Saburo Sakai Flights for his Life

It’s been a few days since anything has come from this keyboard.  For some odd reason, there’s a “topic gap” in the first week of August.  I’m sure that historical things have happened during those days, but nothing that grabbed my attention.  So either I need to read some more, or widen my circle of interests.  Anyway, the spreadsheet has stuff on it for today, so let’s chat for a few minutes.

When the U.S. Navy began shelling Guadalcanal in the early-morning hours of August 7, 1942, it caught the Japanese garrison stationed there completely by surprise.  The same held true for the small nearby island of Tulagi and the twins of Gavutu-Tanambogo (I call them “twins” because they were small islands joined by a man-made causeway).  Frantic messages from the defenders (many of them in uncoded, plain-language text) were sent up the equally-surprised Japanese chain of command.

The Japanese had a bunch of planes at their main base at Rabaul that were being prepared for attacks on U.S. air bases in New Guinea, but were quickly retasked (and re-armed with torpedoes) to support their brothers-in-arms in the Solomon Islands.  Among the attackers were 18 planes of the elite Tainan Air Group, and one of its premier aces was Petty Officer First Class Saburo Sakai.  Boarding his Zero and taking off in the morning, he and his fellow pilots joined the fray over the Guadalcanal early that afternoon.

After downing a Wildcat and a Dauntless dive-bomber, he turned to attack another group of Wildcats, only to discover too late that they were also Dauntlesses.  The SBD featured a rear tailgunner that could give an attacking pilot grief.  But Sakai was attacking several of them with only a wingman, so nearly all the return fire was concentrated on him.  The barrage of gunfire shattered his plane’s canopy and a bullet hit him in the head.  Recovering a bit, he found himself blinded by blood, paralyzed on his left side, and hurtling toward the Pacific Ocean.

He pulled from the dive and got out of the action enough to take stock of his situation, which was grim to say the least.  His left side was truly paralyzed (the bullet had punctured his brain), and his right eye was also blind, even after removing the blood.  Saburo Sakai now faced a nearly-impossible 565-mile return flight to his base.  Blood loss threatened a fall into unconciousness, but he kept himself semi-alert with the help of the searing pain caused by slapping his own head wound.  And in one of the more remarkable flights of the entire War, Sakai (with only one eye, one arm, and one leg functioning) nursed his crippled plane (and his more crippled body) the entire way home…a five-hour flight.

The young pilot endured a long surgery (without any anesthesia) and made a partial recovery (the vision in his right eye never fully returned).  He convinced his superiors to let him fly again, and survived a kamikaze mission late in the War (when he was unable to locate enemy ships).  And in a testament to the Japanese military’s reluctance for advancement, this talented and tough pilot (a fighter ace a dozen times over) would not be promoted to Ensign (the next level above Petty Officer First Class) until two years later.

Sakai survived the War.  And after being surrounded by death for years, and experiencing his own incredible escape from its clutches on that day over Guadalcanal, he vowed to not so much as kill an insect.

Recommended Reading: Guadalcanal

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Operation Mo: No Stooge, no Scalpel Here

We’ve talked a lot about “operations” in this forum, and with good reason.  There have been a ton of them down through the years.  I don’t mean the hospital kind, but the military kind.  And the Second World War was full of them.  Every combatant built its offensive (and defensive) plans as an operation.  Some were complex enough to have operations within operations, so the names can sometimes get a bit confusing.

One with a simpler name was Operation Mo.  Again, not a “doctor” operation, and it had nothing to do with the Three Stooges.  Mo was a Japanese plan to wrest control of the New Guinea territory from Australia and simultaneously cut off Australia and New Zealand from any U.S. help.  With that successfully done, the Imperial Japanese Navy would set out on one of its most ambitious goals:  the capture of Hawaii.

It sounds crazy to us now, but for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (who’s gotten a lot of play here), it made good sense.  First off, up until this point (May of 1942), the Japanese military had really faced no serious challenge, so a bit of cockiness should have been expected from those flying under the Rising Sun.  But primarily, Yamamoto knew that to have any chance of winning this war, he needed to knock America out quickly.  And that meant the naval base at Hawaii.

Richard Frank summarizes this well in his outstanding book Guadalcanal.  He writes, “Yamamoto possessed perhaps the most unclouded understanding among senior Japanese officials of the implications of the immense imbalance in military potential between Japan and the United States, and he refused to gloss over this chasm with wishful thinking about how superior ‘spiritual power’ would enable Japan to overcome material disparities.”  Hawaii presented the Admiral with an enticing target:  a heavily-damaged fleet at Pearl that could be finished off, and nearly half a million Americans that lived on Hawaii presenting the perfect “object of ransom”, an incentive to coax the U.S. out of the war.

So while Operation Mo isn’t quite as well-known, it was the hinge-pin of Japanese aggression.  Take New Guinea and cut off Australia and New Zealand, isolate and destroy the remaining U.S. naval forces somewhere in the Pacific, move in on an undefended Hawaii, negotiate the U.S. out of action, and completely take over the Pacific.  Audacious?…absolutely.  But understandable in light of Japan’s success and Yamamoto’s concerns.  And while the Admiral had to really fight to get it approved (even threatening to resign), he carried the day.

And Operation Mo commenced on May 3, 1942.  The Japanese Light Task Force occupied the harbor of Tulagi with the job of setting up a seaplane base.  Tulagi is a postage-stamped piece of real estate just off the coast of Florida Island…in the Solomon Islands.  About 20 miles south sits the Solomons’ largest island…Guadalcanal.  So now you’re starting to get a feel for some context here in light of all we’ve said about Guadalcanal.

Anyways, they also occupied two very small islands just to the east of Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo.  The next day, aircraft from the carrier USS Yorktown rolled in and attacked the Japanese which, as you would suspect, got them riled up.  And this would lead to the three days of confusion and mis-communication known as the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Ultimately, it was Operation Mo that got the U.S. Navy interested in Guadalcanal.  As summer waxed, the Japanese landed on that island and began building an airfield, which clearly presented a threat to U.S. supply routes with Australia.

Operation Mo:  The big-time operation with a little name.

Recommended Reading:  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, May 1942 – August 1942, Vol. 4

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At Dawn They Slept

Eight months to the day after the Japanese surprised the Americans at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Marines got to return the favor as the spearhead of the United States’ first offensive foray in the South Pacific.  Guadalcanal, as one of the largest islands in the Solomon Island chain, had not originally been chosen for occupation.  But when reconnaissance of the area revealed that the Japanese were building an airfield there from which they could threaten U.S.-Australian supply routes, it suddenly became an important target.  In addition to Guadalcanal, the small islands of Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo (actually two tiny islands joined by a causeway), all nestled just south of Florida Island, would also be assaulted.

Surprise was achieved due to two factors.  First, the landing force made a feint toward Australia before turning towards the Solomons.  Second, the weather turned foul and covered the ships in clouds and rain, shielding them from the eyes of Japanese scout planes.  So when the USS Quincy fired the first ship-borne shells at Guadalcanal early on the morning of August 7, 1942, the Japanese garrison there was caught completely off guard.

Nearly 11,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division, led by General Alexander Vandegrift, would put ashore at Lunga Point.  Simultaneously, 3 battalions would land on the island of Tulagi, and another battalion would take on the island twins of Gavutu-Tanambogo 4 hours later.

The main Japanese base at Rabaul received word of the invasion very quickly and immediately sent planes to attack the landing force, which succeeded in sinking a transport and damaging a destroyer, but doing little else.  Saburo Sakai, a Japanese pilot, was seriously wounded in the attacks, and his death-defying flight home is likely worthy of it’s own place in Today’s History Lesson somewhere down the road.

Tulagi would be secured on the 8th and while the “twins” would fall on August 9th.  But Guadalcanal, the island to be bypassed in the original plans would, for the next 7 months, be the focus of an intense struggle for control.  The Japanese had been checked in the Coral Sea and turned at Midway.  Could the Japanese tide actually now be reversed?  The Battle of Guadalcanal would answer that question.

Recommended Reading: Guadalcanal:  The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle – I’m currently reading Frank’s book…for the second time.  As a one-volume account of this critical battle, it’s really hard to beat.

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