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By Root 1329 0

chosen pilots. At Okinawa the Japanese sent more than three hundred fifty planes against the American fleet and produced devastating damage to several small vessels. Despite the enormity of the attack, the results were not nearly the crushing blow that the Imperial Air Force had promised. The Americans had long ago broken the Japanese intelligence codes, and when the first wave of Operation Floating Chrysanthemum left their airfields, American fighter planes were waiting for them. Half of the Japanese planes were shot down far out at sea, and many of those who survived the gauntlet were shot out of the sky by a storm of anti-aircraft fire. With so much firepower aimed their way, the Japanese pilots mostly ignored their orders to target the largest ships, the carriers and battleships, and instead launched themselves at the first ship they saw. Because of the configuration of the American fleet, those ships were most often the outer ring, the picket line, including smaller gunboats, patrol boats, transports, and supply ships, and the occasional destroyer or light cruiser. Though the most valuable prizes were largely missed, the destruction on the smaller American craft was horrific. Hundreds of sailors were killed, and several ships were sunk.

As the carnage played out in front of him, Ushijima received word that he had long discounted, a communication from Tokyo that the Imperial Navy was finally fulfilling its own promises. They were coming to Okinawa as well. Most of the Japanese army commanders still believed that the navy far outclassed and outnumbered their enemies, but the admirals understood that the greatest naval battles they had fought were mostly one-sided affairs, and the Japanese fleets had suffered severely. What most Japanese never could be told was that the power of the Japanese fleet, the battleships and carriers, was simply gone. But there was one exception, one survivor, a ship that by its very size and strength inspired the Japanese people, their military, and their emperor. On April 6, that ship sailed out of the protection of her port and, accompanied by a fleet of support ships, made her way directly for the American anchorage at Okinawa. The Americans knew her to be the fiercest weapon the Japanese had in their arsenal, the largest and most heavily armed battleship ever built. It was called the Yamato.

The first American ship to spot the Yamato was the submarine USS Threadfin, who radioed that the mammoth warship had emerged from her home port of Kure, on Japan’s inland sea. She was accompanied by nine smaller ships: eight destroyers and one cruiser. It required very little imagination for the American command to predict the Yamato’s destination. The Threadfin could not keep up with the faster-moving warships, and so the Americans responded by launching spotter planes to keep discreet track of the Japanese vessels. As the Yamato drew within two hundred fifty miles of Okinawa, the Americans were astonished to discover that the small fleet was steaming straight toward the island completely naked of air support. The response was ordered by Admiral Raymond Spruance, in overall command of the task force that included the fleet around Okinawa. The Americans launched an attack force of nearly three hundred planes, from eight different aircraft carriers.

The worst challenge for the American pilots was weather, a dense rain and cloud layer that kept their targets mostly hidden, but openings in the overcast were found. Midday on April 7, low-flying Helldiver bombers struck the first blows, followed by Avengers, who launched torpedoes as they skimmed toward their target barely above the water’s surface. The results were immediate and devastating. In a battle that lasted barely five hours, the Japanese cruiser and four of the accompanying destroyers were sunk, with the loss of more than a thousand crewmen. But the Japanese sailors who survived the carnage were witness to their final catastrophe. Stung by torpedoes and a continuing rain of bombs, the Yamato began to list severely, and in one great gasp, she