Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [96]
The campaign progressed through five stages, each targeting specific areas while “reseeding” previous minefields. Only five additional missions were launched through April, averaging just ten bombers each. Consequently, most of the 313th Wing continued with conventional bombing attacks.
Colonel Robert A. Ping’s 505th Group became LeMay’s designated hitter for mining, and in the words of a postwar study “became expert in its task.” From May to July Operation Starvation averaged twenty-five to thirty bombers per night as about one-fourth of the 505th’s total sorties laid mines.
In July the miners achieved a near total blockade of Shimonoseki, Honshu, and Kyushu, plus some Korean ports. The campaign put the cork in Tokyo’s bottle—that summer the food situation approached critical.
The results exceeded expectations as losses to mines rocketed from eighteen ships sunk in April to more than eighty each in May and June. Shimonoseki traffic fell 90 percent between March and July while tonnage entering industrial ports dropped from more than 800,000 in March to a quarter-million in July. Imports of selected commodities that ran over 20 million tons in 1941 were halved in 1944, plummeting to 2.7 million tons through June 1945.
Operation Starvation did not totally eliminate imports to Japan but it reduced them below minimum acceptable levels. Japan’s inadequate road and rail networks forced increasing reliance upon coastal shipping, which was adversely affected by mining.
B-29 mines sank 293 ships from late March to mid-August, averaging two a day. Furthermore, Japanese shipyards became clogged with damaged vessels awaiting repair. Eighteen of the nation’s twenty-one large repair yards were bottlenecked in the Inland Sea or on the east coast. Japan’s admiralty had no option but to close its Pacific ports. That left only the west coast harbors to receive what little cargo survived the perilous voyage from China or Korea. The result was a huge dent in the emperor’s remaining merchant marine, which represented about 60 percent of shipping losses from April through August.
Lacking anything like sufficient minesweepers, the Imperial Navy simply could not clear enough minefields to keep choke points open. LeMay ensured that fields were resown often, and in sufficient density to prevent more than a trickle of ships from getting through.
Perhaps 20,000 Japanese and nearly 350 vessels were engaged in minesweeping efforts, which were largely ineffective. Radar, searchlights, and underwater sound equipment were used in spotting mines but located just 30 percent of those dropped. Furthermore, sometimes two months were needed to counter a new type of mine.
After the war Captain Rokuemon Minami described Seventh Fleet problems in Shimonoseki Strait: “Due to the fact that the United States did not use mines extensively during the first years of the war, the Japanese allowed their research efforts to relax and consequently were in no way prepared for the saturation type of attack that was delivered in Japanese waters in the spring of 1945.” He added that sometimes traffic in the straits became so congested that it was necessary to force ships through regardless of losses.
The 313th Bomb Wing performed one of the significant feats in air warfare, but due to the sensitive nature of its mission, it received little attention. Operation Starvation met the doctrinal concept of economy of force: maximum damage to the enemy for minimum expenditure of effort, lives, and treasure. In forty-six missions Davies’s crews delivered 12,000 mines, losing 103 fliers and fifteen aircraft from 1,500 mining sorties. Even more remarkably, just nine of the B-29 losses were due to enemy action.
Accolades came from all quarters, not least from on high. In April Nimitz wrote LeMay expressing profound gratitude for Starvation, calling the results “phenomenal.”
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