War Story: With Generals and Admirals Attending, a Look Back at Courage

Pete Hegseth wants to inculcate a war fighting spirit throughout our military, but he has a difficult job ahead if he hopes to return us to the awe-inspiring bravery of our men and women in World War II. Here’s a story which takes my breath away for its many reasons every time I read it:

In June of 1944, almost in simultaneity with the D-Day invasion on the other side of the world, the United States invaded the Marianas, the Pacific island chain that runs north-south parallel to the Philippines some 1,500 miles to their east. The largest island is Guam, but the Americans chose to invade Saipan, the northernmost of the fifteen islands and closest to Japan, the objective being for the Seabees to construct airfields for B-29s to attack the Japanese mainland.

Japanese policy had been to conserve their fleet, but they knew that if the Americans were to invade the Marianas, they must commit all of their fleet to battle "crushing with one stroke the nucleus of the great enemy concentration of forces…in one decisive battle", in the words of Admiral Soemu Toyoda, who held overall command of the Japanese sea forces. Both naval powers had foreseen that, Midway notwithstanding, that most decisive battle, an all-or-nothing confrontation, was inevitable and that it would happen in the vast expanse of the Philippine Sea.

Admiral Raymond Spruance commanded the invasion force of Saipan, part of which was Admiral Pete Mitscher's Task Force 58, assigned to cover the amphibious assault from the carrier Lexington. The task force was comprised of fifteen aircraft carriers, seven battleships, eleven cruisers, and eighty-six destroyers, testament to America's phenomenal wartime production.

The Japanese, the world's third most powerful navy, would be led by fleet commander Jisaburo Ozawa, who would have under his operational control a surface force led by Matome Ugaki, former chief of staff for Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japan's combined fleet during World War II.

Ozawa would sortie with five full-sized and four smaller carriers which in all could put 473 planes in the air. They believed they had another 450 planes on the ground in the Marianas, but Mitscher, anticipating what was to come, had his carrier planes destroy almost all of them.

The Japanese planes had the advantage of being of lighter weight, meaning they could carry more fuel and travel further than the American Hellcats. They could attack while staying out of range of American carrier planes.

But the Japanese pilots were less experienced. Unlike the American practice of returning pilots to the the U.S. to train recruits, the Japanese left their pilots on station permanently, so their recruits in the homeland did not benefit from the experience of seasoned pilots.

On June 13th, the U.S. submarine Redfin spotted Ozawa's force heading north from their base at Tawi Tawi, south of the Philippines. Two days later the fleet was sighted by another submarine, the Flying Fish, emerging from the Philippine archipelago into the Philippine Sea. The submarine Seahorse reported that Ugaki's ships were coming up from the south.

Spruance reasoned that the Ozawa's Japanese carrier fleet would act as decoy, to draw off in pursuit its America counterpart, while Ugaki's force would slip in behind and attack the American supply ships and LSTs landing troops on Saipan. He therefore ordered Mitscher to keep his planes within reach of Saipan by taking up an intercept position 180 miles to the west. Tethered to Saipan by a battleship admiral, Mitscher, who had been one of the Navy's first pilots, had made a bad guess and missed Midway by sailing in the wrong direction, and now champed at the bit for the opportunity to go after the Japanese carriers

But Spruance even had Mitscher sail to the east every night back toward Saipan, wary that the Japanese might slip past him in the darkness, and then turn west again in the morning to resume his 180 post. On June 19th, one of 43 scout planes sent by Ozawa found Mitscher's force heading on its westward run back to the 180 mile point.

Ozawa was 380 miles distant, too far for his planes to return, but he launched anyway, ordering them to continue on to land in Guam after their attack on U.S. forces.

Sailors on the ships watched the ultimate dogfight in the skies. Atmospheric conditions caused the hundreds of planes to leave white contrails, "a frenzy of loops and circles", mesmerizing those on the ships' decks. Ozawa sent his planes in waves, a second in the late morning, two during the afternoon. When the day-long air battles ended, the ill-trained Japanese pilots had paid the price. Commander David McCampbell, who led the air crew on the Essex shot down five, Lieutenant J.G. Alex Vraciu, off the Lexington, downed six. The Japanese lost 358 planes, their pilots, and the crews of their torpedo aircraft — over 400 when those shot down over Guam are counted. The U.S. lost 33. "It was just like a turkey shoot", was the Lexington's Lieutenant J.G. Ziggy Neff's description. The tag stuck, and the battle is known as The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".

The Japanese carrier force suffered losses beyond its planes. Before the air battle had begun, a torpedo from the American submarine Albacore struck the brand new Japanese carrier Taiho. Warrant Officer Sakio Komatsu sighted the wake of a second torpedo and crashed his plane to explode it in an effort to save the carrier from which he had just taken off. The Taiho would continue to launch plans until hours later when gasoline fumes from ruptured aircraft fuel tanks exploded, sending the ship to the bottom.

The submarine Cavalla sent a spread of six torpedoes at the Pearl Harbor veteran Shokaku. Three hit, sending the ship under the waves nose down with 1200 lives lost.

Spruance finally released Mitscher on June 20th with the Japanese in full retreat. His carriers had gone a hundred miles to the east to launch their planes into that day's east wind. That put his task force 275 miles from the enemy's carriers as spotted by one of his pilots. It took four hours sailing westward to recover his starting position. It was becoming late afternoon. Mitscher figured he could recover his planes if his carriers steamed at full speed at the direction of the attack to shorten their return flight. Then, after the first deckload had launched, the scout plane pilot altered his report. The Japanese carriers were 330 miles west.

Mitscher did not recall his strike force but did not send further planes. His 216 planes caught up with the Japanese ships and in the fading light, revealed by their flashes of their antiaircraft fire, sank the light carrier Hiyo, damaged the Zuikaku, and several other vessels.

The pilots regrouped their planes and headed back in the growing darkness flying at seven thousand feet, their most fuel-saving altitude, grimly watching the needle on their gauges dip ever lower. Engines began to sputter and choked. One after another, planes fell into the sea, with the downed pilots subsisting in the blackness on their small, inflated life rafts as the task force pressed toward them at full speed.

If the pilots did reach the ships, how could they find them in the dark? The Navy's ships were always blacked out at night. Radar began to show planes on their way returning in the pitch black is when Mitscher gave an order "much celebrated then and since among aviators" for which he is known:

"Blue Jacket this is Bald Eagle himself. Turn on the lights".

One by one, all the ships in his task force, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, beamed their enormous 30-inch spotlights straight skyward, illuminating themselves to Japanese submarines to bring the pilots home. Mitscher radioed them that they should land on any flattop they saw. They began to land, some so out of fuel they could not taxi the deck and had to be pulled out of the way to clear for others coming in.

The next morning, destroyers followed the path of the attack and recovered 143 of the 177 who had fallen for lack of fuel.

In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese had lost three carriers, among them their newest and largest Taiho, and some 400 planes. They had lost several hundred pilots and would resort in desperation to kamikaze raids against American ships. The Americans had lost no ships, a hundred planes, and twenty pilots. The Battle of the Philippine Sea had written an end to the Japanese navy as the fighting force at once was.

But I present to you this story for the thrill of one man's decision to "Turn on the lights".

This is adapted from Craig L. Symonds' "World War II at Sea", Oxford University Press, 2018