Carrier (1999) (6 page)

Though the original Operation Judgment plan called for almost thirty Swordfish torpedo bombers from both
Eagle
and
Illustrious,
engine problems with
Eagle
and a hangar fire on
Illustrious
cut that number considerably. In the end, only
Illustrious,
along with an escort force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, set out to conduct the attack. On the night of November 11th,
Illustrious
and several escorting cruisers broke off from the main force, and made a run north into the Gulf of Taranto. Later that night,
Illustrious
launched a pair of airstrikes using twenty-one Swordfish torpedo bombers (only a dozen of which carried the modified shallow-water torpedoes). The two strikes sank three of the six Italian battleships then in port and damaged several smaller ships and some shore facilities.
¹⁰
In just a few hours, the brilliantly executed strike had cut the Italian battleship fleet in half, and changed the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean.

While most of the world’s attention was focused at the time on the Battle of Britain, the eyes of naval leaders were turned on Operation Judgment. Even before the Italians began salvage operations, naval observers from around the world began to pour into Taranto to view the wreckage, and write reports back to their home countries. Most of these reports were quietly read and filed away, or else were read and discounted (such was still the potency of the battleship myth). In Tokyo, however, the report of the Japanese naval attaché was read with interest. This report eventually became the blueprint for an even more devastating carrier raid the following year, when over 360 aircraft launched from six big carriers would make the strike. The target would be entire U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Out of the tiny strike on Taranto emerged the decisive naval weapon of the Second World War.

Less than six months after the Taranto raid, battleship enthusiasts got a shocking dose of reality with the sea chase and sinking of the German battleship
Bismarck,
one of the most powerful warships in the world. After the
Bismarck
broke out of the Baltic Sea into the North Atlantic, she sank the British battle cruiser HMS
Hood.
Outraged at this defeat (and humiliation), Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the
Bismarck
to be sunk at all costs. Though she was damaged enough during her fight with the
Hood
to need repairs in port, and her British enemies were in hot pursuit,
Bismarck
was still a dangerous foe, and was able to slip away from her pursuers and make for a French port.

She might well have escaped, but for the efforts of two British aircraft carriers. A strike by Swordfish torpedo bombers from the carrier
Victorious
slowed down the German monster, while another strike from the carrier Ark
Royal
crippled her. The following day,
Bismarck
was finally sunk by shellfire from the British battleships
King George V
and
Rodney.
In the celebration that followed, the contributions of the Swordfish crews from
Victorious
and
Ark Royal
generally went unnoticed—again. However, naval observers took note and wrote their reports home; and naval professionals around the world began to wonder if aircraft from carriers
might
do more than just hit ships in harbor. One of the most modern and powerful ships in the world had been crippled by a single torpedo dropped by a nearly obsolete, fabric-covered biplane in the open ocean.

Before the end of 1941, further proof that the age of battleships had passed came with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the sinking a few days later of the British battleship
Prince of Wales
and the battle cruiser
Repulse
by land-based aircraft. While battleships would continue to play an important part in World War II, it was naval aircraft flying from carriers that would win the coming naval war. The strike on Taranto and the crippling of the
Bismarck
had seen to that.

Now that the new weapon was proven, the next stage in its evolution was to work out its most effective use. This came during 1943. That year saw a period of rebuilding for both the United States and Japan. After the vast carrier-verses-carrier battles (Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz) that had dominated the previous year’s fighting, the two navies had reached something like stalemate and exhausted their fleets of prewar carriers. Meanwhile, in the Solomons, on New Guinea, and in the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific, Allied ground forces were conducting their first amphibious invasions on the road to Tokyo.

On January 1st, 1943, the first of a new generation of American fleet carriers, the
Essex-
class (CV-9), was commissioned. Over the next two years, almost two dozen of these incomparable vessels came off the builder’s ways. Utilizing all the lessons learned from earlier U.S. carriers, the Essex-class vessels were big, fast, and built to take the kinds of punishment that modern naval combat sometimes dishes out. Their designs also gave them huge margins for modifications and systems growth. So adaptable were
Essex-
class ships that a few were still in service in the 1970’s, flying supersonic jets armed with nuclear weapons!

The ships of the
Essex-class
were just the tip of the America carrier production iceberg in 1943, for the U.S. Navy also approved the conversion of nine cruiser hulls into light carriers (with a complement of thirty-five aircraft). Though small and cramped, they were fast enough (thirty-three knots) to keep up with their
Essex
-class siblings. Known as the
Independence
class (CVL-22), they served well throughout the remainder of the war.

Along with the fast fleet carriers, the United States also produced almost a hundred smaller escort, or “jeep,” carriers. Built on hulls designed for merchant vessels, they could make about twenty knots and carry around two dozen aircraft. While their crews joked wryly that their ships were “combustible, vulnerable, and expendable” (from their designator: CVE), the escort carriers fulfilled a variety of necessary tasks. These included antisubmarine warfare (ASW), aircraft transportation, amphibious support, close air support (CAS), etc. This had the effect of freeing the big fleet carriers for their coming duels with the Imperial Japanese Navy.

As the new fleet carriers headed west into the Pacific, they would stop at Pearl Harbor for training and integration into carrier forces. Together with a steady flow of fast, new battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and other support ships, they would be formed into what were called “task groups.” Experience gained during raids on various Japanese island outposts in 1943 showed that the optimum size for such groups was three or four carriers (additional carriers tended to make the groups unwieldy), a pair of fast battleships, four cruisers, and between twelve and sixteen destroyers.

On those occasions when larger forces were called for, two or more task groups were joined into a “task force.” These were commanded by senior Naval aviators, and were assigned joint strike missions, refueling assignments, and even independent raids. Though it took time to pull this huge organization together and find the men capable of leading it, by the winter of 1943/1944, what became known as Task Force 34/58 was ready for action.
¹¹
Task Force 34/58, the most powerful naval force in history, put the lid on the Japanese Navy’s coffin, and nailed it shut.

The ships of the fast carrier force at Ulithi Atoll in 1944.

In February of 1944, now composed of four task groups with twelve fast carriers, Task Force 58, under Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, raided the Japanese fleet anchorage at Truk, wrecking the base and driving the Imperial Fleet out of the Central Pacific. Mitscher, a crusty pioneer naval aviator, aided by his legendary chief of staff Captain Arleigh Burke, ran Task Force 58 like a well-oiled machine. By the end of May, preparations had been completed for an invasion of the Marianas Island group, just 1,500 nm/2,800 km from Tokyo (thus within range of the new B-29 heavy bombers). Since these islands were essential to the defense of the home islands, the Japanese had to fight for them. The largest carrier-versus-carrier fight of the war resulted.

As soon as the invasion forces of Admiral Spruance’s 5th Fleet hit the beaches of Saipan in early June, the entire Japanese battle fleet sortied from their base in northern Borneo to counterattack. When they arrived on June 19th, the nine carriers of the revitalized Japanese carrier force (three large, three medium, and three light fleet carriers) got in the first strike, launching their planes against Task Force 58 (now with seven large and eight light fleet carriers). That was their final hurrah; for the Japanese strike simply fell apart against the radar-directed fighters and antiaircraft fire of the American task groups. Of the 326 Japanese planes launched against the American fleet, 220 were shot down. Not a single U.S. ship was sunk or seriously damaged.

The next day, the U.S. fleet found the Japanese carrier force and launched a counterstrike. Blasting through the surviving Japanese planes, they sank the carrier
Hiyo
and several vital fleet oilers, and damaged numerous other ships before returning to Task Force 58.
¹²
The next day, the decisively beaten Japanese force withdrew to Japan. So great were the losses to Japanese air crews that their carriers would never again sortie as a credible force. When the U.S. 3rd Fleet invaded the Philippines in October of 1944, the four Japanese carriers that took part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf were used purely as decoys, and sunk by air attacks from Task Force 34.

When Japan surrendered in September of 1945, the United States had over a hundred carriers in commission or being built. Within months, the Navy had been slashed to a fraction of its wartime peak. Only the newest and most capable carriers and other warships were retained in the tiny Navy that remained. Part of this massive force reduction was a consequence of the simple fact that the war had ended and the naval threat from the Axis nations had been eliminated. But that was not the only rationale for cutting the fleet and other conventional forces.

The major reason for the cut was the development of the atomic bomb. Specifically, the leadership of the new United States Air Force (USAF) had convinced the Truman Administration that their force of heavy bombers armed with the new nuclear weapons could enforce the peace, protect the interests of the United States, and do it without large conventional ground and naval forces. This was a debatable point, which events were soon to prove hugely wrong. But the immediate result was a mass of hostility that broke out between the Navy and USAF in the last years of the 1940’s.

The hostility did not start then, however. It had its roots in the 1920’s in the battles over airpower between the Navy and Brigadier General Billy Mitchell. Mitchell, an airpower zealot and visionary, was not an easy man to like. He had already fought a losing battle to convince Army leaders of the virtues of airpower. Meanwhile, the small corps of Army aviators saw the developing strength of Naval aviation, which some of them saw as taking funds and support that should have been theirs. To set right this (perceived) imbalance, Mitchell and his fliers (against orders) sank the captured German battleship
Ostfriesland,
an act that did not sit well with the Navy. In 1925, fed up with Mitchell’s stings and barbs, his superiors brought him up before a court-martial, where Mitchell, ever unrepentant, stated that airpower made the navies of the world both obsolete and unnecessary. Not surprisingly, the Navy (and others) publicly defended themselves against these charges, and they did it so effectively that Mitchell’s professional career was finished. Mitchell’s supporters never forgot or forgave that. The result was a multi-decade blood feud.

The Navy/Air Force war reached its peak during the 1949 fight for new weapons appropriations. Then as now, new weapons systems were expensive. Then, as now, the Navy and the Air Force saw it as a zero-sum game: You win/I lose (or vice versa). Practically speaking, the fight was over whether the nation’s defense would be built around the new B-36 long-range bomber (armed with the H-bomb), or a new fleet of large aircraft carriers (called supercarriers) armed with a new series of naval aircraft that could carry atomic weapons. There was only enough money in the defense budget for one of these systems, and the Navy lost. The first supercarrier, the USS
United States
(CV-58), was canceled by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson just days after her keel had been laid at Newport News, Virginia.

Outraged, the Navy’s leadership made their case for Naval aviation in a series of heated (some would say fiery) congressional hearings that called into question the capabilities of the B-36 and the handling of the matter by Secretary Johnson and the Air Force. Johnson did not accept this “Revolt of the Admirals” patiently; the Navy’s leadership suffered for their rebellion against him. Many top admirals were forcibly retired, and the Navy paid a high price in personnel and appropriations.
¹³
However, it did manage to win some fiscal support for modernization of older fleet carriers and development of new jet aircraft.