by Robert Gandt
Seconds later yet another kamikaze was boring in on Newcomb’s port beam, crashing into the forward stack, spraying the entire midsection of the destroyer with flaming gasoline. Newcomb became an inferno, spouting flame hundreds of feet into the darkening sky. The smoke was so dense that nearby ships lost sight of the destroyer and thought she had gone down.
The destroyer Leutze came racing to assist the blazing Newcomb. As Leutze’s crew was passing hose lines to fight the fires, a fifth kamikaze streaked in toward Newcomb’s bridge. At the last second, a 5-inch antiaircraft shell caught the attacker. The kamikaze veered off, crashing into Leutze’s fantail and exploding.
Now Leutze was in as much peril as Newcomb. The explosion holed her hull and jammed her rudder hard right. Leutze’s skipper, Lt. Leon Grabowsky, who at age twenty-seven was one of the Navy’s youngest destroyer captains, ordered every heavy object jettisoned—torpedoes, depth charges, topside weights—keeping the destroyer afloat so that it could be towed by a minesweeper back to Kerama Retto.
Both tin cans stayed afloat. Back in the Kerama Retto anchorage, astonished sailors gawked at the fire-blackened, shattered hulks. The wreck of a kamikaze plane still lay across Leutze’s fantail. Newcomb’s number two stack was gone, and her number one stack was bent at a garish angle to starboard. Her fantail was only six inches above the water.
Forty men from Newcomb were dead, as were eight aboard Leutze. Neither ship would see combat again.
Like swarms of locusts, they kept coming. Fresh waves of kamikazes threaded their way through the gauntlet of CAP fighters, headed for the ships of the amphibious force off the Hagushi beachhead.
The gunners on the transports lacked the discipline of those on the tin cans and the battlewagons. They were firing helter-skelter, without clear direction, shooting just as enthusiastically at friendly CAP fighters as they were the enemy. Shrapnel from their gunfire was raining back down on the task force, causing almost as much damage as the kamikazes.
Three Kawasaki Ki-45 twin-engine Nick fighters and a pair of Aichi Val dive-bombers made it through the CAP screen, then ran into the storm of fire from the transports. Four were shot down, and the fifth, apparently losing his nerve, retreated back to the north. More showed up to take their place, this time picking on destroyers of the antisubmarine screen.
The tin cans Witter and Morris each took kamikaze strikes but stayed afloat. Another, Hyman, was struck in the torpedo tubes, causing a violent explosion. Yet another destroyer, Howorth, rushing to assist Hyman, took a kamikaze in her main battery director. Mullany, patrolling on the eastern side of Okinawa, also received a crippling kamikaze hit. The stricken destroyers were all dragged back to Kerama Retto, which was beginning to resemble a destroyer graveyard.
To the north, a minesweeper unit was clearing the channel between Iheya Retto and the eastern shore of Okinawa when they came under heavy kamikaze attack. Marine Corsairs from the Fast Carrier Task Force ripped into the attacking aircraft, shooting down twenty.
It wasn’t enough. Five kamikazes singled out the destroyer Emmons. Two dove into the destroyer’s fantail, taking out her rudder, and another crashed into the bow. Another flew directly into the destroyer’s bridge, killing every man in the CIC. The fifth attacker crashed into the already blazing superstructure.
Emmons was finished. When the destroyer Ellyson came alongside two hours later to rescue survivors, Emmons’s hulk was still afire. Worried that the derelict would drift ashore to an enemy-held beach, Admiral Turner gave the order to sink her with gunfire. Of Emmons’s crew, eleven officers and fifty-three men had been killed.
As devastating as the attacks on the destroyers were, the kamikazes were still missing the bigger game. The anchorage at Kerama Retto where ammunition and fuel ships were clustered like ducks in a gallery came under only sporadic attack. A small landing ship filled with fuel oil was struck and blazed like a beacon through the night. Two thin-hulled Victory ships loaded with ammunition were hit. Their burning cargoes continued shooting tracers and explosions into the night sky until the ships were finally sunk by gunfire.
The real prize, the fast carriers of Mitscher’s Task Force 58, made it through the day unscathed. They were operating far enough out in the Pacific that most of the ill-trained kamikaze pilots were unable to find them. Of those who did, most were shot down by CAP fighters or antiaircraft fire.
With nightfall came a break in the attacks. The day had been a sobering demonstration of Japan’s most fearsome weapon. The kamikazes had sunk three destroyers—Bush, Colhoun, and Emmons. Three more—Leutze, Newcomb, and Morris—were damaged beyond salvage. Several other badly damaged destroyers would be repaired and return to service, but only Howorth and Hyman would see duty before the end of the war. Two ammunition ships and an LST went down at Kerama Retto. A destroyer escort, a light carrier, and seven minesweepers had taken damage.
The most sobering statistic was the toll of dead and wounded. In all, 367 U.S. Navy men died in kikusui No. 1, most in a gruesome fashion. For those who weren’t killed outright by the attacks, death came from terrible burns, mostly from flaming gasoline and ruptured steam lines. Horribly wounded survivors often spent hours of agony in the water without medical attention.
Though American losses in the first kikusui operation were severe, they were far fewer than what the Japanese reported. Radio Tokyo claimed that sixty American ships, including two battleships and three cruisers, had been sunk, and sixty-one more heavily damaged. The attacks were “a blow from which the enemy will never recover.”
While exaggerating the damage inflicted on the Americans, the Japanese high command withheld the facts about their own losses. In the first kikusui operation, seven hundred airplanes, half of them kamikazes, were thrown into battle. The lives of more than 350 tokko airmen had been snuffed out like expendable candles.
The Japanese public was not ready for the hard truth about the tokko warriors. Nor was the man who had sent them to their death.
At 1630 Ugaki roused himself from his command chair. The first wave of tokko aircraft had closed with the U.S. fleet, and reports were being relayed from the battle scene. Ugaki’s spirits soared when he heard a scratchy transmission from one of the radio-equipped tokko aircraft: “I am crashing on a carrier.”
This was exhilarating news. At the same time, the airwaves were filled with American radio transmissions about ships under attack and commanders requesting help. It meant that the tokko warriors were hitting their targets.
Admiral Ugaki’s only disappointment was, as usual, with the army. General Ushijima’s 32nd Army wasn’t doing its share. Ushijima hadn’t launched the promised counterattack on Okinawa in concert with the kikusui operation. “They didn’t move at all,” Ugaki complained, “saying that the general attack was to start in the night of the 8th.”
Still, Ugaki was willing to believe in miracles. “The sea around Okinawa thus turned into a scene of carnage,” he wrote, “and a reconnaissance plane reported that as many as 150 columns of black smoke were observed, while others described it as difficult to observe them.”
The admiral needed no further proof. His tokko airmen had delivered a devastating blow to the American fleet. “It was almost certain that we destroyed four carriers,” he wrote that evening.
Kikusui No. 1 was such a resounding success, Ugaki decided, that it would continue into the next day, supporting the historic mission of the Yamato.
18 BREAKOUT
BUNGO STRAIT
APRIL 6, 1945
In the darkened space of Yamato’s upper radar compartment, Ens. Mitsuru Yoshida watched the slow, monotonous sweep of the radar. The room reeked of sweat, ozone, and cigarette smoke. Four off-duty sailors lay like bundles of laundry, asleep in a corner of the compartment. Four more were hunched over their direction finders, plotting bearings from what appeared to be radar emissions from two separate enemy submarines. When they directed Yamato’s own radar to the bearings, they received confirmation: two weak but telltal
e returns.
The task force had passed the midchannel point in the Bungo Strait. From here on they were in hostile waters. Vice Admiral Ito had redeployed his ships, putting them in the standard antisubmarine formation, destroyer screen in front, sonars pinging for enemy submarines. Yamato was in the center of the formation, the cruiser Yahagi bringing up the rear, each ship keeping a 2,700-yard separation from the others.
Enemy submarines were out there. It was no surprise. The exit of the Bungo Strait into the Pacific Ocean was a favorite hunting ground for American submarines. Thousands of tons of Japanese shipping had gone down here, and so had a fair number of U.S. submarines. It was a deadly cat-and-mouse game, matching the speed and agility of the screening destroyers against the nerve and skill of the submarine crews. American submarine captains liked to maneuver on the surface at night, both to recharge their batteries and to use their best speed to reach a firing position. They depended on radar to warn them of oncoming threats and also to pick up approaching targets.
The Yamato could hardly be missed on anyone’s radar. Yoshida could imagine the size of the blip made by a 72,000-ton battleship. A U.S. submarine captain would be ecstatic at picking up such a contact.
Apparently, one just had.
In the fore of the destroyer screen, Isokaze went charging off in the direction of the nearest contact. After a hurried sweep, the destroyer lost the contact and came back to rejoin the formation. Minutes later, another contact. Again the destroyer went racing out toward the open sea.
On the southern side of the formation the destroyer Asashimo was doing the same thing, zigzagging over the blackened surface like a hound sniffing for rabbits. Each time the elusive contact would fade away. The game went on for nearly half an hour, thrusting and parrying, while the task force zigzagged and finally cleared the mouth of the Bungo Strait.
Their best defenses were speed and geography. The submarines couldn’t match the speed of the task force, now moving at 22 knots. As the task force turned south and hugged the long coastline of Kyushu, it presented the submarines with only one side from which to attack. The task force was relatively safe—at least until dawn.
It was damned frustrating. Lt. Cmdr. John Foote, skipper of USS Threadfin, watched his target fade into the distance. His orders, which ran against the grain of any submarine commander, were not to attack until a contact report had been transmitted to Pearl Harbor. Pacific Fleet headquarters was expecting a breakout through the Bungo Strait by the battleship Yamato. It was critical that the movement of Yamato and her task force be reported before attempting an attack.
Despite his frustration, Foote knew the reason for the order. Two U.S. subs had been lost in these waters in the past two months. If Threadfin were sunk before making the contact report, Yamato’s breakout might go undetected.
Foote’s problem was that Threadfin had to remain on the surface while the report was transmitted. This time of night, the airwaves were jammed with military communications traffic. While the signalman tapped out the message, trying to break through the clutter of transmissions, a Japanese destroyer had been alerted to Threadfin’s presence. Now the destroyer was racing like a greyhound in their direction. Foote had the diesel engines screaming at full power, thrashing across the surface at Threadfin’s maximum speed of 19.5 knots. It wasn’t enough. Judging by the radar blip, the Japanese destroyer was making a good 30 knots.
Foote was playing it down to the wire. In the near blackness of the overcast night, the Japanese gun crews wouldn’t be able to fire on him until they were very close, probably inside a mile. If they had radar-controlled guns, of course, they could start firing any minute now, but Foote was betting that they didn’t.
The signalman continued keying his transmitter, trying to get through. Foote kept trying to urge a few more knots from his already straining engines. The destroyer kept coming.
At 2000, after nearly half an hour of trying, the signalman was successful. At almost the same time, the Japanese destroyer gave up the chase. Threadfin was out of danger, at least for the moment. At 2020 came the acknowledgment that Pearl Harbor had received the report. But while Threadfin had been occupied with transmitting the report, her shot at glory—sinking the world’s biggest battleship—had slipped away. The fast-moving Japanese task force had pulled out of range and Threadfin would not be able to catch up.
Another sub, USS Hackleback, was on station 20 miles to the south. Her skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Frederick Janney, was watching the oncoming task force on his radar from 11 miles away. Judging from the size and disposition of the blips, there could be no doubt. It had to be Yamato and her entourage. Janney’s radio transmission at 2030 to Pearl Harbor would be a confirmation of Threadfin’s earlier report.
Before Hackleback could set up a torpedo attack, she, too, drew the attention of the destroyer screen. The submarine was forced to turn her stern to the target and retreat from another onrushing destroyer. By the time the Japanese destroyer withdrew, Hackleback was also out of firing range.
As Yamato and her task group headed south, the news of their sortie was causing a hubbub in Pearl Harbor. The report was forwarded to Chester Nimitz’s headquarters on Guam, to Fifth Fleet commander Raymond Spruance aboard New Mexico, and to Marc Mitscher on his flagship, the carrier Bunker Hill.
The flashed reports from the American submarines were also received in the communications room of Yamato. Staring at the intercepted message, the intelligence officer was perplexed. It was not encoded. The report had been sent in plain language, for all the world to read.
Enemy task force headed south. Course 190 degrees, speed 25 knots …
To Mitsuru Yoshida, in the radar room in Yamato, it was an ominous sign. It meat that the Americans were tracking Yamato’s every movement, and they didn’t care whether the Japanese knew it.
Looking at the intercepted message, Yamato’s navigation officer thought it was ironic. “I do believe we learn about our position faster from their side than from ours.”
By dawn on April 7, Yamato was transiting Osumi Strait, the narrow and shoal-filled passage between southern Kyushu and the northernmost island of the Ryukyu archipelago. Admiral Ito was still hoping to deceive the Americans about Yamato’s objective. On a tracking map, it would appear that Yamato was hugging the coast of Kyushu, making her way to the port of Sasebo on the northwestern tip of the island. Of course, the presence of such an escorting force—eight destroyers and a heavy cruiser—would be setting off alarms in every American intelligence office.
Ito’s only advantage that morning, he decided, was the weather. Intermittent rain showers were peppering the decks of the task force. Dark clouds scudded low over the tossing sea. The whitecaps provided ideal camouflage for the gray warships of the task force. Ito liked the forecast even better. The barometer was still falling, and the route to Okinawa was covered with squall lines and patches of heavy rain.
Since leaving the mouth of the Bungo Strait, there had been no more submarine contacts. Still, Ito knew the Americans were watching. All he had to do was gaze overhead. Enemy reconnaissance planes—fighters, long-range bombers, even lumbering Martin PBM flying boats—were flitting in and out of the clouds. Occasionally Yamato’s antiaircraft batteries would open up, but the gunfire was mostly a gesture of defiance. The planes were staying carefully out of range. They weren’t there to fight, just to watch.
While they were still close to the Kyushu shoreline, Ito ordered the two remaining floatplanes on Yamato to be catapulted and returned to land. Yamato normally carried a complement of seven “Pete” and “Jake” floatplanes. They were used for over-the-horizon reconnaissance and spotting to help direct Yamato’s big guns.
The two pilots, looking incongruous on Yamato’s bridge in their flight suits and leather helmets, dutifully asked permission to remain aboard the ship. The executive officer, Captain Nomura, waved them away. The floatplanes would be of no use in the coming battle, nor would the pilots, who would just get in the way. In any case,
they should be spared for a future airborne mission.
Each of the floatplanes was hoisted to one of the two immense catapults. Minutes later, one after the other, they hurtled down the catapult track and wobbled into the sky. After a cursory search for submarines in the path of the task force, they turned north and vanished in the murk.
Ito ordered another course correction, heading the task force back to the east. He planned to continue the deception into the morning by returning to a westerly course, letting the American spotter planes report the zigzagging to their headquarters. At the right moment he would abruptly wheel to the south and race at flank speed toward Okinawa. Sometime after nightfall he would be closing with the American fleet, bombarding the enemy shore positions, spreading havoc with the U.S. invasion force.
Yamato’s task force would have no air cover. That much had been decided even before the order for Ten-Go was written. Whatever airpower the Japanese Imperial Navy still possessed had already been allocated to the kikusui operation, the massed tokko attacks on the U.S. fleet.
The previous day, April 6, had been the first day of the first kikusui. The planners of Ten-Go, including Ugaki, Toyoda, and Ohnishi, were gambling that the American carrier-based warplanes would be too busy countering the waves of tokko raiders to mount a serious air attack on Yamato.
It was a pipe dream, Admiral Ito knew. Yamato’s fate was in the hands of the gods.
One of the screening destroyers, Asashimo, was having trouble. With the task force still steaming on the diversionary northwestward course, Asashimo was drifting slowly behind, unable to keep station. From the bridge of Yamato, Ens. Mitsuru Yoshida read the signal flags hoisted on the destroyer: “Engine trouble.” A few minutes later came another message: “Repairs will take five hours.”