All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [355]
Amphibious operations became a Pacific routine, albeit a hazardous and challenging one. An American soldier wrote: ‘Even under the best conditions, the unloading phase of a landing operation is a hot, rugged chore. With a high surf pounding against a narrow strip of jungle undergrowth, with a set deadline of daylight hours, and under the scorching heat of a South Sea November sun, the job was an exhausting nightmare. Working parties were punching with every last ounce of blood to get ammunition, oil, supplies, vehicles, rations and water out of the boats and above the high-water line. Shore party commanders were frantically trying to find a few square feet of dump space and discovering nothing but swamp all along the beach. Seabees and engineers were racking their brains and bodies in a desperate effort to construct any kind of road to high ground where vehicles could be parked, oil stored and ammunition stacked. But there wasn’t any high ground for thousands of yards – only a few scattered small islands of semi-inundated land surrounded by a stinking, sticky mire. And hour after hour boats roared in to the beach jammed with supplies.’
The most important Pacific operation of 1944 was the seizure of the Marianas, key to the inner ring of Japan’s defences. When the US Marine Corps began its assaults on Saipan, Tinian and Guam, the Japanese Combined Fleet sailed to meet the invaders, precipitating the greatest carrier encounter of the war. ‘The fate of the Empire rests on this one battle,’ declared Admiral Soemu Toyoda on 13 June, as his ships, commanded by Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa, sailed against Spruance’s. But Ultra had once more revealed his plan to the Americans. The Japanese hoped to use submarines and land-based aircraft severely to weaken the Americans before the main engagement. Instead, seventeen of Toyoda’s twenty-five submarines were sunk, while his airfields on Guam and Tinian were devastated by US bombing.
Both sides deployed formidable forces, but the Americans outnumbered the Japanese by around two to one at sea and in the air, with 956 aircraft to 473, fifteen carriers to nine – four times US strength at Midway. Ozawa believed he had gained the advantage when he pinpointed Spruance’s ships, and was first to launch air strikes at 0830 on 19 June. But these were swiftly detected by American radar, and the report was flashed to Admiral Marc Mitscher: ‘Large bogeys bearing 265 degrees, 125 miles at 24,000.’ His chief of staff, Captain Arleigh Burke, said later, ‘Well that was just what we were waiting for, so we launched all our fighters, the whole blooming works.’
What followed became known as ‘the great Marianas turkey-shoot’: of Ozawa’s 373 planes dispatched, only 130 survived, having failed to inflict significant damage on the US fleet. A further fifty Japanese aircraft were shot down over Guam. ‘[The Japanese] were just devastated,’ said Burke. ‘You could tell that from the radio conversation.’ In the carrier operations room, eavesdroppers were monitoring enemy radio transmissions. When at last the disconsolate Japanese airborne controller asked his commander’s permission to return to the fleet, a listening American officer said, ‘Let’s shoot him down.’ Burke replied with pitying condescension, ‘No, you can’t shoot that man down. He’s done more good for the United States today than any of us. So let him go home.’ US submarines torpedoed Ozawa’s flagship, the new carrier Taiho, and the veteran Shokaku. These successes cost the Americans just twenty-nine planes; Toyoda’s surviving ships turned away.