Kamikazes Take Final Carrier Victims

On February 21, 1945, the fight for the small island of Iwo Jima was entering its third day.  Featuring less than 10 square miles of black volcanic residue, Iwo’s main lookout point consisted of Mount Suribachi, from where enemy artillery pieces could shell just about any point on the island.  The task of taking Suribachi fell to Col. Harry Liversedge’s 28th Marines, and his assualt got underway shortly after 8:00am.  But before they jumped off, the 550′ peak was treated to a pounding from naval gunfire as well as bombs and cannon fire from the fleet’s carrier-based aircraft.

The U.S. Navy did a lot of grunt work during the month-long battle.  And while the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions had the toughest job (capturing the island and its three vital airfields), the Navy played a tremendous supporting role in the successful completion of the mission.

But like the Marines, the Navy paid a price for its work.

As we well know, the Japanese kamikaze squadrons were an ever-present threat.  Having been formed in late 1944, these one-way suicide missions featuring one pilot, one plane, and one bomb, sought to wreak havoc among the advancing American vanguard.  And while they never achieved the “one man, one ship” success their mantra sought, they were a deadly foe nonetheless.

And on the day the conquest of Suribachi began, the kamikazes came out to fight and die.  As the afternoon headed towards evening, attacks from Hachijo Jima succeeded in breaking through the pickets and hitting the USS Saratoga.  The long-lived carrier, one of the very first battlecruiser conversions, nearly met her end on this day, as she was hit by four kamikazes.  Two hours later, as crews fought to save the ship, five more enemy planes bored in, and one planted a bomb on the forward flight deck.  The fact that she was saved from sinking was a testament to the ability of the crews to successfully overcome the fires and damage that should have sunk her.  But the attacks cost more than 300 casualties, including 123 killed.

The Bismarck Sea was not so fortunate.  The Casablanca-class carrier was hit by just two kamikazes, but both were hit critical sections of the 10,000-ton escort carrier.  The first penetrated the hangar deck and exploded in the ammunition magazines, causing extensive damage and powerful fires.  The second, which struck just as crews were getting a handle on the situation, destroyed the fire fighting water distribution system, which meant it was impossible to put out the remaining fires.  Three hours later, the Bismarck Sea slipped beneath the waves, taking 318 men with her.

The Bismarck Sea has the unfortunate distinction of being the last carrier of any kind sunk by a kamikaze during the War.  The power of Japan’s kamikazes was not in their effectiveness – while they sank numerous vessels, they wasted thousands of lives and thousands of aircraft in a completely futile attempt to stave off inevitable defeat – but rather in their terrifying randomness.

Recommended Reading:  The War in the Pacific

Read Full Post »

British and Japanese go Ship-to-Ship One Last Time

As World War II approached its conclusion in the Pacific, one could make the statement that the U.S. Navy dominated the action in the theater.  And that would be true.  One could also make the statement that, in May of 1945, the U.S. Navy was the only one involved in sinking Japanese ships out there.  And that would be slightly less true.

The incomparable Max Hastings has put together sort of a two-part series dealing with the War’s final year.  Armageddon covers the action in Europe (and is a must-read).  In the volume covering the Pacific, entitled Retribution, Hastings writes that “Britain’s Royal Navy was embarrassed by its difficulties in sustaining a small fleet alongside the great American armada off Okinawa.  In the spring of 1945, however, it conducted a series of little actions which helped to revive its battered self-esteem.”  We’ll look at one of those today, as it’s significant for a couple of reasons.

On May 15th, intelligence revealed that the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro (shown above), escorted by the destroyer Kamikaze, was making a supply and evacuation run to the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.  The British Navy’s Force 61, consisting of five destroyers, headed off to engage.

If you recall back to when we discussed the Graf Spee, it’s not the number of guns, it’s the size of the guns.  So while the British held a numerical advantage (5 ships to 2), they were overwhelmingly outmatched by the Haguro’s 10 8-inch guns.  Royal Navy Captain Martin Power decided this engagement was best held at night, but make no mistake, with British pride on the line, there would be battle.  Martin’s admiral let that be known in no uncertain terms when he sent the following cable:  “You should sink enemy ships before returning.”

And that’s what they did in the early morning hours of May 16, 1945.  The HMS Venus picked up the Japanese ships on radar at an astounding 68,000 yards, and they rapidly closed in.  In a confused melee of shot and torpedoes, the Haguro and Kamikaze put up a good fight, inflicting significant damage on the destroyer HMS Saumarez.  But the Haguro was punctured by four torpedoes and, shortly after 2:00am, slipped beneath the surface.  The British quickly departed the scene (to be out of range of any possible land-based enemy aircraft before dawn), leaving the Kamikaze to fish sailors from the water.

The significance of this rather minor battle between a handful of ships is two-fold.  First, it was the last ship-to-ship engagement of the World War II.  And second, it was (and still is, as far as I know) the last gun battle between major surface ships ever fought.

Recommended Reading: Retribution

Read Full Post »

St. Lo Laid Low by Yukio

The Battle of Leyte Gulf needs no serious introduction to regular readers of Today’s History Lesson, as we spent several days looking at it a year ago.  If you’d like a refresher, here are the three articles from last year, which should give you an above-and-below-water overview of what is considered to be the largest fleet action in naval history:

USS Dace Serves Up Filet-o-Ship with Darter Sauce
David vs. Goliath: Navy-Style
The Japanese Navy Meets her Waterloo

Into the middle of Leyte Gulf comes the discussion about the kamikaze squadrons that we started the other day.  So let’s link them up.

As Admiral Kurita’s Center Force came down the San Bernardino Strait on October 25, 1944, it ran into Admiral Clifton Sprague’s Taffy 3.  Comprised of small escort carriers and destroyers, Taffy 3 was outfitted to support MacArthur’s invasion of the Philippines, not fight against heavy cruisers and battleships.

At the same time (7:25am), Lt. Yukio Seki was lifting off from East Airfield with 22 other pilots.  Their mission was to not return to base, but instead to find a large American ship (preferably a carrier) and simply fly into it.

For two and a half hours, they flew south and east, arriving in the area of the Straits just about the time Taffy 3 had miraculously chased off the Japanese Center Force.  They were likely surprised (and a little disappointed) to find no American capital ships in the area, but they pressed their attacks anyways.

The escort carrier St. Lo was in the process of refueling and rearming aircraft when the kamikazes arrived, and Lt. Yukio Seki singled her out and bored in.  Keep in mind that American gunners were accustomed to Japanese pilots flying in, dropping bombs, and making their escapes.  Flying in and…flying into a ship…well sure, it happened on very rare occasions, but a pre-planned suicide attack was completely new.

At 10:50am, Seki’s plane with its bomb planted itself in the St. Lo’s flight deck.  The plane disintegrated, but the bomb penetrated and exploded in the hangar deck, igniting the fuel and bombs there.  A gasoline explosion was followed by a half dozen more, tearing the light carrier apart.  Thirty minutes later, the St. Lo became the war’s first kamikaze victim as she slipped below the waves of the Strait.

Every other carrier in Taffy 3 (except Fanshaw Bay) was damaged (or further damaged) by Seki’s charges.  All in all, the “proof of concept” mission flown by the squadron from Mabalacat was largely successful…and would become painfully unfortunate for the U.S. Navy over the next 10 months.

Read Full Post »

A Divine Wind Stirs the Balacat Trees

Today, East Airfield is just a field.  Every year, a crop of sugar cane is grown there.  When the time is right (like it is at some point every year), the sugar cane is harvested and turned into whatever sweet things it becomes.  And it’s then, when the sugar cane is removed, that the field presents the evidence of its prior occupation.  The outline of a runway.

This airfield, which only peeks out at harvest-time, sits at Mabalacat, with which some of you avid Today’s History Lesson readers are familiar, even if you don’t know it.  Mabalacat is a city in the northern region of the Pampanga Province, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.  Right here.  If you move just a little to the south, you’ll discover Manila Bay.  Once you’ve hit water, if you move slightly west, you strike land again.  That’s the Bataan province, and now it’s starting to make sense to you.  Moving south down the Bataan Province, you’ll run into water again, and you’ll see a little island right there in the middle of Manila Bay’s mouth.  That’s Corregidor.  See, you kind of knew where it was.

Named for the large number of balacat trees (Ma-balacat in the native tongue means “full of balacats”), the area was, in 1944, also full of Japanese soldiers.  Having taken over the Philippines in the aftermath of their major offensive in late 1941, the Japanese military had been in control of the Philippines since very early 1942.  But things were about to change.  Luzon was about to be invaded again.

By American forces.  The U.S. Army was preparing to land on Luzon, and the Navy was gathering around Leyte Gulf to support the Army.

Which brings us back to East Airfield in Mabalacat.  The Japanese Navy’s 1st Air Fleet (based down in Manila) had been tasked with supporting the attacks on the U.S. Navy in Leyte Gulf.  The problem was that the 1st Air Fleet had just 40 aircraft left.  So on October 19, 1944, Vice Admiral Takajiro Onishi met with his officers at East Airfield and came up with the idea of suicide squadrons.  He believed that a single plane carrying a bomb could do tremendous damage to any ship, even a battleship, if the pilot would hit the ship with both bomb and plane.  In this manner, a few planes could become a formidable force.

And as General MacArthur stepped onto Philippine soil on October 20, 1944, the Kamikaze squadrons were born.  There had been individual suicide attacks before, but this was the first time the “kamikaze” concept was organized into purpose-built units.  Comprised of 23 pilots (all volunteers), the Shimpu Special Attack Corps (as it was called) was divided into four units and was led by the talented Lieutenant Yukio Seki.

It would take a few days to get things organized and prepared, but then these one-way attackers would take to the skies, and their first missions would end in dramatic fashion.  Stay tuned…we’ll discuss it shortly.

Read Full Post »

Laffey II – The Wrath of (Human) Bombs

Let’s talk for a couple minutes about the experience of the USS Laffey in the battle for Okinawa.  As you know, Okinawa turned out to be the last major land battle of the Second World War.  It was also one of the roughest, toughest engagements of the entire war.

But it was also a major naval battle, though not in the traditional sense.  Off the land, it was all about suicide attacks.  Hundreds and hundreds of Japanese pilots flew one-way death missions, with their motto of “One man – one ship”, looking to go out in the proverbial blaze of glory.  These missions were actually planned and coordinated and called “Floating Chrysanthemum” missions, and there were a half dozen or more during the Battle of Okinawa.

Which returns us to the Laffey, one of the more famous recipients of Japan’s suicidal wrath.  Now observant readers will immediately note that the USS Laffey was sunk off Guadalcanal…in 1942.  Ah yes, but that destroyer’s designation was DD-459, while the “Okinawa” version was DD-724.  U.S. shipyards were producing ships faster than rabbits produce families, and Bartlett Laffey (a hero of the Civil War) got his name on a second destroyer.

And on April 16, 1945, Bartlett’s second namesake received a beating.  As one of the “picket” ships, she sat north of Okinawa protecting the bigger battleships and carriers and, on this particular day, the landing craft taking the Army’s 77th Infantry Division to Ie Shima.  Having just beat off a kamikaze attack the day before, they were ready…though maybe not ready for the 50-plane attack that arrived on-station.

About half of the 50 were dispatched by the outer screen of planes and ships, but the remainder (like flies to your bug-zapper) were drawn to the Laffey.  And for the next hour and a half, the little destroyer was subjected to one of the most intense attacks of the war.  Though the ship would shoot down nine enemy planes, six Japanese pilots played “One man – one ship” with Laffey, planting themselves into the destroyer.  And the ship was hit by at least three bombs as well.  Keep in mind that this was no 40,000-ton battleship, bristling with guns and massive armor plating.  This was a 2,200-ton pip-squeak destroyer.

And yet the USS Laffey stayed afloat.  The great historian Samuel Elliot Morison would write that “probably no ship has ever survived an attack of the intensity that she experienced“.  Thirty-two sailors perished in the attacks with another 70 wounded.  And while it’s fashionable to say “she lived to fight another day”, the Laffey’s next action wouldn’t take place until the Korean War.

But DD-724 had survived an intense attack, the same kind of attacks that, while not changing the outcome of the war, sent dozens of ships and thousands of sailors to the ocean floor.

Recommended Viewing: Some kamikaze video from YouTube – The History Channel’s “Dogfights” series is fascinating.

Read Full Post »

The Divine Wind’s First Breeze

October 21, 1944 marks the first actual kamikaze attack by a Japanese pilot.  It’s somewhat coincidental that the event took place when it did, as the Japanese had just initiated an organized kamikaze plan the day before (the same day General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines).  Based from of an airstrip outside the Philippino town of Mabalacat, the pilots would fly their bomb-laden planes into enemy ships.  The biggest prizes were, of course, the carriers and battleships, but any enemy ship would serve.

But this first attack wasn’t part of a kamikaze squadron, as they wouldn’t see action for a few days.  No, this was more of a random act and, unlike most of the subsequent attacks over the next 8 or 9 months, it wasn’t directed at a U.S. ship.  The pilot, behind the stick of a Mitsubishi Ki-51 Sonia, was one of a group of flyers attacking ships near Leyte Island, where the famous Battle of Leyte Gulf would commence in a couple days.

Having made a run at the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia (shown above), he flew away, only to reverse course and fly straight into the Australia’s superstructure (the tallest area there above the front two gun mounts).  The crash showered the ship with debris and burning fuel, and snuffed out the lives of 30 sailors, including the ship’s commander.  Miraculously, the 450-pound bomb the plane was carrying failed to detonate, or the damage would have been catastrophic.

This was the first of thousands of such attacks that would take throughout the remainder of the Pacific War.  It was also the first of six such successful attacks that the Australia would survive, though other ships were not so lucky.  Nailing down a precise number of vessels sunk by the “Divine Wind” attacks has proven nearly impossible, but 50 is in the ballpark.  Nearly 5,000 soldiers, sailors, and officers would be killed by them.

Recommended Reading: History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. 12: Leyte, June 1944-January 1945

Read Full Post »

Floating Chrysanthemums

It’s easy to think of The Battle of Okinawa as a vicious land battle, a very heavily entrenched force warring against an even larger dislodging force.  But to think of the engagement solely in those terms is to miss a large part of the struggle, because there was an equally desperate fight going on at sea.

While the Japanese Navy and Air Force had been worn down to the point of lacking any decisive power, each had some nasty punches left to throw.  Today’s History Lesson will concentrate on the assault from the air.

Japan’s kamikaze program was only about five months old as an official entity, but there was no shortage of young pilots ready and willing to die for the Emperor.  Massed kamikaze attacks were first used with modest success during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and plans were put in place for a massive 4,000-plane attack as the U.S. Fleet approached Okinawa, the final barrier to mainland Japan.

Fortunately, the U.S. military had long ago deciphered the Japanese codes and were well aware that the attacks were coming.  So U.S. fighter and bomber forces had reduced that 4000-plane inventory substantially.  But still, the first of the “Floating Chrysanthemum” (the Japanese loved flowers) attacks at Okinawa, on April 6, 1945, comprised several hundred Japanese aircraft…more than enough to keep the boys manning the guns busy.  Many were shot down or crashed due to mechanical issues, but enough of them got through.  Fortunately, the prized targets (carriers and battleships) were spared, but the outer picket forces, made up of destroyers, minesweepers, and light cruisers, took the brunt of the attacks.

By day’s end, three destroyers had been sunk and numerous more were put out of action.  The kamikazes that actually made it through to Okinawa destroyed an LST and two vital ammunition boats.  And this was just the start of the “Divine Wind” that would blow throughout the remainder of the island battle.

The attacks from the air would continue the next day, but April 7th’s action would also include a very special Japanese mission from the sea, and we’ll look at that tomorrow.

Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Battle: Okinawa 1945 – The Last Epic Struggle of WWII – I’m actually in the middle of reading this book right now, and it’s just been excellent.  I always wish these “campaign” books had more maps, but it’s immensely readable.  Highly recommended.

Read Full Post »