The Twilight Warriors

by Robert Gandt

  2 Schub and Nickerson actions taken from Air Group Ten Action Report, April 12, 1945.

  3 Frank Jackson collision with FM-2 Wildcat: Rielly, Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships, 132.

  4 Gray, Halbe, and Sweeny actions in Air Group Ten Action Report, April 12, 1945, and Air Group Ten Cruise Book 1945.

  27 Black Friday

  1 Beauford Anderson earns Medal of Honor during Japanese counterattack: Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, 134–35.

  2 “Attention all hands! President Roosevelt is dead”: Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 231.

  3 “The dreadful loss … will make you orphans on this island”: Appleman, Okinawa: The Last Battle, 125.

  4 Loss of Mark Orr in night action: Air Group Ten Cruise Book 1945.

  5 Feuding between Army and Marine Corps over Howlin’ Mad Smith: Keith Wheeler, The Road to Tokyo, 109.

  6 Worst loss of U.S. armored vehicles in the campaign: Appleman, Okinawa: The Last Battle, 203–4.

  7 Buckner realizes assault has failed, “Progress not quite satisfactory”: Simon B. Buckner and Joseph Stilwell, Seven Stars: The Okinawa Battle Diaries of Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. and Joseph Stilwell, 42.

  8 Ugaki believes air attacks on Kyushu come from Okinawa: Ugaki, Fading Victory, 586–87.

  28 Keep Moving and Keep Shooting

  1 Lerch, Kirkwood, and Quiel actions described in Norwald Quiel letter to author and in Air Group Ten Action Report, April 16, 1945.

  2 “Keep moving and keep shooting”: Purdy skipper to Laffey captain Becton, quoted by Dale Harper in World War II, March 1998.

  29 As Long as a Gun Will Fire

  1 Ordeal of Laffey described by her skipper, Julian Becton, in his The Ship That Would Not Die.

  2 “I couldn’t even hold a pencil”: interview with Laffey quartermaster Ari Phoutrides.

  3 “I’ll never abandon ship as long as a gun will fire”: Laffey skipper Becton quoted in Time, June 4, 1945, and from Phoutrides interview.

  4 Clarke, James, Farmer, Ehrhard actions from Ray James interview and from Air Group Ten Action Report, April 16, 1945.

  5 Laffey endures more kamikaze attacks than any other and stays afloat: Harper, World War II, March 1998.

  30 Glory Day

  1 Weems and Schlag actions from Charles Schlag interview and Air Group Ten Action Report, April 16, 1945.

  2 Pringle and Bryant under kamikaze attack described in Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 237–38, and Rielly, Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships, 174–76.

  3 Loss of Red Bailey at Kokubu, and actions of Hyland, Cordray, and flight drawn from Air Group Ten Action Report, April 16, 1945, and interviews of VBF-10 pilots.

  31 Target Intrepid

  1 “One day … one of these bastards is going to hit the bull’s eye”: Radarman Ray Stone in his memoir, My Ship!

  2 Fred Meyer watches the Zeke aiming at Intrepid’s stern: Erickson, Tail End Charlies! 121.

  3 “There was Old Glory, stiff as a board”: interview with plane captain Felix Novelli.

  4 Intrepid repaired, lands her aircraft aboard: USS Intrepid War Diary, April 16, 1945.

  5 “It was just like they never existed”: Erickson laments his lost squadronmates in Tail End Charlies! 124.

  6 Hays and wingmen, unable to return to Intrepid, make odyssey around Pacific: interview with Wesley Hays.

  7 Bitzegaio wounded in seat of pants related in Ed Deutschman correspondence and Air Group Ten Cruise Book 1945.

  32 Call Me Ernie

  1 “I much prefer a bird dog that you have to whistle in”: Buckner on Maj. Gen. Andrew Bruce, Buckner and Stilwell, Seven Stars, 24.

  2 Comparing Ie Shima terrain to Iwo Jima: Appleman, Okinawa: The Last Battle, 150. Another enemy-held feature called “the Pinnacle” confronted the 24th Corps in the south of Okinawa.

  3 “Their firepower is so great we dared not show our heads”: Japanese soldier’s diary entry on Ie Shima landings, ibid., 157.

  4 Ernie Pyle’s death on Ie Shima is drawn from various accounts including David Nichols’s Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches, 32, and Lee Miller, The Story of Ernie Pyle, 419–26.

  5 “Base of Pinnacle completely surrounded despite bitterest fight I have ever witnessed”: Andrew Bruce quoted by Appleman, Okinawa: The Last Battle, 177.

  6 Japanese lose 4,700 dead on Ie Shima: Gordon Rottman, Okinawa, 1945, 69.

  7 Sailors go ashore on Mog Mog: Wheeler, The Road to Tokyo, 88.

  33 Counteroffensive

  1 Nimitz worries that the Okinawa battle is dragging on too long: Hallas, Killing Ground on Okinawa, 10.

  2 “If this line isn’t moving within five days, we’ll get someone here to move it so we can all get out from under these damn air attacks”: Nimitz to Buckner, ibid., 10.

  3 Buckner concerned that the proposed amphibious landing could turn into “another Anzio”: ibid., 11.

  4 Spruance is “impatient for some of Holland Smith’s drive”: Buell, The Quiet Warrior, 356–47.

  5 Col. Yahara believes Lt. Gen. Cho’s counteroffensive is doomed: Hiromichi Yahara, The Battle for Okinawa, 196.

  6 Counteroffensive is a disaster from which the 32nd Army will not recover: Rottman, Okinawa 1945, 73–75.

  7 “from now on I leave everything up to you”: Lt. Gen. Ushijima to Col. Yahara, in Yahara, The Battle for Okinawa, 41.

  34 Bottom of the Barrel

  1 Hitler’s death lamented by Ugaki: Ugaki, Fading Victory, 603.

  2 “Carriers That Way” sign, cited by Vice Adm. C. R. Brown in foreword to Inoguchi and Nakajima, The Divine Wind, vii.

  3 Morrison attacked by biplanes: Rielly, Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships, 213.

  4 Ingraham receives full attention of kamikazes: Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 255.

  5 Actions of the British Task Force 57 and effects of kamikazes on armored flight decks described ibid., 264–66.

  35 Gone with the Spring

  1 “When I start inhaling these, I don’t want to waste time reordering”: Windy Hill in Guam, quoted in Erickson’s Tail End Charlies! 126–27.

  2 Nimitz is frustrated by the continuing losses to radar pickets. He asks Adm. Forrest Sherman whether he didn’t think the kamikazes would lay off the pickets in search of bigger game. Sherman didn’t think so. “You could get a man down quicker by hitting him on the same tooth than by punching him all over.” Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 256.

  3 Ugaki is sure that “when our troops can see enemy vessels sunk and set on fire in front of their very eyes and observe planes with the Rising Sun mark fly overhead, their morale will soar.” Ugaki, Fading Victory, 604–5.

  4 Reaction in Japan to the surrender of Germany: Robert Sherrod, History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II, 389.

  5 Turner orders full gun salvoes to salute the troops in Europe: Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 268.

  6 Robert Klingman chops off the Japanese Nick’s tail: “Strangest Dogfight Ever,” Leatherneck, January 2007, and http://www.f4ucorsair.com/vmf312/312.html.

  7 “Flowers of the special attack are falling”: poem by Ugaki lamenting the loss of tokko airmen, Fading Victory, 610.

  36 Change of Command

  1 “Alert! Alert! Two planes diving on the Bunker Hill!”: Taylor, The Magnificent Mitscher, 290–91.

  2 Mitscher evacuates flag plot, observes a third kamikaze diving on Bunker Hill: ibid., 291.

  3 Bunker Hill’s agony continues: Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 263.

  4 “Flatley, tell my task group commanders that if the Japs keep this up they’re going to grow hair on my head yet”: Taylor, The Magnificent Mitscher, 297.

  5 The service for Shunsuke Tomiyasu was one of the rare occasions when the remains of a kamikaze were given a dignified burial. For years after the war, Tomiyasu’s name was incorrectly reported as “Tomi Zae”; http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/stories/tomiyasu/index.htm.

  6 Enterprise becomes last ca
rrier of the war to be struck by a kamikaze: http://www.cv6.org/1945/1945.htm.

  7 Longshaw is lost with eighty-six crew: Theodore Roscoe, U.S. Destroyer Operations in World War II, 480–81.

  8 Kikusui No. 7 details: Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 279.

  9 USS Braine crewmen lost in kikusui No. 8: Rielly, Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships, 279.

  10 Okinawa now the costliest naval engagement in U.S. history: Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 272.

  11 “A less serene man and courageous man might, before reaching this point, have asked, ‘Is this island worth the cost?’ ”: Morison describing Spruance’s tenacity, ibid., 272.

  12 Mitscher and his staff look “like a parade of scarecrows”: Taylor, The Magnificent Mitscher, 300.

  37 Ritual of Death

  1 Ushijima buys time with the “offensive retreat”: Yahara, The Battle for Okinawa, 88–89.

  2 “It’s all over now but cleaning up pockets of resistance”: Buckner quote in Appleman, Okinawa: The Last Battle, 422.

  3 Journalists Bigart and Lawrence criticisms of Buckner from Bill Sloan, The Ultimate Battle: Okinawa 1945, 312.

  4 MacArthur accuses Okinawa commanders of “sacrificing thousands of American soldiers”: “The Trouble I’ve Seen: The Nils Andersen Story,” http://notorc.blogspot.com/2007/07/lest-we-forget-sacred-grove-at-montrose.html.

  5 MacArthur will see to it that Buckner does not play a role in the invasion of Japan: Cole C. Kingseed, Old Glory Stories, 73.

  6 “If we’d scattered our forces, we might have got licked”: Buckner quote from Seven Stars, 80.

  7 Japanese gunners fire five rounds from their concealed position: George Feifer, The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb, 378–79.

  8 The circumstances of Simon Buckner’s death are covered in multiple sources, including Appleman’s Okinawa: The Last Battle, Sloan’s The Ultimate Battle, and Feifer’s The Battle of Okinawa.

  9 Ushijima rejects Buckner’s urging to surrender: Yahara, The Battle for Okinawa, 136.

  10 Ushijima and Cho commit ritual suicide: ibid., 156.

  38 Setting Sun

  1 Thoughts and impressions of the Tail End Charlies aboard Intrepid returning to the Pacific are drawn from multiple interviews and correspondence with pilots of VBF-10 and VF-10, including James South, Wesley Hays, Ray James, and Charles Schlag, and the published memoir of Roy D. Erickson.

  2 “if there is anything that sounds unreasonable to a pilot, it is the idea that he should practice encountering fire from an anti-aircraft gun”: Hyland, Air Group Ten Action Report, August 6, 1945.

  3 Ugaki will “follow in the footsteps of those many loyal officers and men”: Ugaki, Fading Victory, 664–65.

  4 Ugaki intends to “ram into the arrogant American ships, displaying the real spirit of a Japanese warrior”: ibid., 666.

  5 Truman dreads “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other”: Feifer, The Battle of Okinawa, 413.

  6 “Did I really do my part?” Yoshida, Requiem for Battleship Yamato, 150.

  REFERENCES

  Books

  Appleman, Roy E., James Burns, Russell Gugeler, and John Stevens. Okinawa: The Last Battle. Center for Military History, 1948.

  Astor, Gerald. Operation Iceberg. Dell, 1998.

  Axell, Albert, and Hideaki Kase. Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods. Longman, 2002.

  Becton, Julian F. The Ship That Would Not Die. Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1980.

  Blackburn, Tom. The Jolly Rogers: The Story of Tom Blackburn and Navy Fighting Squadron VF-17. Zenith Press, 2006.

  Buckner, Simon B., and Joseph Stilwell. Seven Stars: The Okinawa Battle Diaries of Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. and Joseph Stilwell. Texas A&M University Press, 2004.

  Buell, Thomas B. The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. Little, Brown, 1974.

  ———. Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. Little, Brown, 1980.

  Burrell, Robert S. The Ghosts of Iwo Jima. Texas A&M University Press, 2006.

  Dyer, George C. The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973.

  Erickson, Roy D. Tail End Charlies! Turner Publishing Company, 1995.

  Feifer, George. The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb. Lyons Press, 2001.

  Hallas, James H. Killing Ground on Okinawa: The Battle for Sugar Loaf Hill. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996.

  Hara, Tameichi. Japanese Destroyer Captain. Naval Institute Press, 2007.

  Hastings, Max. Retribution. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

  Hornfischer, James D. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. Bantam, 2004.

  Huber, T. M. Okinawa 1945. Military Press, 2001.

  ———. Japan’s Battle of Okinawa April–June 1945. University Press of the Pacific, 2005.

  Inoguchi, Rikihei, and Tadashi Nakajima. The Divine Wind: Japan’s Kamikaze Force in World War II. Naval Institute Press, 1958.

  Jablonski, Edward. Airwar. Doubleday, 1971.

  Kingseed, Cole C. Old Glory Stories. Naval Institute Press, 2006.

  Leckie, Robert. Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War Two. Penguin Books, 1996.

  Manchester, William. American Caesar. Little, Brown, 1978.

  Miller, Lee G. The Story of Ernie Pyle. Viking Press, 1950.

  Millot, Bernard. Divine Thunder. Pinnacle Books, 1971.

  Morison, Samuel Eliot. Leyte, June 1944–January 1945. Castle, 2001.

  ———. The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Little, Brown, 1963.

  ———. Victory in the Pacific: 1945. Little, Brown, 1960.

  Naito, Hatsuho. Thunder Gods: The Kamikaze Pilots Tell Their Story. Dell, 1989.

  Nichols, David. Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches. Random House, 1986.

  Parrish, Thomas. The Simon and Schuster Encyclopedia of World War II, 1978.

  Potter, E. B. Nimitz. Naval Institute Press, 1976.

  Pyle, Ernie. Last Chapter. Henry Holt, 1946.

  Reynolds, Clark G. The Carrier War. Time-Life Books, 1983.

  Rielly, Robin L. Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships. Casemate, 2008.

  Roberts, John. The Aircraft Carrier Intrepid. Naval Institute Press, 1982.

  Roscoe, Theodore. U.S. Destroyer Operations in World War II. Naval Institute Press, 1953.

  Rottman, Gordon. Okinawa, 1945. Osprey Publishing, 2002.

  Sakaida, Henry, and Koji Takaki. Genda’s Blade: Japan’s Squadron of Aces: 343 Kokutai. Classic Publications, 2003.

  Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan. Keystone: The American Occupation of Okinawa and U.S.-Japanese Relations. Texas A&M University Press, 2001.

  Sears, David. At War with the Wind. Citadel Press, 2008.

  Sherrod, Robert. History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II. Combat Forces Press, 1952.

  Sloan, Bill. The Ultimate Battle: Okinawa 1945. Simon & Schuster, 2007.

  Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun. Vintage Books, 1985.

  Spurr, Russell. A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945. Newmarket Press, 1981.

  Stone, Raymond T. My Ship! G. P. Books, 2003.

  Styling, Mark. Corsair Aces of World War 2. Osprey Publishing, 1995.

  Taylor, Theodore. The Magnificent Mitscher. Naval Institute Press, 1951.

  Thomas, Evan. Sea of Thunder. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

  Tillman, Barrett. Corsair: The F4U in World War II and Korea. Naval Institute Press, 1979.

  Toland, John. Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945. Bantam, 1970.

  Toliver, Raymond, and Trevor Constable. Fighter Aces of the U.S.A. Schiffer Press, 1997.

  Tuohy, William. America’s Fighting Admirals. Zenith Press, 2007.

  Ugaki, Matome. Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki 1941–945. Trans. Masataka Chithaya. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.

 
; Wheeler, Keith. The Road to Tokyo. Time-Life Books, 1979.

  Yahara, Hiromichi. The Battle for Okinawa. John Wiley and Sons, 1995.

  Yoshida, Mitsuru. Requiem for Battleship Yamato. University of Washington Press, 1985.

  Zollo, Anthony F. USS Intrepid CV-11 CVA-11 CVS-11. Turner, 1993.

  Interviews and Correspondence

  Anderson, Dave (VBF-10), October 31, 2008.

  Clifford, James (VBF-10), February 25, 1945.

  Davis, William (VBF-10), February 28, 2009.

  Deutschman, Edward (VF-10), May 18, 2009.

  Dubinsky, Maurice (VBF-10), March 22, 2009.

  Gray, Les (VF-10), October 9, 2009.

  Hays, Wesley B. (VBF-10), July 15, 2009.

  Hollister, James O. (VBF-10), March 3, 2009.

  James, Ray (VF-10), May 14, 2009.

  Novelli, Felix (USS Intrepid), March 3, 2008.

  Oglevee, Don (VF-10), October 9, 2009.

  Phoutrides, Ari (USS Laffey), August 17, 2009.

  Quiel, Norwald R. (VF-10), June 16, 2009.

  Schlag, Charles (VF-10), September 1, 2009.

  South, James (VF-10), October 31, 2008.

  Stolfa, Frank (VF-10 night fighters), June 2, 2009.

  Verdolini, V. J. (USS Randolph), June 10, 2009.

  Wilmeth, Orlo (VF-10), May 26, 2009.

  Internet

  History of USS Cabot. http://www.mcallen.lib.tx.us/books/cabot/cab00_02.htm (accessed January 15, 2009).

  Kamikaze images. http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/stories/tomiyasu/index.htm (on kamikaze who struck Enterprise May 14, 1945; accessed April 1, 2009).

  Nova. “Sinking the Supership,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/ (accessed March 1, 2009).

  USS Yorktown at Okinawa. http://www.yorktownsailor.com/yorktown (accessed May 5, 2009).

  World War II database. http://ww2db.com.

  Articles

  “Year of Attack,” Time, February 7, 1944.

  “Mechanical Man,” Time, June 26, 1944.

  “For Once, Men Could Laugh,” Robert Sherrod, Time, April 9, 1945.