Carrier Division Three

THREE AIR GROUPS FROM 58.2 tackled Kurita’s C Force: Bunker Hill, Cabot, and Monterey. Avengers dominated the strikers, since only Air Group Eight had Helldivers.

Knowing that Americans were inbound, Obayashi launched available aircraft to intercept. Lieutenant Ito led four fighters and ten fighter-bombers, while two Tenzans also took off. They had little chance of defending themselves, but they could serve as airborne sentries to alert Force C of the U.S. disposition.

Obayashi deployed his ships into antiaircraft disposition at 1754, and less than ten minutes later his Type 21 radars detected something to the south. That was likely a phantom blip, as Montgomery’s air groups bore down on him from the starboard quarter. However, at 1830 his CAP spotted the tricolor blue raiders, reporting them splitting into four groups for a multiaxis attack.

Shortly lookouts aboard cruiser Maya gave the alarm. They reported no fewer than fifty Avengers inbound (there were sixteen, plus other types), but the warning did little good. Eight minutes after the CAP report, bombs began falling around Chiyoda, southernmost of the three CVLs in a north-south line of bearing.

Obayashi faced the same problems as the other division commanders, and then some. He had recalled the ministrike launched three hours before, but the sixteen aircraft were caught with gear and flaps down. According to one source, seven planes of Air Group 653 were shot down in the landing pattern, but no matching U.S. claims were made. The more likely culprit was “friendly fire.”

Lieutenant Commander James D. Arbes’s Bombing 8 jumped Chiyoda . He took his Bunker Hill SB2Cs down on the light carrier, splitting the defenses with six bombers from the southeast and six more from the north. With four battleships escorting the carriers, C Force put up a wall of flak. Rolling into his dive from thirteen thousand feet, Arbes saw holes sprout in the top of his wing. Nevertheless, he kept the CVL in his sight and dropped at about two thousand feet. In all, Bombing Eight claimed six hits on Chiyoda and three more on two escorts. The assessment was clearly optimistic: As combat films revealed, it was often impossible to distinguish between hits and near misses.

Monterey and Cabot each contributed four Avengers to the strike, selecting Chiyoda to receive their thirty-two bombs. The TBMs slanted into their dives from six thousand feet, splitting to bracket the flattop port and starboard. Lieutenant Roland P. Gift’s VT-28 pilots double-checked their master-arm switches, lined up the maneuvering carrier, thumbed the red button on the stick, and spaced their ordnance across the flight deck aft, probably scoring two hits. Twenty men were killed and two planes destroyed, but the seven-month-old carrier remained operational.

Almost simultaneously Lieutenant Edward E. Wood directed VT- 31’s attack, claiming bomb hits as a result of smoke and flames. As often occurred, astute young aviators saw what appeared to be heavy damage to the primary target and switched to other ships. The second section went after the thirty-year-old battleship Haruna, allegedly sunk by B-17 hero Colin Kelly in December 1941. Three five-hundred-pounders found the mark, striking the aft turret and quarterdeck, killing fifteen men, and threatening a magazine. Captain Shigenaga Katazuke took the precaution of flooding the area, but the old battlewagon kept station, her thirty-one thousand tons making twenty-seven knots.

The name “Torpedo 8” earned reverential glory at Midway, but Bunker Hill’s TorpRon had no relation to the original VT-8. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth F. Musick’s Avengers continued Commander John Waldron’s legacy from two years before. With nearly half the torpedoes on the entire mission, Musick took his two divisions in an approach on Chiyoda’s port beam, prompting Captain Eiichiro Joh to order hard a-starboard. With a stern aspect on the target, closing at 220 knots relative speed, the five leading pilots were denied time and geometry to set up an anvil attack on both bows. Still, they did what they could. Satisfied with the sight picture, the pilots reached down to the right and tugged the red torpedo-release handle. All their Mark 13s made safe water entry after a four-hundred-foot or more drop, churning toward the speeding flattop. During the breakaway, closing their bomb bay doors, some Avenger crews saw two eruptions against the hull.

As often was the case, however, Chiyoda escaped the spread of torpedoes. The warheads may have detonated in the roiling wake, or the explosions could have been bomb near misses.

Musick’s other three aviators saw the same detonations and optimistically concluded that the carrier was doomed. They shifted targets to a cruiser and battleship, made good drops, but also missed.

Eight minutes after attacking, the Americans began withdrawing, though Japanese gunners reported three “SBDs” resuming the assault shortly thereafter. The account has little credibility, especially since no Dauntlesses belonged to Task Group 58.2. Kurita’s AA crews checked fire at 1910, having failed to down any Americans. But plenty of Zekes waited beyond the flak belt, looking for opportunities.

Five of Bunker Hill’s SB2Cs that raced past the Japanese destroyer screen were attacked from six-o’clock low. At least five Zekes got within range unseen by the rear gunners and shot down two Helldivers. One “Beast” hit the water like a wing-shot duck, and the other went down burning. The other three bombers were holed by 7.7- and 20mm rounds but got away.

At the rendezvous east of the force, other Zeroes belatedly tried to intervene. Bunker Hill CAG Ralph L. Shifley and Lieutenant Gerald R. Rian each claimed a destroyed and a probable about ten miles east of the enemy fleet. None of the other 58.2 squadrons (from Monterey and Cabot) reported intercepts.

The Japanese consistently underestimated the American strength over each force, an unusual event in the Pacific War. Ozawa’s staff pegged the total strike at 140 to 150 aircraft, well under the two hundred that actually engaged.

The dubious prize for greatest disparity went to B Force, which reckoned it was jumped by forty Americans. In truth there were more than twice as many, owing to the Yorktown fighters and torpeckers who diverted from the crowded airspace over Zuikaku.