CHESTER NIMITZ WAS NOT ONE TO FLAUNT THE POWER OF HIS towering rank. In presiding over discussions at his headquarters, the CINCPAC was usually content to listen more than he spoke. He elicited the reasoned opinions of planners and commanders; he allowed a full airing of objections and criticisms, unimpeded by a stifling deference to rank or seniority; he shepherded his subordinates toward consensus before fixing his signature to operational orders. Rarely had he overruled his leading advisers, and never over their unanimous opposition.
But on December 7, 1943—the second anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—when the commanders who had recently returned from GALVANIC convened at the conference table in his headquarters, Nimitz announced that he had chosen a daring bypass strategy for the next phase of the central Pacific campaign. The Fifth Fleet would steam directly into the heart of the Marshalls and land amphibious forces on the giant atoll of Kwajalein. Japanese-held atolls and airfields to the south and east—Maloelap, Wotje, Mille, and Jaluit—would be bombed and shelled into oblivion, but they would not be seized until later, if at all.
It was a more ambitious gambit than Ray Spruance, Kelly Turner, or Holland Smith had envisioned, and the three united in resisting it. Spruance was concerned that the islands bypassed to his rear would threaten sea communications from Hawaii and the Gilberts. The Japanese would fly planes into the bypassed airfields and use them to harass the transports and auxiliaries as they attempted to supply the fleet and its new advanced bases. Moreover, the fast carriers had already been assigned to raid Japanese bases to the south, and once they were gone, Spruance would not have enough airpower to maintain pressure on the bypassed airfields. Holland Smith, having returned from the devastation of Tarawa with sharp opinions, wanted to concentrate the entire Amphibious Corps on a single objective in the southeastern Marshalls. He would have two divisions for the next invasion, and did not want them divided.
But Nimitz was paying close attention to intelligence derived from reconnaissance flights and radio intercepts. The Japanese had poured reinforcements into the outer (eastern) Marshalls at the expense of Kwajalein. The latter would be a much easier nut to crack, and the bypassed islands could be tolerably neutralized with steady air pressure and local control of the sea. “We’re going into Kwajalein,” said Nimitz. “The Japanese aren’t expecting us there.”1 The CINCPAC held firm against the objections of his subordinates. When the issues had been fully aired, he implied that if the existing fleet and amphibious commanders didn’t want to go into Kwajalein, he would assign the task to others who did.
Nimitz’s bold approach was to be vindicated by subsequent events. The Japanese navy did not anticipate the move against Kwajalein. Commander Chikataka Nakajima of the Combined Fleet staff told American interrogators after the war, “There was divided opinion as to whether you would land at Jaluit or Mille. Some thought you would land on Wotje but there were few who thought you would go right to the heart of the Marshalls and take Kwajalein. There were so many possible points of invasion in the Marshalls that we could not consider any one a strong point and consequently dispersed our strength.”2
Forward fleet bases were to be had in the Marshalls. The region’s capacious atolls offered protected anchorages large enough to accommodate the entire Pacific Fleet. Hawaii was thousands of miles behind the front lines and growing steadily more distant with each new westward thrust. The fast carrier task force had extraordinary mobility and reach, but the long voyage back to Pearl Harbor for provisions and repairs cut short its forays and inhibited its seakeeping potential. When operating far to the west of Pearl, Jocko Clark recalled, “you would hit three days at most and go back, so you couldn’t hit more than once a month or once every six weeks.”3 With these considerations in mind, Spruance asked for permission to take the atoll of Majuro, 270 miles southeast of Kwajalein. Majuro’s large, placid lagoon would offer a protected fueling area and a superb advanced base for the mobile floating logistical forces of Service Squadron Ten. Nimitz assented.
Holland Smith, wary of Japanese defenses on Majuro, was determined not to disperse his landing forces. But the latest and best intelligence indicated that the Japanese had pulled most of their troops out of the atoll. In a December conference at CINCPAC headquarters, Nimitz turned to Ed Layton, the fleet intelligence officer, and said, “Tell General Smith how many Japanese are there, the number you told me this morning.”
“Six,” Layton replied.
“Six?” Smith said. “You mean six thousand.”
“No, six,” insisted Layton. Radio eavesdroppers had intercepted a ration report indicating that the remaining garrison on Majuro was consuming six rations per day. Based on that and other intelligence, General Smith was persuaded that a single battalion would be more than sufficient to overrun Majuro.4
Nimitz advised Admiral King of his plans on December 14. The operation was given the code name FLINTLOCK, with D-Day on both Kwajalein and Majuro set for January 31, 1944. Spruance would remain as commander of the Fifth Fleet, Turner as commander of Amphibious Forces, and Holland Smith in charge of the assault corps. Task Force 58, which now consisted of twelve carriers embarking more than 700 planes, would establish temporary air supremacy over the entire region. Beginning two days before D-Day, the carrier planes would rain devastation down on the airfields on Kwajalein and those in the southeastern Marshalls.
THE TASK FORCE 58 that put to sea for FLINTLOCK was nearly twice the size of the force that had struck the same atolls less than two months earlier. The armada of flattops and screening ships, 217 vessels in all, had expanded so suddenly and spectacularly that it seemed a different entity altogether, as indeed it was. Veteran dive-bomber pilot Harold Buell, circling above in his SB2C, “could not look over the huge fleet, stretching as far as eye could see, without a shiver going up my spine.”5
Task Force 58 was now separated into four task groups. Each was a small fleet in itself, steaming in a semi-autonomous circular cruising formation, and commanded by a rear admiral. The task groups remained adjacent to one another, near enough to provide mutual support but far enough apart to avoiding running afoul when conducting flight operations or maneuvering against air attack. As the Iowa-class battleships entered service, they were deployed fore and aft of the carriers at the center of the formations, adding their formidable antiaircraft firepower to the defense of the vulnerable flattops. Most of the battleship admirals were senior to the aviation admirals, and under traditional concepts of seniority they should have run the show—but Nimitz and King had long since decreed that a brownshoe admiral must command each carrier task group, and the rule was adopted without fuss.
“I think that for anyone that participated in the war, there were actually two wars,” said Roger Bond, a veteran quartermaster on the Saratoga. “If you went out to the Pacific after, let’s say, January of 1944, you had a completely different experience and viewpoint than those before, because it really was two different operations.”6 The carrier duels of 1942 had been tense fencing matches in which the fortunes of war had often turned in unexpected directions. Opposing task-force commanders had played cat and mouse with weather fronts, always maneuvering to gain the most tactically favorable position with respect to the enemy. The impulse had always been to stay on the move, to get in and get out, to hit and run. In 1944, Task Force 58 could simply take station off an enemy-held island and batter its airfields into oblivion, brushing off the risk of counterstrikes. The immense size of the task force ensured its omnipotence in whatever part of the ocean it occupied. Hundreds of F6Fs won and maintained complete air superiority through the daylight hours. Improved radar systems and increasingly efficient Combat Information Centers provided ample warning of incoming enemy planes. Screening ships carried more and better antiaircraft weapons, and the introduction of the proximity fuse (which detonated the shell upon detecting the enemy aircraft in proximity) rendered those weapons much more lethal. Destroyers, steaming at the outer edges of the task groups, employed better sonar systems and had refined their tactics against enemy submarines. The remarkable logistical capabilities of Service Squadron Ten permitted the carrier forces to remain at sea for six to eight weeks without putting into any port or anchorage, which in turn expanded their range and mobility. The big ships fueled at sea, took on ammunition at sea, and replenished provisions at sea. Replacement aircraft were ferried out to the western Pacific on jeep carriers and flown aboard whenever they were needed. C. S. King, a chief yeoman on the Hornet, spent more than a year and a half on the ship without ever once setting foot on shore. He could have taken liberty at a recreation area on any number of atolls, but never felt the need: “I spent an ungodly amount of time out there in the Pacific without ever leaving the ship. I didn’t really notice it. . . . I just felt at home at sea. I really did. I felt like that’s what the Navy’s all about.”7
Airstrikes on enemy airfields always commenced with a fighter sweep. Elements of several different Hellcat squadrons coalesced into a tremendous air formation, typically numbering sixty or seventy aircraft. The pilots flew in compact formations, often with little more than 3 or 4 feet between wingtips. They arrived over the target at high altitude and dove on any Japanese fighters that rose to meet them. With decisive advantages in speed, defensive armor, and firepower, the F6Fs made short work of their adversaries. David S. McCampbell, the most prolific navy ace of the Second World War, led his Essex Hellcats into several major air battles in 1944. He always made a point of targeting the enemy leaders first—“it may throw the rest of the pilots off a little bit, disrupt the formation.” According to McCampbell, the Hellcat squadrons had no use for the “Thatch Weave,” a tactic designed to compensate for the F4F Wildcat’s inferior speed and maneuverability against the Zero. The F6F was a better aircraft than the Zero in every respect, and therefore suited to more aggressive tactics. One quick burst of .50-caliber fire, aimed into the Zero’s vulnerable wing-root, and “they would explode right in your face.”8 By early 1944, these initial fighter sweeps usually wiped the sky clean of Japanese fighters, and when the dive-bombers and torpedo bombers arrived some minutes later, they encountered little or no remaining air opposition.
Rear Admiral Mitscher, who flew his flag in the Yorktown, emphasized that the entire carrier task force was just a sophisticated support system for its aviators. “Pilots are the weapon of this force,” he told his staff. “Pilots are the things you have to nurture. Pilots are people you have to train, and you have to train other people to support the pilots.”9 He was a small, wiry man with a gaunt and weathered face. There was barely a hair left on his head, and he used the call sign “Bald Eagle.” Rarely did Mitscher ever leave the Yorktown’s flag bridge. He was usually perched on a stool, dressed in wrinkled khakis and a faded duck-billed cap, with a pair of binoculars on a strap around his neck. He normally had very little to say, but he listened carefully and absorbed everything his pilots told him. When he did speak, it was in a wan, raspy voice, and he was not always successful in making himself understood. Jocko Clark, his first flagship captain, said he had to teach himself to read lips in order to decipher the admiral’s words.
Arleigh Burke, Mitscher’s longtime chief of staff in Task Force 58, observed that the admiral often had an uncanny sense of what the enemy was about to do, and he was usually right. He was not clairvoyant, said Burke—he simply had the intuition of a veteran aviator who had been flying from carriers as long as any pilot in the navy. His expectations were high, and he did not hesitate to relieve a man who failed to meet them. “He was a little bit of a fellow, a sandblower, who was a magnificent commander,” Burke said. “He knew his pilots; he knew his job; he was skillful himself. . . . He was wise, he was simple, he was direct, and he was ruthless.”10
THE INEXORABLE ATTRITION of Japanese airpower in the central Pacific had been underway since long before FLINTLOCK. At the end of December 1943, the Americans had four working airfields in the Gilberts, including three that could accommodate heavy bombers. Rear Admiral John H. Hoover’s land-based air command sent USAAF bombers against the eastern Marshalls from rear bases at Canton and Ellice Islands and new bases at Makin and Tarawa. The workhorse of this campaign was the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, often escorted by F6Fs or P-39 Airacobras. The raiders noted a steady decline in the number of enemy fighters that rose to meet them. Navy PB4Ys, a naval version of the B-24, flew reconnaissance missions over the islands and laid mines in the channels. Nimitz’s headquarters diary recorded the near-daily “milk runs” that preceded the FLINTLOCK landings. On January 21, fifteen B-24s dropped 30 tons of bombs on Roi-Namur and Kwajalein islands. The next day, ten B-24s dropped 20 tons of bombs on Roi; on January 29, five B-24s left 13 tons; on January 30, seven B-24s added another 21 tons. Mille, Jaluit, Malelop, Taroa, and Wotje were all bombed heavily on the same day.11
On the morning of January 28 (D-Day minus three), Admiral Frederick C. Sherman’s Task Group 58.3 landed a knockout blow on the airfield at Kwajalein Island. The dawn F6F sweep encountered no Japanese fighters at all, and the bomber squadrons that followed ensured that the airfield would not return to action before the amphibious fleet arrived. The next day, Sherman’s group struck Eniwetok, the westernmost of Japan’s fortified Marshalls atolls, and gave it the same kind of treatment. Sherman’s carriers remained off Eniwetok for three days while their air groups pulverized the airfields and ground installations. On the third day, not much was left but heaps of rubble and a few palm trees that had been completely stripped of their foliage. The airmen reported that they could not find any targets on the ground or in the lagoon that seemed worth bombing, and “the island looked like a desert waste.”12
The warships assigned to bombard the landing beaches came over the eastern horizon before dawn on January 31. Off Roi, at 6:51 a.m., Admiral Richard L. Conolly maneuvered his flagship Maryland to a position 2,000 yards off the northern beaches. That amounted to point-blank range for 16-inch guns—or as Holland Smith put it, “So close that his guns almost poked their muzzles into Japanese positions.”13 At precisely 7:15 a.m., the naval guns fell silent all at once, and the drone of carrier planes immediately filled the void. A precise airstrike followed, and as the planes flew away, the guns opened up again. A 127mm artillery emplacement on Roi fired gamely at the cruisers and destroyers offshore, but quickly attracted return fire that knocked it out of action. Truman Hedding recalled, “We learned a lot about softening up these islands before we sent the Marines in. We really worked that place over. They developed a tactic called the ‘Spruance haircut.’ We just knocked everything down; there wasn’t even a palm tree left.”14 The islands in Kwajalein Atoll were struck by about 15,000 tons of bombs and naval shells in the seventy-two hours before H-Hour, amounting to more than a ton of ordnance for each man in the Japanese garrison. A wag on Turner’s command ship adapted Winston Churchill’s verdict on the Battle of Britain: “Never in the history of human conflict has so much been thrown by so many at so few.”15
Transports carried nearly 64,000 troops of the 4th Marine Division and the Army’s 7th Infantry Division. The first troop landings were to occur on several small islands adjoining Roi-Namur, designated IVAN, JACOB, ALLEN, ANDREW, ALBERT, and ABRAHAM. Aerial photos had shown that they were either deserted or very lightly garrisoned, but if they contained any enemy artillery pieces, they might pose a threat to the landing boats. Once they had been secured, the marines would set up artillery batteries to direct fire onto the fortified beaches of Roi-Namur.
H-Hour for the landings on IVAN and JACOB had been set for 9:00 a.m., but choppy seas and a stiff breeze made for a difficult transfer into the amtracs. Once in the boats, marines were tossed cruelly on the swells and soaked to the skin by heavy salt spray. The inexperienced navy crews struggled to keep the boats in formation. With their radios drenched and unusable, orders had to be passed verbally from boat to boat. Delays inevitably followed. At 9:30, the first boats churned in toward the beaches. Carrier planes dived low to bomb and strafe the Japanese firing positions. The boats destined for IVAN, battling heavy waves and winds, had to slow their speed to navigate through uncharted reefs. Several of the first-wave amtracs turned away from their assigned landing beaches on the ocean-facing side, and instead went around the island and put ashore on the lagoon beaches. This improvised landing succeeded, as the handful of Japanese defenders could not move into new positions quickly enough to counter it. From their beachhead, small groups of marines quickly overran the island and declared it secure at 11:00.
In the early afternoon, troops went ashore on the little islands ALLEN, ALBERT, and ABRAHAM, all to the east of Roi-Namur. As they raced into the beaches, the Higgins boats and LVTs fired bow-mounted machine guns and rockets and destroyed many of the Japanese guns. Having circled offshore for hours, many wet and seasick marines were relieved to stagger ashore, even if greeted with a hail of enemy fire. In most cases, on these secondary islands, effective fire support, air support, and the not-inconsiderable firepower mounted on the landing craft forced the small Japanese garrisons to keep their heads down, facilitating a bloodless landing. ALBERT was secured at 3:42, ALLEN by 4:28, and ANDREW (where there were no defenders at all) by 3:45. ABRAHAM, where only six Japanese soldiers were found, was secured by nightfall. American casualties had been minimal. That night, howitzers were hauled ashore and positioned to lay down fire on the fortified beaches of Roi and Namur.
The snafus encountered on D-Day were manageable, and none had been entirely unanticipated. “The Commanding General and Staff of the Northern Landing Force were well aware that things might not go as planned on D-Day,” General Schmidt’s chief of staff later observed.16 But the morning had witnessed a general breakdown in the command and control of landing craft. Admiral Conolly attributed the problem to the inexperience of the boat crews and a dearth of pre-landing rehearsals, exacerbated by rough weather and the loss of radios to water damage. For all of that, the admiral proudly concluded, “the plans were made to work and that is the final test of a command and its organization.”17
The bulk of the 4th Marine Division was to storm the lagoon-side beaches of Roi and Namur at dawn on February 1. All would land in amtracs. In order to avoid the confusion and disorder of Tarawa, the first two waves would climb into the amtracs while the vehicles were still embarked on the LST tank carriers. According to the operations plan, the amtracs would roll down the ramps and launch some miles offshore. Then they would enter the lagoon by the channel east of Namur and rendezvous off the landing beaches. But the little landing craft had labored mightily in the heavy seas offshore on D-Day, so Admiral Conolly decided to take the LSTs into the lagoon before dawn and launch the boats much closer to the beaches.
Covered by the big guns of the battleship Tennessee and other fire support ships, the tank carriers entered the lagoon at dawn. Carrier airstrikes and marine artillery on the adjoining islands added to the toll of misery inflicted on the defenders. The volume of fire from Japanese positions on both Roi and Namur had slackened considerably since the previous day. The bombardment of Roi, delayed by the passage of LSTs between the support units and the island, began at 7:10 a.m. The scheduled landing, designated “W-Hour,” was set for 10:00.
Getting the amtracs off the LSTs was not nearly as straightforward as had been anticipated. Those on the upper decks had to be lowered by elevators to the tank decks, but in a nasty twist, it turned out that the second-generation amtracs (“LVT-2s”) were too long to fit in the elevators. They had to be moved onto an inclined ramp, and even then they fit by just inches. Each machine had to be maneuvered just so, and delays unavoidably ensued. A malfunctioning elevator on one LST stranded nine amtracs on the weather deck. At 8:53 p.m., bowing to the inevitable, Conolly pushed W-Hour back to 11:00 a.m.
At 11:12, a signal dropped from the destroyer Phelps, sending the first waves of landing boats toward Roi. It was a thirty-minute run into the Red beaches. The naval barrage rose to a crescendo, and the air coordinator held the Avengers and Hellcats to above 2,000 feet so they could continue to bomb the islands while the naval guns were pouring shells into it. The simultaneous air and naval bombardment during the approach of the first wave was judged a great success, and similar tactics were to be employed in later amphibious operations.
The planes and naval guns desisted with exact timing as the first boats scraped ashore. The treads of the LVTs bit into the sand and drove up the beaches, firing their machine guns and rockets at enemy positions. The first waves hit Namur about fifteen minutes later. Four battalions were put ashore on the two connected islands before noon.
Roi was a relative cakewalk. Wendy Point, the island’s western extremity, was swiftly overrun by armored amtracs. The marines found that many of the pillboxes and defensive entrenchments had been blasted to rubble by the heavy bombing and bombardment. Japanese defenders seemed stupefied by the mighty shelling and did not fight with their usual ferocity. The landscape had been so drastically chewed up by naval shelling and bombing that many landmarks identified on the maps were no longer there. Infantry units could not be sure exactly where they were, relative to their assigned targets, so they instinctively kept advancing toward the northern beaches. A few high-spirited companies had to be summoned back to the island’s midsection so that the advance could proceed in order.
When the first tanks came ashore at midday, all remaining resistance was crumbling. Roi’s level terrain was well suited to these machines, which punched directly into the heart of the island and fired on pillboxes at point-blank range. By three in the afternoon, friendly fire posed more danger to the marines than did enemy fire. From the air, observers noted that marines were walking upright, without bothering to take cover from enemy fire. By late afternoon, the only remaining organized resistance on Roi was in a complex of bunkers at the northeastern end of the island. A large and well-coordinated attack on this section pushed the remaining defenders back to the beach, where they perished under artillery fire or took their own lives. At 6:02 p.m., Colonel Louis R. Jones reported that the northern side of the island was secured.
The marines had a much rougher time on Namur, which was joined to Roi by a sand spit on the lagoon side. There the terrain was less accommodating to the tanks and armored vehicles. Most of the heavy armor was stopped at the top of Beach Green, and could only provide fire support from behind the attacking infantrymen. Tanks became mired in soft sand, or drove into shell craters and tank traps, or could not climb over the heaps of rubble that were the remains of bombed-out defensive emplacements. As on Roi, the naval barrage had thoroughly altered the landscape, so the advancing marines could not identify the landmarks they found on their maps. Thick underbrush and heavy palls of smoke obscured visibility. At the center of the island, Japanese snipers concealed themselves in a brush field and shot several marines as they came within range. There seemed little danger of a counterattack in force, but the nests of Japanese riflemen would have to be cleaned out by direct infantry assault.
A large concrete blockhouse stood near the geographic center of the island. Heavily reinforced with steel, it had withstood the bombing and shelling of the past seventy-two hours, and now gave cover to several dozen Japanese soldiers. At 1:05 p.m., a platoon of marines surrounded and prepared to destroy it. They tossed charges and grenades into several apertures. The structure went up in an earth-shattering explosion, and debris rained down on the heads of men all over the island. An officer on the lagoon beach reported that “trunks of palm trees and chunks of concrete as large as packing crates were flying through the air like match sticks. . . . The hole left where the blockhouse stood was as large as a fair-sized swimming pool.”18 The titanic blast claimed the lives of about twenty marines and wounded about a hundred more. Upon later examination, officers concluded that the grenades and demolition charges had touched off a magazine stocked with torpedo warheads. Reinforcements were summoned from the beach to plug the gap in the marine lines.
In the mid-afternoon, marines cleared lanes for the tanks so that they could be brought up to the edge of the field of underbrush, from which Japanese snipers continued to fire. The tanks poured 37mm canister shot into the field until no one fired back. As night fell on February 1, about two-thirds of the island was firmly in American hands. A pocket of resistance remained in the northeast corner, but the final attack would have to wait until daylight on February 2.
The morning’s attack was led by medium Sherman tanks advancing through lanes cleared by the marines. Infantrymen followed with grenades and flamethrowers. The last sustained resistance was offered by a small group of Japanese soldiers firing from an antitank ditch behind the ocean beach. Tanks flanked the trench and poured canister fire into it.
Sporadic firing continued through midday, but the island was declared secured at 2:18 p.m. An American flag was raised above a scorched wasteland. Peace reigned over Roi-Namur as night fell on February 2.
The army’s 7th Infantry Division was assigned the job of taking banana-shaped Kwajalein Island, at the southeastern corner of the atoll. As at Roi-Namur, assault troops first landed on smaller adjacent islands and set up batteries of 105mm and 155mm howitzers. Minesweepers swept the best deepwater entrance to the lagoon. The fire support ships of the Southern Attack Force closed to within 2,000 yards and leveled a seawall above the assault beaches. Two regiments (the 32nd and 184th) landed on the lagoon side of Kwajalein at 9:30 a.m. on February 1. At first, the attackers encountered only feeble and intermittent resistance and quickly secured the eastern half of the island. The heavy punishment inflicted on the garrison from air and sea had apparently done its work. But the army troops moved slowly and methodically, advancing cautiously against the enemy’s fixed positions in line with their doctrine and training. On D-Day plus one, opposing lines were drawn across the western third of the island. The remains of the Japanese garrison was given time to dig into new positions. Major General Charles H. Corlett’s forces called in heavy airstrikes and naval fire support, which steadily reduced the enemy’s bunkers and pillboxes to piles of rubble.
As on Makin three months earlier, General Holland Smith was not satisfied with the army’s stolid pace: “I could see no reason why this division, with ample forces ashore, well covered by land-based artillery and receiving tremendous naval and air support, could not take the island quicker.”19
The fight for Kwajalein dragged out for four days. Prodded repeatedly to finish the job, and reminded of the ever-growing risk of enemy air and submarine incursion against the fleet waiting offshore, General Corlett ordered a decisive westward push on the fourth day of the battle. Tanks led the way, firing point-blank into one pillbox after another; troops followed with hand grenades and flamethrowers. “Every now and then, gas, oil, and ammunition dumps would be blown up,” recalled Ken Dodson, a naval officer on one of the transports offshore. “The explosions and the gunfire shook the ship. The roar was never-ending. Then came the smoke and the stench, getting worse every day, until we were heartily glad to leave the place.”20 As in every other such fight, Japanese stragglers infiltrated the American lines through tunnels and overlooked bunkers, and the assault troops quickly learned to watch their backs. Nisei interpreters (second-generation Japanese Americans) broadcast surrender appeals through loudspeakers, but there were only a few dozen takers, and most of the men who gave themselves up were Korean laborers.
Kwajalein Island was declared secure at 7:20 p.m. on February 4. Ken Dodson went ashore the next morning. Writing to his wife, he described a desolate landscape of “shell craters and hillocks of upturned coral.” Dodson was sickened by the sight of the enemy dead, and was surprised to find that he pitied them:
Some of the Japanese had been dead from the first bombardment, the day before we landed. Their bodies were seared and bloated, and the stench was sickening. I saw one half buried in a pillbox. You could not tell whether he had on any clothes or not. The skin was burned off his back and his head lay a few feet from his body. Another looked like a bronze statue in Golden Gate Park. He lay forward in a crouch, helmet still on, both hands holding on to a coconut log of his pillbox. There were many, many others. I lie in bed at night remembering how they looked, and that awful sweetish sickening stench of powder, and kerosene and decaying human flesh, and I wonder, after all, what war is all about. I feel sorry for those Japs in a way. They died courageously after a stubborn, last-ditch, hopeless fight. They fought for the things they had been taught to believe in, with their poor little bundles with pictures of their wives and kiddies tied to their belts. . . . They can’t tell me war is a fine and noble thing.21
In the week after the end of Operation FLINTLOCK, a deluge of high-ranking visitors descended on the battle-scarred islands of Kwajalein Atoll. Nimitz flew out from Pearl Harbor with an entourage of officers. On February 5, when fires were still burning on Kwajalein Island, he toured the blackened wastes with Spruance, Turner, Smith, and several other major commanders of the fleet and Amphibious Corps.
Three weeks earlier Nimitz had been the guest of honor at a huge “Texas Picnic” in a Honolulu park. Walking among 40,000 sailors, soldiers, and civilians, the CINCPAC had pitched horseshoes, posed for photographs, and signed autographs. Afterward, the park looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane—clean-up crews had to cart away more than fifty truckloads of garbage and debris. An estimated 120,000 beer bottles had been left strewn across the grass. Now, upon setting foot on the lagoon beach at Kwajalein, Nimitz was waylaid by a mob of correspondents.
“What do you think of the island?” one asked.
The admiral drew a cheerful laugh by replying, “Gentlemen, it’s the worst scene of devastation I have ever witnessed—except for the Texas picnic.”22
A destroyer carried the party across the enormous lagoon to Roi-Namur. Steaming at 20 knots, the ship still took more than two hours to complete the passage. The officers were conducted on a brief tour of the devastated pair of islands. None who saw the scene could fail to appreciate the combat efficiency of the “Spruance haircut” and the “Mitscher shampoo.” Looking down at Roi and Namur from an F6F circling overhead, one navy pilot thought it looked like “the moon,” or “plowed ground.” The beach and roads were strewn with the charred and misshapen remains of equipment, tanks, and armored vehicles. “I don’t think there was a stick of anything standing,” he said. “It looked just completely beaten up.”23 A sailor who visited one of the captured atolls observed that the “palms were shredded where shells and bomb fragments had made direct hits, leaving stumps that looked like old-fashioned shaving brushes stuck, bristles up, in the sand.”24
Holland Smith did not appreciate the parade of sightseers. Kwajalein Atoll, he said, had become a “regular tourist haunt. . . . The big army and navy brass from Pearl Harbor descended on us like flies.” Undersecretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, dressed in a plain khaki shirt and trousers without insignia, rode shotgun in a jeep through the ruins of Roi and Namur. Admiral Spruance and General Schmidt sat in back. The garrison was taxed with hosting tours at a time when they should have been occupied in clearing the airfield, setting up barracks, burying their dead, and erecting new antiaircraft batteries. On Smith’s orders, no more marine drivers were supplied to the jeep pool, a decision that led to the unusual sight of generals driving their own vehicles. “The photographers had a gala day snapping pictures against the background of shelled buildings,” he recalled, “while visiting brass hunted for samurai swords and other souvenirs.”25
The single battalion assigned to take Majuro had walked up the beaches unopposed. The Japanese garrison had pulled out a week earlier. Admiral Hill declared the atoll secure scarcely more than two hours after the initial landing. The huge anchorage would accommodate all the mobile floating logistical assets of Service Squadron Ten, and become (for the time being) the principal advanced base for the Fifth Fleet.
Mitscher’s carriers began filing into the lagoon on February 4. On each ship, lookouts leaned out on either side of the bridge to identify the locations of shoals and reefs, which were easy to spot in the shallow pastel-colored sea. Except for a few ships requiring major repairs, none needed to cross the Pacific to return to Pearl Harbor. They were able to refuel, rearm, and reprovision in the lagoon from supply ships, oilers, and barges. These assets dramatically enlarged the operating range of the fleet and allowed for previously unknown feats of seakeeping.
As Nimitz and his commanders considered the repercussions of the rapid and relatively low-cost victory, they elected to accelerate the schedule of future operations in the region. Eniwetok, the next major atoll on the program, had been slated for capture in May. But Japanese military power in the Marshalls was obviously crumbling more quickly than anticipated. Sherman’s Task Group 58.3 had made a shambles of the airfield on Eniwetok’s Engebi Island. According to the CINCPAC headquarters diary, aerial photos had “disclosed that the defenses were minor and in general the atoll undeveloped. The airstrip is in use but at present appears to be used as a staging base.”26 According to plans agreed to earlier with MacArthur’s SWPA headquarters, the fast carriers of Task Force 58 were to sweep south to support Halsey’s assault on Kavieng. When MacArthur agreed to allow Halsey to bypass Kavieng, the carriers were unburdened of that mission, and could therefore be employed in the central Pacific. Finally, a mother lode of valuable maps, charts, and documents related to Eniwetok were discovered in Japanese bunkers at Roi-Namur. These suggested that the Japanese garrison there ranged between 2,700 and 4,000 men, and they were racing against the clock to erect stronger fortifications on the main island of Engebi. Time was of the essence. For the moment, Eniwetok was low-hanging fruit; it could be captured with existing naval forces and amphibious troops. No intervening return to Pearl Harbor seemed necessary. Why not just take it right away?
Credit for the proposal to pounce on Eniwetok in February, rather than waiting until May as earlier planned, was afterward claimed by a long roster of commanders, including Smith, Sherman, Turner, Hill, and Spruance. It appears that the idea presented itself to all of them simultaneously. Nimitz gave the operation his blessing. It would be carried out by a hastily assembled task force commanded by Admiral Hill. The 22nd Marines and two battalions of the 106th Infantry would provide the assault troops. Task Force 58 would strike the Japanese fleet and air base at Truk Atoll in the Caroline Islands, to coincide with the landings. The date for both operations was set for February 17. The capture of Eniwetok was designated CATCHPOLE; the carrier strike on Truk was named HAILSTONE.
Reporting to Spruance at Kwajalein on February 5, Hill learned that he would command the Eniwetok Expeditionary Group (designated Task Group 51.11) and must complete the major operation in less than two weeks. The marine-army expeditionary troops, drawn from a floating reserve of 9,300 men that had not been needed at Majuro or Kwajalein, would be commanded by Marine Brigadier General Thomas E. Watson. Task Group 58.4, commanded by Rear Admiral Samuel P. Ginder and built around the carriers Saratoga, Princeton, and Langley, would continue to pummel the remaining defenses at Engebi and cover the landings from the air. High-and low-angle aerial photographs were combined with the captured Japanese charts and documents to provide an accurate picture of the objective. Importantly, the Japanese charts provided accurate information about the best deepwater channel into the lagoon at Eniwetok.
Moving up the invasion of Eniwetok required stripping the new garrisons of Kwajalein Island and Roi-Namur of manpower and supplies. The landing boat crews were green and had not trained with the troops. General Watson reported that “the infantry, amphibian tractors, amphibian tanks, tanks, aircraft, supporting naval ships, and most of the staffs concerned had never worked together before.”27 Nevertheless, the forces available for the operation were plentiful and well equipped. Having presided over the bloody assault on Tarawa, Admiral Hill was relieved to have adequate numbers of amtracs. The Army’s 708th Provisional Amphibian Tractor Battalion sailed with 119 LVTs, most of which were the heavily armored newer models. “At Eniwetok, I felt like a millionaire,” Hill later remarked, “but at Tarawa, I was a pauper.”28
As in FLINTLOCK, the CATCHPOLE plan of operations called for capturing nearby islands and using them as artillery platforms to sweep the beaches of Engebi. At 6:59 a.m. on February 17, the cruisers and destroyers of the naval fire support group began bombarding the island’s defenses. Marine artillerymen landed on smaller adjacent islands and set up field batteries that could hit Engebi’s beaches. After twenty-four hours of this treatment, the first boatloads of marines landed on the island and quickly overran it. The flag was raised on the following morning. The islands of Eniwetok and Parry were seized in the following three days.
The marines lost 254 killed and 555 wounded; the army, 94 killed and 311 wounded. Of the 2,700 troops of the Japanese garrison, only 66 were taken prisoner. With the huge lagoon of Eniwetok as its westernmost fleet anchorage, the Fifth Fleet now had a well-situated springboard to strike at the Marianas, which lay scarcely more than a thousand miles away.
AS THE AMERICAN COMMANDERS took stock of what they had achieved in the Marshalls, their confidence and self-assurance rose to new heights. In less than three months’ time, the costly lessons of Tarawa had been refined and integrated into amphibious planning and doctrine, and the results had been more than satisfactory. To the extent that further improvement was needed, it was in the details of execution rather than any deficiency in the plans themselves. Holland Smith concluded in his final report, “In the attack of coral atolls, very few recommendations can be made to improve upon the basic techniques previously recommended and utilized in FLINTLOCK.”29
Nowhere in the Pacific had the preinvasion bombardment and aerial bombing of islands been more effective. General Schmidt estimated that 50 to 75 percent of the Japanese garrison on Roi-Namur had been killed before the first marine set foot on the island. Those who had survived the barrage were apparently dazed, and patently less ferocious than their counterparts on Betio and other Pacific battlefields. Carrier airstrikes in the three days before the landings managed to knock out nearly every Japanese airplane in the entire archipelago. Upon departing from the targets, pilots noted that “ground installations were reduced to mounds of rubble; hardly a tree was left standing and those remaining were completely stripped of their foliage by the terrific bombardment.”30
Most of the marine and army assault troops had never experienced combat before FLINTLOCK or CATCHPOLE, but their training had produced a first-rate performance. The only lapse in discipline had been on Roi, when several units had charged across the airfield and surged ahead to the north shore. The lines had been reassembled before the enemy could attack the exposed flanks. In any event, no ground commander could find much fault in troops who showed too much spirit on the attack. As in other such operations, Japanese stragglers and infiltrators remained a threat behind the advancing American lines, and infantrymen were obliged to do the grim work of cleaning out the bunkers, tunnels, and emplacements one by one with demolition charges, flamethrowers, and hand grenades. By 1944, however, not even the newcomers had any illusions about the enemy’s way of waging war.
Nimitz’s decision to spring past the fortified outer islands and aim the main attack at Kwajalein had been vindicated. The Japanese, surprised by the landings, had been robbed of time to strengthen their defenses on the beaches. Japanese garrisons had been left in possession of several atolls in the southeastern Marshalls, but Nimitz was in no hurry to clean them out. The airfields were pressured by daily air raids, and whenever new planes were flown in from Truk or Rabaul, they were destroyed in short order. Daily “milk runs,” staging from the Gilberts or the Ellice Islands, continued until the end of the war. The routine bombing raids were conducted largely by F4U Corsair fighters escorting army medium bombers. Rarely did the raiders encounter any air opposition at all. The garrisons wasted away for lack of supplies and provisions. Many were killed in the relentless air bombardments; many others took their lives in desperation.
Tokyo had staked its defense of the “unsinkable aircraft carriers” of the Gilberts and Marshalls on the concept of a network of mutually supporting terrestrial airfields. Within the overlapping radii of the nodes of that network lay a vast zone of ocean wastes and low-lying coral atolls. Over the breadth and width of that zone, so it was hoped, Japanese naval fighters and bombers would sustain local control of the skies. Any concerted naval or amphibious attack would be repelled with the help of air reinforcements moving freely and quickly between the nodes. That entire strategic concept, so vital to Japan’s hopes, had been exposed as a chimera by the concurrent expansion and qualitative upgrade of American carrier airpower. Impotently dispersed across dozens of atolls, subjected to a rain of ruin from the air and sea, the defenders could barely even delay the American advance. In less than three months and with relative ease, FLINTLOCK and CATCHPOLE had kicked down Japan’s mid-Pacific barricade.
For the victors, possession of the western Marshalls brought a windfall of strategic rewards. Control of the spacious lagoon anchorages and fine coral airfields allowed American naval and air forces to stage from bases on the threshold of Japan’s new “absolute defense line,” which ran through the nearby Marianas. Admiral Lockwood’s submarines could be circulated back into their patrol areas more rapidly, with the effect of increasing the number of submarine patrol days in the sea-lanes south of Japan by approximately one-third. Admiral Koga had not yet committed his main fleet to a decisive stand, but he could not afford to hold it back indefinitely. The mighty Fifth Fleet was now poised to strike into Japan’s inner ring of defenses, and could be confident of forcing a major naval confrontation in the next stage of its westward drive. With overwhelming superiority in carrier aviation, the Americans stood a reasonable hope of scoring a victory on the scale of the great fleet battles of Tsushima or Trafalgar, an event that would guarantee the eventual defeat of Japan.
OPERATION HAILSTONE, the carrier air attack on Truk, had been long on the drawing board. On December 26, 1943, Nimitz had informed King that he thought the operation would become feasible by the following April, but he pledged to do it earlier if circumstances allowed: “Much depends on extent of damage inflicted on enemy in all areas in next 2 months.”31 The crumbling of Japanese airpower in the Marshalls was just such a favorable development. CINCPAC headquarters had also been mulling over plans for an invasion of Truk, an operation that would have required five divisions plus an additional regiment, making it the largest amphibious operation yet attempted in the Pacific. HAILSTONE might or might not obviate the need to capture Truk—the raid’s outcome would do much to reveal whether the big atoll was a suitable candidate for bypass.
Located 669 miles southwest of Eniwetok, Truk was another colossal atoll with a fringing reef enclosing a lagoon roughly thirty by forty miles in size. Its topography and appearance were different from those of the Gilberts and Marshalls. A cluster of about a dozen islands near the center of the lagoon ascended to 1,500-foot volcanic peaks, their soaring slopes alternately rocky and heavily forested. About 2,000 Micronesian natives lived on the islands, most in thatched-hut villages on the grassy plains above the beaches. Since mid-1942, Truk’s enormous lagoon had served as the Combined Fleet’s major southern fleet anchorage. It was so large, in fact, that high-speed fleet exercises had been held within its reef-protected confines. For most of the war, the superbattleships Yamato and Musashi had ridden at anchor behind torpedo nets, immobilized for the sake of fuel economy. The fleet’s administrative headquarters was located in a modest complex of wood-frame buildings on the island of Tonoas, south of Weno.
The aviators and crewmen of Task Force 58 shared a sense of dread about the impending raid. The enemy’s “mystery base” at Truk had acquired the reputation of an unassailable fortress. In the past, carrier task force commanders had been wary of attacking major terrestrial airfields because the enemy’s long-range bombers could deliver devastating counterstrikes on the vulnerable flattops. Such raids had always been brief, followed by a speedy withdrawal. But HAILSTONE was to be a sustained foray deep into enemy waters. Task Force 58 would lie off Truk for two full days, well within range of aerial counterattack. The operation seemed considerably more dangerous than any previously attempted by the fast carrier forces.
A dearth of intelligence about Truk had enhanced its mystique. The atoll’s distance from Allied bases had rendered aerial reconnaissance impractical before 1944. It was thought to be a major hub of Japanese airpower, defended by hundreds of crack airmen in Zero fighters. Its soaring peaks were supposed to bristle with antiaircraft guns. Its channels were reportedly treacherous to navigate, heavily mined, and amply defended by coastal artillery. Newspapers had nicknamed Truk “Japan’s Gibraltar” or the “Japanese Pearl Harbor.”
Lieutenant James D. Ramage, a Bombing Squadron 10 pilot on the Enterprise, recalled his slack-jawed reaction to the news that his ship was bound for Truk: “Wow!” Ramage’s radio-gunner, David Cawley, added that the squadron was “tense and concerned” as Task Force 58 steamed into enemy waters—“For the previous two years of the war,” he said, “the very thought of approaching Truk seemed fatal.”32 Admiral Mitscher, according to a story that circulated through the crew of the Yorktown, had remarked, “The only thing we knew about Truk was in the National Geographic.”33 A mordant cartoon published in the Essex cruise book depicts the skipper speaking through a bullhorn from the bridge. He announces that the Essex is headed to Truk. In the next moment he is struck speechless by the sight of his entire crew diving into the sea.
The fearsome reputation was undeserved. Truk Lagoon offered a well-protected anchorage for the Combined Fleet, and was suitably located on the sea route between Japan’s southern territories and its home islands—but the Imperial Japanese Navy had never poured much effort or resources into developing its airfields, port facilities, shore fortifications, or repair shops. The comparison to Pearl Harbor was absurd. In 1944 the atoll had a single midsize floating dry dock. There were no major power stations, no piers capable of accommodating large ships, and no underground fuel storage. Damaged ships usually had to make the long passage north to Japan for repairs. Ship-to-shore transfers of supplies and troops were carried out by lighters and other small craft. Truk’s four airfields lacked advanced ground installations and were too small to allow proper dispersal of parked planes. Only in late 1943 did the Japanese navy begin a crash program to expand and extend the airfields. Labor was in short supply, so working parties were drafted from the crews of the warships in the anchorage. “The sailors actually enjoyed the work because it allowed them to go ashore,” recalled an air officer on the carrier Zuikaku.34
In February 1944, the atoll was garrisoned by about 7,500 army troops and another 3,000 sailors and support personnel. Fixed antiaircraft defenses were limited to about forty batteries. Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, who held several important jobs on the Combined Fleet staff, told interrogators after the war that Truk had been little more than a staging area, a way station for ships and aircraft traveling between Japan and the South Pacific. Not until the end of 1943 had there been any concerted attempt to fortify it against attack. In his judgment, the atoll would have fallen easy prey to the sort of amphibious invasion the Americans had just completed in the Gilberts and Marshalls.
Admiral Koga had evidently understood as much, because he pulled most of his major combatant ships out of Truk after the fall of Kwajalein and Majuro. He was forewarned by a reconnaissance overflight on February 4, when two marine PB4Ys flew high over the atoll, and by radio intercepts in the following week, which his staff interpreted as evidence that the American carrier task force was on the move. The planes were sighted and identified, and easily outran the floatplane Zeros that rose to intercept them. Koga gave orders to move most of his larger warships to Palau and thence to Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago of the southern Philippines. Ships began heaving up their anchors and speeding for the exit channels. Koga, in his flagship Musashi, departed for Tokyo Bay with a fleet of cruisers and destroyers on February 10. He was resolved to keep his main fleet intact to fight a decisive battle at some future date. Left in the lagoon anchorages were a handful of light cruisers, destroyers, auxiliary naval vessels, about twenty marus (cargo ships), and five oil tankers. Including small craft, there were approximately fifty vessels in mid-February.
After rendezvousing in Majuro atoll for refueling and replenishment, the American fleet had sortied and taken a westward course on February 12. The striking force included most of the fast carrier task forces under Vice Admiral Mitscher—the greater part of Task Force 58, including five fleet carriers (Enterprise, Yorktown, Essex, Intrepid, and Bunker Hill) and four light carriers (Belleau Wood, Cabot, Monterey, and Cowpens). The nine carriers held an armada of more than 560 planes. The HAILSTONE force also included a powerful surface fleet, including seven battleships. Admiral Spruance, the big boss afloat, was embarked on the New Jersey. Nine submarines had been assigned to take station off the main channels out of the atoll; they would sink targets of opportunity and stand by to rescue downed aviators.
No Japanese snoopers bothered the fleet on its approach to its launch point, less than a hundred miles east-northeast of Truk. The Americans had again achieved an improbable surprise. Before dawn on February 17, five carriers turned into the wind and launched seventy-two Hellcats. Coalescing into a single tremendous formation, the fighters climbed into the west. Less than thirty minutes later they flew over the atoll’s outer eastern cays at altitudes between 16,000 and 22,000 feet. The morning was “clear, cool and beautiful.”35 The air battle for Truk was very nearly over before it began. With an advantage in both numbers and altitude, the Hellcats easily destroyed nearly all the Japanese fighters that rose to intercept them. The fighter sweep shot fifty-six Japanese planes out of the sky and then destroyed another seventy-two on the ground in bombing or strafing runs. Antiaircraft fire was spirited but inaccurate; the American pilots, with several such carrier strikes under their belts, had learned to fly through heavy flak without losing nerve.
Four F6Fs went down in the initial melee, and at least one (according to VF-6 pilot Alex Vraciu) was a victim of friendly fire. “There were dog fights all over the place,” he later said. “I even saw one of our Hellcats shoot another Hellcat down. It was a great deflection shot but . . . one of our guys just shot first before being sure and this other poor pilot was forced to parachute out. In the course of the action, I saw a number of Japanese parachutes in the air.”36
The American airmen had anticipated a much hotter response. They had been told that they might encounter as many as 200 enemy fighters over Truk. As it turned out, there were fewer than 200 aircraft of all types in flyable condition on the atoll’s four airfields. According to estimates given in postwar interrogations, the Japanese had 68 operational airplanes on the Moen field, 27 on the Dublon field, 20 on Eten, and 46 on Param, for a total of 161. Parked on the big field at Eten were some 180 aircraft that were damaged, grounded for lack of spare parts, or immobilized for lack of aircrews. Most would be destroyed on the ground.
Though Admiral Koga had correctly anticipated the enemy’s move against Truk, air and naval forces were not on the alert when the American planes suddenly appeared overhead. According to Masataka Chihaya, a staff officer with the Fourth Fleet, the pilots, ground personnel, and ships’ crews had been kept in twenty-four-hour readiness since the overflight of the two marine PB4Ys two weeks earlier, and had reached a state of collective exhaustion.37 Worse, morale and even discipline had eroded since the withdrawal of the heavy warships. Pilots had refused to climb into their cockpits when so ordered, and many men had gone absent without leave. The atoll’s commander, Vice Admiral Masami Kobayashi, had apparently concluded that the American fleet was still engaged in the Marshalls, and authorized a downgrade in the alert level. On February 16, many pilots and other personnel had left their barracks for R&R. The morning of the American raid found a large proportion of Truk’s aviators asleep in the atoll’s largest town, on the island of Dublon, having partied late into the night at local drinking establishments. Their only means of returning to their airfield on the island of Eten was by ferry, and the ferry could not accommodate all of them at once. Many aircraft, both on Eten and on the airfields of Moen and Param islands, had been disarmed and drained of fuel. Kobayashi’s ignominious failure to keep his forces on alert put an end to his naval career; he was relieved of command and then forced to retire from active service.
The first American dive-bombers and torpedo bombers arrived over the target area while the Hellcats were still engaged in strafing runs. Radio chatter and instructions from the task force directed the dive-bombers’ attention to about thirty ships anchored in the lagoon. James D. Ramage, flying a VB-10 Dauntless, noted that several Zeros flew by him without offering combat. He assumed that they were dispirited by the one-sided results of the air fight and were determined to survive it. It was a syndrome that had become increasingly common during the later stages of the South Pacific air campaign.
The Enterprise dive-bombers dropped 1,000-pound armor-piercing bombs on targets chosen from the aerial photos taken earlier. Ramage’s division was assigned to attack ships anchored in the lee of Dublon Island, one of Truk’s major anchorage areas. The planes hurtled down through flak bursts and smashed the stationary ships. Ramage planted a bomb on the stern of the 13,000-ton Hoyo Maru. Another SBD division targeted the 7,000-ton aviation stores ship Kiyozumi Maru and lit her up; she began foundering immediately. A VT-6 Avenger flew low over an ammunition ship, the Aikoku Maru, and landed a bomb dead-center amidships. The target went up in a huge, rolling ball of flame that engulfed the plane and destroyed it. The shockwave was powerful enough to rock Lieutenant Ramage’s aircraft, more than 2,000 feet overhead. “It was, I think, the biggest explosion I’ve ever seen, other than the atomic bombs,” said Ramage. “It was just an enormous blast.”38
Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the famed marine fighter ace of the Black Sheep squadron (VMF-214), had been shot down and captured off Rabaul a week earlier. He and several other prisoners of war were flown into Truk while the raid was developing. As the G4M bomber carrying them rolled to a stop, Boyington and his fellow prisoners were thrown out onto the airstrip. They looked up and were surprised to see an F6F Hellcat flying low over the airfield, walking .50-caliber fire across the parked planes. The bomber from which they had just been ejected went up in a sheet of flame. The Americans were shoved into a pit by the side of the airfield, and from this relatively protected vantage point they watched the action overhead and cheered for the attackers. Boyington:
There was so much excitement I couldn’t do any differently. I just had to see those Nip planes, some of the light planes like the Zeros, jump off the ground from the explosion of our bombs and come down “cl-l-l-lang,” just like a sack of bolts and nuts. The planes caught on fire and the ammunition in them began going off. There were 20-mm cannon shells and 7.7’s bouncing and ricocheting all around this pit. Some of these hot pieces we tossed back out of the pit with our hands.39
Later, during a lull in the action, the prisoners were collected from the pit and escorted to another part of the island. Boyington observed, “There were huge pieces of concrete upended, plane parts scattered all over, and the place was a shambles.”40
Wave after wave of American carrier planes arrived over the atoll. Air group leaders circled above and directed attacks. Destruction rained down on airfields, buildings, hangars, and machine shops. Squadrons assigned to attack shipping were armed with armor-piercing bombs; those intended to work over the airfields and shore installations carried incendiary and fragmentation clusters. Torpedoes tore into ships anchored in the lagoons and ships running for the exit channels. Parked planes were wiped out on the ground. By midday, several of the afternoon strikes encountered no air opposition at all.
Japanese fighters orbiting to the east of the lagoon pounced on a few Hellcats as they flew back toward the task force. The rudder section of Woodward M. Hampton’s F6F was shot away during a strafing run over one of the airfields. When he flew over the northeastern reefs, his Hellcat was ambushed by two Zeroes. He attempted to escape by steering into a cloud. “I was heading now in a northerly direction and continued on the same course while being attacked, unable to turn or counteract the moves of the enemy,” he wrote in his action report. “The plane was continuously hit by enemy fire and was slowly being shot to pieces.”41 Hampton’s cockpit was riddled with 20mm rounds, destroying most of his instruments. His flight goggles were shot off his head. He concluded his cause was hopeless, but he resolved to take at least another enemy fighter with him. When one of his assailants overran him in a high side run, “I pulled the nose of my plane up until I was on him and gave him a sharp burst from which he burst into flame.” The second plane then turned away, and Hampton flew on to the east. Spotting the outer screening ships of the American task force, he made a violent water landing and managed to get free of the cockpit “after submerging for what seemed like a great depth.” As he broke the surface and filled his lungs, Hampton was relieved to see a friendly destroyer bearing down on him.42
Several downed pilots were rescued in similar fashion. Destroyers and submarines had been stationed as lifeguards around the atoll. The submarine Searaven rescued three Yorktown aviators several miles north. An Essex F6F pilot, George M. Blair, parachuted into Truk Lagoon. Since no American ships could penetrate the channel entrances (which were mined), Blair assumed he was as good as captured. A Japanese destroyer bore down on him, but it was driven off by several other planes of his squadron. Blair was rescued by an OS2U Kingfisher catapulted from the cruiser Baltimore. The floatplane made a daring landing on the lagoon and flew back to the task force without mishap. More than half of all American aircrewmen shot down during the two-day action were safely recovered. In many cases, friendly airplanes circled low over the life rafts until a floatplane or destroyer arrived on the scene.
Under relentless air attack, several Japanese ships cast off their moorings and got underway at high speed. The light cruiser Katori and destroyer Maikaze fled the lagoon through the north passage, but the pair was chased by a division of TBFs and struck by several 500-pound bombs. By noon the Katori was down by the stern and the Maikaze was ablaze. Circling above, with his bombs expended, Lieutenant Ramage attempted to direct newly arriving bombers to deliver the killing blow on the two cripples. But Admiral Mitscher, identifying himself by his call-sign “Bald Eagle,” got on the circuit and ordered all planes to stay clear. “Do not, repeat do not, sink that ship. Acknowledge.”43 The flight leaders were perplexed. Why should they leave the crippled enemy ships alone?
The reason was soon evident. Admiral Spruance had chosen to bring a column of surface ships into the waters immediately north of the atoll. This force included the battleships New Jersey and Iowa, the cruisers Minneapolis and New Orleans, and four destroyers. Mitscher was anxious to avoid a misidentification that might result in friendly fire. Moreover, Spruance was evidently keen to have his big guns finish off any cripples they found in their path. The Minneapolis and New Orleans sank the two immobilized ships with three or four salvos. The New Jersey narrowly avoided two torpedoes launched by the sinking destroyer. The American ships closed and offered to pick up survivors, but almost all the Japanese sailors took their own lives rather than submit to capture. The warships continued in a full counterclockwise circuit of the atoll and retired to the eastward after nightfall. They fell in with Mitscher’s carriers at dawn the following morning.
Spruance’s decision to bring a surface task group into the combat area was not popular with the aviators. In their view, the surface units were not needed at Truk and only got in their way. Mitscher was obliged to provide ten F6Fs from the Cowpens to fly combat air patrol over Spruance’s column. Those Hellcats could have been more profitably employed in strafing runs, and their obligation to cover the slow withdrawal of the warships forced several pilots to make dangerous night recoveries. The Iowa was bombed by a Japanese plane, but suffered little damage. Her gunners fired on and destroyed another plane, which proved to be an American SBD; both the pilot and his back-seater were killed. With an ugly turn of luck, one or more of the ships in Spruance’s column might have run into a torpedo, an event that could have cost him his command. The ordinarily conservative fleet commander had behaved with impulsive bravado, and for no better reason than a blackshoe’s inborn desire to claim a piece of the action for the big guns. Admiral Sherman’s tactful conclusion was that “this expedition accomplished little and only complicated the attacks by the carrier planes.”44 Lieutenant Ramage was less gentle: “So the big battleships finally drew blood against a cruiser that was almost dead in the water. It must have been a great victory.”45
Carl Moore, the Fifth Fleet chief of staff, was later asked to explain Spruance’s reasoning. As always, Moore was candid. The boss was on a sightseeing expedition. “Well, I think it was a matter of curiosity. . . . I think Admiral Spruance was as much interested in taking a look at Truk as he was in hunting for Japanese ships.”46 Moore also speculated that the chief may have been motivated to taunt the Japanese by operating the flagship within plain sight of their largest naval base outside the home islands.
That night, a flight of Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo planes stalked the American task force. The intruders had not flown from Truk—their origin has never been conclusively determined, but it is likely they launched from either Rabaul or Saipan. Night fighters attempted to intercept them but could not find them in the darkness. A few minutes after midnight, one of the prowlers roared low over the flight deck of the carrier Intrepid. The incident spooked the crew, and Admiral Alfred E. Montgomery of Task Group 58.2 ordered a hard port turn to throw off the attackers. But the B5N had already dropped its torpedo, and while the Intrepid was still in its turn, an explosion astern sent a powerful shockwave through the hull. The torpedo had struck the carrier’s vulnerable starboard quarter. Eleven of her crew were killed and another seventeen wounded in the explosion. Damage-control parties sealed off the flooded compartments, and the ship could make way under her own power, but her rudder jammed and kept her in a helpless turn. She nearly collided with the Essex. She was in no danger of sinking but could not keep pace with the task force; she withdrew to Majuro and thence to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco for repairs.
At 2:00 a.m. on the eighteenth, the Enterprise launched a flight of twelve radar-equipped TBF Avengers to attack the surviving Japanese ships in Truk Lagoon. Each aircraft was armed with four 500-pound bombs. The concept of a low-altitude night attack, with the planes guided to the targets by radar alone, had been studied and discussed but never attempted. It required the pilots to navigate to Truk on instruments. Once over the lagoon, they circled over the anchorages until radar echoes provided an image of the targets. The mission was a tactical breakthrough, unprecedented in the annals of aviation or naval history. Lieutenant Commander William I. Martin, who had trained the airmen, called it “a real classic.” He recalled:
Radar displays at that time required an operator to do a great deal of interpreting. It was like learning a new language. Instead of it being a polar plot, looking down on it like a map, the cathode ray tube just gave indications that there was an object out there. After considerable practice, a radar operator could determine that there was a ship there and its approximate size. You related the blip on the radar scope to the image of the ship.47
The pilots approached the targets at an altitude of 250 feet or even lower, and released their bombs based on radar readings alone. At masthead altitude, with a slow airspeed, this method of bombing proved devastatingly accurate. The Avengers scored thirteen direct hits and sank eight Japanese ships. The antiaircraft fire was thick but wild; only one of the twelve planes was shot down.
As February 18 dawned, Task Force 58 put another 200 planes into the sky. They met negligible air opposition over the atoll and worked over the remaining targets at their leisure. Hundreds of incendiaries were dropped on smoking airfields, airplane parking areas, and hangars. The bombers paid special attention to the fuel tank farms, which had been spared on the first day in order to prevent smoke from obscuring visibility.
Two days earlier, the Japanese cruiser Agano had been sunk north of Truk by the American submarine Skate. A destroyer, the Oite, had been dispatched to pick up the survivors, numbering about 400 officers and sailors. The destroyer had set course for Saipan but was ordered back to Truk after the raid began. Crammed with the rescued crewmen of the sunken Agano, the star-crossed Oite entered the lagoon on the morning of February 18 and was quickly set upon by a flight of TBF Avengers from the Bunker Hill. Struck amidships by a torpedo, the Oite broke in half and went down. She took more than 500 men down with her; only 20 survived.
Flight leaders reported that they were having trouble locating worthy targets. Spruance, aware that he might be flogging a dead horse, ordered all planes back to their carriers, and Task Force 58 retired toward Majuro.
For the Americans, Truk’s extravagant reputation inflated the symbolic importance of the victory. Even so, judging by the material results, HAILSTONE had been one of the most smashing carrier raids of the war. Though most of Japan’s heavy naval units had previously fled the lagoon, the attackers had sunk three light cruisers, four destroyers, three auxiliary or training cruisers, and six other naval auxiliaries. They had, in addition, sent about thirty merchant ships to the bottom of the lagoon, including five precious oil tankers. In aggregate, the total shipping losses approached 200,000 tons. Many of those vessels had been laden with munitions and other supplies that could not be recovered. Seventeen thousand tons of fuel went up in the attack, at a time when fuel was running very short.48 The Japanese had lost 249 aircraft, most destroyed on the ground. All of that was accomplished at negligible cost to the striking force. Mitscher’s carriers lost twenty-five aircraft, including those destroyed in accidents; all but nine pilots and aircrewmen were recovered safely and would fly again. The only ship to suffer any significant damage was the Intrepid, but she would return to service later in the year.
A navy communiqué announced that “the Pacific fleet has returned in Truk the visit made by the Japanese fleet on Dec. 7, 1941, and effected a partial settlement of the debt.”49 Time magazine’s verdict was accurate: “The overfeared power of land-based air power had been set aside by greater air power from the sea.”50
Truk was thereafter useless as a fleet base; it would not serve in that function again. Its airfields were cleared and repaired, and when Koga ordered Rabaul’s air units evacuated, most flew to Truk. But if the atoll was vulnerable to Mitscher’s attention in February 1944, it would be no less so later in the spring. Task Force 58 would revisit Truk in April, when no shipping remained in the lagoon. During this repeat performance, the air groups concentrated their attentions on the airfields and aircraft of the erstwhile Japanese bastion, and left it a smoking ruin.
