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Through the night, Mitscher’s Carrier Task Force 58 steamed hard in pursuit of the retreating Japanese, and the following afternoon US reconnaissance planes pinpointed Ozawa’s squadron. Mitscher took the daring gamble of launching strikes at extreme range, knowing that his 216 aircraft would have to be recovered in darkness. So great were American resources and so high the stakes that the carriers’ air component could be deemed expendable. Exultant pilots found the Japanese, among them dive-bomber-pilot Don Lewis.

The carrier below looked big, tremendous, almost make-believe. I had a moment of real joy. I had often dreamed of something like this. Then I was horrified with myself. What a spot to be in. I must be crazy … From each side of the carrier below seemed to be a mass of flashing red dots … It had been turning slowly to port. It stopped. Who could ask for more? I pulled my bomb release, felt the bomb go away, started my pull-out. My eyes watered, my ears hurt, and my altimeter indicated 1,500 feet. The sky was just a mass of black and white puffs, and in the midst of it planes already hit, burning and crashing into the water below. It is strange how a person can be fascinated even in the midst of horror.

This sortie sank another carrier, Hiyu, and damaged two others; the Japanese were left with thirty-five planes, having destroyed only twenty American aircraft. A further eighty of Mitscher’s force ditched from lack of fuel, or were lost attempting to land in darkness, but most of the crews were recovered. US factories could readily replace the lost aircraft, while those of Japan were quite unable to re-arm Ozawa. Spruance incurred criticism for breaking off the battle at this point, allegedly forfeiting a chance to complete the destruction of the fleeing Japanese. But he had inflicted a massive and irretrievable defeat on Toyoda’s fleet. He had no need to hazard his own ships, and perhaps the entire Marianas operation, in dangerous waters. Spruance in the Battle of the Philippine Sea displayed a wisdom and discretion that his counterpart and rival ‘Bull’ Halsey seldom matched. The action confirmed that American combat skills, as well as naval power, now wholly outclassed those of their enemies. For the rest of the war Japan’s pilots displayed diminishing proficiency, and sometimes even a want of courage. US carrier aircraft, notably the Hellcat fighter, dominated the sky, even when the Japanese deployed some new aircraft supposedly capable of matching them.

But victory at sea off the Marianas could not avert bloody fighting ashore. The Marines’ first objective was Saipan; its fourteen-mile length, and some high ground, enabled the Japanese to deploy 32,000 defenders in depth. When 77,000 US Marines waded ashore on 15 June, they met machine-gun and artillery fire which inflicted 4,000 casualties in the first forty-eight hours. The planners had anticipated a three-day battle, but the island’s capture took three weeks: the defenders had to be blasted from their bunkers yard by yard. An army division was committed in support of the Marines; after failing to take the densely forested position ruefully dubbed Purple Heart Ridge, its commander was sacked. But day by day, even while hundreds of thousands of their compatriots were fighting a similarly brutal battle in Normandy, the invaders slowly battered a path inland.

On the night of 6–7 July, 3,000 Japanese, sensing that the end was close, launched a futile, sacrificial banzai charge in which they were mown down by US firepower after desperate close-quarter fighting. ‘We had hardly any arms,’ said one of the few survivors, naval paymaster Noda Mitsuharu. ‘Some had only shovels, others had sticks.’ An American officer said: ‘It reminded me of one of those old cattle stampede scenes of the movies. The camera is in a hole in the ground and you see the herd coming and then they leap up and over you and are gone. Only the Japs kept coming and coming. I didn’t think they’d ever stop.’

Mitsuharu, lying in front of the American positions with two bullets in his stomach,