getting warmed up. “You may be surprised to know,” he lectured Nimitz in a paragraph headed “Another Subject,” “how widely you are quoted as the basis for comment and speculation as to what we are going to do next in the Pacific Ocean Area.” Nimitz had “said nothing much but what would be obvious to military men,” King agreed, “but the use of it has, I fear, verged on ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy.’ ” King went on to caution Nimitz to “watch your step in dealing with the press, etc.” before signing off with the platitude “Remain cheerful—and keep up the splendid work you are doing.”24
It was a bumpy month or two for Nimitz because, having gotten himself into trouble with King by appearing too accommodating to MacArthur, he now ran into the general’s buzz saw as well. MacArthur and Halsey had devised a plan to bypass the Japanese strongholds of Kavieng and Rabaul and jump ahead to Manus in the Admiralty Islands, much as King had long advocated in regard to Truk and the Marianas. Halsey’s South Pacific command—still in the dual role of answering to MacArthur for overall strategy but to Nimitz for everything else—took Green Island, east of Rabaul, and then supported MacArthur’s efforts to take Los Negros Island and its fine Seeadler Harbour, on the east side of Manus.
All of this went generally according to plan, but then Nimitz, knowing that Halsey had been directly involved in the planning of a major fleet installation in Seeadler Harbour and had the Seabees to undertake the operation, innocently suggested to King, with a copy to MacArthur, that Halsey’s South Pacific Area be extended westward to include Manus. MacArthur reacted as if Nimitz had snatched his only child.
He immediately summoned Halsey to Brisbane and went into a tirade in front of Halsey, Kinkaid, and Halsey’s chief of staff, Robert B. “Mick” Carney. Not only would he oppose any such efforts by Nimitz—MacArthur insisted on calling him Neemitz when peeved—but he also would see to it that the harbor be restricted to ships of Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet and not permit one ship of the Fifth Fleet to anchor there.
After a fifteen-minute lecture, MacArthur, who had once offered to make Halsey grander than Nelson himself, pointed the stem of his ever-present pipe at Halsey and demanded, “Am I not right, Bill?”
“No, sir!” Halsey shot back, and proceeded to tell MacArthur that not only did he disagree entirely, but if the general stood by his order, he would “be hampering the war effort!” MacArthur’s courtiers gasped, but Halsey had made his point. Still, it took another two rounds of debate before MacArthur calmed down.25
Even so, the general sent a similar message to Marshall, arguing that Nimitz had “proposed to project his own command into the Southwest Pacific by the artificiality of advancing South Pacific Forces into the area” and that somehow this involved MacArthur’s “personal honor.” MacArthur asked to present his case to the secretary of war and to the president.26 Marshall assured MacArthur that his honor was not at stake and told him he would arrange for him to see Roosevelt. Privately, Marshall no doubt rolled his eyes and thought, Here we go again. Years afterward, Marshall was still of the opinion, “With Chennault in China and MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, I sure had a combination of temperament.”27
With his usual, maddening understatement, Leahy described this latest MacArthur-Nimitz squabble thusly: “It appeared that MacArthur’s ideas might conflict with those of Nimitz, and the difference in the personalities of these two able commanders was going to require delicate handling.”28
Consequently, Nimitz and MacArthur were both summoned to Washington to work out their differences. But by then, in typical fashion, MacArthur pleaded that he simply couldn’t be spared from his command and sent Sutherland in his stead. When the conference ended, the Joint Chiefs had categorically made two major Pacific Theater decisions: first, there would be no more talk of taking Truk—Nimitz would bypass it; and second, the timetable for the Marianas invasion would be moved forward from October to mid-June. Additionally, Marshall informed MacArthur—carefully as always—that his visions of grandeur would once again be limited to his continued advance along the coast of New Guinea and that his full cooperation with Nimitz was a given.
Having been thus subdued, only then did MacArthur, who had snubbed Nimitz twice on the latter’s visits to nearby Nouméa, do an about-face and cordially invite Nimitz to Brisbane for a personal conference with all the assurances of “a warm welcome” so that “the close coordination of our respective commands would be greatly furthered.”29
Steady Raymond Spruance sailed westward in the Indianapolis to lead his Fifth Fleet against the Marianas. There is no question that Spruance’s command style was diametrically opposed to Halsey’s. Spruance always had a detailed operations plan that he followed—occasionally, it will be seen, to subsequent criticism. Halsey, by contrast, was quick to shoot from the hip. “You never knew what you were going to do in the next five minutes or how you were going to do it,” George C. Dyer, who commanded the cruiser Astoria under both Halsey and Spruance, complained. This was frequently because Halsey himself did not know.
Dyer, who later served King as his intelligence officer, confessed that his feeling “was one of confidence when Spruance was there and one of concern when Halsey was there.” Nimitz put it quite differently, recognizing at least part of the difference when he said, “Bill Halsey was a sailor’s admiral and Spruance, an admiral’s admiral.”30 The one thing both Halsey and Spruance had going for them, however, was that Nimitz trusted them to accomplish their missions.
The Marianas campaign was to be a much more complicated operation than those against the Gilberts and Marshalls. Saipan, Tinian, Guam, and even smaller Rota were much larger islands with sizable civilian populations. They were defended by 60,000 troops entrenched in rugged terrain and supported by tanks and artillery. At his disposal, Spruance had about 127,000 assault troops backed by more than 600 ships.
The Northern Attack Force of the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions, with the Twenty-seventh Infantry Division in reserve, targeted Saipan for a June 15 landing, while the Southern Attack Force of the Third Marine Division and the First Marine Brigade was scheduled to land a few days later on Guam, depending on the success of the Saipan operations. Once again, Mitscher’s Task Force 58 was responsible for ensuring that Spruance had an isolated target.31
The Japanese, however, had other ideas. The Japanese fleet had not sortied en masse since the Battle of Midway two years before, and Nimitz and Spruance were inclined to think that it would not contest the landings in force. Nonetheless, Spruance prepared for surface action just in case. By now, any misgivings Spruance might have had about Mitscher had vanished, and he put his trust in him as his carrier ace just as Nimitz had done.
Heavy bombardment of the invasion beaches began on D-Day minus 2, but almost at once an American submarine reported a Japanese force of at least four battleships, six cruisers, and six destroyers on the move off the northern tip of Borneo. But where were their carriers? Nimitz’s best intelligence estimates put nine battle-ready Japanese carriers somewhere in the southern Philippines. Under the right circumstances, they could still wreak plenty of havoc against Spruance’s fifteen opposing carriers.
The landings on Saipan went off on schedule, but that evening Spruance received another report of battleships and carriers exiting San Bernardino Strait, in the Philippines, and steaming eastward into the Philippine Sea. The next morning, yet another submarine sighted a Japanese task force northeast of Mindanao, also heading east. It appeared that the western Philippine Sea was filling with at least two major Japanese forces queuing for a concerted strike against the American landing forces on Saipan, the American fleet, or both.
Spruance postponed the landings on Guam and ordered Task Force 58 and his other forces to concentrate near the Marianas by June 17. When Kelly Turner told Spruance that there was no way he could withdraw transports and supply ships eastward, out of harm’s way, without compromising the beachhead, Spruance replied, “Well, get everything that you don’t
absolutely need out of here to the eastward, and I will join up with Mitscher and Task Force 58 and try to keep the Japs off your neck.”32
It continues to be debated just how essential those transports were to Turner’s efforts. Spruance took Turner at his word that they could not be moved and thus committed his fleet to a largely defensive role within easy range of Saipan. Given well-known Japanese tactics of dividing forces, Spruance was particularly concerned that while one enemy unit engaged his principal carriers, another unit might slip around either of his flanks and strike Turner’s transports. Spruance was prepared to engage the Japanese fleet, but his overriding concern became protecting the beachhead and guarding against an end run.
On June 17, as the battle for Saipan continued fierce and deadly, Task Force 58 searched westward during the day for any sign of the approaching Japanese, but then retired eastward toward evening to be tied to the beachhead. Seaplanes hastily sent to Saipan and carrier scouts failed to locate the Japanese carriers, but Japanese scouting planes seemed to be shadowing the American carriers, attempting either to find a way around them or to coordinate a strike at them from a safe distance. The Japanese weren’t steaming straight into a melee off Saipan, but this only caused Spruance additional angst over the possibility of an end run.
The prevailing winds didn’t help either. Steady winds from the east meant that every time the Americans conducted flight operations—either to launch or recover planes—the big carriers had to turn into the wind and run east for some distance. This had the effect of increasing the distance between them and the oncoming Japanese, while the Japanese, heading eastward, could conduct air operations while continuing to close the distance.
On the night of June 18, despite submarine reports of the enemy closing, Spruance elected once again to steer eastward in order to be near Saipan, instead of continuing west to position his carriers for a dawn strike against the oncoming Japanese. Mitscher favored the latter but followed Spruance’s orders and crafted a defensive battle line of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers out in front of his carriers.
The next morning, the entire American fleet came under a concerted attack from carrier-based planes, as well as from airfields on Guam and Rota. Wave after wave of attacking aircraft became ensnarled with the antiaircraft fire of Mitscher’s battle line and then found themselves outmatched by his aviators. In what came to be called the Marianas Turkey Shoot, 383 Japanese planes went down in flames, against only 25 American losses. The American carriers remained untouched, but so did the Japanese carriers—save one crippled by a submarine torpedo—and therein lay the root of the criticism that would soon come Spruance’s way.
By the morning of June 20, Spruance had finally become convinced that there would be no end run, and he instructed Mitscher to proceed west to find the Japanese carriers. But by then, staggered by their air losses, the Japanese were withdrawing westward, and the continuing east wind meant that whatever westward pursuit Mitscher mounted would be halting, as he would be forced to turn eastward from time to time for flight operations. The day slipped away, and it was late afternoon before scouts located the Japanese carriers. Mitscher’s pilots were game to attack, despite being almost at maximum range and with the late hour almost certainly meaning a night landing—if they made it back at all.
The attacking squadrons finally found the Japanese carriers and, low on fuel, made their runs as quickly as possible and then headed eastward. Mitscher ordered his carriers’ lights turned on to receive them, but mass confusion ensued, and more American planes ditched in the ocean than were shot down all day by the Japanese. By the time dawn came on the 21st, the American fleet was in disarray, and the retreating Japanese were well out of range.
Then came the critics. Towers, in particular, blamed Spruance for letting the enemy carriers escape and screamed for his head, much as he had done against Kinkaid after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Characteristically, Towers suggested himself as Spruance’s replacement, but Nimitz would have none of that. Despite lost opportunities, it was hard to argue against overall losses of 476 planes and 445 aviators for the Japanese and 130 planes and 43 pilots for the Americans. The Japanese also lost two of their nine carriers to U.S. submarines and another to the belated evening air attack.
When King and Nimitz visited Saipan a month later, after it had been subdued, King’s first words to Spruance as he stepped off their plane were, “Spruance, you did a damn fine job there. No matter what other people tell you, your decision was correct.”33
But even Spruance had his doubts, although he never backed down from his determined duty to protect Turner’s beachhead. “As a matter of tactics,” Spruance wrote after the war, “I think that going out 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.”34
A week after the battle, Time put Spruance on its cover, complete with his four stars of a full admiral. “After the Marianas,” the caption read, “The Empire,” meaning Japan itself. Doubtless Douglas MacArthur, fearing a route that would bypass the Philippines, was among those not cheering.35
By all accounts, the Battle of the Philippine Sea was an American victory. Japanese airpower sustained huge and irreplaceable losses. The beachhead on Saipan was safe, and landings would soon occur on Guam. In Japan, Tojo’s government fell as he called the loss of Saipan “an unprecedentedly great national crisis.”36
But what continued to nag at many American naval commanders were the six Japanese carriers that remained to fight again. On the Japanese side, their planners realized that the Americans would continue to key on any enemy carriers that threatened their amphibious operations. On the American side, the failure to destroy the enemy fleet would weigh heavily on U.S. command decisions the next time such an opportunity presented itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Crippling Blow: Submarines or Airpower?
If one had asked Chester Nimitz in the opening days of 1944 where the direct offensive against the Axis powers lay, he would have said through the Central Pacific—from the Marshalls, past the Marianas, and on to Japan itself. MacArthur’s drive northward from New Guinea was a steadying movement on Nimitz’s left flank. If one had asked Douglas MacArthur the same question, he would have said that the direct offensive led north from New Guinea to the absolute must of the Philippines and then on to Japan. Nimitz’s drive through the Central Pacific was a steadying movement on MacArthur’s right flank. George Marshall, of course, would have continued to say that the principal offensive thrust was the cross-Channel invasion of Europe.
But a follow-up question to these answers that presupposed the occupation of enemy territory—be it islands in the Pacific or hedgerows in France—would have been, What is the ultimate strategic weapon that is bringing the enemy to its knees? “If I had to give credit to the instruments and machines that won us the war in the Pacific,” Bill Halsey offered in retrospect, “I would rank them in this order: submarines, first, radar second, planes third, bulldozers fourth.”1
From the day he assumed command of the Pacific Fleet aboard the submarine Grayling, Nimitz looked to the submarine force—almost unscathed by opening hostilities—“to carry the load until our great industrial activity could produce the weapons we so sorely needed to carry the war to the enemy.”2 Submariners readily assumed this burden, but early in the war, their overall effectiveness was hampered by a host of defective torpedoes.
Given his background in engineering and submarines, Nimitz understood the mechanics, as well as the frustrations, better than most. The principal torpedo of World War II, the Mark XIV, was 21 inches in diameter and 20 feet 6 inches long. It weighed 3,200 pounds, about a fifth of which was its explosive warhead. Steam powered by methane gas, it left a telltale wake.
The Mark XIV came equipped with a Mark VI magnetic exploder. In the
ory, the torpedo would pass under the hull of a target, because the keel was more vulnerable than its more heavily armored sides. A compass needle in the torpedo responded to the magnetic force of the ship and closed an electrical circuit to trigger the warhead. As a backup, the Mark VI also had a relatively simple contact exploder.
When BuOrd finally admitted that Mark XIVs were routinely running about ten feet deeper than set and thus harmlessly passing under their targets, adjustments were made, but some torpedoes still failed to explode or exploded prematurely. Even when skippers fired for direct impact, the contact exploder tended to crumple on impact before it could send an electrical impulse to the trigger mechanism.
All this made for a crapshoot, and in the early years of the war, a proper hit was more the exception than the rule. It was easy for BuOrd to blame rookie skippers for this record, but when experienced captains came home with reports of one dud after another, the deficiencies of the Mark XIV slowly became obvious. “If the Bureau of Ordnance can’t provide us with torpedoes that will hit and explode,” Charles Lockwood, Nimitz’s submarine commander in the Central Pacific, fumed to Admiral King on a visit to Washington, “get Bureau of Ships to design a boat hook with which we can rip the plates off the target’s sides!”3
In July 1943, a frustrated Nimitz finally ordered his submarine commanders to do what some had already been doing on the sly: disconnect the magnetic component of the Mark VI exploder. That solved the problem of premature explosions, but it took more exasperated skippers and tests against undersea cliffs off Oahu to pinpoint the weakness of the contact exploder crumpling before it could make contact. In response, the support housing was strengthened. “At last,” Lockwood later revealed, “almost two years after the beginning of the war—U.S. submarines went to sea with a reliable torpedo.”4
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