U. S. NAVAL AVIATION

in the

PACIFIC

I

Issued by

The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations

UNITED STATES NAVY

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER IM i s s i o n a n d O r g a n i z a t i o n o f N a v a l A v i a t i o n

CHAPTER IIComponents

CHAPTER III

and Weapons of Naval Aviation

Page

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Special Aspects of the Air War. . . . . . . .

CHAPTER IVThe Japanese Offensive-Pearl Harbor to Midway.

CHAPTER VOffensive-Defensive—Guadalcanal to Bougainville. . . . . . . .

CHAPTER VIThe United States Offensive--Tarawa to Tokyo. . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER VIITactical Effectiveness of Naval Aviation. 43

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29

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CHAPTER VIIILessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

PREFACEThe purpose of this review, which was prepared by officers on duty in the Opera-

tions Division, including Air Combat Intelligence officers with extensive service in thePacific, is to analyze the relation between air and sea power. It is based upon theexperience of naval aviation in the war against Japan as recorded in the files of theNavy Department. Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing: Survey have alsobeen consulted and the chart of the progress o f the war has been taken from oneof them.

The danger inherent in any report confined to one aspect of the war is that itmay mislead the reader into forgetting that the conflict was won by a combinationof ground, naval, and air forces, each of which carried its share of the commonburden. All operated within the framework of strategic plans, and it is the aim ofthis analysis to show how naval aviation fulfilled its part of those plans.

Since it is from the lessons of experience that plans for the future must bederived, the report is presented in the hope that it will prove of some value to thoseresponsible for thc future security of the United States.

FORREST SHERMAN,Vice Admira l , U . S . N . ,

Deputy Chief of Naval Operations.

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FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE

I MISSION AND ORGANIZATION OF NAVAL AVIATION

The wartime mission of the Navy is control ofthe sea. Twice in the twentieth century theUnited States Navy has accomplished this mis-sion with enemies overseas. Each time it hasbeen able to move troops, equipment, and sup-plies wherever it desired and to draw vital rawmaterials from all over the globe. Althoughcomplete destruction of enemy naval units wasnot possible, and although areas close to hostileshores remained under enemy control, such su-premacy was attained as to permit United Statesand Allied forces freedom of movement and todeny the same faculty to the enemy as well as tocut him off from strategic resources.

In two wars with Germany this meant mainte-nance of an effective blockade and holding thesubmarine menace within bounds. Against Ja-pan the naval war was vastly more complex anddifficult because in the opening stages Japangained control of the Western Pacific in the areanorth of Australia from the Indian Ocean to theGilbert Islands. When the Japanese failed atthe Battle of the Coral Sea to extend their swaysouthward and at the Battle of Midway to extendit to the Eastern Pacific, they, in effect, lost thewar. Behind the shield of sea power the UnitedStates built the ships, planes, and equipment; ittrained the land sea, and air forces that ulti-mately beat down the enemy’s navy, drove himfrom strategic bases, cut off his supplies of rawmaterials, and placed Allied forces in positionto launch final air and amphibious offensivesagainst his homeland. Having lost control ofthe sea and of the air, the Japanese found them-selves open to mass bombing and unable to re-place their nearly exhausted supplies of fuel andindustrial materials. Rather than wait for theinevitable defeat on land, they surrendered—aneloquent testimonial to the effectiveness of the

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Allied campaign based on sea power and on airpower supported by water-borne transport.

The activities of the Navy had no other pur-pose than to obtain or maintain control of thesea. First, it was the function of the Navy todestroy enemy submarines, war vessels. and air-craft by any means, including the capture ordestruction of the bases from which they oper-ated. Second, the Navy sought either to sinkand capture or to contain in port the enemy’smerchant vessels so as to deprive him of raw ma-terials and to prevent him from transporting histroops and supplies. Third, the Navy protectedits own and Allied ships engaged in carryingmen, equipment, and raw materials. Fourth, ifthe accomplishment of other objectives requiredit, the Navy by amphibious landings seized anddeveloped advanced bases. Fifth, when offen-sive land operations were made against hostileshores, the Navy provided transportation fortroops and equipment and supported landingforces until a bridgehead sufficient for the oper-ation of land-based air and artillery had beenestablished; and the Navy continued to assurethe safe arrival of ships with supplies and re-placements. Sixth, the Navy rendered enemygarrisons on bypassed islands ineffective by cut-ting off supplies and bombarding installationsand prevented the removal of personnel to othertheaters. Seventh, the Navy furnished thenecessary facilities for the logistical support ofits own units. Eighth, the Navy provided forthe collection of intelligence, the rescue of per-sonnel, and such other services as needed to keepit operating efficiently.

In all these activities aviation played a partand in none did it have an independent role.For example, the destruction of enemy sub-marines was accomplished by surface vessels,

faircraft, and friendly submarines. Enemy warand merchant vessels were attacked by surfaceships, aircraft, and submarines operating eitherindependently or in cooperation. Aircraft wereshot down either by other aircraft or ships’ gun-fire. Accuratee information on enemy move-ments came from patrolling aircraft, submarines,and surface vessels. Amphibious operations re-quired close support of ground troops both byplane and nava1 gunfire, and the neutralizationof bypassed islands was accomplished throughair and surface bombardment. In the course ofa campaign—sometimes during a single day—naval units carried out two or more of theseoperations in rapid succession. The same car--rier whose planes supported ground troops mightattack enemy fleet units, search out a hostile sub-marine, or intercept an enemy air raid.

Naval aviation had no separate mission andno separate operational organization. It was anintegral part of the naval forces contributing tothe control of the sea in cooperation with surfacevessels, submarines, and Marine ground troops.For operations aviation units were assigned totask forces. The naval task force was simplyan assemblage of naval units of the right typeand in sufficient numbers for the accomplishmentof an assigned task. Such a force could em-phasize whatever element was best suited to carryout its mission and might well have consisted ofcarriers with supporting surface vessels or itmight have been a force built around heavy bat-tleships with the necessary air support. In am-phibious operations all elements supported thelanding troops who became the primary respon-sibility. A task force was customarily composedof numbered task groups which were further sub-divided into task units and so on right down tothe individual aircraft squadron or ship, whichalso received a task designation. A group, unit,ship, or squadron might be withdrawn at anytime that it had fulfilled its task and be reas-signed to another mission. With the completion

of the over-all task. the entire force could bereorganized and a new task given it. The es-sence of the system was integration and flexibil -ity which permitted the maximum efficiency- inthe assignment of all components, includingaviation.

The task-force system assumed that all unitsof a given type were similar in equipment andtraining. An analogy to the formation of a taskforce may be found in building with prefabri-cated units. Just as in any piece of construc-tion a definite number of units of specified designare required, so a task force was composed ofships, aircraft, and ground troops each in suf-ficient number for the mission assigned.

To assure uniformity was the function of typecommands of which there was one for each kindof ship. Prior to the war the situation in avia-tion was not so simple. Combat units were di-vided into two categories—carrier and patrolplanes. Utility planes were organized sepa-rately, and battleship and cruiser aircraft cameunder the type commanders for the respectiveclasses of ships. In the Pacific theater a singletype command was established on 1 September1942, and given the title of Air Force, UnitedStates Pacific Fleet. This command provided apermanent administrative organization for thehandling of aviation personnel, equipment, andships. It received planes from the Bureau ofAeronautics and men from the aviation-trainingcommands and assigned them to squadrons, pro-vided for squadron training and the shakedownof ships, and saw that all units were maintainedin a state of combat readiness. Although utilitysquadrons and battleship and cruiser aviationremained administratively apart from the typecommand, both depended upon it for logisticaland material support. The Atlantic Fleetadopted a similar organization on 1 January1943. The uniformity of training and equip-ment and the administrative stability assured bythe type commands guaranteed to the task-force

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commander that a unit assigned would be of aknown size and capable of the predeterminedkind of operation for which it had been trained.

For purposes of command the system pro-vided admirably for all types including avia-tion. Commander Air Force, United States Pa-. . .cific Fleet, was a nava l aviator who had charge

of technical matters pertaining to aviation andserved as advisor to the Commander in Chief ofthe Pacific Fleet. In operations air units were

always under the direct command of aviators.When an operation was expected to be conductedlargely through the air. i. e., a series of raidsby a fast-carrier task force, the Commander wasa naval aviator. In support of a landing thesame carriers would be integrated into a taskforce under an amphibious-force commanderwhO indicated the part that aircraft should playand issued orders which were then carried outby the air units under direct control of aviators.

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A HELLCAT EAGER FOR BATTLE

A Carrier Strike Is Launched

I I COMPONENTS AND WEAPONS OF NAVAL AVIATION

Both combat and noncombat activities werecarried on by naval aviation. The first includedcarrier, Marine, and patrol aviation and twolesser types: battleship and cruiser aviation, con-sisting of small seaplanes used primarily to di-rect ships' gunfire and coastal-patrol aviationemploying small land and seaplanes to protectport areas and coastal convoys against submarineattack. Noncombat functions were performedby utility squadrons and the Naval Air Trans-portation Service. In addition, the Coast Guardoperated as part of the Navy during the war,and its air units were employed in antisubmarinewarfare and air-sea rescue work.

Carrier Aviation

Carrier aviation may be considered in threeparts: the fast-carrier striking forces, the escort-carrier forces, and Marine-carrier aviation.

The functions performed by the fast carriersincluded offense, defense, and reconnaissanccagainst enemy aircraft, warships, merchant ves-sels, and beachhead targets. They were prima-rily an offensive weapon used to gain control ofvast sea areas and to destroy enemy forces whichthreatened friendly fleet or amphibious opera -tions. These functions required mobility, flexi-bility, aerial power, and defensive armament.

The fast carriers included both large, fast,100-plane carriers and light, equally fast: 33-plane carriers. Fighter, dive-bomber and tor-pedo-bomber squadrons were organized in car-rier air groups and trained to operate togetheras coordinated striking units. Specializednight-fighter aircraft and high-speed photo-graphic planes also flew-from fast carriers.

Fast carriers were normally operated in taskgroups of 3 to 5 carriers, 4 to 6 battleships and

cruisers, and 12 to 20 destroyers, all under asingle command. Two to five task groups com-posed a fast-carrier task force, such as TaskForce 58. The fast-carrier task force whichmade the first assault on the Philippines in Sep-tember 1944 had 730 planes; for the Leyte land-ings a month later, 1,060; and for the Tokyoraid of February 1945, 1,220.

Escort carriers provided air and antisub-marine defense of invasion convoys and beach-head areas and close support of invasion troopsuntil such time as these functions could be takenover by shore-based aircraft. The carriersthemselves were smaller, slower ships of about30-plane capacity, on which were based squad-rons of fighters and torpedo bombers. In am-phibious operations escort carriers were nor-mally employed in formations of 4 to 7 carrierswith 6 to 12 destroyers and destroyer escorts.but single carriers with fewer escorts were usedfor specialized antisubmarine or convoy-escortoperations. The invasion of Leyte was Sup-ported by a task group of 18 escort carriers in 3task units with a total of 500 planes. The groupfor the Lingayen landings had the same numberof carriers but was divided into a larger numberof units with a total of 570 planes.

Marine-carrier aviation was of two kinds. Inthe first place, the marines were expected to actas a reserve for naval aviation, and, althoughthis function was not exercised in the early partof the war, a few- Marine Corps pilots wereaboard an escort carrier off Attu in May 1943,and, beginning in December 1944, a number ofMarine fighter squadrons were used on the fastcarriers. In the second place, during the sameyear, the decision was made to employ marinesfrom escort carriers in support of amphibiousoperations, and the first two such carriers were

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present during the Okinawa campaign in thespring of 1945. Training and techniques wereidentical with those employed by Navy squad-rons engaged in the same sort of work.

The aircraft used in carrier aviation were ofthree major types. Designed primarily forcombat with enemy aircraft, fighter planesequipped with machine guns, bombs, and rocketswere also employed as offensive weapons againstships and land targets. Dive bombers partici-pated in coordinated attacks with fighters andtorpedo plane and were the most accurate of allbombers. Torpedo planes made torpedo attacksonly occasionally and were more often used asversatile light bombers capable of carrying a tonof bombs plus rockets. Because of their inher-ent characteristics, they proved valuable forshort-range search and sea patrol particularlyagainst submarines.

Marine Aviation

Marine aviation was organized administra-tively as part of the Marine Corps. The basicunit was the squadron of 12 to 32 planes, 2 ormore of which constituted a group. Likewise 2or more groups with headquarters and serviceunits made up a wing. Although it was orig-inally planned that each division of groundtroops should have a supporting wing bearing thesame number, the exigencies of war made it im-possilbe to carry out this scheme, and Marineaircraft, like all others, were assigned wherethey were most needed. For logistical and ma-terial support, Marine air units depended uponnaval commands.

Besides its carrier functions, Marine aviationserved ashore both in support of Marine groundtroops and as a garrison air force to protect basesand other installations. Although the latter wasmore properly the task of the Army, the marinestook it over because the Army Air Forces, con-centrating on the primary strategic objective in

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Europe, had insuficient planes available for thePacific theater. Such a substitution was in ac-cord with the agreement of 1935 between theArmy and Navy which specified that whenneeded each service would operate in lieu ofthe other. Similarly Marine air units supportedArmy ground troops on Guadalcanal and in thePhilippines, where they won the highest praiseof Army officers. As an extension of its workas a garrison air force. Marine aviation con-ducted numerous raids on enemy installations atNew Britain and in the islands of the CentralPacific to prevent by-passed Japanese garrisonsfrom interfering with Allied communications.While engaged in their many activities, shore-based Marine squadrons shot down over 1,900Japanese planes.

Because of their position as a fleet reserve, theMarines used the same types of aircraft as theNavy and received similar training with in-creased emphasis on close air support. The as-sumption of garrison air force duties resulted inthe addition to Marine plane types of a two-engined bomber, the Mitchell (Army B-25,Navy PBJ), which was employed for search andinterdiction.

Patrol Aviation

Patrol aviation had as its basic function todiscover and report the location, nature, andmovements of enemy forces. By a natural ex-tension this came to include photographic mis-sions against enemy installations in advance ofcarrier and amphibious operations. Wheneverit was possible and would not interfere with thebasic reconnaissance duty, patrol planes attackedenemy shipping. This was especially successfulagainst unescorted surface vessels and sub-marines. In the Atlantic, and to a lesser degreein the Pacific, antisubmarine warfare became ahighly specialized activity that called for inten-sive training and complicated equipment. Pa-

trol aviation also acquired many other miscel-laneous functions including air-sea rescue, mine-laying, defensive patrols around surface forcesfar at sea, and diversionary, harassing attacksagainst enemy bases and islands.

Prior to the war the Navy depended uponlarge flying boats for patrol work. All theseaircraft were distinguished for range, relativelyslow speed, and light armament. Since flyingboats could be based upon tenders anchored inharbors, sheltered coves, and open sea, they pos-sessed great mobility and were employed in ad-vance positions before the capture or construc-tion of airfields was possible. Between 1939and 1941 the neutrality patrol demonstrated theneed for land-based aircraft to operate in north-ern latitudes during winter weather, and thefirst months of the war indicated the need formore speed and armament in a plane that wasexpected to operate singly in close proximity toenemy airfields. Since it was impossible toprovide the necessary characteristics in sea-planes, the Navy obtained land types from theArmy. Before an Army high-altitude bombercould be effectively employed for search andreconnaissance, however, 50 percent of its in-ternal arrangements had to be altered and specialequipment installed. Because this modificationrequired virtually as many man-hours as theconstruction of a new plane, the Navy begandesignating new patrol aircraft to meet its specialrequirements.

As in other types of naval aviation the basicunit was the squadron. Since the planes usuallyflew alone and were frequently operated in three-or six-plane detachments from tenders, thesquadrons remained largely an administrativeunit. Squadrons were organized into Fleet AirWings which also included coastal-patrol squad-rons and headquarters and service units. Patrolsquadrons were assigned to task groups andforces for operations and since it was commonpractice to employ wing commanders in the task

organization, Fleet Air Wings acquired opera-tional as well as administrative and logisticalfunctions and were closely integrated with otherelements of the fleet.

Noncombat Aviation

Created immediately after the outbreak ofwar in the Pacific, the Naval Air Transport Serv-ice adapted the methods of commercial air linesto meet the demands of the Navy’s forces theworld over. Familiarly known as NATS, itplayed a major role in the Pacific War. Thecargoes it carried sent damaged ships and sub-maries back to sea weeks before surface trans-port could have delivered the required materials.It supplied fighting units throughout the Pacificwith critical implements of war and brought asmuch as 1,000 pints a day of life-giving plasmaand whole blood to forward areas. It evacuatedcasualties from the active fighting fronts. AtOkinawa begining 6 days after the initial land-ing, 9,871 patients were moved in 329 flights.The importance of such service was only partlymeasurable in statistics; it also lay in the short-ened convalescence and improved morale of eachcasualty and in the lightened burdens and re-sponsibilities of medical units in the battle area.

A measure of the size and scope of NATS ac-tivities can be gained from the following statis-tics. In August 1945 NATS flew a total of 39,-732,000 miles carrying 11,400 tons of cargo andmail and 85,000 passengers over a network of63,251 route miles. Four hundred and twenty-nine aircraft and a total personnel of 26,604were involved in this enterprise.

Utility squadrons supplied the fleet with spe-cial aircraft services. Before Pearl Harbor ithad become obvious that, if gunnery trainingwere to keep abreast of new developments infire-control, the utility squadrons would have toexpand and increase their scope of operation.

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Radio-controlled target aircraft were developedand personnel trained to place this target at thedisposal of ships in training. Aircraft betteradapted to towing target sleeves were obtained.Throughout the first war years new squadronswere formed to bring these devices to the fleetand shore establishments.

Utility squadrons moved into forward areaswith their tow equipment and radio-controlleddrones to give advanced training to ships, basesand fighter aircraft. These services were pro-vided not only for Navy and Marine Corps hutalso for Army units in the Southwest Pacific.

Other activities included coverage of submarinesengaged in training, aerial mapping and surveys,local rescue work, and itinerant air transport.

Utility squadrons everywhere in the Pacificcontributed to the effectiveness of antiaircraftfire. Nowhere did the practice afforded thegunners better reveal its usefulness than duringthe long campaign for the capture of Okinawa.The ability to shoot down Kamikazes that hadslipped through the protective screen of fightershelped immeasurably in the ability of the fleetto stay until the troops no longer required itssupport.

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I I I SPECIAL ASPECTS OF THE AIR WAR

Naval warfare included more than the con-tacts between rival fleets and their air compo-nents. It involved constant surveillance of en-emy movements and bases, destruction of ship-

Air-sea rescue, which kept personnel losses to a min-imum, preserved that element of military powermost difficult to replace and bolstered the moraleof all fighting men. In all these activities avia-tion participated and for their accomplishmentdeveloped special techniques, a knowledge ofwhich is necesary to an understanding of vic-tory in the Pacific.

Naval Air Search andReconnaissance

Pearl Harbor showed the need for air patrols.The Japanese Fleet whose planes did such dam-age on the morning of 7 December 1941, werewithin range the evening before. Had enoughCatalinas been out, the fleet might have been dis-covered, but the ability of United States forcesto surprise the enemy on many occasions laterin the conflict indicated that more than planes inthe air were needed to conduct an adequate

1search. Above all it required special radarequipment and thorough training which Amer-ican forces did not possess inl 1941. AdmiralHart in the Philippines commented on the vastamount of misinformation he received over thewarning net. Before that ill-fated campaign inthe East Indies had ended, the patrol-plane pilotsand crews had learned their business the hardway. During the latter stages of the Japaneseadvance the only information available to Alliedcommanders came from the Catalinas of PatrolWing 10 operating from tenders whose almostdaily moves enabled them to service their planes

after landing fields had been knocked out. Thelessons learned were applied elsewhere as fastas aircraft, equipment, and trained crews couldbe obtained.

Although naval search planes were not avail-able for the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942,the following month at Midway a Catalina wasthe first to report the Japanese fleet. When thesame type of flying boat was used in the Solo-mons, its limitations rapidly became apparent.The surprise and sinking of four Allied cruisersat Savo Island on the night after the landings onGuadalcanal might have been avoided if recon-naissance had been complete. In the weeks thatfollowed, concentration of enemy fighters madeimpossible the use of Catalinas in the area northof Guadalcanal. Although Army Flying For-tresses were employed for patrols, lack of specialequipment and training restricted their useful-ness. Late in 1942 the Navy began receivingLiberators, which after extensive modificationand time for training the naval crews appearedin the Solomons early the following year. Thisplane had both the range to reach the centers ofenemy activity and the firepower needed to oper-ate singly.

The possession of such a plane also made pos-sible the development of photographic reconnais-sance. Because the Japanese had for years ex-cluded foreigners from military areas and espe-cially from the mandated islands, Allied intelli-gence knew very little about the nature or extentof installations. In the spring of 1943 the firstphotographic squadron , accompanied by expertpersonnel for processing and interpretation,reached the South Pacific. From that time for-ward, extensive photographic reconnaissancewas made in advance of every major operation.In addition to specially equipped units, every

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search plane carrried a camera and was able tosupplement visual sighting with photographicevidence. The camera and radar enormouslyincreased the effectiveness or naval patrolaircraft.

Although the first function of patrol aviationwas to sight and report, naval planes frequentlydiscovered enemy merchant shipping alone orwith only light escort. Since the aircraft car-ried machine guns, bombs, and, in the latter partof the war, rockets and guided missiles, theymade sucessful attacks on cargo vessels andcontributed to the effort that ultimately strangledJapanese industry.

Antishipping operations also possessed directmilitary importanance. In the South and South-west Pacific areas the enemy frequently at-tempied to move troops and supplies at night insmall vessels and barges, ducking in and outamong the numerous islands and hiding in covesby day. In detecting these clandestine ship-ments, the slow speed of the Catalinas becamean asset and darkness provided adequate protec-tion for their vulnerability. With special paintand equipped with radar they became Black Catssearching out enemy vessels and barges whereverthey could be found. Not only did they them-selves strike but they also worked out techniquesfor guiding motor torpedo boats, destroyers, andother light vessels to Japanese convoys. TheBlack Cats made reconnaissance a 24-hour-a-dayjob.

In the Atlantic, patrol squadrons devoted theirprincipal effort to antisubmarine warfare. Be-cause the Japanese directed many of their under-water craft to supply garrisons on bypassedislands, antisubmarine activities were over-shadowed by other phases of patrol aviation inthe Pacific. All squadrons, however, were giveninstrction in the special techniques of this typeof warfare, and although patrol planes were in-strumental in sinking only five Japanese sub-marines, viligance was never relaxed and a

high degree of proficiency maintained throughtraining.

As the United States offensive moved acrossthe Pacific, patrol aviation accompanied it.Search and photographic planes checked and re-checked enemy installations and movements.When the carrier forces moved against an objec-tive, they desired to achieve surprise. If Jap-ansee search aircraft encountered carrier planes,they could have inferred the presence of carriersand transmitted the fact before being shot down.In the invasion of the Marianas and later opera-tions, Navy Liberators flew along the flanks andin advance of the carrier force, shooting downenemy search planes. Prior to the landings inthe Philippines they knocked off Japanese picketboats east of Formosa.

During the critical periods when amphibiousforces were establishing a beachhead, naval com-manders needed accurate knowledge of ap-proaching enemy units. For this purpose tend-ers accompanied the invasion fleet and com-menced operating seaplanes immediately. Al-though this remained a dangerous activity solong as the enemy had aircraft and fields in useit was necessary and by 1943 the Navy hadavailable the Mariner (PBM), a faster, longer-ranged flying boat with more firepower than theCatalina. At Okinawa the Mariners conductedtheir first searches at the main objective even be-fore the troops went ashore and on 7 April 1945had an opportunity to demonstrate their value.A United States submarine the previous daysighted a Japanese force built around theYamato, the world’s largest battleship, headed to-ward our invasion fleet. Search planes immedi-ately took off and some hours later spotted theenemy and guided carrier planes into the attackwhich resulted in the destruction of the Yamato,a light cruiser, and four destroyers. The Mari-ners not only maintained continuous contact butlanded on the open sea to pick up the personnelof carrier planes shot down during the action.

The last 6 months of the war saw- the culmina-tion of patrol aviation. New plane types be-came available in increasing numbers. Toavoid the duplication of labor inherent in build -ing a plane and then modifying it extensively.the Navy designed a version of the Liberator tomeet its special requirements and gave it thenautical name Privateer (PB4Y-2). A two-engine land plane, the Ventura (PV-1) orig-inally developed for antisubmarine work in theAtlantic was also employed in the Pacific, and anew model named the Harpoon (PV-2 ) ap-peared in 1945. In preparation, but not readyin time for war operations, was the Neptune( P2V ) one of which startled the world in 1946by flying from Perth, Australia, to Columbus,Ohio, a distance of over 11,000 miles and thelongest flight on record. What a plane with thatrange and ease of operation would have meant in1941 may easily be imagined.

By the spring of 1945 the Navy operatedsearches that literally covered the Pacific fromthe Aleutians to Australia, from Seattle to Singa-pore. Especially important was the area be-twen the Philippines and the mainland of Asiathrough which vital supplies from the East Indiespassed to Japan. To sever these lines of com-municatin, patrol planes proved particularlyuseful not only sinking ships themselves butguiding submarines to likely targets and evencalling up Army bombers to dispose of one con-voy too large for a single patrol plane to handle.This coordinated campaign reduced Japaneseshipping to such a thin trickle that by summerthe big planes were crossing to French Indo-China where they went after the railroads whichwere the last link in enemy communications withthe southern regions. Farther north other navalaircraft, based on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, wereconducting patrols along the coast of China asfar as Korea and around the coasts of the Jap-

anese home islands. They also attacked ship-

ping with bombs, rockets, and guided missilesand laid mines in the principal shipping lanes.At the extreme top of the Japanee Empire,search planes from the Aleutians regularly - vis-ited the Kurile Islands.

The effectivess of this reconnaissance interms of area covered can be seen from the chartson pages 12 and 13 which compare the searchesin effect at the end of the war with those at thetime of the Guadalcanal landings. The effec-tiveness in terms of results achieved is indicatedabove. All of this was accomplished with thegreatest economy. At no time did the Navyhave in operation in the Pacific area more than500 search planes of all types.

At the outset of the war, operating procedurefor the rescue of pilots and air crews was unde-veloped. On the other hand a number of basicsafety devices had been provided permitting apilot to survive the unexpected failure of hisplane. The parachute, the inflatatable life jacketpopularly known as the "Mae West,” and therubber life raft with its emergency survival andsignalling gear were standard equipment. Dur-ing the war, safety gear was steadily improvedand the probabilities of survival were all infavor of the flyer, whether the trouble was simpleengine failure or being shot down in flames. Inthe first half of 1942 many pilots survivedcrashes in combat areas but frequently little ornothing could be done to effect their recovery.A number of rescues, however, were madeusually as the result of individual initiative, andafter the battleof Midway, Catalinas picked upmany pilots.

Organized rescue operations developed in theSolomons campaign. Catalinas, popularlyknown as “Dumbos,” were dispatched to pickup personnel who had been shot down. At firstthis was an incidental duty assigned as the occa-

726015 47 2 11

sion arose, but it later developed to a point whereDumbo circled near the scene of a raid. Posi-tions were reported as planes went down, andthe Dumbo, often protected by planes from thestrike, recovered the personnel. The bravery ofthe rescue crews in landing in positions exposedto enemy shore fire became legendary. It wasfortunate that no rescue personnel were lost insuch operations.

By 1944 in the Central Pacific the problem ofmaking rescues in open-ocean areas first became

7 AUGUST 1942-,

acute. Since only the most skillful and experi-enced seaplane pilots could land and take offagain in the enormous swells, the job requiredas much seamanship as airmanship, and it be-came standard practice to avoid open-sea land-ings unless conditions were favorable and therewas no other rescue agent available. Ships,usually destroyers, made the recoveries whereverpossible. Catalinas continued not only to beused extensively to search for survivors, to dropemergency gear, and to circle overhead until a

A T T U —.-. —

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AR, HALLS

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Recoconnaissance, 1942. -–Early in the war, United States naval forces far from the heart of the Japanese Empire wcre able onlv.

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ship could arrive but also to make rescues infair conditions and in protected lagoons.

The tendency towad specialization observablein the creation of photographic squadrons in1943 also appeared in the creation of rescuesquadrons in 1944. Equipped with Marinersmodified to permit carrying newly developedrescue gear and with pilots and crews given spe-cial training in the techques of air-sea rescue,these squadrons effected rescues under conditionsimpossible to Catalinas. During the Okinawa

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u s.

operations a 6-plane rescue squadron made 76landings and rescued 183 survivors of all serv-ices. Such special units were employed onlyin areas where the intensity of operations madecalls upon their services frequent; elsewhere inthe Pacific patrol planes continued to provideDumboS as all adjunct to their other duties.

Because fast-carrier operations were generally-

deep in enemy waters, the only rescue facilitieswere the seaplanes from the battleships andcruisers, the ships of the task force itself, and

. . . .. —. —.-. —.

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submarines. Lifeguard submarines were sta-tioned at each objective to rescue flyers forceddown in the vicinity and after standard proce-dure had been devised, rescue operations werehighly successful. On one occasion the sub-marine Tang recovered 22 flyers off Truk.Although several submarines received damage,none was lost on rescue missions. In atoll la-goons, shallow waters, and mine fields, whereour submarines and ships could not go, the smallseaplanes carried by battleships and cruisers ofthe carrier task forces provided a satisfactoryanswer to this problem.

In the vicinity of a carrier task force, screen-ing and picket destroyers performed rescues.The attack on the enemy fleet during the Battleof the Philippines Sea cost 20 United Statesplanes shot down and another 55 force by lackof gas to land on the water before reaching theircarriers. Of aproximately 180 personnel in-volved all but 16 pilots and 22 aircrewmenwere recovered, the majority by destroyersbefore dawn.

Many types of rescue operation required closecoordination between commands that normallyoperated more or less independently. Such co-ordination reached its high point in connectionwith bombing of Empire targets by B–29’s. Achain of ships and submarines, each with a sup-porting plane circling overhead, was providedalong the route from the Marianas to the target.Submarines were stationed from the Empirecoast to about 400 miles out and destroyers orsimilar ships the rest of the way. When a planewent down, the assigned air-sea rescue plane,which on the most remote stations was usually aspecially equipped B–29 “Super Dumbo" and

the surviors and directed the comparativelyslow-moving ship or submarine to the scene.With this system most B-29 survivors, no matterat what point on their 1,200 -mile over-waterroute they went down, were recovered in a

short period, sometimes within a few minutes.Air-sea rescue activity in the Pacific shows

naval units of all types being successfully em-ployed to meet every kind of combat rescueproblem. Durng the last year of the war, atotal of 2,150 flight personnel of all services wasrecoverd by these agencies. The value of air-sea rescue transcended the total of lives saved.Everwhere it bolstered morale and encouragedflight personnel to greater efforts against theenemy. Since it took longer to train air crewsthan to build planes, personnel were more diffi-

ft; economy and senti-cult to replace than aircrament both contributed to the development of air-sea rescue.

Aerial Mining

The offensive mine-laying campaign wagedagainst Japan was little publicized but the re-sults were highly successful. At least 649,736tons of shipping were sunk and another 1,377,-780 tons damaged, of which 378,827 were stillout of use at the end of the war. The total sunkand damaged represented one quarter of the pre-war strength of the Japanese merchant marine.In addition 9 destroyers, 4 submarines, and 36auxiliary craft went down as the result of mineexplosions; and 2 battleships, 2 escort carriers.8 cruisers, 29 destroyers or destroyer escorts, asubmarine, and 18 other combatant vessels weredamaged, In the course of the war 25,000mines were laid, 21,389 or 85 percent by air-craft. From a total of 4,760 sorties, only 55mine-laying planes failed to return.

Although surface vessels and submarines werealso employed, airplanes proved particularlyadapted to mine-laying. They could penetrateenemy harbors and repeat the operation withoutbeing endangered by mines previously sown.Much of the work could he carried on at nightwith relatively little loss of accuracy and withincreased secrecy as to the exact location of the

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mines, which added to the Japanese difficulty insweeping. All United States and Allied airservices participated, using practically everytype of bombing plane from the Avenger (TBF)to the Superfortress ( B–29), and, of course, theever-present Catalina. The mines themselveswere developed, produced, supplied and serv-iced largely by the United States Navy with afew British types being employed in Burma andthe Southwest Pacific. Naval mine-warfare offi-cers collaborated in the planning and executionof all operations.

Although mining resulted in the destruction oflarge numbers of vessels, , it had other importanteffects not so easily determinable. It forced theJapanese to close ports until they could be swept,thereby causing the loss of valuable ship time.Even with relatively few mines at a time oftenrepeated attacks resulted in the abandonment ofmany harbors. To prevent the enemy fromstaging his fleet through certain anchorages theywere mined when important operations were inprogreS in adjacent a rea s . Shallow waterswere mined to force shipping into the open seawhere United States submarines could attack.In the last month of the war the mining cam-paign was extended to home waters to cut of thelast Japanese connection with the mainland.

In the outer zone, particularly though the

with comparatively small numbers being usedagainst strategic objectives. The campaign wascarried on by Royal Air Force, Australian, andUnited States Army aircraft operating frombases in the Southwest Pacific, China, and India.It prevented the Japanese from using such im-portant ports as Rangoon to reinforce theirtroopS in Burma and greatly curtailed their ob-taining supplies of oil from sulch places as Sura -baya and Balikpapan. In the South and CentralPacific, Navy planes used mines for tactical pur-poses to keep the Japanese Fleet from using cer-tain harbors while amphibious operations were

being conducted in nearby areas.Over half the naval mines expended during

the war were laid by the Superfortresses of theTwentieth Air Force in and about the homeislands, particularly in the straits of Shimonsekiand around the Inland Sea. This forced theJapanese to carry goods from the Asiatic main-land to ports in northern Honshu from which

1 adequate distribution by rail was impossible.To complicate the enemy’s problem Navy Pri-vateers from Okinawa mined the shores of theYellow- Sea as far as the southern coast ofKorea. The movement of ships of over 1,000tons was stopped altogether. Careful mine-laying prevented the use of all but three ofJapan’s merchant-marine shipyards, thus pre-venting the repair of vessels already damaged.Cut off from the East Indies by air and sub-marine action, the enemy saw his last link withthe Asiatic mainland severed bv aerial mines.American and Allied services working in closecollaboration completed the strangle-hold onJapanese industry.

Air Support of AmphibiousOperations

The primary missions of air support werelocal defense and direct support of troops ashore.Defense included combat air patrols to ward offenemy air raids, antisubmarine patrols flown constantlly around the approaches to the objec-tive area, and special missions such as the silenc-ing of heavy coastal batteries. Direct troop sup-port consisted prinipally of attacks with bombs,rockets, machine guns and incendiaries on enemytroops and defenses. In order to be effective,both defensive and offensive air operations re-quired a high degree of coordination and con-trol. This was practically impossible to securethrough the normal task-group communicationchannels because in a major amphibious opera-tion as many as thirty- different carrier air

l 5

groups and land-based Marine air units mightbe jointly engagd in operations. The task-force and task-group organization involved toomany echelons of command to permit promptaction on requests for air support.

The need for the development of air-supportdoctrine was apparent in the landings on Guadal-canal and Tulagi in August 1942. Three car-riers supported this operation, and their airgroups reported to a support air director in theflagship of the amphibious commander and priorto the landings carried out missions assignedby him. Although the Navy had foreseen theneed for liaison parties ashore with the troopsand had occasionally employed them in peace-time maneuvers, on Guadalcanal inadequatecommuications and lack of experience handi-capped the direction of support missions afterthe Marines had landed.

The air defense for this operation also leftmuch to be desired. The plan called for a com-bat air patrol of fighters directed by a ship-

His function was to receive information fromships’ radars of enemy air raids and the posi-tion of friendly fighters, to relay this informa-tion to the patrolling fighters, and to direct themto a point where they could make visual contactwith enemy planes. As the radar of the cruiseron which he was embarked failed to detect the

raids, the fighter director wasunable to carry out his mission.

After the first two days the carriers wereobliged to withdraw, leaving the amphibiousforce and the troops ashore entirely without localair support until a captured airfield on Guadal-canal could be completed and supplied with land-based aircraft. The tragic history of the weeksthat followed, during which planes available fordefense and for troop support were pitifully few,clearly demonstrated the importance of main-taining a continuous supply of carrier-based airpower during the critical period between the

16

initial assault and the eventualland-based aircraft ashore.

establishment of

It was late in August 1942 before land-basedsupport operations actually got under way. Usewas made of radio for communicating requestsfrom troops to supporting planes, and from thisexperience came a realization of the tremen-dously increased effectiveness gained from hav-ing liaison officers who worked constantly withthe troops and knew the special problems in-olved. As a result, the Navy organized a num-ber of air liaison parties which, unlike the offi-cers who went ashore on 7 August, were espe-cially trained to accompany front-line troops andto relay their requests to the controlling com-mand. Such parties were successfully used atKiska, the Gilberts, and in subsequent opera-tions. Eventually, their functions were takenover by units within the Marine and Armyground organization.

In the assault on Tarawa on 20 November1943, there appeared for the first time the over-whelming concentration of air power that char-acterized all landing operations in the CentralPacific. A total of 17 aircraft carriers with acomplement of 900 planes participated. Eightwere the new, comparatively slow- escort carriersassigned exclusively to tactical air support, amission for which they were well fitted and whichpermitted the release of the fast carriers for useagainst enemy air bases and other distant targets.As escort carriers become available in increas-ing numbers it was possible to expand enor-mously - the volume of air support.

During the Gilberts campaign use was alsomade of a specialized troop-support control unitafloat equipped both to receive and filter the re-qests for help and to assign offensive supportmissions to the aircraft overhead. In each suc-ceeding operation air-support control units grewin size, number, and complexity, eventually as-suming complete control of every air-borneplane in the objective area. These units func-

tioned first on battleships and later on commandships. The latter were converted transportswith the necessary concentration of radar andradio-communications equipment. These shipswere used as joint headquarters by the amphibi-ous, shore, and air commanders.

Fighter direction, the control of defensive airsupport, was conducted in the Gilberts from des-ignated ships in the landing fleet, but there waslittle coordination between such ships. After theexperience of this operation control of all am-phibious fighter-director teams was centralizedin the existing air-support control organization,so that all support aircraft, both offensive anddefensive, received direction and coordinationfrom a single command. The two activitieswere thereafter physically located in adjacentcontrol rooms on a command ship, which was inconstant communication with subordinate con-trol units or teams whether on other commandships, picket destroyers, or ashore.

In January 1944 the amphibious forces of theCentral Pacific invaded Kwajalein. The pat-tern of tactical air support in Pacific amphibiousoperations emerged clearly. Although later op-erations brought increasing complexity and re-finement in technique, no important departuresfrom this pattern were made.

In the Marianas assault of June 1944 air-support control employed three command shipswith additional standbys available. The de-velopment of standardized techniques made itpossible to pass control of the air-support opera-tions without interruption from one ship to an-other. Similarly, aS land-based aircraft becameestablished ashore, it was found feasible to trans-fer elements most closely integrated with troopmovements to a control center on the beachheadwhile retaining afloat fighter direction, anti-submarine patrol, and air-sea rescue. Anothernew technique developed in the Marianas wasthe coordination of shore-based artillery, navalgunfire, and air support. By placing the sepa-

rate controllers on the same ship it was possibleto select the most effective type of weapon (air,naval, or artillery) for each request from theground troops.

In September 1944 came simultaneous land-ings at Morotai and the Palaus. Esort carriersprovided the direct support for both. While theMorotai landing was virtually unopposed, fanat-ical resistance from underground positions andcaves was encountered at Bloody Nose Ridge onPeleliu. In hand-to-hand fighting precision at-tacks by support aircraft were provided as closeas 100 yards from front-line positions, a featthat would have been impossible without therigid air discipline and concentrated control sys -tem developed in earlier operations.

In the campaign for the recapture of the Phil-ippines, Army, Navy, and Marine aircraft par-ticipated together in tactical air support. Land-ings in the Leyte-Samar area were made on 20October 1944 by forces under the command ofGeneral of the Army MacArthur. Althoughafter softening-up by air and ship bombardmentthe landings were successfully made without toomuch ground opposition, Japanese sea and airresistance developed on an all-out scale. In theensuing Battle for Leyte Gulf, the Air SupportCommander carried his control to the point ofdiverting aircraft from troop-support missions tostrikes against enemy surface forces. This wasan outstanding example not only of the versatil-ity of carrier aircraft but also of the flexibility-

of air power made possible by the type of air-support organization developed and perfected inthe Pacific war.

In the Lingayen Gulf landing in January andthe assault on Iwo Jima in February, air supportfollowed the established pattern. The increas-ing use of Kamikaze attacks by the Japanese,however, emphasized the defense function of theair-support control units.

The largest amphibious operation of the Pa-cific war, the assault and occupation of Okinawa,

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saw air support at its highest level. From 20to 31 carriers provided tacticat air support for1,213 ships and 451,866 combat and servicetroops. As landing fields on Okinawa were cap-tured and activated, a total of over 400 shore-based Marine and Army planes were addded pro-gressively to the carrier-based aircraft.

The statistics are impressive and indicative ofthe scope of the support function of aircraft.During 88 dayS, 1,904 direct-support missionswere flown involving a total of 17,361 individ-ual offensive sorties. An average of 560 planeswas in the air each day on all types of missions,including defensive patrols. These aircraft ex-pended 7,141 tons of bombs, 49,641 5-inch rock-ets, 1,573 wing tanks containing 260,000 gallonsof napalin, the blazing gasoline jelly, and 9,300,-000 rounds of 50-caliber ammunition.

Okinawa provided a crucial test for amphib-ious fighter direction. As in the Philippines,the intensity of Japanese opposition increasedthe importance of air defense. With an area ofapproximately 7,850 square miles to cover andwith the majority of the enemy air strength basedonly 350 miles away in Kyushu to the north andin Formosa to the southwest, the magnitude ofthe centralized air-defense responsibility is ap-parent. During the first 54 days, 18,675 fighter-plane sorties were flown for the protection of theamphibious force alone, while in addition thefast and support carriers provided their owncombal air patrol. In the 82 days during whichthe amphibious forces air-support control unitwas responsible for the defense of the objectivearea. the Japanese dispatched 896 air raids in -volving more than 3,089 planes. Of these thecentrally controlled combat air patrol over theobjective area shot down 1,067 planes, including50 shot down by night fighters. Antiaircraftfire and suicide dives destroyed at least 948more, making a total of 2,015 Japanese planes.These figures do not include Japanese planesshot down by the combat air patrols over the

18

carriers and by the antiaircraft guns of the car-rier forces which were not under air-supportcontrol.

Enemy air tactics had been foreseen and 15radar picket stations, located from 20 to 95 milesfrom the center of the area, had been establishedto cover paths of approach. Each station wasmanned by a radar-equipped destroyer orsmaller vessel with a fighter-director teamaboard. These teams were linked with the cen-tral air-defense control organization. They di-rected fighter patrols assigned to their sectorsand passed control and information to otherunits as the raiders left their area. The picketline was so effective in intercepting enemy raidsthat the Japanese switched tactics and began toconcentrate on picket vessels which heretoforehad been neglected for larger and more profit-able targets. Despite the pounding these picketstations received, which resulted in 7 destroyerssunk, 18 seriously damaged, and 6 damagedslightly, fighter-director ships were still on sta-tion when responsibility for air defense wastransferred ashore to the Air Defense Com-mander 82 days after the original landings.

Air-support control as it functioned in theOkinawa campaign had grown to include morethan aircraft. It provided for the integrationof all available weapons -- land, sea, and air.For limited forces operating far from bases,economy in the use of weapons became manda-tory. The control system provided for defensewith a minimum of fighter planes, releasing oth-ers for support missions. It made possible theuse of aircraft only against targets susceptible toair attack and saw that nava l gunfire or fieldartiliery was usedwhere more efficient. Suchan economical use of power grew from theNavy’s concept of organization which treated allelements of the naval forces as integral partsof the whole complex required for control ofthe sea. Each should be used in the mannerbest suited to its inherent characteristics and all

should be formedchine through the

into a unified operating ma-task-force system. The air-

support control units were themselves a special-ized adaptation of the task-force pattern for theaccomplishment of a well-defined mission.

Although the surrender of Japan made un-

necessary the final amphibious assault on theenemy homeland, the Okinawa operation demon-strated the ability of the United States to trans-port its forces over vast sea distances and to landthem on a hostile shore. The possession of thistechnique altered the world’s strategic picture.

19

IN BATTLE ARRAYAn Essex-class Carrier P1OwS Through Pacific Waters

I V THE JAPANESE OFFENSIVE--PEARL HARBORTO MIDWAY

The nature of the area with its island basesand long lines of water communications madethe conflict with Japan essentially a naval war.The advent of the airplane revolutionized themethods of attack but did not alter the basic con-cepts of strategy or decrease the necessity forcontrolling the sea. As an island empire, Japanwas peculiarly susceptible to any interruption ofits water-borne supply system and particularlyto any action that would sever the connectionwith the East Indies whence came indispensableraw materials.

The actual conflict may be divided into threephases: the Japanese offensive from 7 December1941, to 5 June 1942; the offensive-defensivefrom 7 August 1942, to 19 November 1943,during which Japan had lost the initiative but theA11ies commanded resources only to mount lim-ited operations and the United States offensivefrom 19 November 1943, to 15 August 1945.

Japan’s decision to launch a war was basedon the assumption that the conflict in Europewould render Russia and Great Britain neg-ligible factors in the Far East. It was basedon the further assumption that the United States,already committed to near belligerency in theAtlantic could not, even if finally successful inthat theater, mount an offensive in the Pacific in1ess than 18 months to 2 years and would notin any case be willing to pay the price of totalvictory in the Pacific.

The Japanese set out to conquer the Philip-pines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, andBurma, which they appropriately called theSouthen Resoures Area. Judging that theirprincipal enemy was the United States, the Jap-anese planned as initial objectives the destruc-tion of a part of the United States Fleet and theacquisition of a line of military bases to rein-

force their existing positions in the Marshalls.Attainment of these objectives was to be followedby economic development of the Southern Re-sources Area and consolidation and strengthen-ing of their newly acquired defensive perimeterin the Central and South Pacific. Japanese car-rier forces operating from interior lines and sup-ported by a land-based air force would be able tomeet the United States counterattack if, andwhen, it came. The limited nature of these ob-jectives was apparent in the failure to include

- .seizure of the principal United States naval basein the Pacific at Pearl Harbor or damage to thePanama Canal and the ports on the west coastof the United States.

The Japanese recognized that control of theair was an essential condition to amphibious op-erations. The Japanese Fleet was thereforebuilt around a striking force of 6 carriers to bedrawn from a total of 10 available and 7 moreunder construction or being converted from mer-chant hulls.

With a high degree of tactical success thisforce struck Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941,employing 360 of 414 embarked aircraft. Halfthe attacking force was directed against airfieldsin the Hawaiian Islands; half against fleet unitsin Pearl Harbor. Nineteen warships were hitamong which were 5 battleships that came torest on the bottom.

The Japanese then proceeded to the conquestof the Southern Resources Area which they com -pleted in an incredibly short time. The com-nined aircraft strength of the Japanese Army andNavy, carrier- and shore-based, was approxi-matey 2,625 units. These were opposed byapproximately half that number of land-basedaircraft widely dispersed among the variousUnited States and Allied bases in the Far East.

At the points of conflict the Japanese achievedby virtue of the mobility inherent in a properlyemplloyed carrier force a numerical superiorityof at least 4 to 1. To this factor must be addedthe intangible value of surprise, superb training,and combat experience. With the exception ofthree destroyers sunk by Allied submarines, notone Japanese major combat vessel was lost andvery few were damaged. Their air, ground,and shipping losses were equally insignificant,while the United States, Great Britain, the Neth-erlands, and Australia lost the majority of sea,land, and air forces engaged. April 1942found the Japanese with their empire greatlyenlarged, their fleet intact, and morale at a highlevel.

Between 7 December 1941 and 9 Apri11942,the Japanese carrier striking force had operatedacross a third of the earth’s circumference, fromHawaii to Ceylon, and conducted strikes againstships and shore installations at Pearl Harbor,Rabaul, Ambon, Darwin, Tjilatja, Colombo,and Trincomalee. Allied losses to Japanesecarrier air included five battleships, one aircraftcarrier, one cruiser, and seven destroyers sunkor very heavily damaged; three battleships, threecruisers, and one destroyer damaged and thou-sands of tons of auxiliaries and merchant shipssunk. Hundreds of Allied aircraft, as well asdocks, hangarsa and base facilities, were de-stroyed or captured. The enemy force was sel-dom sighted and never effectively attacked.Control of the Western Pacific and its island andcoastal perimeter lay in Japanese hands untilsuch time as forces to challenge them could becontructed and assembled. The Japanese hadnot, however, brought to action the carrierforces of the United States Pacific Fleet, whichremained the sole immediate threat capable ofstriking through their newly acquired defensiveperimeter and of turning further amphibiousadvance into defeat.

Encouraged by the ease with which they

achieved their initial objectives in the first fivemonths of the war and perhaps influenced by thecarrier-launched Dolittle raid, the Japaneseundertook the extension of their original defen-sive perimeter. At the cost of delaying the de-velopment of their newly acquired bases, theydetermined to cut the lines of communicationbetween the United States and Australia by seiz-ing Port Moresby, the last important Allied foot-hold in New Guinea, New Caledonia, the Fijis,and Samoa, and to improve the defensive per-imeter on the east and north by the capture ofMidway and the western A1eutians.

The Japanese then embarked on a three-pronged offensive. The first avance was di-rected against Port Moresby. In early May1942, an amphibitous force supported by threecarrers, steamed south into the Coral Sea. AUnited States task force including the carriersLexington and Yorktown discovered the trans-ports on 7 May and sank the light carrier Shohoby air attack. Throughout the rest of the dayboth Japanese and United States carrier forcessearched unsuccessfully for each other. Earlythe next morning contact was made and simul-taneous air attacks launched. A Japanese car-rier, the Shokaku, received severe damage fromhits by dive bombers. The Yorktown took lightdamage; the Lexington with uncontrollable gas-oline fires was abandoned and sunk by UnitedStates destroyers.

With their control of the air at the objectivein serious doubt, the Japanese retired. The en-gagement, the first of four carrier duels to takeplace during the next 6 months, was tacticallyindecisive but of considerable strategic conse-quence. Japanese occupation of Port Moresbyby sea was defered to July and finally aban-doned following the Battte of Midway. TheJapanese Army thereafter attempted the con-quest of Port Moresby over the Owen StanleyMountains without air support. The result wasthe disaster at Buna.

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Aware of the fact that available United Statescarrier strength had been in or enroute to theSouth Pacific as late as 8 May, the Japanesedesignated 6 June aS the date for the occupa-tion of Midway to be preceded by a diversionarycarrier strike on Dutch Habor in the Aleutians.Against Midway- was sent a transport force cov-ered by the main strength of the Japanese Fleetincluding four carriers. A group of two car-riers and escorts was assigned the task of raidingDutch Habor; this attack was to be followed bythe occupation of Adak, Kiska, and Attu in theAleutian chain.

On 3 June naval patrol planes made initialcontact with the southern transport force steam-ing east toward Midway, and early on 4 Junethe main body of the Japanese Fleet was discov-ered. Concentrating on the destruction of theMidway air group, composed of Marine andArmy aircraft and naval patrol planes, and di-verted by torpedo-plane attack, the Japanesecarriers were’ taken by surprise and fell beforethe dive bombers of a hastily assembled Amer-ican carrier task force composed of the Enter-

prise, Hornet, and Yorktown. Three Japanesecarriers were sunk. A fourth, seriouslycrippled, was finally destroyed by the Japanesetheselves. In a counterattack the Yorktownwas heavily damaged by aerial torpedoes andthe following day sunk by- an enemy submarine.

As at Coral Sea, with control of the air irre-trievably lost, the Midway invasion force turnedback. The Japanese, nevertheless, landed onKiska and Attu on 6 and 7 June but canceledthe occupation of Adak.

Two important naval actions had been foughtwithout the forces themselves engaging in oppos-ing surface gunfire. Aviation had demonstratedits latent power as the principal offensive ele-ment of the new American Navy. The loss offour of their finest aircraft carriers weakenedthe powerful striking force with which the Jap-anese had achieved their conquests. Battleshipsand seaplane tenders were withdrawn from thefleet for hasty conversion to carriers, but theJapanese Navy never regained the position itlost at Midway. The initiative had shifted tothe United States.

23

ON GUARD -

A Helldiver Escorts a Convoy

v OFFENSIVE-DEFENSIVE—GUADALCANALTO BOUGAINVILLE

The war plans in effect at the outbreak ofthe war were predicated on fighting the axispowers simultaneously. Since Germany was re-garded as the more dangerous, it was made thepreferred objective of United States efforts.Forces in the Pacific were experted to protectAllied territory and to limit the Japanese expans-sion as much as possible.

With the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staffin January 1942, a more definitive strategicconcept was devised, and in April 1942 revisedwar plans were adopted. The Pacific was di-vided into two theaters of United States responsi -bility, the Pacific Ocean Area and the SouthwestPacific Area. Forces assigned had the generaltasks of containing the Japanese in their respec-tive areas, protecting their own communications,and supporting operations in the adjacent thea-ter. Although the victory over Germany re-mained the primary objective, nevertheless, asforces became available in the Pacific the strat-egy was gradually to become offensive. TheAllies were ultimately able to conduct majorcampaigns in both theaters of the global war.

On 7 December 1941, the United States Navyhad seven carriers, of which only the Lexingtonand Enterprise were immediately operational inthe Pacific. The Saratoga was on the WestCoast ; the Wasp, Yorktown, and Ranger werein the Atlantic; and the Hornet was shaking downin the Caribbean.

From Pearl Harbor to Coral Sea the Wasp andRanger remained committed to the Atlantic. Op-erations of the remaining carricrs conformed tothe wholly defensive strategy in the Pacific. On 1February, a series of carrier raids was launchedto delay or divert the enemy’s advance. TheEnterprise and Yorktown particiated in a com-bined air attack, surface bombardment, and re-

connaissance of the eastern Marshalls and north-ern Gilberts. A task group built around theLexington was approaching Rabaul on 20 Febru-ary when it was detected and forced to retireafter successfully repulsing a Japanese bomberattack. Four days later the Enterprise and ac-companying screen bombed and shelled Wakeand then went on to launch strikes againstMarcus. On 10 March the Lexington and York-town aircraft flew- over the Owen Stanley Moun-tains to attack shipping at the eastern NewGuinea ports of Lae and Salamaua where theJapanese had landed three days earlier. TheDoolittle raid of 19 April on Tokyo was launchedfrom the Hornet which, since it had Army bomb-ers on deck, was supported by the Enterprise.Those early raids all met with a high degree oftactical success and demonstrated that carrierswere not exclusively a Japanese weapon.

With the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway,United States and Japanese carrier strength be-came nearly equal. At the same time the newsthat the Japanese advance was creeping downthe Solomons and commencing the constructionof an airfield onGuadalcanal made it advisableto undertake a limited offensive in the SouthPacific. In view of the danger to supply linesto Australia and with the reassurance that theUnited States had 12 fast and 15 escort carrierson the ways, the Joint Chiefs of Staff determinedto accept the risk, and orders were issued direct-ing operations against the Japanese in the Solo-mon Islands. The first test of the Japanese per-imeter came a year before the enemy- expected it.

On 7 August 1942, the United States Marineslanded on Guadalcanal, quickly overcame minoropposition, and captured a half-constructed air-field. The operation was covered initially by atask force of three carriers. Although the Jap-

25

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final night action on 30 November. The waywas then clear for a land offensive which pushedback the poorly supplied Jap troops. In Febru-ary 1943 some 10,000 survivors of the 30,000troops which the Japanese had invested piece-meal in the campaign were evacuated.

United States forces began a slow advance upthe Solomons chain leading toward Rabaul. Asthe Navy lost two carriers in the early part ofthe campaign, its first-line strength in the Pacificwas reduced to two carriers, and this was a pri-mary factor in explaining the slow progress ofsucceeding months. Guadalcanal air bases wereexpanded; the Russells were taken for an ad-vanced fighter base; an amphibious campaigncovered by planes from those bases took Mundaand other points on New Georgia. From thoseairfields short amphibious advances took VellaLavella and an island in the Treasury group onwhich further bases were built. A foothold atTorokina on Bougainville was obtained in No-vember 1943. Only from here and from basessecured in similar short Southwest Pacific ad-vances from New Guinea could land-based fight-ers finally reach the main Japanese base at Ra-baul. Sixteen months elapsed from the date ofthe landing at Guadalcanal until the first SouthPacific fighter planes flew over Rabaul less than700 miles distant. Even then it was deemeddesirable to take and develop further bases atGreen Island and Emirau before the Rabaul areacould be considered adequately covered; thisconsumed 3 months more.

The lessons and consequences of this longdrawn-out campaign were numerous. It affordedan opportunity to perfect tactics by which theheavily armored United States fighter planescould master the brilliantly maneuverable butunarmored Japanese. It confirmed the need forclose support of troops by aircraft and providedin numerous landings a school for the develo-ment of suitable techniques. It confirmed Eu -ropean experience as to the need for night fight-

ers and led to their inclusion in the first airechelon sent into captured bases. It providedopportunity for perfection of fighter directionand other techniques. It posed the question,only partially answered by heavy-bomber strikes,of an effective means of denying the enemythe use of the airstrips remaining in his pos-session in the northern Solomons and Bismarcks.It emphasized the importance of adequate searchand reconnaissance including the use of land-based Navy aircraft, capable of penetratingenemy-held areas without escort, and of specialphotographic squadrons. Last, it saw the de-velopment of the Black Cats as all effectivemeans of dealing with Japanese night shipping

. . .activities.The air war was conducted principally by

Marine and Navy shore-based planes of carriertypes. Using largely dive and glide-bombingtactics, small planes proved most suited to thistype of sea and island warfare in a theater wherethe supply problem was critical. Whether interms of hits per gallon of gasoline, hits perpound of plane weight reflected in turn in timeand effort of airfield construction, hits per dollarinvested or flight crewmen risked, hits per hourflown, and in hits per ton dropped, the small,single-engine, low-altitude bomber with its crewof two or three and its ability- to fly from shortand narrow fields was the most effective weapon.

The campaign further demonstrated that thetime required in the advance of a land based airforce from one newly constructed air base toanother placed a serious limitation on the abilityof United States forces to capitalize on the de-struction of an opposing Japanese air force. Bythe time the new position was fully developedand prepared to support a decisive air offensive,the Japanese had reorganized and reformed theirunits unhindered at the next base to the rear.

Whatever the lessons from the first sustainedexperience with United States power, the Jap-anese failed to profit from them. In the face of

726015 47 —3 27

rapid progress in radar search and fire control, ships were overshadowed by the attrition suf-night surface action once favorable to the in- fered in destroyers and other escort types whichferior force and for which they had long trained plagued them to the end of the war. Most seri-was no better than action by day. But more ous of all was the l0SS of experienced air per-important was what the Japanese lost: 2 carriers, sonnel, a loss which was never overcome. The2 battleships, 6 cruisers, 39 destroyers, and some Solomons campaign was a valuable laboratory3,000 aircraft and crews. The losses in heavy to the side which could profit from experience.

2 8

V I THE UNITED STATES OFFENSIVE-TARAWA TO TOKYO

The offensivc against Japan depended uponUnited States forces supplemented by such unitsas its Allies could spare from commitmentselsewhere. By the autumn of 1943 the UnitedStates waS able to supply the Pacific theater withsufficient ships, planes, ground forces, and sup-porting equipment to undertake operations on alarge scale.

Except for the Solomons and the Aleutians,where Attu and Kiska had been retaken, the Jap-anese still held the perimeter which they hadstaked out in 1942. The weakness in their stra-tegic pattern was the separation of the industrialhomeland from sources of raw material and theconsequent dependence on water transportationnot only to supply wide-flung military and navalunits but also to maintain the Empire economy.Shipping and the supply routes presented an in-viting objective. The second possibility was abombing attack on the home industries whichcould be effectively conducted once strategicislands within range had been captured. Boththese objectves could be atained if the UnitedStates won control of the sea in the western Pa-cific. This in turn required the defeat and, ifpossible, the destruction of the Japanese Navy

1and the capture by amphibious landings of thosebases necessary to the operations of UnitedStates air and naval foces. From the Marianasit would be possible to bomb Japan and fromthe Philippines to sever the route to the SouthernResources Area.

Simultaneous advances were to be conductedby Southwest and Central Pacific forces. Basedon Australia, the first was to proceed by a seriesof amphibious hops along the north coast of NewGuinea to Morotai and thence to the Philippines.Except for three of the longer jumps, this cam-paign did not require carrier aviation and could

be conducted by the Army supported by land-based air and relatively light naval forces. TheCentral Pacific, however, presented the problemsof much longer over-water operations startingfrom the Ellice Islands and proceeding from theGilberts through the Marshalls and Marianas tothe western Carolines from which a long jumpcould he made to the Philippines in collabora-tion with the Southwest Pacific forces. Becauseland-based air cover was impossible to maintainbeyond 300 miles from base, carrier aviationnecessarily played a major role. As it waS ex-pected that the Japanese Fleet would make itsmain resistance in this area, both carriers andheavy naval units were assigned to the CentralPacific. With the taking of the Philippines, thesame forces could be withdrawn and used tomove north and west from the Marianas to-ward the Bonins and Okinawa and finally toprepare an amphibious assault on the Japanesehomeland.

The contribution of naval aviation to theSouthwest Pacific advance was largely in recon-naissance and antishipping attacks. Marine airunits were retained in the northern Solomons andthe Admiralties to interdict bypassed enemy gar-risons on Bougainville, New Britain, and NewIreland. In the Central Pacific the Navy had

. . .available both fast and escort carriers in increas-

ing nunbers, its land-based and tender-basedsquadrons, and Marine garrison air forces. Al-though the Army-Air Forces supplied heavy andmedium bombardment groups as needed, thenature of the Central Pacific made the theaterprimarily a Navy responsibility. With thenecessary equipment on hand and assured of acontinuing supply of replacements and reinforce-ments, the United States prepared to launch itsdrives at the Japanese Empire.

2 9

The summer of 1943 saw the Marine andArmy air units in the Solomons and the FifthArmy Air Force in New Guinea engaged in adeath struggle with Japanese naval aviationbased at Rabaul and Bougainville. Because itwas expected that an advance on the Marshallsmight be met with opposition of the same inten-sity and caliber the first steps were cautious.Airfields were constructed at Funafuti, Nanomea,and Nukufetau in the Ellice chain, and BakerIsland was developed as a staging base for Armybombers based at Canton. Search and photo-graphic reconnaissance by Navy squadrons andbombing by Army aircraft were initiated againstthe Gilberts and southern Marshalls. The fast-

carrer forces conducted strikes against Marcusin August, Tarawa and Makin in September, andWake in October. These were in the nature oftraining and probing operations for the newEssex- and Independence-class carriers as they-

arrived in the Pacific. By November four largeand five small carriers had been added to theexisting force which comprised only the Enter-prise and Saratoga, and a total of eight escortcarrers had been assembled. It was now pos-sible for the first major carrier-paced offensiveto begin.

The air garrisons in the Gilberts, 100 miles tothe north at Mille in the Marshalls, and 530miles to the west at Nauru were overwhelmed

SEA POWERU. S. Warships in the Admiralties

3 0

by carrier strikes on 19 and 20 November.These were carried out by- the 11 fast carriersorganized in 4 task groups, the largest carrierforce yet assembled by any navy. On 20 No-vember the marines landed on Tarawa, whichfell after 2½ days of heavy fighting. The es-cort carriers and 1 fast-carrier group provided

direct support, while other groups covered theapproaches. Makin and Apamama were takenwith ease and although the Japanese Navy madeno effort to contest the landing by surface action,it did launch a series of troublesome and damag-ing night torpedo attacks by aircraft from Kwa-jalein. Despite daily bombings and daylightfighter patrols the planes staged through Millein the evening.

With the Gilberts in friendly hands prepara-tions were made for the assault on the Marshalls.Photographic reconnaissance by a carrier taskforce on 4 December 1943, confirmed by thepictures later brought back by Navy Liberators.showed that the enemy had fortified Maloelap,Wotje, and Mille in the outer ring of islands buthad much less extensive installations on Kwa-jalein and Eniwetok farther to the west and noneat all on Majuro, an atoll with sufficiently largeanchorage for the fleet and land space for an air-field. Rather than assault the main Japanesedefenses with the resultant heavy casualties ashad occurred at Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Majurobecame the first objectives in the Marshalls to befollowed by landings on Eniwetok.

The operation commenced with an air bom-bardment by Army, Marine, and Navy unitsbased in the Gilberts. Profiting from the ex-ample of the enemy at Pearl Harbor, the fast car-riers approached from a direction in which Jap-anese searches were known to be weak. On 29January 1944 approximately 700 aircraft struckKwajalein, Maleolap, and Wotje and by eveningthere was not a Japanese plane operational eastof Eniwetok. The latter was cleaned out thenext day. Two landings were made on Kwa-

jalein Atoll, and by 4 February enemy resistancewas overcome. In the meantime Majuro hadbeen occupied without opposition. The loss ofbases in the Marshalls caused the Japanese towithdraw the First Mobile Fleet from Truk, partto Singapore and the remainder to home waters,

Although it had not been planned to takeEniwetok until May, the speed with which Kwa-jalein Atoll had fallen was exploited by changingplans on the spot. Uncommitted reserves from that operation landed on Eniwetok on 17 Febru-ary, and within 6 days the atoll was secure.

Truk was not only the reputed center of Jap-anese naval strength but was also the base fromwhich air reinforcements could have been flown into the Marshalls. During the capture of Kwa-jalein and Majuro, night torpedo attacks likethose experienced in the Gilberts had been pre-vented by keeping a combat air patrol over Eni -wetok through which enemy planes would havehad to stage. When an attack on the latter atollwas scheduled, the time seemed ripe for a raidagainst Truk itself. Although the nature andextent of the enemy installations had been acarefully guarded secret, Marine photo-Libera-tors from the Solomons had obtained a few pic-tures on 4 February which indicated that an airstrike would be well within the capabilities ofthe fast carriers and the targets would be worththe risk. Achieving complete tactical surprise,a force of 5 large and 4 light carriers struckTruk on 16 and 17 February, destroying 26merchant vessels, 6 warships, and 270 aircraftand inflicting damage on installations. OneUnited States carrier was damaged in a nightaerial-torpedo attack and, with 2 other carriersto provide cover, retired to Pearl Harbor.

Success at Truk led to a decision to turn northand investigate Japanese bases in the Marianas.Detected during the approach on 21 February.the six-carrier force fought its way without sig-nificant damage through a night-long series ofattacks by land-based aircraft and carried out

31

the operation as scheduled. The Japanese FirstAir Fleet, already greatly reduced by actionsin the Marshalls and at Truk, lost much of itsremaining strength and the first photographswere obtained of installations and beaches in theMarianas.

The Truk and Marianas raids demonstratedthe decisive striking and defensive power of thefast-carrier task force. Although tactical sur-prise was achieved freqently during the war,the Japanese in the Marianas were fully warnedby their search planes about 18 hours in ad-vance. The Japanese failure to stop the attackindicated that, concentrated in sufficient numbersand properly handled, carriers could operateagainst shore-based aircraft even without theelement of surprise.

With the development of United States basesin the Marshalls, Palau and adjacent atolls be-came the only Japanese fleet anchorages in theCentral Pacific remaining free from land-basedair attack and reconnaissince. To prevent itsuse during Southwest Pacific operations at Hol-landia, Palau was chosen as the next target forthe fast carriers. Approaching from the south-east through the Admiralties, the carriers de-

March andstroyed the Palau air garrison on 30 a wave of air reinforcements the following day.A feature of the attack was the first mining bycarrier planes, which effectively closed the har-bor for a month to 6 weeks. The enemy alsolost 104,000 gross tons of war and merchantships including 6 tankers of 47,000 tons, and150 aircraft were destroyed. Because completesurprise had not been obtained, 4 war vesselsand 15 to 20 merchantmen had escaped on 29March.

After replenishment the fast-carrier task forcewent on to cover and support the landings ofSouthwest Pacific forces at Aitape and Hollandiaon the north coast of New Guinea on 21 April1944. These landings involved bypassingstrong enemy positions at Hansa Bay and We-

wak in the longest hop yet made by SouthwestPacific forces. Although the Fifth Army AirForce in a series of brilliant operations had de-stroyed enemy air opposition in New- Guinea, itwas feared that the Japanese might bring up rein-forcements and attack the amphibious force be-yond the range at which land-based air couldprovide continuous cover. The presence of car-riers insured carrying out the landings withoutinterference, and because the enemy refused torisk further losses, the carrier planes had littleto do.

Returning from Hollandia, the fast carriersstruck a second time at Truk on 29 and 30 April.Since there were only a few small craft in theharbor, the attack was directed against shore in-stallations and the remaining air strength. Jap-anese naval officers later testified that the twocarrier strikes effectively destroved Truk as anair and logistics base, a blow from which subse-quent bombardment by Army aircraft from Bou-gainville and Eniwetok prevented all recovery.

Between 29 January and 30 April 1944, fast-carrier operations not only caused the enemysevere losses in ship and planes, but also pro-vided information about Japanese installationsin the Carolines, Palaus, and Marianas. FromEniwetok and other bases in the Marshalls andfrom South and Southwest Pacific airfields onBougainville, Green, and Emirau, naval searchplanes could continue the collection of intelli-gence and carry on antishipping attacks. Ma-rine garrison air forces effectively neutralizedbypassed islands and Army bombers preventedfurther use of the great base at Truk and raidedother installations.

In the meantime the carrier and amphibiousforces prepared for landings in the Marianas.In staging planes from the home islands to theSouth Pacific, the enemy had a choice of goingeither through Formosa and the Philippines orthrough the Bonins and Marianas to the Palausand Carolines. Shipping also proceeded along

32

much the same routes. The capture of the Mari-anas would sever one of the main lines betweenthe Empire and the south, result in the acqui-sition of bases from which to bomb Japan, andassist southwest Pacific forces advancing alongNew Guinea toward the Philippines. As thecomnander in chief of the Japanese combinedfleet, Admiral Toyada, declared, “The war isdrawing close to the lines vital to our nationaldefense.”

Although aware of the departure of the firstcarriers from Majuro on 6 June, the Japanesedid not know their objective until a fighter sweepeliminated their aircraft on the afternoon of11 June. Tactical surprise was achieved bysimultaneous operations in the Southwest Pacificarea to which the force might have been pro-ceeding and by nava] patrol planes that shotdown or drove off enemy search planes whichmight have discovered the carriers in transit.From the eleventh until the landings 4 days later,Guam, Tinian, and Saipan were held under con-

Lstant attack, and on 13 June two fast-carrier taskgroups were sent north to disrupt the movementof enemy aircraft from the home islands throughthe Bonins. Carrier aircraft destroyed 120 Jap-anese planes on Iwo and Chichi Jima on 15 and16 June.

Troops went ashore on Saipan as scheduledon 15 June but met unexpectedly heavy resist-ance which delayed the planned landings onTinian and Guam from 18 June to 21 July. Theescort carriers, which provided the hulk of theair support and defense against enemy land-based planes, maintained control of the air until27 June, when 74 Army P-47’s, flown ashorefrom escort carriers, which had brought themfrom Pearl Harbor, took over the task. Saipanwas secure on 7 July.

The threat against a vital communications andsupply artery brought the enemy fleet to action.On 14 June a submarine reported that largeforces had sortied from Tawi Tawi in the

Sulu Archipelago. The Japanese Fleet waspreparing to give battle. Misled concerningUnited States intentions by the timely landingof Southwest Pacific forces at Biak on 27 May,the Japanese expected a major landing in thePalaus or Moluccas. It was not until the am-phibious force, assembled in the Admiralties,turned north toward the Marianas that the Jap-anese learned the objective and started theirfleet northeast.

On receipt of the submarine report the twotask groups attacking the Bonins were calledsouth. Seaplanes operating from tenders in theopen sea off Saipan and naval patrol planesfrom Southwest Pacific bases extended theirsearches to the outer 1imit of endurance. Onthe 15th, submarines reported large fleet unitspassing east through the Philippines by SanBernardino Strait.

With the Japanese Fleet approaching, a high-speed run to the west by the fast carriers wasconsidered. The position of the landing forces,however, was precarious with much neededequipment still being unloaded from the trans-ports. So long as there existed a possibility thatundetected enemy units might be approachingfrom another quarter, the main elements of theUnited States Pacific Fleet were retained withinstriking range of Saipan. Once landing forceshad been committed, they required defenseagainst any possible interference from outside.The fast carriers, therefore, remained west ofthe island until Japanese intentions were defi-nitely known.

At 0730 on 19 June combat air patrols re-ported increased air activity over Guam, anindication that the Japanese land-based airforcewas bringing in planes from the Palaus to co-ordinate its activities with the approachingcarriers. By 0950 radar screens began pick-ing up large groups of enemy planes to thesouthwest. From the time the first UnitedStates planes made contact, air combat persisted

33

.

throughout the day until 1823, when a largegroup of enemy planes was intercepted whilepreparing to land at Guam. The fighter directorsworked efficiently and only a few small, disor-ganized flights penetrated to the United Statesforces, scoring a bomb hit on the South Dakotaand some near misses which caused negligibledamage. In return, the enemy lost 385 planesin the air raid 17 on the ground.

The defeat of the enemy air force altered thesituation so that the planes of the escort carrierswere sufficient to protect the amphibious forces.The fast carriers moved west in pursuit of flee-ing Japanese naval units. Although UnitedStates submarines had already sunk 2 enemycarriers, the main fighting strength of the Jap-anese Fleet remained. Late in the afternoon of20 June a strike was launched and caught theenemy at extreme range. In the ensuing attackanother carrier and 2 fleet oilers went down and7 ships were left damaged. Even though about 100planes were lost either in combat or throughlanding on the water when their fuel ran out.the United States units continued the pursuitduring the night and the next day until it becameevident that all chance of contact had been lost.

The Battle of the Philippine Sea did not re-sult in the destruction of the enemy fleet, thebulk of which escaped to home waters. It did,however, mean the end of Japanese carrier avi-ation as an effective fighting force. It neverrecovered from the loss of trained air groupsoff Saipan.

The remainder of the Marianas campaignpassed off without enemy interference. Thefast carriers were rotated by groups for replen-ishment. Those which remained continued theneutralization of Iwo Jima and gave support tolandings on Guam and Tinian. Even before theMarine fighter garrison had assumed control atGuam, the fast carriers went south to photographand pound installations at Palau and Yap. Witha final carrier raid and surface bombardment of

34

the Bonins the participation of the fast carriersended. From 11 June through 5 August,United States carrier aircraft had shot down 915enemy planes and destroyed another 306 on theground. The inner Japanese perimeter hadbeen broken and the primary line of communi-cations with the south severed.

In the summer of 1944 the area separatingCentral and Southwest Pacific forces was grow-ing smaller. Simultaneous landings at Palauand Morotai in September would bring themwithin 500 miles of one another and make pos-sible a common advance into the Philippines.The plan for Palau also included the capture ofYap and Ulithi in the western Carolines whichwould provide safe anchorages for the fleet suchas were not available in the Marianas.

Covering and diversionary operations by Cen-tral Pacific forces began on 31 August when afast-carrier group hit the Bonin and VolcanoIslands followed by further air strikes and cruiserand destroyer bombardment on 1 and 2 Septem-ber. In a11 54 Japanese aircraft were destroyed.The entire task force then raided Palau and Yapafter which 3 task groups went on for a 6-dayseries of attacks on Mindanao in the Philippines.Because Japanese forces on Mindanao were un-expectedly weak, the planed attacks were cutshort on 10 September and the carriers movednorth to fuel and prepare for raids on theVisayans in the central Philippines.

Two days of strikes on 12 and 13 Septemberproved much more profitable. Although Jap-anese air attacks were sporadic and ineffective,considerable opposition was experienced overairfields, and the final score showed over 300enemy planes destroyed, and 13 large merchantships, 20 smaller ones, and 35 sampans orbarges sunk. 0n conclusion of these strikes, 1carrier group went south to cover the landingson Morotai and 1 east to Palau, while the thirdreplenished preparatory to attacks on Luzon.

Landings were made by the marines on 15

September on Peleliu Island and by the Armyon 17 September on Angaur, with direct air sup-port furnished by escort carriers augmented by

By 24 September capturedfast-carrier groups. airstrips were in use by shore-based Marine air-craft and a heavy-bomber runway was opera-tional by 16 October. Carriers were withdrawnon 1 October. The only enemy air oppositionhad been harmless, night attacks by a single floatplane. Opposition to Southwest Pacific land-ings at Morotai was light.

From 21 to 24 September the fast-carrier taskforce returned to the Philippines. Airfields onLuzon and the harbor of Manila were attackedfor the first time in almost 3 years of Japaneseoccupation. After 2 days with excellent resultsthe carriers returned once more to the Visayans.During the month of September, carrier opera-tions in the Philippines destroyed over 800 en-emy aircraft and sank over 150 vessels withoutdamage to United States ships and with rel-atively minor losses in planes. The assault ona land mass defended by hundreds of aircraftdispersed on scores of fields demonstrated on anunprecedented scale the ability of carriers togain and maintain control of the air and wasbasic to any plan for invasion.

Because the successes of the fast-carrierstrikes and intelligence information indicatedthe weakness of Japanese forces in the Visayans,it was decided to move against them as rapidlyas possible. The plan for the capture of Yapwas dropped, and landings in the Leyte-Samararea were scheduled for 20 October 1944 byforces under command of General of the ArmyMacArthur. The Seventh Fleet, which operatedunder General MacArthur, was augmented byunits from the Pacific theater including amphibi -ous elements, 18 escort carriers, and land- andtender-based patrol planes. The fast-carriertask forces were retained under Pacific Fleetcommand for covering and supporting the Cent-ral Pacific areas and also were assigned mis-

sions in full support of the Leyte operations.Preliminary to the landings, air operations

against the Philippines were stepped up. Navalpatrol-plane searches from the Southwest Pacificwere extended to cover the southern and centralPhilippines and coordinated searches were madeby the Fourteenth Army Air Force based inChina. Throughout October the carriers at-tacked the Ryukyus, Formosa, and the Philip-pines, destroying another 1,000 aircraft. Inthe most intense air reaction of the war to date,the Japanese sent 600 sorties against the taskforce attacking Formosa, but the effectivenessof carrier fighter-plane and antiaircraft defenselimited the damage to 2 cruisers which weretowed back to base.

Directly supported by aircraft from three di-visions of six escort carriers each, the landingscommenced with the capture of minor outpostsin lower Leyte Gulf on 17 and 18 October. On20 October the main landings were made on thebeaches of upper Leyte Gulf. Although initialground opposition was relatively light, the enemycommitted his entire fleet.

The Japanese converged upon Leyte Gulffrom three directions. A southern force, whichtransited the Sulu Sea, was met and decisivelydefeated in a night surface engagement in Suri-gao Strait. Enemy carriers approaching fromthe north were destroyed by the fast carriers offCape Engano. Although attacked by air on 24October as it crossed the Sibuyan Sea, a thirdenemy force succeeded in passing through SanBernardino Strait and surprised an escort-car-rier unit off Samar. Despite superiority inarmament and numbers this force was drivenoff and retired by the route it had come underconstant air attack. The failure of the Jap-anese to carry off a daring maneuver may beattributed to skillful handling of the older bat-tleships and to the efficiency of United Statesradars that turned the engagement at Surigaointo a disaster and also to the enemy’s inability

35

to coordinate land-based air with the movementsof his fleet. As a result, the Japanese lost 4carriers, 3 battleships, 10 cruisers, 9 Destroyers,a submarine, and some 370 aircraft comparedwith the United States losses of a light carrier,2 escort carriers, 2 destroyers, a destroyer escort,and 99 planes.

With the Battle for Leyte Gulf control of thesea passed completely into the hands of theUnited States. The Japanese Navy ceased toexist as an effective fighting force. Althoughat Coral Sea, Midway, and the Philippine Seacontact had been between air components of therespective fleets, the Battle for Leyte Gulf, oneof the great naval engagements of history, wasa combined air-surface action, which demon-strated the integration and flexibility of theUnited States naval forces. It was the combi-nation of various agents that brought victory asthe following tabulation of enemy losses willshow: 13 war vessels were sunk by carrier air-craft alone, 8 by naval surface ships alone, 2 by

1submarines alone; a cruiser, crippled by sur-face action, was later sunk by carrier aircraft;a second such cripple sank after repeated heavyattacks by Army B–24s; a carrier, mortallydamaged by carrier air attack, was sunk by sur-face action; and a cruiser damaged by carrieraircraft was sunk by a submarine.

United States battle damage and aircraftlosses had forced one of the three escort-carrierunits to retire, and a second was badly hurt bysuicide attacks. This reduction in air strengthat the objective area made it necessary to call inthe fast carriers for close support. For the re-mainder of the month the fast carriers flew-

fighter sweeps over the Visayans and Luzon.On 27 October, with only one airfield in opera-tion, the Army’s Far East Air Forces assumedresponsibility for air defense and support oftroops in the Leyte-Samar area, and within afew days the remaining carriers withdrew. Be-cause the Japanese were making strenuous

efforts to increase their Philippine air strengthand on 1 November made strong suicide attackswhich sank one destroyer and damaged threeothers in Leyte Gulf, the Southwest Pacific com-mand immediately requested further assistancefrom the carrier forces. A long-planned car-rier attack on the Empire was abandoned andthroughout November the fast carriers con-tinued to strike at Japanese aircraft and shippingin the central Philippines and on Luzon. Over700 aircraft and 134,000 yons of shipping weredestroyed in these attacks.

Although bad weather severely hampered air-field construction, by early December, Army andMarine shore-based squadrons had taken overcontrol of the air around Leyte. With theground campaign progressing satisfactorily,Southwest Pacific forces prepared to resumetheir advance by landing on Mindoro Island.Since the invasion fleet would have to movethrough confined waters within the PhilippineArchipelago, where it would be peculiarly vul-nerable to enemy air attack, direct coverage wasfurnished from escort carriers of the SeventhFleet, which beat off suicide attacks and re-stricted losses to two LST’s sunk and a cruiserand destroyer damaged. To prevent enemy airoperations at the source three fast-carrier taskgroups maintained continuous air patrols overJapanese fields on Luzon. Often referred to asthe Navy’s rolling blanket, this new techniqueaccounted for 298 enemy planes in three days,three-fourths of them on the ground. A fur-ther 45 Japanese aircraft were shot down by thecombat patrols of the escort carriers and another55 were either destroyed by ships’ gunfire orexpended themselves in suicide dives.

With Mindoro in the hands of United Statestroops and with the end of organized resistanceat Leyte on 20 December, the way was open tocommence operations against the important Lu-zon area, the center of Japanese power in theislands. Army aircraft began a series of strikes

36

on the great complex of airfields around Manilaand completed the disorganization of Japaneseair forces which had been well advanced by overthree months of carrier-plane attacks. Already1,500 enemy planes had been destroyed on theground in the Philippines and during the three-month period carrier aircraft had accounted for3,800 Japanese planes in the air and on theground in the Philippines-Formosa-Ryukusarea .

The climax of the Philippine campaign wasthe invasion of Lingayen Gulf in western Luzon.The military objectives of the operation were theseizure of the central Luzon plain and the Ma-nila area and the denial to the enemy of thenorthern entrance to the South China Sea. Thereinforced Seventh Fleet was to transport, pro-tect, and land the invasion forces by a routepassing west of Luzon through the inland watersof the Philippines. Direct air support was to beprovided by escort carriers while the Army AirForces neutralized Japanese air bases to thesouth and the fast carriers took care of those inFormosa, the Ryukus, northern Luzon.

Army heavy bombers began raiding Luzonairfields on 22 December. Navy search planesfrom Leyte and Mindoro, coordinated withlong-range aircraft from China, extended theirpatrols of the sea approaches to cover all thePhilippines and the South China Sea. On 3January, as mine-sweeping, bombardment, andescort-carrier units started their northward ad-vance through the Sulu Sea, the fast carriersinitiated 2 days of strikes against Formosa andthe Ryukyus. Despite Japanese efforts at dis-.persal and camouflage, over 100 aircraft weredestroyed, the majority on the ground. De-signed to prevent reinforcement of Japanese airpower on Luzon, this effort also reduced thenumber of planes on Formosa which were avail-able for direct attacks on United States forces inLingayen Gulf. On 4 January 1945, thehoarded remnants of the Philippine air garrison

began suicide attacks on the advancing ships,sinking an escort carrier. On the following dayKamikazes caused damage to another escortcarrier, 2 cruisers, and a destroyer. To relievethe escort carriers already fully occupied withdefense of the amphibious fleet, the SouthwestPacific command requested that the fast carriersoperate south of their originally designated areaso as to cover the chain of bases centered aroundClark field near Manila. Repeated strikes on6 and 7 January destroyed over 110 enemyplanes and combined with the sweep of land-based planes and the activities of the escortcarriers, reduced enemy sorties from about 130on the sixth to less than half that number onthe seventh.

Some aircraft, however, escaped the vigilanceof the attacking forces. Since every Japaneseplane, except a handful reserved for the evacu-ation of staff officers, was designated for a sui-cide mission, the invasion forces were exposedto serious danger. Although Japanese ordersdirected that Kamikazes concentrate on the trans-ports, actualy the combatant ships in LingayenGulf received the heaviest damage. The situ-ation appeared so serious that the fast carriers,which had planned to attack Formosa on 7 Jan-uary, were retained to continue their raids onLuzon. Kamikazes continued to appear in twosand threes for a week or more but they weremerely the remnants of the enemy air forces inthe Philippines. On 8 January, the Japanesenaval air commander had left for Singapore andhis staff for Formosa, while the commandinggeneral of the Fourth Air Army retired, withouthis army, to the hills of Luzon.

The troops went ashore on 9 January. Theconquest of the Luzon plain turned out to beeasier than expected, and without air sup-port the enemy could put up effective resistanceonly in mountain areas. When on 17 Januarythe Army Air Forces with which Marine squad-rons were operating assumed responsibility for

AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULTIwo Jima, 19 February 1945

air support, the escort carriers withdrew. Al-though the Japanese continued to hold out inparts of the Philippines until the end of the war,the principal naval advantages of the requestwere gained by mid-January. United Statesforces not only controlled the sea but had sev-ered the last route to the Southern ResourcesArea. Between 10 and 19 January the fastcarriers were in the South China Sea, andAmerican planes destroyed 57 ships along thecoast of Asia, ranging as far south as Camranh

Bay in Indo-China. Such small vessels as theJapanese tried to slip through after Januarywere effectively checked by the collaboration ofsubmarines and naval land-based patrol planes.

The Philippines campaign revealed the poorstate of the Japanese air force. Although pro-duction of planes had been increased in 1943and 1944 so that more aircraft were availablethan ever before and even though the quality ofthe planes improved, the ratio of losses in com-bat mounted higher and higher. All United

3 8

States aviators agreed on the cause. The Jap-anese had failed to replace the superb pilotswho rode so high in the first year of the war.The enemy's training program had broken down.With adequate numbers of aircraft and poorlytrained pilots the Japanese resorted in despera-tion to Kamikaze, suicide tactics; they turnedtheir aircraft into guided missiles and flew- themonto the decks of United States ships. It wasan effective, dangerous, but not decisive, ma-neuver. The percentage of hits did not exceedthat achieved by American carrier flyers usingconventional bombing methods.

After the conquest of the Marianas in June1944, Central Pacific forces had turned south tomeet Southwest Pacific forces in the Philippines.In February 1945, they were ready again tomove north and west in operations preliminaryto the invasion of Japan itself. Iwo Jima wasselected as the next objective in order to securea base from which Army fighters could escortB-29 strikes on the Empire and also to stopdamaging raids from Iwo against the crowdedairfields on Saipan. Preliminary bombings ofIwo and the minor air base at Chichi Jima wereconducted by shore-based aircraft from the Mari -anas. Reinforced by B–29 reconnaissanceflights, naval shore-based and tender-based pa-trol planes extended the air search to the coastof Japan itself. Covering operations for theinvasion were begun by the fast carriers on16 and 17 Feruary when the first carrier raidswere made on the Tokyo area of the Japanesehome islands. On those two days and againon the 25th strong air opposition was encoun-tered despite bad weather. During these raids,420 Japanese planes were shot down, 228 weredestroyed on the ground, and a limited numberof sorties were directed against strategic targetssuch as aircraft-engine plants and airplanefactories.

The pattern of attack at Iwo followed that ofother amphibious operations. Direct air sup-

39

port and defense were furnished by escort car-riers with the fast carriers preventing the enemyfrom bringing up reinforcements. The Marineson shore, however, encountered the most viciousand determined defense of the Pacific war. TheJapanese had taken advantage of the naturalterrain to build a complete underground defensesystem much of which defied the most intenseair and surface bombardment. In many partsof the island the marines had to dig out and killthe enemy individually. From 19 February to16 March bitter fighting continued until the Jap-anese garrison was virtually eliminated.

If the price for Iwo Jima was high, the resultswere also great. On 8 March, naval patrolplanes began to use the island for searches thatcovered the coast of Japan as far as Tokyo. Army fighter planes from Iwo escorted the B–29’sof the Twentieth Air Force on their devastatingraids against Japanese industries, and the bigbombers used the island as an emergency-land-ing field. Between March 1945 and the closeof the war over 2,400 B–29’s put in at Iwo withan incalculable saving in planes and 1ives. Theexistence of an emergency field made it possibleto reduce the amount of gas carried for reasonsof safety and to increase the bomb load.Finally, from Iwo Jima air-sea rescue planescould cover most of the B-29 route from theMarianas to Japan.

The reconquest of the Philippine’s had per-. .mitted the United States to sever the connection

with the Southern Resources Area. The Japa-nese could obtain only a trickle of supplies fromthe mainland by way of the East China Sea andthe Straits of Tsushima. Before an assault onthe home islands could be launched, more fleet

1anchorages, airfields, and staging areas fortroops were required. All of these objectivescould be satisfied by the occupation of Okinawain the Ryukyus. Accordingly, the Joint Chiefs-.of Staff directed that Central Pacific forcesundertake the operation.

The assault on Okinawa was the largest am-phibious operation of the Pacific war. Thejoint expeditionary force included 1,213 ships,564 support aircraft based on escort carriers,and 451,866 Army and Marine ground troops.Also available for air support as well as to pre-vent enemy interference and reinforcement werea fast-carrier force with 82 ships and 919 planesand a British carrier force with 22 ships and244 planes. For interdiction and neutralizationraids against enemy air bases there were theArmy'S Twentieth and Far East Air Forces.

Preassault operations were initiated by fast-carrier attacks on Kyushu, Shikoku, and west-ern Honshu on 18 and 19 March. Beginningon 23 March, the fast carriers operated continu-ously for 2½ months in the Okinawa area, pro-viding direct air support and cover for the am-phibious forces. These were the longest sus-tained carrier operations of the war.

Islands in the Kerama Retto, 15 miles to thewest of Okinawa, were seized on 26 March inorder to provide a protected anchorage and abase for logistic support. From tenders sea-plane searches extended far into the Yellow Seaand to the Straits of Tsushima between Koreaand Japan. Day and night antisubmarine pa-trols were flown by patrol and carrier planescompletely around- the southern Ryukyus where. .the surface ships were operating. Search air-craft, acting in coordination with submarines,watched the exits from the Inland Sea.

At 0830 on 1 April 1945, the amphibious as-sault on Okinawa itself began. Landings weremade over the western beaches against unexpectedly light opposition, and by noon the twoairfields at Yontan and Kadena had becn cap-tured. As operations ashore progressed, Jap-anese resistance increasd. On 19 April heavilydefended positions to the south were encounteredand a long drawn-out battle began.

The expected air reaction was slow to ma-terialize and for the first few days was relatively

light. Starting on 6 April, the Japanese airforces struck with a fury- never before encount-ered. The scale of effort in suicide missionswas the outstanding and most spectacular aspectof the Okinawa operation. During the periodfrom 6 April to 22 June, 10 major, organizedKamikaze attacks were carried out. The rel-atively short distance from Japanese air basesin Kyushu and Formosa permitted employmentby the enemy of planes of all types and pilotsof every degree of proficiency. In 896 enemyair raids approximately 4,000 planes were de-stroyed in combat of which 1,900 were Kami -kazes. Damage to United States forcesamounted to 28 ships sunk by air attack ofwhich 26 were by Kamikaze planes, and an-other 225 damaged, ‘of which 164 were byKamikazes.

The Japanese Navy made a last, despairingeffort. At 1520, 6 April, a force consisting ofthe battleship Yamato, the light cruiser Yahagiand eight destroyers sortied from Tokuyama onthe Inland Sea with the object of attacking theinvasion fleet off Okinawa at daylight on themorning of 8 April. This force was sighted byUnited States submarines while proceeding souththrough Bungo Channel during the evening of6 April. Contact was regained the next morn-ing by naval patrol planes and by - air searchgroups froml the fast-carrier force. Commenc-ing at about 1240 a series of coordinated attacksby carrier fighters, dive-bomber, and torpedoplanes resulted in the sinking of the Yamato.the Yahagi, and four destroyers. Sufferingvarying degrees of damage the remaining de-stroyers retired to Saseho.

Heavy air attacks on the amphibious and cov-ering forces continued during April and May,after which they declined rapidly. During thisperiod valuable support was rendered by theTwenty-first Bomber Command and the Far EastAir Forces in attacks on air fields in Kyushuand Formosa. In April approximately 40 per-

4 0

A

cent of the effective sorties of the Twenty-firstBomber Command were on such missions. On7 April the first of the land-based Marine air-craft attached to the Tactical Air Force arrivedon Okinawa. Consisting originally of Marineaircraft to which were later added Army fight-ers, this force operated jointly for over 2 monthswith the escort-carrier planes and ultimately re-lieved the carriers of responsibility for air de-fense and direct support of ground troops.Units of Fleet Air Wing One, including bothseaplanes and landplanes, were based in theKerama Retto and at Yontan airfield on Okinawaand conducted search and antisubmarine opera-tions and antishipping strikes in the East ChinaSea and Korea areas. A British carrier forceneutralized Japanese air bases in SakishimaGunto and Formosa which were a constant threatfrom the southwest. This force was presentfrom 26 March to 20 April and again from 3 to25 May, and although relatively small, it pro-vided valuable and necessary assistance.

Ashore the operations proceeded slowly. By20 April all organized Japanese opposition inthe northern two-thirds of the island had ceased.On 19 April the ground forces launched a large-scale offensive in the south, but slow progresswas made against stubborn resistance. Japa-nese defense positions were wel1 planned. Therugged terrain with many natural caves andelaborate under ground installationls presenteddifficult obstacles. Direct air support was fur-nished by both fast and escort carriers and byland-based Marine planes. Naval gunfire wasprovided throughout the campaign. On 21June all organized resistance on Okinawa ceasedand the last escort carriers departed after a stayof 88 days in the area.

From 1 July to 15 August, when the Japaneseacccpted Allied terms, the final actions of thewar took place. From Okinawa, Iwo Jima, andthe Philippines naval search planes scoured thewaters and sank whatever enemy shipping they

encountered. B–29’s contributed to the stran-gulation of Japan by extensive mine laying in theInland Sea and the Straits of Shimonoseki, whilePrivateers of Fleet Air Wing One carried outthe same type of operation along the coasts ofKorea. Submarines penetrated the Japan Sea,the last link with the mainland outside the reachof United States air prover. Army and Marineplanes from Okinawa launched a series of raidson installations in Kyushu that were to begin thesoftening-up for the first landings on the homeislands. As commerce dropped to a meretrickle that was of necessity directed to secon-

. . . .dary ports from which rail distribution was a -lmost impossible, the Twentieth Air Force in theMarianas continued with the methodical annihi-lation of Japanese industrial centers, and fast-carrier task forces of the British and AmericanNavies conducted a series of raids to destroy theremnants of the Japanese Fleet and attackedstrategic points in northern Honshu and Hok-kaido that were beyond the area of B-29operations.

Because of a desperate fuel situation Japaneseships were found at their dock or anchored insheltered inlets. The enemy air forces stillpossessed about 10,000 planes, of which one-half were combat types. Together with a sup-ply of fuel and semitrained pilots all aircraftwere being hoarded to use in suicide attacksagainst an invasion force. Since the enemy re-fused combat, until a landing had been begun,United States aircraft roamed at will over Japan.In a series of 9 raids between 10 July and 15August, the fast carriers destroyed over 1,200aircraft, 90 percent of them on the ground, dam-aged most of what was left of the Japanese Navy,and destroyed the Aomori-Hokadate railroadferry system that connected Honshu and Hok-kaido Islands. On occasion the battleships andcruisers of the carrier task force moved in closeenough to bombard industrial plants on shore.

The unremitting military pressure, in which

41

Navy, Marine, Army, and British air units allplayed their appointed roles, underlined anargument going on in Japan itself. The inva-sion of Okinawa had brought a change of cab-inet, and the new prime minister, Admiral Su-zuki, was feeling his way toward peace througha difficut domestic situation. It was a case ofoverruling the military and naval fanatics whohad long dominated Japanese policy and pre-cipitated the war in the first place. They de-sired to coutinue the struggle to the bitter end onthe excuse that some compromise peace mightbe attained. Otherwise they would drag thecountry to ruin with themselves. Between 6 and10 August, two atomic bombs were dropped andRussia entered the war on the side of the A1lies.Whether these events determined the Japaneseto immediate acceptance of the Potsdam Decla-ration will probably never be known; they cer-tainly provided a powerful punch line to analready winning argument.

0n the morning of 15 August the fast carrierslaunched their aircraft for raids on the Tokyoarea. The first strike had already gone in andthe seecond was approaching the target whenword of the Japanese surrender arrived. In alast demonstration of the excellent control main-tained over air-borne planes, the second strikewas recalled. During the day combat patrolswere kept flying. Either out of curiosity orpiloted by hotheads who refused to accept theemperor’s orders, a few Japanese aircraft ap-proached too close and were shot down “in afriendly fashion,” as Admiral Halsey termed it.

The war was over.In the advance across the Central Pacific the

carrier task force with its extreme flexibility andmobility had been the dominant factor. Itestablished the conditions under which long-range amphibious advances were possible. Itnever failed to gain command of the air at therequired time and place, successively over-whelming the air garrisons not only of the Jap-anese perimeter but of the major fortresses ofFormosa and the Philippines, and it maintainedcommand of the air until shore-based air forcescould be established. This remained true evenwhen the enemy in desperation converted theremnants of his air force into guided missiles.In a naval war conducted across vast stretchesof ocean, it destroyed the Japanese carrier airforce at Midway and in the Marianas, and thesurface fleet in the battle for Leyte Gulf. In anamphibious war where it was necessary to stormthe beaches against a well-emplaced and fanat-ically tenacious enemy, it excelled in the directsupport of troops. In a war whose pace was atall times governed by what was logistically pos-sible, the carrier task force was an economicalweapon independent of the investments in time,personnel, and priceless shipping space requiredfor construction of airfields and facilities soonto be left far behind the advancing front. Itsmobility gave to the attacker the advantages ofcontinuous initiative and surprise. NO weaponis equally good at all times or in all places, butfor the Pacific war the carrier task force wasideal.

42

V I I TACTICAL EFFECTIVENESS OF NAVAL AVIATION

A prerequisite to control of the sea was con-trol of the air above it. In the first days of thewar, the Japanese prevented the British frominterfering with the movement of troops to Ma-laya by a successful aerial attack on the Princeof Wales and the Repulse. To drive the enemyfrom the air in vital areas was the first missionof naval aviation. With the development ofnight tactics this became a 24-hour job whichrequired specially equipped night planes as wellas conventional day fighters. For patrol planesit meant the ability- to penetrate enemy-held areasalone, to possess the firepower necessary to driveoff interceptors, .and to return to base with vitalinformation.

When the Catalina proved to have insufficientspeed and armament to defend itself, the Navyobtained Liberators for use in forward areas.Even this type did not have enough guns andrequired other modifications to change it froma high-level bomber into a patrol plane. Fromexperiments that amounted to altering 50 per-cent of the Liberator’s internal arrangements,the Navy developed the Privateer. In 1944 and1945, planes of these 2 types flew 15,000 patrolsand destroyed 504 of the 937 Japanese aircraftencountered, against a loss of 18. During thesame period, Mariner and Coronado flying boatson similar missions shot down 24 enemy planesand lost 3.

In 1943, Japanese night torpedo attack indi-cated a need for night fighters, but neither theArmy nor Navy had suitable radar-equippedplanes available. Royal Air Force experiencefavored the development of specially designedtwin-engine, two-seater aircraft. Since the Navycould neither wait for the completion of the newplanes nor could it hope to operate them fromcarriers without further design changes, it

equipped a number of its standard Hellcats andCorsairs with the necessary instruments and de-veloped special training for night pilots. Beforethe Army’s Black Widow reached the Pacifictheater the Navy had night fighters on all largecarriers and at land bases in forward areas.Fighter directors worked out a technique bywhich interceptions were made as far as 80miles from base. With a loss to themselves of3 aircraft. Hellcats alone shot down 163 enemyplanes in night combat.

Important as were these special aspects of airactivities, the enemy lost the major portion ofhis air forces in conventiona l daylight opera-tions. Although, owing to the destruction ofJapanese records, exact figures will never beobtainable, naval aviation accounted for three-fifths or almost 15,000 of the total enemy planesdestroyed. Of these, the most reliable recordcredits 9,000 as having been shot down and theremainder as having been knocked out on theground. In aerial combat the Navy lost only897 aircraft for an advantage of 10 to 1.

Even during the period of heavy losses in1941-42, naval aircraft destroyed 830 enemyplanes while suffering 265 air combat losses fora favorable ratio of 3 to 1. In 1944 when navalaviation cracked the enemy air defenses of Ra-baul and carried the offensive to the Marshalls,Carolines, Marianas, and Bonins, and to the ex-tensive chains of enemy air bases in the Philip-pines and Formosa, the ratio rose to 15 to 1;4,021 Jap planes shot down against 261 aircombat losses. In 1945 when the naval offen-sive concentrated on the Ryukus and Japan, theratio rose further to 22 to 1; 3,161 Japaneseplanes shot out of the air against 146 lossessuffered at the hands of enemy pilots.

The above figures, include the air engagements726015--47---4 43

of all types of naval aircraft. Fighter planesnaturally enjoyed a superior record and de-stroyed 13 Japanese planes in the air for each 1lost in combat. During the last 12 months ofthe war, the Hellcat, mainstay of the carrierforces, knocked down 3,518 Jap planes againsta 1oss of 160; the Corsair, used by both Navyand Marine pilots, 1,042 against 49; the Wild-cat, used on escort carriers, 377 against 9 losses.These ratios were 22 to 1, 21 to 1, and 42 to 1,respectively.

Control of the air was also reflected in theability of a bombing effort to reach the enemyand the corresponding ability to break up andprevent an enemy attack from reaching its ob-jective. During 1944 and 1945, Navy andMarine dive-bombing and torpedo planes made102,000 sorties against the Japanese, engaged

in combat on 742 occasions, and lost only 18planes to enemy fighters. Although many ofthese flights occurred in areas where the en-emy’s air force had already been annihilated,the remainder indicated the effectiveness of thecover furnished by Navy fighters. Even in 1942when the Japanese air force was at its peak, itcustomarily lost 20 to 40 percent of its aircraftin any mission encountered by Navy planes.Although complete figures are not available forboth land and carrier-based aircraft, the latterdestroyed 70 percent of the enemy bombers and50 percent of the fighters intercepted. No airforce could stand such losses over an extendedperiod of time without becoming in fact, if notin name, a suicide force. The Kamikaze merelyacknowledged an existing situation.

Aerial combat was essentially a defensive

COMPARATIVE U. S. & JAPANESE AIRCRAFT LOSSES

13,000

12,300

11,000

I0,000

9,000

8,000

7,000 D6,000

5,000 AT4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0

1,000

2,000U.S. NAVY U.S.NAVY &CARRIER

U. S.ARMYMARINE AIR

AIRCRAFT LAND-BASED FORCESAIRCRAFT

Comparative Aircraft Losses.--Japanesc 10sS are based on the best available United States Army and Navy figures. Althoughit is impossible, to check these figures from enemy sources, they are believed to be approximately correct. Japanese aircraftdestroyed by British Empire and Netherlands Air Forces are not included.

4 4

function designed to protect the fighter’s ownair-borne or surface forces from direct attack.If freed from this duty, the fighter plane couldperform operations of an offensive nature. Of500,000 sorties flown by naval fighter planes inthe Pacific war, only 12,000, or 2½ percent,resulted in aerial combat; the remainder waslargely for other purposes.

More than able to overcome air-borne oppo-sition, naval aviation pressed its attack againstairfields and grounded planes. Because duringamphibious operations vast numbers of ships ina restricted landing area were especially vul-nerable to bombing, the fast carriers first triedto clear the air of enemy planes and then wenton to destroy parked aircraft and to render fieldsinoperable, thus stopping hostile air activity atthe source. Approximately one-third of thesorties by carrier aircraft were for this purposeand in some campaigns the number reached two-

thirds. Although at no time was it possible todispense with combat air patrols only about 28percent of the enemy aircraft destroyed wereshot down in the defense of United States forcesas against 32 percent in the air over enemy shipsand installations and 40 percent on the ground.

In overcoming the Japanese in the air, carrierplanes destroyed 18 enemy to each of their ownthat was lost, while naval and Marine land-basedaircraft enjoyed an advantage of 8 to 1. Thedisparity resulted not from a difference in planetypes, which were the same, but from the abilityto concentrate carriers and send them into theheart of a Japanese-held area. Although beforethe war it was frequently stated that the addedweight and other design factors necessary incarrier planes made it impossible to operatethem against shore-based aircraft, this turnedout not to be true. Carriers were mobile unitsthat, when assembled in sufficient numbers, COUld

JAPANESE WARSHIP TONNAGE SUNK, WORLD WAR II

BY U.S.NAVY BY U.S. NAVY BY U.S. NAVY BY U.S.ARMY BY ALLAIRCRAFT AIRCRAFT SUBMARlNES SURFACEALONE

AIRCRAFTAND OTHER ALONE VESSELS AND MINES OTHER AGENTS &AGENTS ALONE COMBINATIONS

Warship Tonnagc Sunk. --The predominance of United States naval forces, particularly aircraft, in the destruction of the Jap-anese, Fleet is clearly illustrated above. United States Navy units alone accounted for 85 percent of all sinkings and par-ticipated with other forces in an additional 5 percent. Naval aircraft alone accounted for 38 percent and participated inan additional 8 percent.

45

overwhelm an enemy’s airforce in any area thatthe United States desired to penetrarte. Develop-ment of radar and fighter-direction technique in-sured only a minimum of planes being used fordefense and relieved the remainder for offensivemissions against either shore installations orhostile fleet movements. With control of the airoverhead and with adequarte air support, theUnitd States Fleet could move freely about thesea and land troops and equipment wherever thestrategic plan demanded.

Command of the sea also required the destruc-tion of Japanese warships which might threatenour ships using Pacific waters. It was furthernessary to deprive Japan of its merchant ma-rine both to prevent its use to reinforce and sup-ply enemy bases and to cripple the entireJapanese economy, which was dependent on ship-ping for the bulk of its oil, iron ore, cooking coal,rubber, aluminum and other nonferrous metals.and for much of its food.

Naval aircraft were highly effective againstshipping targets. Dive bombers were developedby the Navy as a means of controlling maximumaccuracy with minimum hazard to planes in at-tacks on heavily armed warships. The torpedoplane was designed to launch the most lethalweapon yet devised for shipping attack. Tothese initial tactics were added three additionalmeans of attacking ships: masthead bombing,pioneered in the Pacific by the Fifth Air Force,rocket attack, and strafing.

Armed with these weapons, naval aircraftsank 745,000 tons of Japanese warships and co-operated with other agents in sinking an addi-tional 167,000 tons. Included in the vesselssunk by naval aircraft, either alone or with otheragents, were 6 out of Japan’s 12 battleships, 12of 20 carriers, 18 of 40 cruisers. Of all sink-ings in the class of destroyer or larger, navaland Marine aircraft accounted for 48 percentand for about 42 percent of combatant tonnageof all types.

Naval aircraft were also responsible for dam-aging a large number of major enemy warshipswhich then required extended periods of repair.This damage frequently had as important aneffect on the course of the war as the sinkings.Hits on units of the Japanese carrier force inthe Battle of the Coral Sea were an importantfactor in the abandoment of plans for invadingPort Moresby. Similar damage in the Battleof the Eastern Solomons caused the withdrawalof Japanese naval forces, giving our sea and landforces in the Solomons a needed breathing spelland opportunity for reinforcement. Damage toJapanese carriers by carrier attacks in 1943resulted in the permanent withdrawal of heavywarships from Rabaul and removed the threatof naval interference with the occupation ofBougainville. After the latter actions the Jap-anese refused again to risk heavy warshipswithin range of naval aircraft, except withmassed carrier support as in the Battle of thePhilippine Sea, or on an admittedly - last-ditchsucide mission as in the Battle for Leyte Gulfand the last sortie of the Yamato.

Important in naval air action against enemywarships was the ability to inflict damage witha minimum expenditure of effort. Only about160 bombers and escorting fighters, carryingabout 80 tons of bombs and torpedoes, made theattacks which sank 1 Japanese carrier and dam-aged another at the Coral Sea. In the attackson the second day of the Battle of Midway,which resulted in the sinking of 4 carriers andproved to be the major turning point of the Pa-cific war, the hits on enemy carriers were in-flicted by about 80 dive bombers. The naval aircontribution to the crucial Battle of Guadlalcanal

350 attack sorties and lessamounted to less than than 160 tons of bombs and torpedoes. A bat-tleship, a cruiser, and 11 troop transports werecredited sunk in whole or in part by these airattacks, and other vessels were damaged. Inthe battle for Leyte Gulf two elements of the

46

3-pronged attack were routed with a totalexpenditure of only 750 tons of bombs.

Naval aircraft unaided sank over 1,500,000tons of Japanese merchant vessels during thewar; in cooperation with other forces they as-sisted in sinking another 200,000 tons. Thesefigures included only vessels of 500 tons or overbut not the hundreds of small barges, sampans,luggers, and other vessels sunk by- naval air-craft, whose total has never been compiled.About 50 percent, 800,000 tons, went down inthe 4 monthS of the Philippines campaign frommid-September 1944 to mid-January 1945;200,000 tons in the Truk, Marianas, and Rabaulraids of February 1944; and 100,000 more inMarch 1944 at Palau and elsewhere. The ton-

nage destroyed by naval planes exceeds that ofany other agent except submarines whichaccounted for over half the total.

Complete data on losses of smaller vessels arealmost impossible to obtain. It is believed thatsubmarines played a smaller and Army- andNavy aircraft and aerial mines a larger part insinking these vessels. Carrier fighters devotedan enormous volume of effort to strafing androcket attack on these vulnerable targets. Navalpatrol bombers whose daily searches covered theentire western Pacific made hundreds of indi-vidual masthead-bombing and strafing attacks onisolated small ships. Army bombers and fight-ers were effective against these vessels along the

JAPANESE TANKER TONNAGETHOUSANDTONS SUNK

BY U.S. NAVYSUBMARINESALONE

of New Guinea and the Bismarck Sea, the

SUNK, WORLD WAR II

3 9 9

BY U.S. NAVYAIRCRAFTALONE

9 5

BY U. S.ARMYAIRCRAFTAND MINES

BY ALL OTHERAGENTS ANDCOMBINATIONS

4 7

East Indies, the Philippines, and Formosa. Inthe last months of the war mines laid by B–29’sfurther crippled the remnants of this juniormerchant fleet, by then confined largely to theinland waters of Japan, and harassed even thereby both carrier and naval patrol planes.

Only 9 naval planes and only about 4 tonsof bombs or torpedoes were required, on theaverage, to sink each 1,000 tons of Japanese waror merchant shipping. In executing its decisivecampaigns against the enemy fleet and merchantmarine, naval aviation expended only 14 per-cent of its attack effort and only about 4 percentof its combat sorties.

Naval aircraft operated against enemy groundforces in all parts of the Pacific. Much of thiseffort was devoted to attacks whose main purposewas the attrition of enemy units either in advanceof an invasion or on

TONNAGE

4,00

I3,000

2,000

1,000

0

bypassed islands to prevent

OF JAPANESE MERCHANT

the Japanese from harassing communications.Strikes were also made against specific beach-head defenses and adjacent supply facilities inpreparation for a landing. Finally, planes af-forded direct close support to ground troops.Although the proportion in each of the threecategories is not known, naval aircraft directed54 percent of their total attack effort to enemytroops, weapons, equipment, defense installa-tions, and supply facilities. This figure is ex-clusive of sorties to neutralize airfields or at-tacks on Japanese industrial and transportationfacilities.

The effectiveness of air support was measurednot by the damage inflicted on installations butby the rapidity with which marines and soldiersadvanced against the enemy. The variety oftargets in close-support missions was very greatand was dictated by the need of the troops, the

VESSELS SUNK, WORLD WAR II(VESSELS OF 500 TONS AND OVER)

BY U.S. NAVY BY U.S.NAVY BY U.S. NAVY AICRAFT BY U.S.ARMY BY U.S.ARMY BY ALLSUBMARINES AIRCRAFT

AND OTHER AGENTSAIRCRAFT AIRCRAFT OTHER

ALONE ALONE ALONE MINES AGENTS &COMBINATIONS

Japanese Merchant Vessels Sunk. ---Submarines alone accounted for 54 percent of sinkings; naval aircraft alone, 18 percent. Navyunits participated in 77 percent of all sinkings and were the sole agents in 76 percent. The principal elements representedin the last bar of the chart are losses to British Empire and Netherlands forces and marine casualties.

4 8

suitability of the target for airplane attack, andthe availability of aircraft and other weaponssuch as naval gunfire and shore-based artillery.Enemy gun positions on the reverse side of ahill could be put out of operation only by air-craft. Planes frequently discovered their owntargets behind Japanese lines and, as in the caseof supplies or reinforcements, prevented theirreaching the front lines. Frequently aircraftwere called upon to keep the enemy down asfriendly troops moved up. Such activities can-not be represented statistically. Although inground combat the achievement of victory restedwith the foot soldier, naval aviation providedhim with invaluable assistance, facilitated hisadvance, and by its accurate methods of attacksaved thousands of American lives.

The foregoing discussion has set forth navalaviation’s part in the Pacific war. It demon-strates how effectively the Navy balanced the po-tentialities of air weapons against their limita-tions, developed them, and used them with otherweapons to implement the strategic plan. Yetit is pertinent briefly to isolate naval aviationfrom the naval structure as a whole to considerits efficiency as an air force.

One of the most pervasive phenomena of thewar was the popular tendency to evaluate theeffectiveness of air attack in terms of bomb ton-nage. This was readily understandable in viewof our national predilection for great size andquantitative measures and the ease of compari-son which a tonnage figure provides. From thestandpoint of military analysis bomb tonnage isto some extent a measure of effort but only oc-casionally a good measure of effectiveness. Itwas most significant in attacks on large urban cen-ters made under favorable weather conditions sothat most bombs could not help but hit the area.Yet even in the attacks on Japanese cities, therewas wide variation in the area laid waste per tonof bombs depending on the type of bombs usedand on the concentration of their fall. As the

size of the target decreased, or when weather andother factors affected accuracy, the full ton-nage dropped remained a cost of the attack, butthe effect on the enemy depended on what propor-tion of the bombs hit the target. For example theStrategic Bombing Survey reported that of 30,-000 tons of bombs dropped in high-altitude at-tacks on 3 large German oil and chemical plantswith a total area of 3½ square miles, only 1bomb in 8 hit within the plant fences and only 1of 30 inflicted physical damage to manufacturingfacilities.

Probably the largest Japanese targets custom-arily bombed by naval aircraft were airfields.The average large runway had an area of about50 acres, considerably smaller than one of theoil plants mentioned above. The largest type ofenemy ship attacked by naval planes, a large air-craft carrier, had a deck area of about 2 acres.Against a submarine, the lethal area in which abomb had to hit was about a quarter acre and ona beachhead a gun position presented an area ofonly one two-hundredth of an acre. The tonnageof bombs dropped in attacks against such targetswas of very little significance but the questionoften arose whether the target could he efficientlybombed at all. The statistical chance againsthitting a 25-foot diameter gun revetment was 10,-000 to 1 in high-altitude bombing, 600 to 1 inlow-altitude glide bombing, 300 to 1 in the mostaccurate dive bombing, and about 100 to 1 inmasthead bombing. The development of thehigh explosive rocket reduced the chance to 21 to1; and, if it was desired to put the gun temporarilyout of action while troops advanced or friendlybombers were carrying out an attack, this couldhe accomplished by a fighter plane with a fewhundred rounds of ammunition.

Except for patrol planes, naval aviation oper-ated from carriers or from small land fields inadvanced areas, both of which required small air-craft with limited bomb capacity. As an integralpart of the naval forces, it had as targets primarily

4 9

naval objecctives--ships, parked aircraft, shoreinstallations and close support of amphibioustroops. Because the types of plane and the na-ture of the targets put a premium on accuracy andeffectiveness of each bomb dropped, naval avia-tion did not engage in high-altilude, pattern bomb-ing. Three methods of bomb attacks were com-monly used: glide bombing at altitudes from1,000 to 4,000 feet; dive bombing at the samealtitudes but with an angle of 65° to 90°; andminimum-altitude, or masthead bombing, from50 to 300 feet. Especially against war vesselsaerial torpedoes were used at close range and lowaltitude. With the introduction of the high-explosive rocket in 1944, naval aviation acquireda weapon more suitable than bombs against suchtargets as small shipping and ground installa-tions. An index of its importance was the use of

over 100,000 rockets in the Okinawa campaign.Finally, naval planes employed machine guns andlight cannon against many small targets.

In measuring the tactical effectiveness of anair force it was not the volume of effort but attain-ment of objectives and the cost of results thatcounted. Each type of target and operation hadto be considered separately; there was no com-mon standard. To destroy half of Tokyo re-quired 14,000 tons of bombs. Less than one-twentieth of this tonnage won the battle for LeyteGulf; a few dozen dive bombers won the Battle ofMidway. The comparative importance of theseachievements is not found in any measure ofsorties or bomb tonnage. They are in fact, notcomparable at all, except as each was a vital con-tribution to victory achieved by skilled applica-tion of appropriate weapons.

50

V I I I LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons of any naval war are of great im-portance to the Unietd States. The lessons ofthe war against Japan are unique. Unlike thegreat conflicts of the eighteenth century and theFirst World War, where blockade and relativelypassive control of sea lanes provided limited, al-though decisive, naval objectives. Japanese ex-pansion and the United States victory were cam-paigns fought across the sea.

World War II also witnessed the full develop-ment of aviation. In view of the complete lackof factual evidence, many of the opinions ex-pressed between the two World Wars on the roleof air in naval operations were based largely ontheory and to a considerable degree were ulti-mately proved false. Bombing of anchored andundefended battleships off the Virginia Capesafter the last war led to statements that navieswere obsolete and that no ship could operatewithin range of land-based aircraft. Althoughcertain advocates of independent air power ques-tioned both the possibility and usefulness of closesupport of troops, such support was proved notonly possible but indispensable. The accuracyof high-level, precision bombing was vastly over-estimated, as witness both the ineffectiveness ofthis means of attack against shipping and the im-proved efficiency of B–29 attacks after the adop-tion of medium-altitude, area bombing. A con-siderable body of opinion in both the Army andthe Navy held that the airplane would quicklymaster the submarine. While this was ultimatelyaccomplished, it came about rather late in thewar after immense e ffort in research and designof new equipment and in the development oftechniques for cooperation of planes and surfaceships. Certain improvements in U-boat designand equipment, which appeared too late to be-come operational on a wide scale, made it ex-

tremely doubtful that Allied superiority wouldhave long prevailed.

Those who questioned the importance of theairplane were equally far from the mark. Thedisappointment of officers who planned for fleetengagements after the fashion of Trafalgar andJutland was doubtless as great as that of theo-rists who had confidently dismissed the battle-ship as a modern weapon, only to find it pro-foundly useful and singularly invulnerable insupport of amphibious landings. The conclu-sion is that while times do change, revolutionsare seldom as complete as the revolutionarieshope.

The efforts of the various nations between thewars to solve the problems of the employmentof aircraft in naval warfare were instructive.The debilitating effects of Britain’s separate airforce on the British Navy are well known. Theeffectiveness of the lumbering Swordfish torpedo-plane was a high tribute to the gallantry of thepilots but hardly complimentary to the organi-zational system which produced it. Counting ontheir geography, the Italians established a land-based air force with which they thought to con-trol the Mediterranean. Constantly outfoughtby British carrier aircraft, the greatest victoryof the Italian Air Force was scored against itsown navy- which it once put to ignominious flight.The Japanese developed aviation as part of theirfleet, and the operations of their carrier strikingforce from Pearl Harbor to Ceylon set the pat-tern of the Pacific war, but they failed to solvethe defensive problem and this failure, with theirlimited recuperative abilities, nullified theirwhole war plan. The outbreak of war foundUnited States aviation, both military and naval,woefully deficient in types and quantities of air-craft. Doubly fortunate in geography and in-

STRIKE ON TOKYOPlanes from Carrier Task Force Pass Mount Fujiyama, February 1945

dustrial power the country was able to go for-ward with the building of great forces incorpo-rating the early lessons of the war and the mostrecent technology, thus achieving an unexpect-edly early victory. As it may not again be pos-sible to extemporize, the importance of correctevaluation of the experience cannot be over-estimated.

The experiences of warfare, however, arenever conclusive. They cannot be controlledlike experiments in a laboratory but must betaken as they occur. Two examples from therecent conflict may be cited to show the dangersof facile generalization from insufficient evi-dence. In the past it had been taken forgranted that aircraft carriers could not operatefor extened periods within range of a largenumber of enemy air bases, yet from September1944 until the end of the war this was done andin every instance the shore bases had the worstof it. It would be unwise to deduce from thisexperience too rigid theories for the future be-cause against an enemy, equal plane for planeand pilot for pilot, it would have been muchmore difficult and costly, although at what pointsuch operations would become unprofitable it isimpossible to determine. Likewise the opera-tional capabilities of B–29’s with full bombloads against heavily defended targets weresomewhat limited. Although islands within1,300 miles of Tokyo had been secured, it wasnecessary to pay a great price for Iwo Jima,600 miles nearer the objective, in order that thebomber bases might be free from attack andthat the bombers might have fighter protectionand an emergency landing field.

The impact of technology on modern warfareis such as to render generalization and predic-tion doubly dangerous. Although the carriertask force was the outstanding fighting unit inthe advance across the Pacific, if the develop-ments in radar and fighter direction had not oc-curred when they did, the event would have

been far different. On the other side of thepicture, had the Germans developed the proxim -ity fuse for antiaircraft fire, the important effectof the heavy bomber in Europe, achieved as itwas at great cost in men and effort, might havebeen drastically reduced.

The United States possessed no single weaponsufficiently effective in itself to defeat Japan.All the tools of modern war were used in theadvance across the Pacific. The integrated em-ployment of all forces each possessing its spe-cialized weapons and equipment was essential toaccomplish the ultinate aim. Each assaultclearly demonstrated that we had no singlemeans of destroying the enemy or securing theobjective. The extent to which man could pro-tect himself and absorb punishment, particularlyfrom air attack, was a striking feature of WorldWar II and revealed limitations in the capabil-ities of modern weapons.

The fact is that there exists no single scienceof war. There are many sciences with whichwar is concerned, but war itself is a practicalart and skill. It is impossible ever wholly toanticipate war’s requirements as the experiencesof the Germans and the Japanese revealed. Anyexclusive adoption of a single weapon or typeof weapon immediately limits freedom of actionand greatly simplifies the enemy’s probem ofdefense. War is a phenomenon of immensecomplexity whose problems are solved prag-matically by hard experience and clear thinking.There is danger that investigation of a singleaspect of one war may give rise to an unbalancedinterpretation. Limitations are as significant asaccoplishments.

Certain features of the war in the Pacific,however, are of such importance that they mustbe considered in any planning for the future:

1. Control of the air was prerequisite to con-trol of the sea.

2. Control of the sea permitted the concentra-tion of carrier air power to control the air, and

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. for continuedthe construction of bases necessarylocal control of the air.

3. Local control of the sea permitted thelanding, support, and supply of amphibiousforces on hostile shores.

4. General control of the sea was decisiveagainst an enemy dependent on ocean commercefor vital supplies.

5. Control of the sea, including the landingof mililary forces on a hostile shore, was prop-erly a naval function achieved by air, surface,and submarine forces acting in concert.

6. Naval aviation was an integral part of thenaval forces and, as such, possessed the espe-cially designed planes and equipment and em-ployed the special tactics necessary to fullfill itsrole.

7. With control of the sea gained and main-tained by the Navy, it was possible for landforces to control large-scale offensive operationsand for strategic bombing to destroy enemy'sindustrial potential at will.

Technology is never static, it produceschanges in the methods and tactics of warfare,but it does not alter basic concepts of strategy.For centuries control of the sea has permitted abelligerent to remove the field of operationsfrom his own shores and to fight on the territoryof an enemy. Since the United States achievedstatus as a great power in the last quarter of the

nineteenth century, it has been three times en-gaged in war. On each occasion it has beenable to carry the confict to the enemy becauseit possessed control of the sea. Behind a shieldof sea power, the country has employed its greatresources and industrial machine to build theforces for victory Whether the growing rangeof bombing aircraft and the greatly increaseddestructiveness of explosives has made immu-nity from air attack impossible in the future isarguable. However, the amount of explosivecarried will continee to vary inversely with thedistance a plane must travel. Each added mileof range increases the opportunity for intercep-tion before the attacking aircraft reaches its ob-jective. Although air raids may level cities,they do not lay waste an entire countryside aslarge-scale land operations do. So long as warremains a possibility, control of the sea will bevital to the national defense.

When the Japanese entered the conflict, theyhad a plan for a war of limited objectives. Theyseized a perimeter but soon found that it wasinsufficient for proper defense. In Europe theGermans conquered large amounts of territorybut failed to put either England or Russia outof the conflict, and so long as those belligerentsremained in the field Hitler could not force apeace. Experience proves that in the modernworld there is no such thing as a war of limited

T0DAY'S, “SHIP OF THE LINE”New Midway-class Carrier Devloped During the War

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objectives; there is only total war which ends defeat of one of thewith the exhaustion and

contestants. Such defeat can best be accom-plished by an attack on the enemy’s homeland,the source of his ability to wage war. AgainstGermany a direct land campaign was required;the Japanese recognized the inevitability of de-feat as the strategic air attack was reaching highgear and as the invasion forces were assembling.In offensive air operations the closer the base tothe objective the more effective and the lesscostly will the task be. For the United Statesthis means the establishment of bases suppliedby ships, and for the free movement of shipscontrol of the sea is mandatory. Control of thesea will also remain vital to the offfense.

Submarines and aircraft, within the limits im-posed by range, penetrated enemy-held areaswithout support. Neither of them could cap-ture and hold territory or supply a beachhead.When the Japanese lost their carriers at Midwaythe invasion fleet turned back without attempt-ing to land. Control of the air was prerequisiteto control of the sea. When United States forcesmoved across the Central Pacific, they encoun-tered a string of strong, mutually supporting.Japanese air bases which were frequently re-ferred to as so many "unsinkable aircraft car-riers.” With control of the sea it was possibleto concentrate enough “sinkable carriers” tooverwhelm and isolate the area under attack andto reduce the Japanese bases to so many unsink-able hulks. After strategic islands had beencaptured, the freedom of United Stattes ships tosail the ocean made it possible to construct instal-lations and to keep the occupying forces con-tinually supplied with men, equipment, and air-craft, which in turn contributed to control theair in the vicinity. Control of the sea was vitalto control of the air.

Spanning oceans with loads of atomic explo-sives may become technolgically possible butwill not alter the basic fact that each added mile

of range will increase the likelihood of intercep-tion and decrease the bomb load of the attacker.As the naval task force found in combatingguided missiles in the form of Kamikazes, earlywarning increases the chance of breaking up araid. For that reason alone, bases which canonly be supplied and held as long as control ofthe sea is maintained will remain important. Inthe second place, the belligerent possessing basesclosest to an enemy will have the advantagesof being able to launch a more concentrated at-tack with fewer aircraft. Since the UnitedStates is not connected by land with any greatpower, the necessar-y bases must be away fromits shores; i. e., in an area where possession canbe maintained only by sea communications.

the war on an enemy’s territory with all the de-struction that such a campaign implies. In theWar of 1812, superior sea power allowed theenemy to burn Washington. In two great warsof the twentieth century the United States pro-tected by the Navy was safe from devastation.

Except for strategic bombing, in which theNavy did not engage aviation does not functionindependently. It exists as one of the elementsnecessary - for control of the land or control ofthe sea and operates with other forces having thesame end in view, and the techniques for controlof land and sea are not the same. The experi-ence of other nations shows, and the lessons ofthe war confirm, that modern warfare is highlyspecialized and each phase requires its partic-ular aircraft, equipment, and tactic’s, for the useof which special training is necessary. In theUnited States this has resulted in the creation ofseparate military and naval air components,capable when the situation demands of operat-ing in support of one another, but each concen-trating on the development of planes, equipment,and tactics best suited to its normal sphere ofaction. In naval warfare the necessity for com-plete integration of aviation with the other naval

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forces was completely demonstrated in the con- The mission in the case of each was different,flict with Japarn. Because naval aircraft used The Navy must retain every component neces-the same air, because on occasion they took off sary to its effectiveness, and must further developfrom the same bases, did not mean that they the unity of purpose, training, and commandduplicated the work of the Army Air Forces. that brought victory in the Pacific war.

U.S. GOVERRMENT PRINTING OFFICE 194756

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