In a Rainstorm

TASK FORCE 58’S SORTIE FROM Majuro was a drizzly departure, both grim and grand. Beneath low, gray skies, 111 gray-painted warships steamed slow ahead in stately procession, emerging from the anchorage one at a time at roughly two-minute intervals. From first to last, the exit took almost five hours.

On the flight decks and hangar decks of fifteen fast carriers reposed the latent violence tacit in nearly a thousand warplanes. The 96,618 men in TF-58 existed for one reason: to put those technical-scientific marvels in the air for the purpose of placing ordnance on target.

Nor was that all. The disparate elements of Operation Forager got under way from other ports as distant as Hawaii and Guadalcanal, as near as Eniwetok and Kwajalein. Assault troops (127,571 Marines and soldiers), fire support forces (seven veteran battleships and eleven cruisers plus destroyers), two escort carrier groups (seven “jeep” carriers), and scores of attack transports, stores ships, hospital ships, escorts, and oilers all added to the total: 535 ships and vessels.

All were en route to the largest sea battle yet fought in World War II.