Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [64]
Bunky Ottinger was among three dozen aviators awarded Navy Crosses for March 19 actions but he never pinned it on. Five days later he was killed off Okinawa, one of thirty-one members of the Annapolis class of ’32 who died in the war.
While disengaging from the home islands the carriers cast their patented aerial net overland to keep the enemy on the defensive. In the wake of the Franklin disaster, “The Big Blue Blanket” largely did its job, as only one destroyer sustained a bomb hit.
Two days’ claims of 223 enemies downed contrasted with forty-four acknowledged by the Imperial Navy and an unknown number of Japanese army planes. Moreover, the U.S. figure of some 250 aircraft destroyed on the ground was clearly optimistic, but that was beside the point. The aviators had driven home their message, not only to Tokyo but to cynics in navies and air forces around the globe. Powerful, extremely competent carrier groups had completely dominated Japan’s coastal waters and begun the process of clearing the enemy’s skies of meaningful defense.
However, there was room for criticism. Despite the claims for hits on major warships, the carrier pilots had done poorly. Though enjoying air superiority, they inflicted minimal damage on the major combatants: merely five hits on four battleships, three of which were immobile. A carrier and a light cruiser were badly damaged. In contrast, at Pearl Harbor the Imperial Navy’s elite airmen had destroyed two battleships and a target vessel, and severely damaged six more warships. In any case, Mitscher’s aircrews knew two things: they could do better, and they would be back.
The Fifth Fleet withdrew from home waters to begin pre-invasion strikes against Okinawa on March 23. But despite the obligation to support the amphibious forces, the fast carriers returned to the Japanese homeland as opportunity permitted. Brief visits on March 28–29 put more tailhookers over southern Kyushu, meeting almost no opposition.
Action shifted seaward on April 7, about 100 miles offshore. The aviators could hardly believe their good fortune when the Imperial Navy made its last sortie, sending the super-battleship Yamato on a one-way trip to Okinawa, hoping to disrupt the U.S. landings. Swarmed by Mitscher’s squadrons, she was destroyed in a huge explosion resembling a small nuclear mushroom cloud. Her escorting light cruiser and four of eight destroyers also sank beneath the weight of American bombs and torpedoes.
The fast carriers continued dominating Japanese airspace but could not prevent some kamikazes from getting airborne. Shuttling task groups between Okinawa and Japan, Mitscher kept his fliers occupied in both arenas, and one day’s respite could lead to the next day’s deluge. On April 15, Hellcats tallied just twenty-seven shoot-downs over southern Kyushu, but on the 16th the kamikazes came out in force. Task force fighters claimed 157 kills and still could not prevent the suiciders from mauling Intrepid so severely that she could not be repaired for nearly four months.
Increasingly, Task Force 58 realized that it needed to sit on the kamikaze nests around the clock to prevent the lethal eggs from hatching. Therefore, beginning May 12, Rear Admiral Ted Sherman’s and Rear Admiral J. J. “Jocko” Clark’s task groups put the home islands of Kyushu and Shikoku in their sights. Two days and nights of counter–air operations began with Enterprise’s Air Group 90 launching nocturnal patrols to keep Japanese night fliers grounded. Big, gregarious Commander William I. Martin was the Navy’s senior night-flying aviator and an innovative torpedo squadron skipper. Now, with a dedicated night fighter and bomber squadron in his experienced hands, he set out to show what his fliers could accomplish in dominating Japan’s nocturnal skies.
In the predawn hours of the 12th, a flock of Japanese recon planes was mauled by Martin’s radar-equipped Hellcats, which destroyed eight without loss. Less than twenty-four hours later Essex’s detachment of night fighters preceded