The Conquering Tide (81 page)

Two weeks earlier, a massive explosion had ripped through a row of moored LSTs in the West Loch of Pearl Harbor. Its cause could never be established with certainty because all direct witnesses vanished in an instant. A subsequent investigation concluded that it was likely an ammunition-loading accident, perhaps caused by a dropped mortar round. The blast quickly touched off the magazines of adjoining vessels. Debris and bodies rained down across Ford Island and onto the decks of ships moored as far as half a mile away. Fires raged throughout the day and were not brought fully under control until the following morning. The disaster destroyed six LSTs slated for
FORAGER
. Casualties were heavy: 163 killed and 396 wounded. No reference to the incident was permitted to appear in the press.

If the West Loch disaster had occurred six months earlier, in the prelude to
FLINTLOCK
, it would have forced Nimitz to postpone the operation. But in the late spring of 1944, the Pacific Fleet was so abundantly outfitted that it could shrug off the loss of six LSTs. Two days after the accident, Nimitz assured King that salvage and clean-up operations were underway and “
FORAGER
target date will be delayed but little if at all.”
⁴

The Marianas were nothing like the low-lying coral atolls of the Gilberts and Marshalls. They were big, rugged islands, dominated by steep peaks, yawning gorges, undulating tablelands, and fields of sugarcane. The lowlands were overgrown with thick vegetation. Saipan, Guam, and Tinian, the three principal islands in the southern Marianas and
FORAGER
's main objectives, took in almost 300 square miles altogether. Saipan, twelve miles long, was dominated by a ridge of volcanic mountains running down the middle of most of its length. Its highest peak, Mount Tapotchau, rose to 1,554 feet. The western (or leeward) side of the island descended through terraced hills and sugarcane fields to a populated coastal plain. Three towns were situated on the west coast. Saipan was home to about 30,000 civilians, of whom about five-sixths were Japanese or Okinawans, the remainder mostly Chamorros and Koreans. The marines and soldiers of the Fifth Amphibious Corps had previously fought in flat, constricted terrain. In Saipan they would fight a wide campaign through towns, canefields, and mountainous backcountry. They would assume all the responsibilities and risks inherent in fighting among a civilian population.

Working with aerial photographs and radio intercepts, American intelligence analysts had estimated that the Japanese garrison numbered between 15,000 and 17,000 troops. That estimate was far short of the mark. Reinforcements shipped from Japan and China in April and May had brought the island's troop strength to almost 30,000. The garrison included 22,702 army troops (the Forty-Third Division and a mixed brigade, the Forty-Seventh Independent) and 6,690 naval personnel, including more of the elite Special Naval Landing Forces (“Japanese marines”) who had fought at Tarawa. Overall command of the Marianas and Palau was entrusted to Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, whom the Americans remembered well as the commander of
Kido Butai
, the carrier strike force that had attacked Pearl Harbor and been smashed six months later at Midway. Nagumo's command center was on Saipan. Tactical command of ground forces, and the preparation of the island's fixed fortifications, was left in the hands of Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito.

The Saipan garrison would have been even larger if not for the effective depredations of Pacific Fleet submarines. The Japanese army's Forty-Third Division had sailed from Japan in two transport groups. The first, a half-dozen dilapidated freighters escorted by a small cruiser-destroyer force, had left Tokyo Bay on May 14. During the miserable five-day voyage, a sergeant recalled, the men had been crammed into a stifling hold, “laid out on shelves like broiler chickens.”

You had your pack, rifle, all your equipment with you. You crouched there, your body bent. You kept your rubber-soled work shoes on continually, so your feet got damp and sweaty. Water dripped on you, condensation caused by human breathing. The hold stank with humanity. A few rope ladders and one narrow, hurriedly improvised stairway were the only ways out. We expected the ship to sink at any moment.
⁵

That first convoy reached Saipan without incident on May 19. But the second convoy, seven transports carrying 7,000 troops and most of the Forty-Third Division's heavy weaponry, supplies, and provisions, was attacked by American submarines. Five of the seven transports were torpedoed and destroyed. Most of the troops were rescued, but the sinkings deprived Saito's forces of armaments, provisions, and other important supplies. A rushed construction program was to have rendered Saipan “impregnable,” but in May the general complained to Imperial General Headquarters that a lack of needed construction materials and equipment had kept his men “standing around with their arms folded.” Coastal defenses and antiaircraft batteries had been erected hastily, and in many cases the work was incomplete. Defensive works were built of earth and wood, rather than heavy reinforced concrete as on Tarawa. Crates of ammunition, artillery, barbed wire, and other munitions were stored in naval depots near the western beachheads. American forces would seize much of this material intact. A report later submitted by Pacific Fleet headquarters estimated that just one-third of the heavy artillery on the island had been mounted in gun emplacements. Fortifications and firing positions above the landing beaches were “in much smaller quantities than had been heretofore encountered, with surprisingly few concrete pillboxes and blockhouses along the beaches.”
⁶

More than 1,000 miles lay between Saipan and Eniwetok, the westernmost atoll in American hands. Turner's amphibious fleet would be required
to operate at sea, within easy reach of the invasion beaches, possibly for many weeks. Reaching a safe anchorage would require a voyage of several days. Turner's vulnerable transports would depend entirely on the air protection provided by Task Force 58. Japanese airfields on Saipan, Guam, and Rota were thought to be abundantly supplied with land-based fighters and bombers, and they could be reinforced quickly by aircraft staged through airfields in the Bonin and Volcano island groups to the north. Given the record of Mitscher's recent carrier raids against enemy territory throughout the theater, the Americans could confidently rely on Task Force 58 to win control of the skies above the southern Marianas. But what happened if Ozawa's First Mobile Fleet appeared on the scene? Would Mitscher be cut loose to go after it? Or must he remain near the beachheads and the invasion fleet? Therein lay a worrying ambiguity that had not been directly addressed in Spruance's orders, or in
FORAGER
's operational plans.

The problem had been on Ernest King's mind throughout the spring. Though his instincts were always aggressive, the COMINCH had misgivings about the looming confrontation with the Japanese fleet. Earlier in his career, war games at the Naval War College had exposed the logistical strains that would develop as the Pacific Fleet moved deep into enemy waters. King assumed that the Imperial Navy had conserved an elite cadre of aviators. The Americans had underestimated the Japanese in the past. Might they be on the verge of repeating the error? In an off-the-record interview with reporters in February 1944, the COMINCH confided his anxieties: “We know the Japs are a very patient people, and will spend years, if necessary, laying a trap for us to walk into, and we fear we may wake up one of these bright mornings with a very bloody nose.”
⁷
From Tokyo's point of view, King said, “it is better strategy for them to let us come to the very end of our long lines of communications and then attack us. Why should they come to meet us on some middle ground and away from their bases? We have to come to them, and they know it. Therefore they will make it as difficult as possible.”
⁸

Nimitz assured the COMINCH that Spruance was prepared for the contingency of a major fleet battle. Task Force 58 possessed a formidable numerical advantage: fifteen carriers to Ozawa's nine, seven battleships to Ozawa's five, and 950 carrier planes to Ozawa's 450. But Spruance was convinced that the Japanese would not risk their fleet to oppose the invasion of the Marianas. He assumed that the enemy would wait for the most
advantageous tactical circumstances. Since the main body of the Japanese fleet had not contested MacArthur's landings on Biak, where it would have enjoyed a clear margin of naval superiority, Spruance assumed it would not travel more than 2,000 miles to the Marianas: “I was of the opinion that the Japanese fleet was waiting for a time when they could count on strong shore-based air to help them. Outlying groups of islands, such as the Marianas, could not be counted on for this, as we had demonstrated our ability to smother them with our superior carrier air strength.”
⁹

T
ASK
F
ORCE
58,
STEAMING
in the vanguard of the American fleet, completed fueling on June 8 and 9. The weather was clear and the sea mild. A steady light breeze blew from the east. Radar periodically registered “bogies” to the west, but none made contact with the task force or its aircraft until the afternoon of June 10, when F6Fs were vectored ahead to intercept and destroy two Japanese patrol planes. On the following morning, a flight of G4M bombers approached from the northwest. They were also intercepted and destroyed. It seemed likely that the Japanese were now alerted to the approach of a powerful carrier force.

The task force was now less than 200 miles from Saipan, well within air-striking range. With his presence unmasked, Mitscher knew he could expect another long, tense night dodging low-flying G4Ms armed with torpedoes. Even if the intruders did not score, they would keep the American ships on the defensive, maneuvering evasively, all night long. The effort would exhaust the crews on the eve of a long and demanding operation. Better to launch the customary fighter sweep now, he reasoned, rather than wait until dawn.
¹⁰
At 1:00 p.m., ships in Task Force 58 turned into the wind and began launching planes—sixteen Hellcats from each
Essex
-class carrier, twelve from each light carrier, 208 fighters altogether. All were fitted with belly tanks, and about half were armed with 500-pound bombs.

Arriving over Saipan, Guam, and Rota shortly before 3:00 p.m., they caught the Japanese unprepared. The Hellcats shot down about thirty Zeros and damaged some additional (unknown) number of aircraft on the ground. The attackers were met by intense antiaircraft fire, especially around the Japanese airfield on Orote Peninsula, Guam. Eleven F6Fs sustained fatal damage as a result of antiaircraft fire (three of the eleven downed pilots were later recovered). Alex Vraciu, now with the
Lexington
's VF-16, flew a strafing
run over a seaplane ramp on Saipan. A flak burst nearly took his plane down, but he stabilized and flew back to the
Lexington
, his engine running rough: “This is where the F6F Hellcat's ruggedness is really appreciated.”
¹¹

That night, Mitscher launched small “Bat Team” fighters to “heckle” the Japanese airfields—that is, to circle above them and strafe them intermittently, a tactic intended to keep the Japanese awake and leave them exhausted and on edge the following morning.

Kakuta's First Air Fleet had begun the day with approximately 435 aircraft manned and operable. The initial daylight fighter sweep on June 11 had destroyed as many as a third while also cratering the runways and demolishing many of the vital ground support facilities. At the end of the first week of aerial combat and carrier strikes, Kakuta's flyable inventory was reduced to about a hundred planes. The remaining aircraft had survived only because they had been camouflaged under palm fronds and brush and dispersed to locations far from the airfields. Air reinforcements arrived in small numbers from the home islands and from Truk. But the First Air Fleet, upon which so much hope had rested, never posed more than a nuisance to American forces.

Spruance ordered two task groups, half of Mitscher's force, to divert north and raid the airfields on Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima. Mitscher assigned the job to Task Groups 58.1 and 58.4, commanded by Rear Admirals Jocko Clark and William K. Harrill, respectively. Task Group 58.1 reached its point option on the afternoon of June 15 and launched a large composite strike against Iwo and Chichi Jima. Hellcats shot down about two dozen Japanese fighters while the accompanying bombers worked over the airfields, ammunition dumps, fuel tanks, and ground complexes. F6Fs armed with small fragmentation bombs cratered the runways and then banked around for low-altitude strafing runs. Again, the sturdy construction of the American planes worked to their advantage, and many damaged or shot-up aircraft returned safely to the carriers.

A small typhoon was brewing in the area. Late afternoon brought towering seas, and green water broke over the flight decks. On the
Belleau Wood
, a plane hurtled over a crash barrier and started a raging fire. Winds and sea rose steadily through the night. Flight operations were impossible in those tempestuous conditions, so Clark maneuvered his carriers well to the east, into calmer waters. By midday on June 16, the storm had abated enough to allow for another large strike. VB-2 pilot Harold Buell, flying a SB2C Helldiver
from the
Hornet
, was assigned to attack shipping in the small harbor of Chichi Jima, a place nicknamed the “punch bowl.” It was a technically difficult dive into a snug harbor surrounded by steep hills, with only a single exit to the west. Antiaircraft fire was intense. Buell, who returned to strike this same harbor several more times in the course of the war, later wrote, “Chichi Jima was a tough, dirty target that always scared the hell out of me and left me feeling like I hadn't accomplished anything except to stay alive when I got safely outside the bowl again.”
¹²