Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [60]
Next the fast carriers steamed 750 miles south to pound Iwo Jima for three days, supporting the Marines, before returning to Japan. However, Saratoga remained off Iwo, where she was tagged by suiciders and bombs on the 21st, ending her round-the-clock support of the landings. She steamed home to the West Coast for repairs and never returned to combat.
Carrier operations against the home islands resumed on February 25 well offshore—190 miles southeast of Tokyo. The tailhookers launched into bad weather and found it miserable over land. The Japanese barely bothered to contest the effort, and sporadic combats over airfields and the capital resulted in U.S. claims of forty-six shoot-downs against sixteen losses.
Fleet aerologists predicted worsening weather so Mitscher canceled further operations at noon. He hoped to strike Nagoya the next day but roughening seas prevented the force from reaching the intended launch point. Instead, Mitscher aimed for Okinawa, striking opportune targets and conducting photoreconnaissance there on March 1.
If any Japanese had questioned who owned the Pacific Ocean, Task Force 58 operations in the thirty days after February 10 removed all doubt. Mitscher’s sortie spanned the North Pacific: from Ulithi up to Honshu waters, south to Iwo Jima, westward to Okinawa, and back again—a track of some 5,000 miles without serious opposition.
March 18
The fast carriers were not long absent from Empire waters. Following a ten-day respite in Ulithi, Task Force 58 sortied on March 14, Tokyo-bound once more. The mission was to keep the pressure on the home islands, and to start paring the remaining strength of the Imperial Navy.
With fifteen flight decks deployed in four task groups, Mitscher had nearly as much airpower to throw at the homeland as he possessed a month before. The main difference was that Enterprise was the only remaining night carrier.
On March 18, the Navy pilots targeted forty-five airfields, as it had been impossible to shut down those briefly attacked in February. With their bases largely undisturbed, Japanese fighters rose in strength to oppose the Americans’ latest effort at winning air superiority.
Most heavily engaged was Hornet’s Fighting 17. The skipper, Lieutenant Commander Marshall Beebe, led his Hellcats into a half-hour brawl around Kanoya, personally claiming five of the twenty-five victories. It was sweet revenge for Marsh Beebe, who had swum away from the escort carrier Liscombe Bay, sunk in 1943. He offered a vivid contrast to one of his division leaders, Lieutenant Robert Coats, who also earned ace in a day status, but who could not swim, had the need arisen.
Bennington’s marines had a full day. Twenty Corsairs of VMF-112 flew a sweep to Kanoya East, encountering some twenty Zekes at 19,000 feet. With an altitude advantage Major Herman Hansen’s pilots knocked down five in their initial pass, almost immediately splashing four more.
By late afternoon the carrier aviators had claimed 126 on the wing, a figure unusually close to the admitted Japanese losses of 110, including thirty-two kamikazes. With the initial goal of establishing air superiority largely accomplished, the next day Mitscher sent his air groups after his prime target: the Imperial Japanese navy.
March 19
Japanese bombers and kamikazes rose with the dawn. Taking advantage of a layer of haze, many eluded the American combat air patrols long enough to inflict serious harm upon Task Force 58.
Early that morning a lone bomber emerged from the overhead blind zone in the group’s radar coverage and nosed down, drawing a bead on Wasp. The bomb exploded belowdecks,