“What the hell are we doing?” I asked Miyabe one time when we found ourselves alone in the crew lounge. “How on earth are we supposed to wage war with kids who can’t even nail down a carrier landing?”
He sat down in a chair and folded his arms. “They must’ve shortened the training period and sent inexperienced recruits right into combat. I recently asked a young pilot how many flight hours he had, and he said a hundred. You can’t land on a carrier with just 100 hours under your belt.”
“Hell, they can barely keep a plane in the air with just 100 hours.” He nodded, and I continued, “By the time we struck Pearl Harbor, we all had over 1,000 hours each.”
Miyabe closed his eyes. “So basically that means the First Carrier Division isn’t anything near what it used to be.”
It wasn’t long before the carrier takeoff and landing drills were halted. It was clear that we’d only continue to lose more aircraft and pilots. Also, enemy submarines patrolled the waters just outside Tawi-Tawi’s bay, so training there was extremely dangerous. While on the lookout for subs, warships followed a zigzag course through the waters, but during aircraft takeoffs and landings, carriers had to sail straight into the wind, making them an excellent target for submarine attacks.
Our fleet of destroyers were sorely lacking in anti-submarine capabilities. They were unable to halt the enemy rampaging under the waves. At times, the destroyers would be sunk by the subs they were supposed to be protecting us from. That’s like the mice getting the cat. It was thanks to the other side’s superior underwater equipment, their sonar and radar. Basically, it was a technological gap. And Command simply chose not to further expose their precious carriers to risk for the sake of mere landing drills.
The night of the decision to halt them, I asked Miyabe to join me on the flight deck.
“Halt their training, and then what?” I asked him.
A warm breeze swept across the deck. It was a typical evening in the tropics. We sat down on the deck.
Miyabe replied, “The brass probably thinks being able to take off will do. That’s actually not too difficult, even for the new guys.”
“Then the initial attack will be our only one.”
He nodded. “They’re betting everything on a single strike.”
That put me into a black mood. Halting the drills was a severe blow to the aircrew. Training was the best way to maintain our edge. It’s just like in sports, you see?
We were facing a decisive battle but couldn’t fly for nearly a month.
In June of 1944, the Americans at last launched their fierce attack on Saipan.
Apparently this development had been wholly unforeseen by the General Staff. Our military had established many bases on Saipan and the islands in the Guam sector and had an impressive aggregate number of aircraft. The brass obviously assumed the Americans would never dare to attack. This could only be explained as negligence on their part.
The American Mobile Task Force sent an incredible number of aircraft to attack these bases, crushing our land-based aviation units and practically annihilating them.
But Saipan was one island that our military had to defend at all costs. We had captured Guadalcanal and Rabaul only after the war had begun, but Saipan was different. It had been under Japanese rule since before the war, and there were entire towns there where many civilian nationals lived. And if the Americans captured Saipan, their state-of-the-art B-29 bombers would be within striking distance of the Japanese mainland. That’s why Saipan was within our military’s critical defense zone.
As soon as the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet learned that the Americans had landed on Saipan, he immediately implemented Operation A-Go, a battle plan intended to wipe out the American Mobile Task Force.
The First Mobile Fleet, under the command of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, headed to Saipan from Tawi-Tawi. Day after day, we sent out numerous scouting planes. This was in response to lessons learned from our defeat at Midway.
On the 18th, our recon planes finally discovered the American task force. It was nearly sundown by the time the discovery was made, and they were still too far off, so the attack had to wait for the following day.
By the next morning, the distance between our fleets had shrunk to 400 nautical miles. At that point, the Americans hadn’t noticed our presence yet. This was a great chance for us. But actually, we wouldn’t have minded even if they had discovered us, because our planes had longer flight ranges than American aircraft, and we could launch attacks from a greater distance. It was like we were a boxer with a longer reach.
This was Fleet Commander Ozawa’s famous “out-of-range” battle tactic. If we launched attacks from a distance beyond the reach of the American forces, there was zero risk.
This sounds like an ideal strategy, but in the real world things are never so rosy. While it was true that there was no risk for our fleet, the same could not be said for the aviation units. It’s no easy task for pilots to carry out an attack after flying 400 nautical miles. Four hundred nautical miles is about 700 kilometers. It would take over two hours flying over the ocean to reach enemy airspace. It would be one thing if the target was an unmoving land base like Hawaii, but the enemy was a speedy task force that could move up to 100 kilometers by the time our planes reached them. Which meant it wasn’t a given that we would actually come upon them. Even though our most seasoned pilots led the way, if we chanced upon an ambush that broke up our formations, many of the aircraft would be incapable of reaching the enemy’s fleet.
To make matters worse, most of the crew in the attack forces were rank novices. Sure, their morale was high. They had a far more powerful thirst for battle than their battle-weary senior counterparts. But spiritedness alone is meaningless once you’re up in the air. There, the aircraft’s performance limitations and the pilot’s skills are all that matter.
When the attack was successfully over, crew who weren’t confident about getting back to the carrier were to proceed to the land base on Guam to resupply. The orders were to then go back and attack the Americans again.
At any rate, the attack force launched.
The main mast of the flagship Taiho had run up the “Z” flag the day before. This was a signal flag of special significance that Combined Fleet Commander-in-Chief Heihachiro Togo had used at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War.
The Zebra flag, which hadn’t been raised since the attack on Pearl Harbor, fluttered and flapped in the wind. “The fate of the Empire depends on this battle,” indeed. The sight of it was bracing to the crew.
Early in the morning of June 19th, the Third Carrier Division launched the first attack wave. Next, the First Carrier Division launched a second attack wave. I sortied with the second wave, as part of the fighter escort for the Suisei bombers.
That day, our mobile force launched six attack waves with an impressive total of 400 aircraft. There had never been such a large attack force. This was on a scale even greater than that of Pearl Harbor. And all the aircraft deployed were state-of-the-art, from the Zero Model 52 to the Suisei dive bombers and Tenzan attack bombers.