Clash of The Carriers

DURING THE WEE HOURS OF JUNE 21 a VP-16 Mariner tracked oil slicks leading to many ships westering through the darkness. The plot was about seven hundred miles west of Saipan. In Task Force 58, deckload strikes were fueled and armed in case the range closed.

However, the day did not go well for the PBMs. One was misidentified by U.S. destroyers, who, not reading the IFF code, opened fire. The Mariner was lost with all eleven men.

While the mayhem of recovering the strike unwound, plans were proceeding for another nocturnal mission. Not surprisingly, it involved Bill Martin, the Enterprise night-flying evangelist commanding Torpedo Ten.

In the first hour of June 21, Martin huddled with his available Avenger pilots, plotting a four-plane torpedo attack on the fleeing Japanese. As originally planned, the mission was to launch at 2200, but the prolonged recovery scotched that. Consequently, the schedule was rolled back to 0100. Two TBFs were already on the catapults, launch bridles affixed to the shuttle that would slingshot them into the moonless sky. They were the pathfinders who would locate Ozawa on radar and guide the attackers to the target. A night torpedo attack on a fleet at sea had never been attempted, which was exactly the reason that Bill Martin wanted to do it.

As Martin was about to conclude his briefing, word arrived from flag plot. The strike was scrubbed. Mitscher felt that the risks outweighed the potential benefit, and with so many splashes that night, he wanted to conserve his strength. Years later Vice Admiral Martin admitted that it was the greatest disappointment of his career. In the 1960s, any number of officers were capable of commanding the Sixth Fleet, but only a handful were ever positioned to torpedo enemy capital ships maneuvering at sea on a moonless night.

The stand-down was met with ambivalence. The aircrews assigned to the strike knew the odds, but they also knew their business and believed in their skipper. However, there was still work to be done that night. The daylight search team that had found Ozawa was dispatched to find him again. Lieutenant Bob Nelson was playing acey-deucy in ready room six when he got the word. At 0230 his and Jim Moore’s crews manned the waiting Avengers and were flung off the Big E’s deck, armed with a patrol plane contact report.

Tracking westward into the dark, the VT-10 team searched for three hours along the westerly course. In the cramped interior of each Grumman the radioman fine-tuned his radar set, looking for the green phosphor trace.

The blips appeared at 0530. ARM1c Thomas T. Watts in Jim Moore’s plane was first to note the glowing phosphors. The pilots dropped smoke lights to verify the wind drift, then tweaked their navigation. They placed Ozawa 252 nautical miles from Enterprise’s 0300 position.

Nelson and Moore had ample time to compose their contact reports. Without fear of enemy night fighters, the Avengers used darkness and cloud cover to snoop the Mobile Fleet, practically counting each ship. There were four task groups arrayed in a diamond formation, steaming west.

The snoopers did not go undetected. Alert Japanese skywatchers pointed out the blunt Grumman silhouettes, and Ozawa’s ships took action. Destroyers began making smoke, while gunners opened an optimistic long-range fire at the Big E’s fliers. One battleship even chimed in with its concussive heavy guns, to no effect.

Nelson and Moore remained on station for an hour, broadcasting details of Ozawa’s strength, course, and speed. They got close enough to confirm the identities of Yamato and Musashi, which bore a pleasant resemblance to the ONI recognition sheets. However, they concluded there was no point trying to identify the light carriers, which looked alike, especially in the dark.

Periodically the Avengers passed updated information to an airborne radio relay team orbiting far to the east, ensuring that the reports were passed to the task force in legible form.

In Task Force 58, the men were exhausted, spent. That morning, Wednesday the twenty-first, it seemed as if the smaller ships were carpeted with bodies. The “hot bunk” system made for maximum efficiency of limited space, permitting two or even three men to share the same “racks” in sequence. Now, after forty-eight hours of general quarters alarms, repeated air attacks, and the chaos of the night recovery, sailors slumped in slumber wherever there was space. From Arleigh Burke’s perspective, “unless performing indispensable duties, [they] simply went to sleep. They fell asleep on decks, on tops of ammunition lockers, in corners or passageways—wherever they found a little empty space.”

Regardless of the difficulty in keeping their eyelids open, thousands of other men still had work to do, both routine and exceptional. Among the latter were Hellcat pilots from each task group, bombed up with five-hundred-pounders and launched by 0615. They were briefed to fly three hundred miles and attack any Japanese ship—crippled or otherwise—they found along their track.

A good part of the twenty-first was spent sorting out the mixed-up air groups. Some carriers had nearly empty decks and hangars, while others were chockablock with the overage. Much of the morning involved refueling aircraft and getting them headed for their own ships. Some squadrons had pilots on half a dozen carriers. But even the mundane task of returning errant chicks to their “bird farms” had routine risk.

In the process of launch and recovery that morning, some squadrons staged mini reunions in the air. Three of VF-16’s Airedales unexpectedly came across one another: Lieutenant Henry M. Kosciusko didn’t know that his wingman, Ensign William J. Seyfferle, was still alive until Lexington’s number thirty-three Hellcat joined him over the task group. Grinning broadly, they exchanged exaggerated gestures of relief. Then another familiar F6 appeared with Alex Vraciu, just launched from Enterprise. Flashing thumbs-up, he joined them overhead Lexington, happy to see two other survivors from his squadron.

As senior member of the trio, Kosciusko led the fighters into the pattern and trapped on his first pass. He was climbing from the cockpit when he heard the warbling notes of the crash alarm. Looking astern, the Floridian saw Vraciu turning away from the groove. Beneath him the water was churned white with an expanding patch of brilliant green dye marker. Bill Seyfferle apparently had not dropped his fully fueled belly tank and turned too tight in lining up with the deck. His Hellcat stalled and went straight in; the twenty-two-year-old flier left a widow in Cincinnati.

Fighting 16 had launched nine planes and got seven back. When the pilots finally compared notes, they found that each had landed on a different carrier.

Far to the west, Enterprise’s tireless search team of Nelson and Moore was still at it, having tracked the Mobile Fleet during the night. Just before 0700 one of the light carriers with planes remaining on deck seemed to be turning into the wind, and the Big E’s snoopers prudently decided to scram. En route home, Nelson sent amplifying reports from so far out that he needed a Hellcat radio relay team to get the messages back to home plate. Knowing that the long-range strike was airborne, Nelson radioed, “It’s a beautiful day. I hope you sink them all.”

Though Nelson and Moore had done their typical splendid job, ultimately they were disappointed. As they took up an easterly homing track, the “Bombcats” were headed west on their three-hundred-mile tether. In his narrative report Nelson gloomed, “Our striking planes would not be able to reach those sitting duck targets.”

One advantage of a night launch on a seven-hundred-mile round trip: The weary pilots could land in broad daylight. Nelson and Moore logged eight hours, including three in green ink indicating instrument flight.

Their information was immediately absorbed aboard Lexington and Indianapolis. The plot put Ozawa 360 miles west of Task Force 58, and Spruance ordered an increase in fleet speed, trying to close the distance.

Though keyed up after two significant finds in two days, eventually the VT-10 scouts logged some well-earned sack time. One crewman slept for thirty-six hours—a near-impossible feat on a crowded, noisy aircraft carrier.

Throughout the day, the cockeyed optimists in flag country hoped for a chance to finish off some limping Japanese ships. Even Spruance caught the spirit: At midmorning he directed Lee’s battle line to take up the chase, supported by Bunker Hill and Wasp, detached from Montgomery’s group.

Meanwhile, the 0600 strike returned with nothing to report. By then the Mobile Fleet had extended the distance from its pursuer, and though the enemy was still being tracked by Enterprise and Bunker Hill TBFs, it was clear that the game was up. Task Force 58 could not gain enough headway to haul within the optimum 250 miles to launch a useful air strike.

Nor could Lee hope to press ahead with any chance of overhauling some cripples. He needed to refuel his destroyers along the way, a task that consumed most of three hours stretching into early afternoon. At a regulation twelve to fourteen knots, the process only allowed Ozawa—who had no cripples—to add to his lead.

Perhaps mindful of the criticism he knew was building, Spruance permitted the hunt to continue. A second contingency strike tucked its wheels in the wells at 1500, not knowing that the fleet commander allotted them four hours to find something worth killing. When the clock ticked over at 2030, Blue Jacket hailed Bald Eagle and called off the chase, six hundred miles west of Saipan.