Operation FS: Japan's Final Strike

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XLI: Drop Bear, June 1943

Twenty-four hours before the troops were set to storm ashore, four American battleships fired their guns at the southern coast of New Guinea. North Carolina, South Dakota, Indiana and Massachusetts were tasked with clearing the way for a combined Allied force, primarily Australians and Americans but including detachments from other nations as well, to take the beaches west of Port Moresby before storming the city itself. Beaches, to the annoyance of commanders both Allied and Japanese, was a relative term, for this part of New Guinea lacked any great expanses of open beach ideal for the easy unloading of troops and supplies. Steep hills extended almost to the sea in even the best of locations, and the Japanese had lost hundreds taking many of those hills the previous year. Getting the troops on land safely and then supplying them on the march east would be a challenge that worried virtually everyone involved, but it was a job that had to be done.
While the battleships battered jungles and hillsides, General MacArthur and Admiral Fitch were keen to finish the Japanese air presence over New Guinea for good. Fighters flying from the Saratoga, Hornet, Victorious and Illustrious were joined by P-38s and P-47s flying out of bases in northern Australia. Behind them were B-17s, directed to attack every known airfield in New Guinea. If the Japanese fighters did not meet their foes in the air, they would be destroyed on the ground.
The aerial assault on New Guinea began very successfully. Unlike the Navy, and probably just because the Navy was doing it, the Imperial Army had made no effort to pull experienced pilots out of the most dangerous roles, and eighteen months of intense operations had taken its toll on the Army’s Air Service. Well over two-thirds of the Army’s elite crews that had been serving Japan in the Pacific on December 7th, 1941 were now dead, and their replacements had been rushed through a training schedule that provided only a minimum of flying hours before sending them to the front. The Ki-43, while hardly the world-beater it had seemed at the beginning of the war, was still a capable aircraft in the middle of 1943. In the hands of novice pilots, it proved no match for its sturdier, better armoured rivals. Dozens were destroyed, while Allied losses were lighter than expected.

On the eve of the invasion, an air of confidence filled MacArthur’s headquarters. The ease with which the counterattack in New Caledonia had been conducted, the quick collapse of their position in Fiji and the destruction of their air power over New Guinea was making Allied commanders believe that the Japanese defence was fragile. They may still be capable on the offensive, their effort towards Tontouta had been proof enough of that, but the moment they were stopped was the moment they would begin to die. MacArthur was the most confident of all, and with two divisions (the 32nd US and 9th Australian) set to land, he had fair reason to be so. Intelligence was suggesting that the Japanese were in a complete shambles.
What MacArthur did not know was that the chaos in the Japanese command was occurring far behind the lines. Although the Imperial Navy had stationed some troops on New Guinea, General Hyakutake had wanted to ensure that it was Army troops that would have the glory of repulsing an American landing. The Navy troops were now being sent out of New Guinea, but they were leaving the sectors of the island considered less important by the Japanese. General Horii and the 55th Division were still manning the beach defences, only the interior was weakened.

On June 11th, 1943, nearly 4000 Japanese were stationed at MacArthur’s landing sites. Despite the air and naval bombardment of the previous day, too few had been dislodged from the hillsides, and now they swept the battlefield with machine gun and artillery fire while remaining safe in hundreds of wooden and concrete bunkers. Bombers originally planned to destroy Japanese bases across Western New Guinea were redirected to assist in the destruction of the hillside bunkers, while hundreds of MacArthur’s infantry fell. The first wave of Drop Bear suffered some of the heaviest losses so far seen in the Pacific war, but after nearly nine hours Blue Beach, one of the four landing sites, was declared taken. Smaller beachheads at Red, Green and Orange beaches were also occupied, but many of the bunkers in those sectors continued their menacing presence.
Horii, who had been forced to split his time between the Allied landings and the dispute with the Navy, was under the impression that the bunker lines were holding. He had built several such lines at every location close enough to Port Moresby that he thought an invasion could arrive at, but now found his manpower – 25,000 all up – divided along a nearly hundred kilometre front. An hour of disputes with a Navy officer delayed the decision of whether to pull forces from these other sectors, and intelligence reports suggesting a second invasion was soon to follow made the general even more uncertain. After dawn the next day, when another recon flight reported no second invasion fleet, Horii finally made the decision to pull some of his defences away from the bunkers east of Port Moresby.
MacArthur, on board the cruiser Louisville, watched nervously as his troops clinged on to the scraps of ground that they had lost a thousand men for. All through the night, there was a fear that the Japanese could push forward with some unseen reserves. The sea was just a few hundred metres behind them, and the destruction of a landing group remained a feared possibility, especially at Orange Beach where the situation was more precarious than anywhere else. The Australians at Blue Beach worked through the night to unload several artillery pieces, and by morning they were ready to push forward once again.
MacArthur’s hope to be in Port Moresby in three days had been dashed, and the situation was deemed to dangerous for him to personally join the troops on the beaches, but at the beginning of D+1 the position at Blue had been consolidated sufficiently for a new advance to be made. The troops at Blue, along with newly-landed forces, were ordered into the hills again with the difficult job of clearing the Japanese from their bunkers, one by one. Only once the bunkers had been silenced would it be possible to advance on Port Moresby. The fanatic soldiers fighting to the death in the hills of New Guinea were proving that Japan was just as fearsome on the defence as they had been on the attack.

- BNC

 

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XLII: Hills of Hell, June 1943

It would take four days for the bunker line to be cleared. Four days of heavy casualties on both sides as MacArthur’s artillery attempted to silence one emplacement after another. Air support, which was beginning to take the form of the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, once again proved its usefulness, knocking out some of the strongest Japanese positions. Many bombs however fell into New Guinea’s dense jungles, and it was the infantry that had the hardest job of all. Each Japanese bunker contained anything from a machine gun crew to a mighty six-inch howitzer, and all were well stocked with supplies of rice and ammunition.
MacArthur personally landed on Blue Beach on June 14th, just in time to see his troops clear the last resistance on the landing grounds. While there he decorated an unusually large number of soldiers for bravery and courage in what had become one of the country’s bloodiest fights since the Civil War. At least three thousand of his men had given their lives for this scrap of New Guinea coast, and another 4500 were wounded. Half of those who fell at ‘Gallipoli in the Pacific’ were Australian, the rest Americans. Every Japanese soldier in the area had been killed. Prisoners had been rare in New Caledonia, and now that the news from Fiji and Bataan was out, Allied soldiers were not inclined to take them at all.

New Guinea, MacArthur decided, needed to be the birthplace of America’s amphibious doctrine. Although several landings had been conducted in the past, most had been either unopposed or only against token resistance. In drafting a report for the Joint Chiefs and other commanders, MacArthur’s first recommendation was to seek an unopposed landing if at all possible. Doing so had served the Japanese very well numerous times, especially at Fiji and New Caledonia where an opposed landing would very quickly have disrupted their plans to a catastrophic degree. The same had held true for American efforts as well, although not as dramatically as what the Japanese had pulled off. Above all, unopposed landings saved casualties, always a good thing.
Unopposed landings would not always be possible however. Captured Japanese documents would soon reveal that the end of Horii’s defences had been only a dozen kilometres west of Red Beach, so a better handling of New Guinea might have improved that operation. However, several Micronesian atolls that Nimitz and the rest of the Navy were intending to capture in 1944 were too small to simply land on in a location far from the enemy – if they were defended at all, and some surely would be, the defences would have to be taken head-on. In Europe, Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was beginning to take shape, and any French beach chosen for the long-awaited ‘second front’ would be as full of bunkers and heavy defences as anything in New Guinea. Possibly more, for while New Guinea was a distant Japanese outpost, the Pas-de-Calais was in Hitler’s backyard.
MacArthur laid out several recommendations in his report of the battle, with strong naval and air support at the top of the list. Four battleships and their escorts bombarding the beaches for half a day had done some damage to the Japanese defences, but more could clearly have been done (especially now that the Iowa-class was being commissioned). Japan’s air force looked to be a beaten foe, but Germany’s certainly wasn’t. Clearing the skies would also have to be an important part of following amphibious operations.
One thing that MacArthur neglected to mention was the possibility of an enemy navy interfering with the operation. Yamamoto had been told of MacArthur’s landing almost as soon as it happened, but as the Navy was not yet deemed ready for the decisive battle he decided not to do anything about it. The Kriegsmarine was too small to be any effective threat and MacArthur’s report would come too late to change anything in Operation ‘Husky’, the landing in Sicily, which began just a few weeks after ‘Drop Bear’. But as long as the Axis had a significant naval presence, they could still pose a serious threat.

Beyond the landing grounds lay a further thirty kilometres of hills that would need to be crossed before Port Moresby could be taken. MacArthur had hoped to sweep through them in a couple of days, but the Japanese coastal bunkers had put an end to dreams of a quick offensive. Like the fight for New Caledonia, this was destined to be a slow and painful battle.
By June 15th, General Horii had managed to push disputes with the Navy off to his superior, General Hyakutake, allowing him to focus his attention to the battle at hand. All the information he had available was suggesting that MacArthur had no second invasion force after all (MacArthur had wanted a second force, but the Joint Chiefs wanted the shipping moved to the Central Pacific as quickly as possible). The 55th Division was still mostly intact after the battles on the beaches, and half of its manpower was in the process of being moved west. The fight for Port Moresby would not be made in the town, where Allied battleships could provide gunfire support. The hills, where Japanese soldiers could be at least somewhat safe from Allied air superiority, would be a much better battlefield.
What became a two-week battle began on the night of the 15th, when an Australian patrol met one of Horii’s battalions sent to throw the Allies back into the sea. The danger of that had now passed, with Allied strength on the island approaching 50,000. A lack of infrastructure on New Guinea posed problems for both forces, as everything from weapons and equipment to crates of rations had to be moved manually. The hills greatly restricted where MacArthur’s vehicles could operate, and he soon decided to use aircraft to send the majority of his army’s food and ammunition. The Japanese, who had virtually no surviving air presence over Port Moresby, conscripted natives to carry their supplies for them, at gunpoint if necessary.
MacArthur’s larger force soon secured the upper hand while the Japanese position deteriorated. The Imperial Army had been bloodied in China and the Navy’s troops were leaving New Guinea as arguments raged in Tokyo about what to do with them. Horii was left with little hope of reinforcement, while MacArthur was getting stronger by the day. On the 26th, the airfield nearest Port Moresby fell, ending the Japanese threat to Australia for good, and two days later the Allies were at the edge of the town. Losses had been much lighter than on the beaches, and many Japanese had fled into the jungles to prepare for a counterattack that would never come. Many months would pass before the last of them would be cleared out, but MacArthur’s priority was never a handful of riflemen that could be a minor nuisance to airfield guards. The town that had started the whole mess in the South Pacific was ripe for the taking.
Yet Horii, who still had two-thirds of his division, was not ready to surrender. The hills now in Allied hands, New Guinea was about to become an even bloodier battlefield.

- BNC

 

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XLIII: Port Moresby, June 1943

Urban warfare is much more commonly associated with the massive battles that took place in Europe: Stalingrad, Warsaw, Budapest and Berlin were just a few of the great cities that became the graves for hundreds of thousands in the war’s later days. By contrast, most Pacific islands had no true ‘cities’, and even large settlements such as Noumea and Suva would have been at best towns had they been on a continent instead of an island. The opportunities for urban battles had been scarce: MacArthur had declared Manila an open city in 1941 and the three battles for Suva took place on the town’s outskirts.
When General Horii declared his intention to turn Port Moresby into an “urban fortress” in the days after MacArthur’s invasion, few in the Imperial Army believed he could make good on the promise. Port Moresby had been a mere village in the days before the war, and Japan’s capture of it just five months later had interrupted Australian efforts to build it up before they really got going. The presence of a Japanese garrison and the need to house officers made sure that the village grew, but if Horii wanted to make a Pacific Stalingrad, he would not find it in New Guinea.
Contrary to the Army command, Horii did not feel that he needed to. MacArthur’s divisions were nothing compared to the Sixth Army, and his own men would never be able to rival what the apparently infinite manpower of the Soviet Union. Yet Port Moresby offered the 8000 Japanese now in the town every advantage that the Soviets had: the built up environment, the cover from air attack, the many opportunities for heavy casualties. Most importantly, a bloody fight in Port Moresby would give Horii, and the rest of the Japanese, time. Almost a hundred thousand soldiers were stationed on Rabaul, and once the transport could be worked out they could be sent to New Guinea. If MacArthur was held down in Port Moresby, he would be exposed when those soldiers were sent to attack.

MacArthur struck on June 28th, before the Japanese defence was fully prepared. He had hoped to secure the town with a minimum of bloodshed, intending to use the naval base as a starting point for further offensives in the region. Instead, when his troops had secured a mere quarter of the town, the Japanese attacked from the east. This attack, consisting of troops Horii had stripped from another line of coastal bunkers on a beach that would never be attacked, was poorly planned as Japanese communications fell apart. The Japanese were individually brave, and tied up two American regiments that should have been securing Port Moresby. When the attack was defeated, the Japanese retreated not east, as most had expected, but south into the city.
They joined the rest of the Japanese New Guinea garrison that was still operating south of the Owen Stanley mountains. Horii had given few orders to his junior commanders, and was more interested in arguing with the Navy in the hopes of getting reinforcements across the Bismarck Sea than in fighting the battle unfolding barely a kilometre from his headquarters. The infantry needed no orders telling them to fortify the town: when word came back that MacArthur had taken a beach east of Port Moresby and cut the town off from the rest of Japanese-held New Guinea, there was now nowhere to retreat.

The battle for Port Moresby began in earnest as July dawned. Surrounded by land and sea, the Japanese fought to the death for every inch of ground. Native huts and more recent Japanese and Australian constructions had been turned into fortified strongpoints of every description. Some housed groups of riflemen, others machine gun crews. Many more appeared abandoned, with dead natives or even Japanese. Even the dead were dangerous however, as several unfortunate Allied soldiers found out as the bodies turned out to be loaded with traps. It was like the fight for the bunkers all over again, only this time there was no hope of air support (the risk of friendly fire being much too great), and there was no space between each enemy position.
Despite outnumbering his enemy more than six to one, MacArthur could not take full advantage of his greater forces. The tiny peninsula on which Port Moresby lay did not have space for all of his troops, and those that did end up in the fight soon found that they had been drawn into a meat grinder. Only after five days, and another 4000 Allied casualties, could Port Moresby be declared captured. MacArthur’s troops left behind them a town that had seen seventy percent of its structures heavily damaged or outright destroyed. ‘Drop Bear’ was not yet complete however, for one last objective lay beyond the ruins of Port Moresby

That last target was Paga Point, a 110-metre tall hill home to a massive strongpoint on the southern tip of the Port Miresby peninsula. Overlooking Port Moresby harbour, Paga Point had to be taken before the naval base could be used by the Allies. Two six-inch guns had been set up by the Australians before the war, as had some of the bunkers and other concrete emplacements. The Japanese had since improved the defences, adding another four large guns of their own as well as a garrison of estimated battalion strength. Some of those guns had been fired into Port Moresby without regard as to whose troops they killed, now they bore down on the infantry sent to disable them for good.
MacArthur decided against storming Paga Point immediately, sure that such an assault would cause more casualties than it was worth. Instead he gave orders to place the hill under siege, as supplies inside could not last forever. Meanwhile, artillery from the ground and Helldivers from the air pounded away at the Japanese, disabling several guns in the massive bunker and overwhelming the defenders inside. A considerable part of the bunker’s roof collapsed, rendering all but one of the artillery pieces unusable. The surviving gun was pointed out to sea.
After two days, the order to take the ruins of Paga Point was given. Despite the furious bombardment, the surviving Japanese fought furiously, refusing to surrender and all too willing to die for the Emperor. Their shattered battalion had no hope against one of MacArthur’s regiments, and within hours the fight for Paga Point was over. The bodies of the Japanese were searched in the hopes of finding General Horii, but he was nowhere to be seen. Some believe that he slipped out of Port Moresby at the last minute to hide out in the jungle, more likely he was crushed to death by the collapsing walls of the Paga Point bunker.
MacArthur had already written one report to Washington warning them of the strong defences likely to be encountered in future amphibious operations. After Port Moresby, he drafted another about the fanaticism of the inland defence. Along with details from the ground, he added his own opinion of the fighting: “as we get nearer Japan, such operations will become more costly. New Guinea was of marginal value to the average Japanese soldier, and the results are as detailed. When their homes are under threat, we can only expect an even grimmer determination by our enemy.”

- BNC

 

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XLIV: Timor, July 1942

In his post-war memoirs, General MacArthur would lament several times that no major ground offensive was made under his command throughout 1943 or early 1944. Port Moresby had been a small although bloody step, contributing very little towards actually ending the war or MacArthur’s ultimate goal of liberating the Philippines. At a time when the Japanese high command spent as much time arguing amongst itself as it did fighting the war, and before hundreds of thousands of Japanese reinforcements would flow into the islands within MacArthur’s command area, an opportunity appears to have been missed. “We took the first step,” MacArthur wrote, “before the attention and resources were sent to the Marines in Micronesia and the chance for a great victory slipped from our grasp.”
That first step was Operation Culverin, the recapture of Timor.

Located 650 kilometres northwest of Darwin, the small island of Timor is well positioned to act as a forward base for further operations into the East Indies. B-17s operating from the airfield at Penfui had much of eastern Java, Celebes and even parts of western New Guinea within range, and the base had been used as a stopover point for flights to the Philippines during MacArthur’s command there. The Japanese had taken the island around the time that Java fell, and the Australians had been fighting the Japanese garrison in the island’s mountains ever since.
For months it had looked as though Timor would be another dead-end fight, draining Japanese manpower but otherwise leading nowhere. In June, MacArthur had agreed with Australian General Blamey that Timor should continue to be contested but the fight in that region expanded no further. The rationale at the time was that efforts into New Guinea or the Solomons should receive priority of resources, and the Japanese garrison, the 48th Division, was large enough that any serious effort to dislodge it would require a sizeable part of those resources. It took a year for two factors to change MacArthur’s mind.
The first was the Joint Chiefs refusing MacArthur permission to carry on further offensives into New Guinea as they transferred the bulk of their naval assets to Nimitz in preparation for the drive into Micronesia. Although he had not yet realised it, this ended up being to the benefit of MacArthur’s soldiers, who were suffering from malaria and other tropical diseases after the Port Moresby campaign, and would be largely unfit for heavy action until the proper medical supplies could be sent and time given to recover. The other factor had occurred the previous September, when most of the 48th Division was withdrawn from Timor so that they could be used in New Caledonia (although few ever made it there). Intelligence had noticed mention of this transfer but had been unable to confirm it, and it was only when Australian forces on Timor noticed a much weaker enemy presence that the rumours were seriously believed.

In early July, as the fight for Port Moresby was reaching its climax, MacArthur gave the order to reinforce Timor. Australian troops already on the island were ordered to secure a sector of the island’s southern coast (much of which had been under Allied control since early 1942). At the same time, the 7th Australian Division was to be transported to the island, before the two forces would link up and drive the remnant Japanese garrison out of the island for good. The operation could be conducted entirely under the air cover of P-38 Lightnings based out of Darwin, but if it drew Yamamoto’s navy out of its bases in Japan and away from Nimitz’s upcoming offensives, that would be for the better. If things went to plan, the whole island would be taken before any carriers coming out of Japan could even make it to Timor.
Compared to the brutal slog of Port Moresby, the Timor campaign moved rather more swiftly. Yamamoto made no effort to move so much as a destroyer to the East Indies, as events within Tokyo took his attention in a way they had not for nearly two years. Although they had not yet realised it, the Australians already on Timor had been on the verge of finishing the Japanese presence there for good, and the extra division increased their numbers more than tenfold. The airfield at Penfui, where MacArthur had anticipated a major clash, was taken bloodlessly. Any prestige he had lost at Port Moresby was regained, and those few Japanese not wrapped up in the ever worsening inter-service disputes believed that MacArthur was set to advance on Java and the oilfields.

MacArthur would have liked to do just that, but planning for Operation Cleaver, the first of Nimitz’ Micronesian offensives, was too far advanced at this stage to be quickly cancelled. If the strategic focus was to be shifted once again, it would very likely be no earlier than January, by which point any momentum ‘Culverin’ had generated would be lost. Micronesia being the favoured goal in Washington, MacArthur was so sure that further requests for offensives in the Southwest Pacific would be denied that he did not even bother sending a recommendation for an offensive to directly follow Culverin.
Amphibious offensives may have been out of the question, but he was confident that bombers would not be. Penfui airfield was rebuilt and expanded by the end of July, and it would be an ideal place to disrupt the Japanese war effort from. MacArthur sent a request to Washington for more heavy bombers to be sent to his command. His existing B-17s and B-24s were already committed to suppressing Rabaul and other major Japanese bases in the Solomons, so if the Java Sea was to be mined or New Guinea put out of action for good, more would be needed. B-17s could not be operated by carriers, so they would not be needed by Nimitz, and Europe already had so many that a few squadrons would not be missed. Washington agreed with MacArthur’s assessment, and sent six B-17 squadrons to Darwin (two of which were promptly moved to Timor).
When MacArthur received the message giving him control of the B-17s, he promptly forgot about the bombers. At the end of the telegram was something that he perceived to be of far greater importance. “Consideration for an offensive into the Philippines following the conclusion of the Micronesian campaign is now underway by the Joint Chiefs”.

- BNC

 

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XLV: A Game of Blame, July 1943

To an outside observer, Tokyo in the middle of 1943 appeared to be living in its own fantasy land. The war effort had turned very suddenly and very decisively against them since the failed invasion of New Caledonia, but instead of their senior commanders attempting to make a plan to throw MacArthur back or prepare defences in islands further back, generals and admirals were fighting each other. The few parties in the dispute that could be called neutral would later describe the situation as one of “near civil war”. There was no open conflict on the streets, and for the moment no-one had died, but hostility remained all the same. While the civilians of Tokyo were completely unaware (newspapers were filled with grandiose stories of victory in New Guinea and China), inside the Imperial General Headquarters the humble conference table was turning into a war zone.

At the heart of the dispute was an order given by IJA Chief General Sugiyama to his subordinate General Hyakutake, ordering the 17th Army to ensure all Japanese units in New Guinea, the Bismarcks, Solomons and New Hebrides to be placed under Army control. The effect of this was minor in pure military terms, with little more than a Navy infantry regiment and some small ships not already fitting that description. Sugiyama had convinced himself that the Navy was leaving the Army out to dry after New Caledonia, where Yamamoto had beaten the US Navy before withdrawing his major fleet units. Less than a dozen cargo ships had survived Operation FS, so further support for ground units had become impossible, but instead of blaming Admiral Fletcher, the Army decided that it was the Navy’s fault. To them, seizing the islands had been the goal of the operation and the Navy had let them down. Yamamoto, who had won a decisive battle, disagreed. Had the matter ended there, nothing would have been out of the ordinary for a years-old interservice rivalry, but when the “defeated” US Navy showed up again off Fiji the Imperial Navy was suddenly described as a pack of cowards. 17th Army had to take control of every asset in the region or the Navy would betray the war effort again.
Hoping to put an end to the crisis, the Emperor called a meeting of the most senior Army and Navy commanders: Generals Sugiyama and Tojo (who doubled as Japan’s Prime Minister), and Admirals Nagano and Shimada. It was hoped that a unified war effort could be once again maintained, with the Army and Navy closely cooperating as they had throughout several major operations in 1941 and 1942. That hope quickly evaporated as the generals accused the Navy of holding back its forces, sending poorly-trained pilots to oppose the Americans while a group of elite veterans were doing light duty and training in the Home Islands, and the fleet remained in port. “A lack of fighting spirit” was a phrase used by the Army several times, while the Navy described the Army as being reckless and irresponsible for having provoked numerous incidents without authorisation from Tokyo.

Rivalry between the services no longer meant distrust, but hatred, and if the dispute was allowed to go on any longer the United States would not even have to do anything to win the war. A map of the Pacific region was produced, and both factions were ordered to divide Japan’s territory into spheres of influence. Once a line was agreed upon, any units in that zone would answer to the respective service, even if nominally they belonged to the other, the sole exception being transport ships carrying raw resources to the Home Islands.
The result was the “Two Black Lines”: the first extending from the southern tip of Kyushu to the northernmost point of New Guinea, the second from there to a point of open sea somewhere near the Ellice islands. North and east of those lines, including Iwo Jima, all of Micronesia as far as the Gilbert islands, but not Rabaul, belonged to the Navy. Everything south or west: the Solomons, New Guinea, the East Indies and all of continental Asia became the Army’s domain. The Home Islands were to be organised jointly, although the Army dominated everything that wasn’t a naval base.
The Two Black Lines favoured the Navy’s strategy of drawing the Americans in before crushing them in a second decisive battle, and gave the Navy control of more than 60,000 Army soldiers making up the garrisons of Japan’s scattered atolls in the Central Pacific, while ceding the Army very few of their own resources. The Army quickly approved however, pleased to have been granted total control of what they saw as the most important islands in the Philippines, East Indies and New Guinea. Only hours later, when the conference was adjourned, did the generals realise that they had effectively thrown away any chance of the Navy sending the fleet against MacArthur if he struck the East Indies. Nor did they appreciate that the Emperor looked to be favouring the Navy once again.

The Two Black Lines system lasted only a matter of days before the Army tired of it. IJN Chief Admiral Nagano moved with the greatest haste to ensure the island garrisons would remain under his authority, and as soon as General Sugiyama realised his mistake he was determined to backtrack. Every island that had a single Army soldier on it had to be under his command and his only. Three days after the conference that created the Two Black Lines, another meeting was called, to be attended by every senior Army officer in Tokyo. The details of this meeting are not well known, for most generals present did not survive the war, but it appears that Sugiyama declared the Navy to be as great a threat to Japan as the United States, and that their authority should be opposed at every opportunity.
This began the following day, when the Imperial General Headquarters met for the next time. Although the meeting had been called to organise an improved ground defence of the Caroline islands, most importantly Truk, Army officers obstructed the meeting with demands to have the Two Black Lines overturned and the eastern garrisons restored to their command. The Navy was willing to abandon the lines, which Grand Admiral Yamamoto believed would be problematic if it turned out to be MacArthur that presented the best opportunity for a decisive battle, but no admiral was willing to concede the garrisons. They were an essential part of the decisive battle plan, it was argued, and if the battle was to be fought with the greatest level of success it would have to be under a unified (Navy) command. The meeting ended without a satisfactory conclusion, Truk’s defence as pitiful as it had always been, and the garrisons’ fate uncertain although likely to belong to the Navy.
That night, Admiral Nagano was shot dead.

- BNC

 

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XLVI: Boiling Over, July 1943

General Sugiyama claimed that Nagano’s death was merely an unfortunate accident when questioned the following morning. If it had been, it was a very convenient one for the general. Sugiyama had been attempting to weaken the Navy’s influence on the war effort for the better part of a year, and there was hardly a better way to do that than by removing the second most prestigious admiral in the country from the equation. The junior Army officers that had directly led the assassination had made sure to cover up the details of the death, and in hiding the body they made Sugiyama’s lie believable to any who did not know otherwise.
Unfortunately for Sugiyama, one senior officer knew the truth, or at least enough of it to see through Sugiyama’s lies. Worse, he was someone who Sugiyama had been relying on for support. That man was Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister and Minister of War. As Minister of War, he was one of the most politically powerful men in the Army, while the office of Prime Minister gave him some power over the Navy as well. Sugiyama believed that the conflict with the Navy was very much a bipolar conflict, and because Tojo was an Army man, it would follow that he would support the Army. However Tojo’s loyalty lay first and foremost to the Emperor, and Hirohito had made it known in the past that he at the very least approved of Yamamoto’s plan for a decisive battle. When Tojo privately asked the Emperor if he still had faith in Yamamoto, he received a ‘yes’ in reply.

No replacement for Nagano had yet been found, and with the approval of the Emperor Tojo appointed Admiral Shimada to the post, making him both Chief of the IJN and its top Minister. Tojo was no stranger to the thought of taking multiple positions at once, for his own list of duties had grown several times throughout the war, and Shimada was both a political lightweight and quite friendly towards Tojo. Everyone knew that de facto control of the Navy had lain with Grand Admiral Yamamoto ever since his great victory in the South Pacific, and now that the only other admiral who could rival his prestige was gone that was likely to be even more true than ever. Shimada, Tojo had realised long ago, was merely Yamamoto’s messenger in Tokyo.
Tojo had also grown tired of the endless infighting between the services, knowing that such dysfunction reflected badly on him as Prime Minister. Relieving Sugiyama was out of the question, as it would not look good for him to sack his own superior officer. The only alternative was compromise between the Army and Navy, which had so far failed in the somewhat public environment of the Imperial Headquarters, but may still be possible if done in private, with Tojo acting as middleman.
Tojo ordered Yamamoto and Shimada to meet him in Yokosuka, outside of Tokyo to reduce the risk of any further assassinations. Yamamoto was pleased to see that at least one other senior officer seemed to recognise that the United States was Japan’s greatest threat. Tojo asked him what he, and by implication the rest of the Navy, would need to defeat that threat. Yamamoto replied with “a division for the Carolines, six months to get everything ready, and enough of a free hand to fight the battle without interference from the Army”. Tojo remarked that the Army had effectively given him two of those three things with the Two Black Lines agreement. To that Yamamoto shook his head, noting “that didn’t even last a week.”

When Tojo met with Sugiyama the next day, the reception he received was not nearly so friendly. “Yamamoto has already had his six months!” Sugiyama exploded, before insisting that only the Army could win the war, and if they were to do so they needed the troops that the Navy had “stolen” in the Central Pacific islands. Clearly, Sugiyama had no interest in any compromise with the Navy, or at least none that would see the Emperor’s support for Yamamoto respected. Tojo decided that if he was to honour the Emperor’s wishes, he would need the Emperor to give the order.
The opportunity for that came before the end of that week, when the Emperor summoned Tojo, Shimada, Sugiyama and Yamamoto to the Imperial Palace. All four officers were told of his extreme displeasure towards Japan’s armed services, who were more distracted by their infighting than in their duty to Japan. He ordered that all internal conflicts were to cease immediately and that Yamamoto be given official command of the division he requested as well as those disputed garrisons in the Central Pacific. Furthermore, Yamamoto was to be given all relevant authority with regard to the planning and execution of the decisive battle. Sugiyama was furious, but the Emperor rebuked him. “Where are your great victories, general?”

With orders from the Emperor in hand, Yamamoto left the Imperial Palace relieved that he finally had the power, and written proof of said power, in hand to fight his second decisive battle. His new group of well-trained pilots were showing promising results in their training, although they were still short of the elite fighters that had helped him bomb Pearl Harbour. The new planes were entering service too, with the B6N torpedo bomber starting to fill hangars on board his carriers. His flagship, the Musashi, had pride of place in Tokyo Bay, and her sister Shinano was nearing completion. MacArthur’s efforts into New Guinea and Timor had convinced him that while the Americans would be coming, they were still weak. If all went to plan, he would have enough time to beat them again before their factories put him out of action for good. A meeting with the Emperor looked to have finally gotten the Army off his back.
No mere meeting could put an end to the rivalry however. Sugiyama was just as sure that the Army’s plan – his plan – for defeating the Americans was the best way to win the war. More sure, actually, for he did not acknowledge the strength and industrial power of the United States in the same way that Yamamoto did. The Imperial Navy, Yamamoto principally, was a threat to that plan, taking resources away from the Army when there were never enough to go around. Now the Emperor had backed the Navy, and it seemed that Tojo too had had a hand in Yamamoto’s schemes.
Sugiyama smiled as he left the Imperial Palace, more than an hour after the other three officers were dismissed. While he had not ordered Nagano’s assassination personally, he was in close contact with the man behind the scheme: General Korechika Anami, commander of various armies in China and Manchuria, more recently known for his outspoken contempt towards Yamamoto’s “theft of Army glory” in Fiji. Anami was a perfect representation of Japan’s interservice rivalry, and had a reputation as a dangerous fanatic to go with it. Nagano’s death had not been enough, and Anami was eager to see the Navy eliminated from a position of influence. That could mean only one thing:
The assassin’s job was not yet done.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

XLVII: Bloodshed, August 1943

The theatre performance had a mere half hour left to run when Grand Admiral Yamamoto was tapped on the shoulder.
“Sir, my deepest apologies for disturbing your show, sir,” a young Navy lieutenant whispered, careful to avoid disturbing the rest of the crowd. “Admiral Yamaguchi has heard rumours of an Army conspiracy against you, and strongly recommends you return to the ship at once, sir.”
The lieutenant produced a folded piece of paper, signed by Yamaguchi, to that effect. Yamamoto read over it quickly and sighed. Two weeks ago the Army had killed Admiral Nagano, and since then a faction of high-ranking generals had been interfering in affairs normally considered a Navy concern. After three decisive victories over the Americans, at Pearl Harbour, Fiji and the South Pacific, Yamamoto had thought that the backlash sure to follow his death would be enough to deter even the most hardened plotter. Since the dispute with the Army flared up however, an attempt on his life didn’t seem so unreasonable after all. That’s why six Navy men were in nearby seats, acting as guards.
“Very well, lieutenant, I’ll come. Use the nearest exit.” Yamamoto said. He signalled the nearest guard to leave with him, but too many people leaving at once could draw unwanted attention.
The rain outside would normally be considered a nuisance, but tonight the grand admiral was glad for it. If assassins roamed the streets, he would be much harder to spot than on a clear night. The Musashi was less than fifteen minutes away by foot, and he had visited this theatre enough times to know the way back to the ship by memory alone. He considered asking the lieutenant how Yamaguchi found out about the scheme, but decided against letting his voice be heard in a public place. Besides, the lieutenant couldn’t have been an officer for very long, he was much too young and clearly inexperienced. Yamaguchi wouldn’t have told him anything more than the absolute minimum.
Four minutes later, he spotted a group of three stern-looking Army officers running down the other side of the street in the direction from which he had just come. All three looked very tough, ready to get into a brawl with the first thing that messed with them. Yamamoto, who preferred to fight with his mind than his knuckles, looked down at the ground and kept walking. By the time those three had gone through the theatre crowd, he would be back on the Musashi, out of the Army’s reach.

***

Army conspirators turned out to have more than just Yamamoto in their sights. They wanted the Navy out of the picture for good, and anyone deemed to be an ally for Yamamoto had to go. Admiral Shimada, the short-lived chief of the IJN, was also on the list of targets, succumbing to the assassin’s bullets less than an hour after Yamamoto returned to the Musashi. Hideki Tojo, despite being part of the Imperial Army, was deemed by the radicals to be too friendly to the Navy, and was mortally wounded by a third group of assassins, dying early the next morning.
The worst of the Army coup had yet to come. Around 0400, on the morning of August 14th, a much larger group of Army fanatics stormed into the Imperial Palace, overpowering the Emperor’s guards and taking the Emperor prisoner. As the sun rose over Tokyo, he would be hauled out of the Palace and into an Army truck, bound for a form of house arrest in an unremarkable location outside of the city. To prevent his recapture by a pro-Navy faction, he would be moved every few days by the Army and all records of the movements burned.

The Emperor was then forced to install a new cabinet to run the war, made up of hardline Army fanatics that would see their favoured strategies implemented. Sugiyama was to be made Prime Minister as well as Chief of the IJA. His new Minister of War would be Korechika Anami, who had fast become one of his closest political allies. The plotters had originally hoped to leave the Navy leaderless to reduce their influence, but as long as Yamamoto was alive he would have de facto control of the entire IJN. In a hope to rein him in, the Army forced the Emperor to name Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa as the Chief of the IJN and thus Yamamoto’s superior. Commander of part of Yamamoto’s transport fleet for the early stages of FS, until an illness forced him off duty for several months, he had delivered supplies to Army forces on several occasions and thus was seen more favourably by the Army than most available alternatives. Appointing one of Yamamoto’s lower level commanders to become his superior was also intended as an insult to the grand admiral that had annoyed the Army so much.
Unfortunately for the Army faction, they had underestimated Yamamoto’s control over the Imperial Navy. Despite his theoretically superior post, Admiral Mikawa was willing to defer to Yamamoto on all major judgements relating to the Navy. The Army managed to veto the transfer of a division to Truk, but the independence of Army and Navy command from each others’ orders gave Yamamoto the perfect excuse to keep the garrisons of the Marshall and Gilbert islands under his control. Attempts were made to coerce the Emperor into sacking Yamamoto or otherwise cancelling his orders that gave Yamamoto a free hand to pursue the decisive battle, but as long as the Emperor remained under the Army’s “protection”, most senior admirals refused to acknowledge any such orders as legitimate. Yamamoto had orders to fight the decisive battle handwritten by the Emperor, and no Army forgeries would convince him to give those up.
Yamamoto still had some control left over in the Home Islands as well, taking the form of his close friend Koichi Shiozawa. Admiral Shiozawa was just as determined as his superior to see the second decisive battle be fought out, but had held no official post since the end of 1941. Yamamoto and Mikawa worked to get Shiozawa installed as head of the Kure Naval Arsenal, one of the largest in Japan and home to a British-built steel works. If the Army wanted to weaken the Navy, the next thing they would likely target after admirals would be the Navy’s resources, and three months before several major ships would be ready for trials at sea, Yamamoto did not want to give them the chance to do so.

Sugiyama and Anami had other priorities, chief among them the seizure of several Navy transports so that more troops could be sent to oppose MacArthur in New Guinea and the East Indies, as well as berating junior officers for failing to catch Yamamoto. Several more attempts on the admiral’s life would be plotted, but as long as he remained on board the Musashi, he would be safe from the Army and their assassins. With his top commanders, Yamaguchi and Nagumo, on board with him, Yamamoto prepared to organise his half of Japan’s war effort from the sea.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

XLVIII: Aerial Offensive, August 1943

The series of assassinations in Tokyo had no effect on the Allies. Unconditional surrender was the stated policy, giving the Japanese no room for negotiations, and if anything the Imperial Army was less likely to surrender than the previous government. The Army had been behind the various incidents that had led to the war with China, two border clashes with the USSR and a string of other incidents since. If Japan had a ‘peace party’ at all, Sugiyama and the generals were certainly not it.
Allied attention thus remained not on the Army, but on Yamamoto and the Navy. MacArthur’s suggestion for an offensive into Java had been denied on the grounds that it would require too many men and wouldn’t bring the Allies any closer to the Home Islands, and to the best of the Allies’ knowledge, the rest of the Army’s troops remained tied up in the Philippines, East Indies and China, all too far away to be a threat to Operation Cleaver and subsequent offensives into Micronesia. The Imperial Navy, a well-proven and dangerous foe, was not so far away. Yamamoto may have sat out of the action during the retaking of Fiji and Port Moresby, but he would surely oppose a thrust into the centre of the Japanese Empire. The US Navy was by now stronger than the IJN, but the disparity was not yet overwhelming, making a potential battle a risk.
While MacArthur was finishing the campaign against Port Moresby, Admiral Fletcher sent Nimitz a proposal for a series of raids in the South Pacific, launched from carriers in the hopes that Yamamoto would ‘take the bait’ and move his forces away from the islands that would soon be invaded. Saratoga and Hornet would need to pass by the area on the way from New Guinea to Pearl Harbour, and Fletcher’s command had recently been given four escort carriers that could be used in the raids. The two British carriers, set to depart for the US for upgrades and minor repairs before returning to the Royal Navy, would also have the chance to give the Pacific a proper farewell. The Joint Chiefs, who noticed that this force was ever so slightly weaker than their current estimate of the IJN’s entire carrier force, approved the mission and cut the appropriate orders. Perhaps Yamamoto could be fooled into thinking the US Navy was weaker than it actually was.

First on the list of targets was the small Japanese airfield on Guadalcanal. It had served as a secondary jumping-off point for the Japanese offensives into Fiji and Samoa, and now that Fiji was back in Allied hands there were many who would argue that going back the other way would be the best route to victory. As the eight carriers launched wave after wave of Helldivers and Wildcats, the Allies hoped Yamamoto was among them.
Guadalcanal’s garrison was in a sorry state even before the raid. What had been a fairly small force to begin with had seen half its manpower taken away to build the now-ruined base on Efate, and then half of the remainder had been sent to fight in the doomed final offensive on New Caledonia. Those who were left had suffered from numerous B-17 raids, as well as neglect from their own side. They were the Imperial Army’s troops, but the Army had greater priorities, in New Guinea, Rabaul and closer to home. Supplies in this corner of the Empire had been scarce since FS was declared a partial victory, and even fewer made it out of Rabaul and into the Solomons. Matters were not helped by MacArthur’s fighters downing several transports spotted flying east.
The garrison by now was used to the raids, and lacked both the anti-air defences and the ammunition needed to oppose such a large raid. Those who could ran into the island’s thick jungle, waiting out the bombers instead of attempting to fight them. The dozen or so Ki-43s that still functioned were sent up, managing to shoot down one Helldiver before the Wildcats destroyed the ‘Cactus Air Force’ (as it was known to Allied planners) for good. But still Yamamoto did not come.

Next was Japan’s stronghold at Rabaul. MacArthur’s B-17s had been attacking the base since the airfield at Port Moresby could be made operational, drawing the IJAAS into a bloody fight of attrition. More than a month of heavy raids had already done heavy damage to a force that had never fully recovered from its losses in 1942, and with the exception of a few surviving veterans most of the pilots serving over New Britain had been inadequately trained and could be considered very poor quality. “They’re all either aces or grass-green” in the words of one of MacArthur’s airmen.
The August 17th raid was not about the Japanese pilots, which MacArthur would deal with given time, but about the naval base that had made FS possible. MacArthur’s B-17s were loaded with naval mines instead of the usual bombs and sent to litter the Bismarck Sea. Further east, the carrier aircraft attacked the port and airfield, further weakening Japanese abilities to project their power out of Rabaul. Fuel storage was of particular interest to bomber crews, as every ton of fuel oil set aflame would be one that Yamamoto’s fleet could not use attempting to sink an American warship. Rabaul’s defenders, much more numerous than those on Guadalcanal, put up a much stronger fight that saw 23 Allied planes shot down, but they could not stop the bombers. Under siege from the newly-laid minefield, Rabaul would soon be useless as a base. But still Yamamoto did not come.

Finally the carriers struck Efate, a target that Admiral Halsey had given his life to destroy the previous year. Japan’s garrison on the island had long since ceased to be an effective fighting force, starved of ammunition and forced to fish the island’s waters to survive. The airfield there was no closer to being repaired than it had been the day after Halsey struck, as Japan’s understrength construction battalions lacked the equipment needed to flatten out the cratered runway. Even if they had been able to flatten the ground, there was not enough fuel remaining on the base to supply any planes that might have come in, and no tankers bringing in any more.
Efate had long since ceased to be a threat, a fact well known by both Japanese and Americans alike. Bombing it would do nothing to help the war effort, and would serve no purpose unless an invasion force was about to take the island. No such invasion was planned – even if the South Pacific was intended to be an axis of advance towards Japan, Efate would likely have been bypassed in favour of Guadalcanal – but Japanese planners had no way of knowing that. They would see Efate targeted and come to the conclusion that the Americans were thinking of taking it. But still Yamamoto did not come.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

XLIX: Demand for Blood, September 1943

Under siege. Two words that perfectly described Grand Admiral Yamamoto as he stood on the deck of the Musashi looking out over Tokyo Bay. Under siege from the Americans, who were suddenly striking every island of Japan’s outer perimeter with what had to be a newly rebuilt fleet. Under siege on the Musashi, for stepping onto the streets of Tokyo was to invite Army assassins to make another attempt on his life. Under siege from his senior commanders, who were divided on whether to hit the American fleet now or stick to the original plan and wait until the year’s end. Under siege from junior officers, assassins-to-be really as they were demanding Army blood as payment for Admirals Nagano and Shimada. No no no, Yamamoto thought, the Americans first. Always the Americans first.

Nimitz’s carriers had struck the South Pacific islands faster and harder than he had dared imagine. Even though he was better aware of America’s great industrial capabilities, he had been confident that an enemy force able to claim parity with his own would not be possible before some time in 1944. Army reports of the attacks, which could well be inaccurate given they were coming from the Army, suggested an aircraft strength of possibly six carriers. Half of his decks were mere light carriers, at best half of a regular carrier. Six enemy decks would give him parity. Possibly an advantage in battleships, as American losses thus far had been heavier there, but hardly a crushing superiority. Parity, in face of the American goliath, would be inferiority in a matter of months. He had to strike soon.
Reports from the various naval bases indicated that the fuel was there for a major battle, provided it was fought within the defensive perimeter. There would be no great offensive to Fiji or Samoa this time, but if the Americans met him near Rabaul (which by all accounts had been rendered useless by the American raids), the Solomons or even somewhere they seemed to have ignored like the Marshalls, he could meet them. The Army clique that had taken over Tokyo had done its best to interrupt any and all supplies going to the Navy, so only a minimum of additional fuel could be expected. If he wasn’t waiting on the Shinano and Taiho to be completed, he would have had every resource he was likely to get. Two ships and potential months of pilot training.
He nearly ordered the fleet forward, regardless of the nearly-ready reinforcements. The Americans had made three major raids in a matter of days, and MacArthur had been attacking in the south all summer, so it was obvious that they would be invading somewhere in that region very soon. Moving the entire fleet a good 4000 kilometres would take some time – if the Army proved as hopeless as it had on Fiji and Timor, MacArthur could take the next island before the Musashi had even made it to its next battlefield. Sailing south looked like the right move.
Only the intervention of Admiral Nagumo prevented Yamamoto from falling for the Allied diversion and wasting his last reserves. Any Allied attack in the south, he reasoned, would be aimed at either Rabaul or Java (two targets that MacArthur in particular had been vocal about taking, although Nagumo did not know this). Both were heavily defended by the Army, Rabaul in particular held more than 60,000 Japanese troops, while Fiji had only hosted less than a tenth of that. When the Allies attacked, they would be committing their carrier groups to a long and drawn-out fight, akin to Port Moresby but on a much larger scale. There would be time to move the fleet south then, but now it was better kept in Tokyo Bay until the site of battle was known. The new constructions and an extra month of training could well prove the difference.

If the Army didn’t interfere...

In the current climate, that would be a big “if”. Yamamoto had come to resent the rivalry with the Army for getting in the way of every aspect of command. The Americans, not the other service, was the real enemy, and Japan did not have enough resources to fight them alone. Wasting them on a fight in Tokyo would do nothing but give Douglas MacArthur an open invitation to occupy the city.
Even if Yamamoto was opposed to getting the Navy involved in Sugiyama’s political game, a large group of junior officers were just as eager as their Army counterparts to fight the other service. The Navy’s honour had been insulted with Nagano’s murder (which was by now known to be no accident), and again when Shimada was killed so soon afterwards. The truth behind Tojo’s death was less well known, and most of those not involved believed that he had been killed by Navy men and not Anami’s agents. That would put the score, as American intelligence officers began to refer to it, at 2-1 in the Army’s favour. 3-0 more correctly, but either way still against the Navy.
Anami’s plotters had been working to get rid of Nagano since the spring, leaving Navy officers at a marked disadvantage. While Anami could call on his agents to hunt down Tojo in a matter of hours after the decision to kill him was made, the Navy officers who sought revenge would spend a good half a month planning before they felt ready enough to settle the score. As they were based on shore in Tokyo and would not limit his ability to use the fleet against the Americans, Yamamoto did not bother ordering them to stop. Resigned to the continued fight, the grand admiral merely hoped that whoever the Army decided to name as a replacement for any victims would prove less inclined to keep the dispute going.

The scheme that eventually went ahead in early September was probably the one that had the best chance of fulfilling Yamamoto’s wishes. The Navy officers targeted none other than General Anami himself, most likely as a target of opportunity than any concerted effort to eliminate the man behind the assassinations. Knifed in the dead of night, Anami became the Navy’s greatest payback. A notable victory in a war that more than half of the IJN’s officer corps did not want to fight. Very soon afterwards, they would be reminded why.
General Sugiyama had a replacement in mind for Anami when he called a meeting of Japan’s “top officers” – at that point Sugiyama and a bunch of yes-men – the next morning. Kenji Doihara, the so-called “Lawrence of Manchuria”, would be the new Minister of War. Doihara was a criminal boss who represented the worst of the Army radicals: he had helped engineer the Mukden Incident in 1931, supported terrorism and a massive drug industry within China and had helped create the ‘Kill All, Burn All, Loot All’ policy that had killed millions of Chinese civilians. As an intelligence officer, he was well connected to the teams of assassins that had brought down Nagano and Tojo, and he was ruthless enough to expand their operations to eliminate every Navy officer in Tokyo if need be. Before the day was out, all four Navy officers that had killed Anami were captured by his assassins, to be tortured before their death.

Doihara was determined to settle the score with Yamamoto as well, and it was this issue that took most of his attention as September dragged on. Yamamoto was notified by Navy officers in Tokyo that the Army was planning on seizing control of several key resource stocks, prompting him to order the relocation of thousands of tons of fuel to storage facilities in the Palau islands. The decisive battle would be fought Yamamoto’s way, regardless of what the Army thought.
The Army evidently didn’t think too much of it, and in the middle of September they brought up an issue that had dragged on for months: the garrisons of the Marshall and Gilbert islands. Doihara sent Yamamoto a demand that the garrisons be placed under Army control “at once”, or the Army would be forced to “redirect Navy resources to Army units to compensate”. Yamamoto by this point was furious, and when he was informed that the Navy had on hand all the resources needed to finish the construction of Taiho and Shinano, train their crews and pilots, and get the fleet to the Central Pacific, he sent Doihara a blunt rejection. Behind the rejection was a threat: if the Army dared seize control of so much as a kilogram of steel or a litre of oil from Navy stocks, he would order the Navy to blockade more than half a million IJA soldiers on islands stretching from Okinawa to New Guinea.
Yamamoto was bluffing – he had no desire to see the violent dispute turn into a full-blown civil war – but the threat of starving so many soldiers, and perhaps more importantly the humiliation that would surely follow an American capture of the Army-defended islands, finally convinced Doihara to back down. Any thought of a united defence against the Americans was long gone, but Yamamoto was content with the chance to fight the second decisive battle free of Army interference. Sugiyama and Doihara fumed, but there was little more they could do to take control of Tokyo. Ceasefire would be tense and troubled, as both looked towards the time when the other would make a mistake.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

L: For Want of a Rail, October 1943

A common strategy in the game of chess is to attempt to control the centre. Four squares from which the most moves can be made, giving a player more options than his opponent. In war, not all countries are square, but the strategy still applies. Sometimes, as it did this time, that meant controlling the railroads, the best avenues for sending the hundreds of tons of supplies needed by an army to the front as well as often providing a direct route towards whatever final objective was being sought. The Army had sent the 27th Division west to do just that, ready to begin the war’s greatest offensive yet.
Of course, no physical railroad connected the various Pacific islands, but when Nimitz had drawn a line between Oahu and Honshu, some of the islands on the nearest route had been described as a ‘railroad to Tokyo’, and the name had stuck. The first island on the Tokyo railroad was the tiny island group of Midway, which had been under unchallenged US control for the entirety of the war. The next was Wake, a similarly tiny group of three islands, taken by the Japanese just two weeks after Pearl Harbour. The target of Operation Cleaver would bring the US Navy that much closer to Japan.
As military objectives went, Wake was recognised to be a rather poor choice. The airstrip that covered half of the largest island was not sufficient for any real land-based air force, nor did the islands host a significant port that could be used as a starting point for future offensives. The Marshall islands further east would be required for both. A small number of American prisoners were being held on Wake, but if liberating prisoners was the most important objective then MacArthur’s plan to retake Java and then the Philippines would be able to rescue perhaps a thousand times as many as ‘Cleaver’. And while the Tokyo railroad looked like a good strategy on paper, beyond Wake there was only one other island on the route, the volcanic rock of Iwo Jima, which was no better a base than Wake or Midway and just as useless for a great offensive.
The decision to recapture Wake came down not to the value of Wake itself, but how it would influence Operation Wasteland, which was aimed at the Marshall islands. The Imperial Navy was still a very real threat to the Allies – it had already halved the US battleship fleet and destroyed all carriers but two in the twelve months after December 6th, 1941. Yamamoto still had three-quarters of his pre-war strength, as well as whatever ships Japan had managed to build since. If that force was sent against an American force attempting to cover an invasion of the Marshall islands, it had a good chance of doing some serious damage. By taking Wake, which was small enough as to likely fall before the IJN could protect it, Nimitz would give himself an airstrip from which recon missions could be flown, potentially several days’ warning for the Marines and the carriers that would cover them. There was also some chance that the Japanese would decide that an American-held Wake was much too dangerous, and order Yamamoto to attack it once again. If he did, he would be wasting fuel and ammo: Nimitz only intended to leave a token garrison once the Japanese were evicted. Supplying Wake would be difficult.

The 4000 Japanese defenders knew first-hand just how hard supplying Wake had been. Not enough food had ever been sent to the islands (about the only thing that had come in sufficient quantities were American bombers, which the garrison commander Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara had no interest in seeing). Supplies had grown even more scarce when the Army and Navy decided to clash over control of the island outposts, with ships being redirected several times as different commanders gave contradictory orders.
When American bombers flew over Wake again on October 5th, 1943, Sakaibara thought nothing of them. They had come before, cratering Wake’s airfield to the point that he no longer bothered to repair it. He had other priorities, among them the execution of 98 American forced labourers. They were enemy spies as far as he was concerned, reporting back so that Wake could be invaded. Unless the massive American armada that had just surrounded Wake was a decoy, there would surely be an invasion today. The untold numbers of Higgins boats coming forward soon proved that this was no decoy mission.
The machine-gun team doubling as executioners was ordered to hurry up, only for both of them to be hit by enemy fire within a couple of seconds of each other. Gunfire from the American destroyers surrounding the island had alerted the defenders, but communications had fallen apart. The admiral could see the American infantry storming ashore only a few hundred metres to the south and rushing towards his position. Not wanting to be captured, there was only one thing left to do. He took out his katana...

By nightfall, two thirds of Wake Island lay in Allied hands. The Navy had ignored MacArthur’s advice recommending a long and powerful shore bombardment in favour of a short and sudden attack, as had been done in the later stages of World War I, and the results had been less than ideal. Few Japanese fortifications had been destroyed, requiring infantry assaults to clear them out in the bloody march across the island. Only the unpreparedness of this starving garrison and the US Army’s much greater manpower had allowed the invasion force to get as far in the first day as it had. Future island assaults held no promise of an admiral more interested in committing a war crime than organising his defences.
The following day the last of the Japanese defenders were killed on Wake and smaller invasions were staged on nearby Peale and Wilkes. Engineers were landed and began repairing the heavily damaged runway, preparing it to host the Catalinas and F4U Corsairs that would soon be deployed there. Most of the invasion force was withdrawn when the fleet left, as supplying an entire division on the island was deemed too great a challenge when other priorities required attention. Those that remained would soon find that they had little to do beyond watching the strange little birds that walked around the island.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LI: One Step Closer, October 1943

Yamamoto frowned as he read over the telegram for the fifth time. The officer on Wake that had written it had left out a lot of details. There was a “large air presence”, but that could mean ten planes or ten thousand. Allied destroyers (about the only clear detail in the entire telegram) had bombed installations across the entire island, but no mention of whether heavier ships were there. The American infantry clearly outnumbered the garrison, but by how much it did not say. Then, “For the Emperor”, which meant nothing to a Navy man as long as the Army had a hold of him. Apparently there was already a rescue mission being planned, but that wouldn’t be able to save Wake.
“This has to be a diversion.” Yamamoto decided. “The real attack will come in the south.”
Admiral Nagumo shook his head, remembering the argument they had had six weeks ago about the very same topic. “You cannot be sure of that, sir.”
“I am sure of it.” Yamamoto said. “Wake is completely useless. It is impossible to feed anyone there – our garrison was starving to death the entire time they occupied it. The airstrip is too small to fly any large force off, and you’d have to ship in fuel from a thousand miles away to use it. There’s hardly a dock, much less a proper port facility, and it’s in the middle of nowhere. If the Americans were going to attack the north of the defensive perimeter, this telegram would be saying that Kwajalein or Tarawa was under attack.”
“Sir, perhaps the Americans wanted to cover their northern flank.” Nagumo said. “Another attack could be on the way.”
“Wake is about the size of a bird dropping.” Yamamoto said. “It can’t cover anything. The only reason they would ever attack it is if they wanted me to see them taking it. They know I still have a fleet. If I send the fleet to Wake, it’s not there to defend the Philippines, or more likely Java first, when MacArthur comes parading back in.”
“You could be wrong.” Nagumo warned. “We can’t afford to not be ready again. Wake didn’t matter, but if we let them take the Marshalls then the entire outer perimeter is compromised.”
“I’m not wrong.” Yamamoto said. “My judgement hasn’t failed me yet this war, and I see no reason for that to change. Besides, they’ve told me where they’re coming.”
He pulled out a leaflet that had been captured by the garrison in the Philippines and made its way back to Tokyo. Two thirds of it was Douglas MacArthur’s face, the bottom third the words ‘I Shall Return’.
“Draft a plan to fight them near Kwajalein if you must.” Yamamoto said. “I’m going to prepare to sink MacArthur.”

***

The invasion of Wake had been something of a disappointment for the Allies as well. The ground offensive had taken nearly thirty-one hours, well short of the eight or nine that had been expected. Wake had not been nearly so well defended as New Guinea, and evidence of poor supply and even worse leadership was strewn around the island. The island’s small size, combined with its lack of defensible terrain, should have led to a rapid victory. Instead they had suffered several hundred casualties, and only the news of the liberation of the 98 prisoners on the island prevented the battle from attracting any public criticism.
Wake did prompt the Joint Chiefs to take another look at the reports MacArthur had sent following his landings in New Guinea, largely ignored until now due to MacArthur’s poor relationship with Washington. MacArthur’s casualties had been proportionally far heavier than anything seen on Wake, but most of them had been suffered during the advance into the New Guinea interior and the urban battle of Port Moresby. Wake had no interior, neither did any of the atolls marked for invasion as part of Operation Wasteland. The beach battles, as much as they could be, had been successful. There would be no need to dig the Japanese out of hillside bunkers in the Marshall islands either.
MacArthur’s proposal for a heavy shore bombardment certainly looked like a good addition for Wasteland. While MacArthur had only had access to four fleet carriers, six were set to be used in the Marshalls operation now that the first four Essex-class ships had entered service, and huge numbers of smaller escort carriers were coming out of shipyards to join them. The story was similar for battleships, with five modern battleships now operating in the Pacific and many older ships available to join them if the need arose. If what MacArthur said about gunfire support was true, the defenders of the Marshall islands would have little hope of surviving the pre-invasion bombardment.

Wake had been a disappointment for another reason, although one that the United States had no real control over. New Guinea had sparked a string of deaths of high-ranking officers, particularly members of the Imperial Navy. Decoded intercepts didn’t reveal the true cause of these deaths, but the Japanese Army and Navy had been feuding for quite some time, and Imperial Japan had a history of “rule by assassination” particularly in the 1930s. If the Japanese wanted to kill of their officer corps in what was close to a miniature civil war, that could only work to the Allies’ benefit. One particularly strange message sent by Yamamoto to General Doihara, threatening an outright blockade of half the Japanese empire, certainly suggested such an eventuality.
After Wake, there had been no more disappearances among the Japanese top brass, no more “unfortunate accidents” or even deaths claimed to be of natural causes. The Japanese were no longer killing each other, and the Minister of War was no longer a relative unknown, but now an infamous criminal brute, who would very likely be at the top of the list in any post-war war crimes trials, at least if the assassins didn’t get to him first.
Yamamoto remained as frustratingly “off the map” as ever. Navy codes hadn’t changed, but there were no messages indicating that the Combined Fleet had moved. That had greatly helped at Wake, but Yamamoto was well known to be both a gambler (and so far a very lucky one at that) and very aggressive. He would show up somewhere, sometime soon. Everyone in the American high command wanted advance warning when he did.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LII: Ready for Battle, November 1943

The Combined Fleet was finally ready. The Shinano, Japan’s final battleship, and the Taiho, its next-to-last carrier, were finally completed within days of each other in early November 1943. The Unryu would not be ready for at least another eighteen months, and was under threat of cancellation from the Army. It would be this fleet that would fight out the decisive battle.
Both ships had been given far less than their fair due of glory during the construction process. In an effort to get both ships into active service before the end of the year, a considerable number of components had been rushed into place, dooming the ships to suffer from reliability problems. Several more components had been left out entirely, most notably the RADAR sets originally intended for Taiho. Yamamoto had given the final word on those RADAR sets: the decisive battle would be fought in friendly territory, so land-based aircraft would be available to locate the enemy. If American bombers did get through the Zeroes flying a combat air patrol, they would not be able to destroy Taiho’s armoured flight deck. That line of thinking still depended on a good damage control team, and unfortunately Taiho’s crew was not well prepared for that either. Shinano’s problems were fewer, helped by the presence of two existing ships of the class, but the third Yamato could not claim to be as robust as her sisters.
The commissioning of the new ships was led by Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, an officer whose greatest accomplishment was serving under Nagumo during the Indian Ocean Raid in early 1942. None of Japan’s top admirals dared appear publicly where Army assassins might show up. Shinano’s commissioning went undisturbed, probably because the Army did not consider battleships worth their time, but the ceremony for Taiho was targeted by a group of Army officers. Three men, a brigadier general and two colonels, invited themselves to Kobe, armed and ready to remove Yamamoto from power for good. When instead they saw a lower ranking admiral who they did not recognise, the general decided against shooting him, believing him not to be an important enough target, and certainly not worth the risk of inviting backlash against the Army. He ordered the two colonels not to shoot as well, but it was too late. One of them had already moved to the edge of the crowd. When Kurita finished his speech and stepped off the stage, the colonel dragged him away into a nearby alley and shot him once in the head. Two Navy guards quickly caught up with him, and got revenge for their fallen admiral less than a minute later.

While the new ships were preparing for a rushed series of trials, Yamamoto took the opportunity to review the rest of his forces. In addition to the three Yamatos, the IJN still had seven other battleships: Nagato and Mutsu, which were both relatively modern, and the older Kongo, Fuso, Yamashiro, Ise and Hyuga. Fuso and Yamashiro in particular had been recently refitted to carry a greatly expanded anti-aircraft armament. Nagumo and Yamaguchi had been debating about how to best use them: while their main guns would be very useful in the main battle line, if they were held back as escorts for the carrier fleet they could allow more of the IJN’s airpower to be directed against the Allied carriers.
The ten battleships were joined by the three fleet carriers that had taken part in the South Pacific campaign – Akagi, Hiryu and Shokaku, as well as the new Taiho. Two more carriers – the Hiyo and Junyo, were only able to carry around 50 aircraft each, so were too small to be considered true fleet carriers but considerably larger than his small decks. Then there were seven true ‘light’ carriers: Hosho, Ryuho, Taiyo, Unyo, Ryujo, Chiyoda and Chitose. Of those, Hosho would be useless in battle and Ryuho hardly better, so those were to continue in their current role as aircraft transports and training ships. The latter five would bring Yamamoto’s carrier force to eleven decks.
Yamamoto could also call upon the seven surviving heavy cruisers: Aoba, Chokai, Furutaka, Haguro, Kako, Kumano and Myoko, two light cruisers (Oi and Tenryu), and around 40 destroyers. Enough tankers still existed to fuel the fleet anywhere within Japanese territory, although there was not much room to spare. The newly trained group of pilots had performed well so far, and looked to be Japan’s best hope to win the war. Considering the dismal performance of the Army’s airmen since about the time of New Caledonia, they may well have been Japan’s only hope.

Before the ships had even left Tokyo Bay, Yamamoto’s good spirits were shot through the head. News had come in that Admiral Kurita had been killed. General Sugiyama and the Army’s propaganda team had decided that Kurita had killed himself, and most civilians who had been at the Taiho’s commissioning knew nothing more than that some gunshots had been heard. That was a lie, and a rather obvious one considering the mad chase that had unfolded at the end of the ceremony.
Yamamoto quickly decided against escalating tensions any further with the Army. If he looked to believe that Kurita had indeed killed himself, the Army would not strike again for a little while – they already had their victory – and he would have time to get people and supplies out of Tokyo to ensure the decisive battle could be fought. At the same time, this incident would come out at some point, enough people outside the Navy knew the truth, and when it did it would surely reflect badly on Sugiyama and his cronies. Hopefully the Americans would take some useless island in the meantime to further turn the public against the Army. Sugiyama couldn’t be defeated in open battle – the Army’s control of Tokyo was too strong – but if the public turned against him he could soon find himself without enough allies to continue the fight.
For now, Yamamoto ordered that all admirals within the Navy were to remain on board their ships or travel with four armed guards at all times. Kurita’s guards had not been able to save him, but they had managed to kill off one of his assassins. Then he sent out a secret message, asking that former Prime Minister and retired admiral Mitsumasa Yonai meet him in Yokosuka when Shinano’s trials were finished in December. Yonai had been overlooked by the Army at least once, was popular within the Navy and was closely trusted by the Emperor. If there was ever to be an end to the madness caused by the Army, the Navy needed someone to replace it. Yonai could fit that role well.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LIII: The Tokyo Games, December 1943

Yamamoto felt as though fortune had blessed him once again. It was a feeling he had grown accustomed to, after a string of victories that had given him an unmatched reputation among admirals across the world. The odds were stacked so greatly against Japan that many had worried defeat would only take a year, and for a long time Yamamoto had been leading that belief. The war was now in its third year, but apart from the far-off South Pacific and Wake, Japan had not really been pushed back anywhere. The US Navy did not look to be nearly so large as he had predicted it would become by early 1944, while the Imperial Navy was about as strong as it had ever been. It barely had enough oil to get to the perimeter and back, but no matter there. One battle. One victory. America was just about defeated. And that victory was certain: the grand admiral knew that the god of war looked favourably upon him.
Help from the god of war would not help Yamamoto in the other conflict he had found himself forced into. Fighting the Imperial Army was not a matter of carrier-based bombers and battleship guns, but one of pistols and knives, fought in the back streets of Tokyo and unremarkable rooms hosting junior officers. Each with their plans, each with their targets. Despite that, fortune had once again given Yamamoto its blessing. The discovery made by a low-ranking sailor on leave from on-shore duty had been passed up the chain of command. Used properly, it could be the silver bullet that pierced Sugiyama’s skull, and bring an end to the Army’s nonsense. As he walked through the door of an unremarkable house in Yokosuka, a meeting he had scheduled last month gave him the chance to do just that.

“Admiral, it is good to see you again.” ex-Prime Minister Yonai greeted him, “I must concede I have been surprised by your victories against the Americans. Three years ago I would have given us no chance at all to win this war, yet here we are.”
“Thank you, sir.” Yamamoto said. “Unfortunately, the Americans are only half of our problem. The Army at this point is our real threat. A disease upon the nation.”
“I had feared I would be dragged into that game at some point.” Yonai admitted. “I didn’t think it would be you who brought me in.”
“I didn’t seek to. Unfortunately Sugiyama decided to force me to fight him anyway.” Yamamoto said.
“So I would guess that you wish for me to take back by old position?” Yonai asked.
“Not necessarily. A counter-coup only invites a response from Sugiyama.” Yamamoto said. “Our answer must be smarter than that, and with this information I believe we may have the answer we need.”
Yonai took the paper that Yamamoto offered. Although incomplete, it looked to be a copy of a conversation between two Army officers, accidentally overheard by a sailor loyal to his Emperor. Potential targets for assassination, locations for hideouts, even stories that could be told to the newspapers in case of any ‘accidents’. “You believe this is genuine?” Yonai asked.
“If it is, we may be able to beat them. If it is not, the worst we lose is a handful of volunteers to Sugiyama’s assassins should we run into a trap, and none of the highest ranks. The risk to us is minimal in any case.” Yamamoto said.
“Your name is on that list.” Yonai observed.
“I would be much more surprised if it were not.” Yamamoto said.
“So what is your plan for me after these hideouts are taken?” Yonai asked.
“We’re not taking the hideouts.” Yamamoto said.
“Then your plan is what exactly?” Yonai wondered.
“To rescue the Emperor.” Yamamoto said. “We do know that the Emperor is held in each location for only a short amount of time, preventing his discovery. Sugiyama thinks that if he does this, the Emperor can be kept in his clutches. As you can see there are several hideouts, and there must be many more we do not know about.”
“So you’re going to wait for the Army to move him to one that you do know about? That could take months.” Yonai said.
“How many hideouts do you believe the Army is actually using?” Yamamoto asked.
“I would guess hundreds.” Yonai said. “Tokyo is a very large place.”
“My thoughts are that the number is many times less than that. Probably no more than a few dozen. Sugiyama has been doing this every few days since August, and our response so far has been very limited. He has very likely grown lazy or distracted in that time. If we watch four or five of these locations, we should be able to locate the Emperor within the next few months.” Yamamoto explained. “My preference, which will be reflected in the orders I send to the men, would be to watch locations closest to Navy barracks, such that we may quickly respond to any news. If we can get the Emperor out of Sugiyama’s hands, he will be willing to remove Sugiyama promptly. Shortly before he was captured, he was supportive of my proposals to win the war.”
“Where does that leave me?” Yonai asked, “Prime Minister again?”
“If you would accept the position, that would be my preference.” Yamamoto said. “Your term in office is notable for cooperation between the services, and this will be very important if we are to end the assassinations. I shall recommend this to the Emperor as soon as he has been freed, and believe General Terauchi would be the best man for the top Army positions.”
“I understand he is your friend?” Yonai asked.
“As much as I have within the Army ranks. He is not a part of Sugiyama’s clique and was considered for promotion to Field Marshal before the takeover. The Army will follow him and he will not seek to continue the madness. More importantly, if he receives that promotion it will not look as though I have interfered, but as a natural successor to Sugiyama, who also calls himself Marshal now.” Yamamoto asked. “Are you willing to take your old job back?”
Yonai paused for a moment, considering Yamamoto’s plan. Then he decided: “If you can organise the Emperor’s restoration, I shall support your decision.”

When he returned to the Musashi, Yamamoto was greeted by some most unwelcome news. Nagumo informed him that an American submarine had sunk two oil tankers west of the Philippines. Those two tankers had been an important part of the decisive battle plan, and without them the fleet would be forced to refuel in Palau before engaging the Americans.
“A good thing I moved the fuel storage there then. It is right on the route to MacArthur’s targets in Java and New Guinea.” Yamamoto noticed.
“You’ve lost time.” Nagumo pointed out, “and you may not be fighting MacArthur next year.”

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LIV: Operation Wasteland, January 1944

The capture of Wake could be described as an unnecessary operation, taking a tiny island that was totally worthless for basing anything larger than a scout plane out of. If the Japanese fleet sailed near it, they may be more easily located than would otherwise be the case, but it was always much more likely that the Japanese would sail to one of their forward bases, most likely Truk, before attempting to engage the Americans. Unless of course they were waiting to fight the US Navy just outside Tokyo Bay.
‘Wasteland’, despite the name, was always going to be a far more important operation than Wake’s ‘Cleaver’. The targets were three major atolls in the Marshalls chain: Maloelap in the east, Kwajalein, the largest and arguably most important in the centre of the chain, and Eniwetok in the west. All three were to be attacked on the same day, and the bulk of the US Pacific Fleet, commanded by Admiral Spruance, would be supporting more than a division of Marines. Spruance was ordered to use his battleships to deliver a devastating bombardment of the Japanese positions and his carriers to sweep the skies, but if the Combined Fleet showed up, the destruction of Yamamoto was to be the first priority.
Wasteland was the first step in a much larger plan, the ‘Central Pacific Operation’ or ‘Blowdart’ in code. Under this plan, the Marshalls would be secured while MacArthur launched an overland assault in central New Guinea, taking advantage of intelligence suggesting that the Japanese were more concerned by MacArthur than Nimitz or Spruance. This would be followed by the capture of Truk in the Carolines, cutting the Japanese Empire in two and leaving the Gilberts, Solomons, New Hebrides and other islands to wither and die without the need for invasion. Truk would be followed by the capture of the Palaus and Marianas, giving the Allies bases from which the new B-29 Superfortress bombers would be able to bomb the Home Islands. Once Palau had been secured, MacArthur would be transferred out of Australia to command an invasion of the Philippines – not from the south as Yamamoto believed but from the east, which would hopefully cut the Home Islands off from vital resources in South East Asia by the end of 1944.
Yamamoto’s intention to force a decisive battle was hardly a secret – Tsushima had won the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and every action Japan had taken since then indicated they were using a similar strategy against the United States. The grand admiral was bound to show up at some point, and he had a very powerful fleet under his command, one that had suffered only one major defeat since 1941. Yamamoto was far too dangerous to be left ignored.
Nimitz’ instructions were clear: “The way to defeat Japan is to defeat Yamamoto.”

On January 26th, the previously quiet front in New Guinea erupted as MacArthur launched a massive offensive against the Japanese defences in the foothills of the Owen Stanley Ranges. The terrain was inhospitable, forcing all supplies to be brought over by air, while the IJA’s few surviving planes could provide no more than token resistance. Their ground troops proved little better against MacArthur’s combined American-Australian force, which had been reinforced with an elite unit comprised of Fijians and Samoans, eager to avenge the offensive directed against their homes in 1942. Days of artillery fire and aerial bombardment wore away at the starving Japanese forces, and by the end of the month the line had been cracked. A treacherous and difficult mountain track was the only path forward, and it would require weeks of difficult battles to conquer. MacArthur was unfazed. He was on the move again.
Yamamoto was quick to notice MacArthur’s new offensive. His attention had been firmly set on the general for a very long time, and was wholly convinced that MacArthur would be his opponent in the decisive battle. Once New Guinea was taken (which it surely would considering that the Army was in charge of its defence), MacArthur would undoubtedly move on Rabaul. Rabaul was a massive Japanese base, dominating the approaches to the South Pacific. The garrison there was enormous, numbering well over 100,000, all but guaranteeing MacArthur a bloody disaster when he attacked it. His plan was to wait for MacArthur to get bogged down on the beaches, and then annihilate his fleet while it was distracted by its efforts to support the landing.
When the Marines stormed ashore across the Marshall islands the next day, Yamamoto was certain that Nimitz was leading a mere diversion. The appearance of the American battlefleet there was explained away as it being more useful there, for no battleship guns could reach the battlefields of inland New Guinea, but they would be transferred south for the Rabaul operation, where they could be crushed.
For six days, while the Marshall islands slowly fell to the Americans, Yamamoto remained unflinching in his beliefs. The fleet was kept in Tokyo Bay, intended as a secret weapon to be kept concealed until the last moment. Then, on February 2nd, Nagumo finally convinced Yamamoto that the fleet would be useless in Tokyo Bay, and the grand admiral ordered the fleet be moved to Palau and then refuelled, in preparation for the battle. Nagumo’s other warning, that it may be MacArthur who was the diversion, was left ignored.

***

“Take a seat, colonel.” Nimitz said. “What’s the news?”
“Not good, sir,” the colonel replied. “We’ve just decoded a whole series of messages indicating Yamamoto has left Tokyo with what seems to be the entire Japanese fleet.”
Nimitz only had to look out the window to see how bad that could be. The wreck of the Arizona, mostly submerged under Pearl Harbour’s waters, was clearly visible. The other time that Yamamoto had left Tokyo with most of his fleet he had launched the South Pacific campaign, another total disaster.
“Where do you think he is headed?” Nimitz asked.
“Almost due south, sir. Almost every time Yamamoto mentions an Allied commander he uses MacArthur’s name, and it is very likely that he knows of MacArthur’s intention to free the Philippines.” The colonel said. “So Java or New Guinea are very likely, although their bases in the Palaus or at Truk cannot be ruled out.”
“Inform MacArthur immediately.” Nimitz ordered. “And make sure General Kenney is warned as well. If Yamamoto comes in range, they are to focus all efforts on his destruction, even at the expense of the New Guinea campaign.”
As the intelligence colonel saluted and left, Nimitz picked up the phone and asked for Admiral Spruance’s office.
“Ray, I want you to amend the plans for Crossbones.” Nimitz ordered. “Yamamoto’s coming south, maybe for you, maybe for MacArthur. Be ready for a major battle, because if he turns east he’ll be bringing everything he’s got.”

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LV: Return to the Gilberts, February 1944

Yamamoto’s move south came just as the Marshalls operation was being completed, and brought to light once more a long-standing concern with the entire Central Pacific Plan. Wake had been taken to act as a forward reconnaissance base, while the Gilbert islands had been ignored, serving as an occasional target for raids. The large garrison on the islands, and their limited strategic value, ensured that they would never be seriously considered for invasion. Until the Carolines were taken as part of Operation Crossbones, the Gilberts had become a forward reconnaissance base for the Japanese. That had not been a problem so long as the Japanese could not do anything to reinforce their islands (as had seemed the case throughout the last several months), but now that the decisive battle was just over the horizon, the Gilberts posed a new threat: if left active, they could warn Yamamoto of the US fleet’s arrival two days before it got to Truk. Perhaps more.
That was a risk Nimitz and Spruance were not prepared to take.

An invasion of the two most important locations in the Gilberts chain: Makin and Tarawa, was quickly dismissed for the same reasons it had been passed over in 1943. Furthermore, Truk would be an important part of the upcoming Philippines operation, so a delay there was unacceptable. Instead, four of the carriers that had been supporting the landings on Maloelap were directed south, to deliver a knockout blow against Tarawa. Concerns of the Japanese rebuilding the base after the operation were dismissed: if the Gilberts were out of action until the day after Crossbones began, the raid would have done its job. Once Truk fell, there was no chance of Tarawa posing any further threat.
The raid was launched on February 8th and quickly proved to be an astonishing success. The Japanese fighters based on the island, mostly early-model Zeroes but also including antiquated A5Ms, proved to be no obstacle to the Americans, who were now fielding F6F Hellcats alongside the Wildcats and Corsairs, and within a few hours the Japanese air defences in the eastern Pacific were effectively wiped out for good. Bombers were sent in throughout the afternoon, cratering the runways, destroying hangars and storage facilities, and finishing off aircraft that had never gotten off the ground. Before the day was out, Tarawa was a smoking ruin. Like Efate and Guadalcanal before it, the base would never be repaired by the Japanese.

Yamamoto was informed of the raid around midday, and was immediately put into a foul mood. The loss of two tankers in December had forced him to send the fleet to Palau to pick up fuel before the decisive battle could take place, and now that the Americans were targeting the eastern islands his fleet was well out of position to react. As the Americans had feared, he had intended to use Tarawa as a warning station in case the US Navy appeared in force. Palau to Truk was a three day voyage, and there was another three or four days between Truk and Tarawa. Two days’ warning would have been extremely helpful.
The raid also shook Yamamoto’s confidence that he would be fighting MacArthur in the decisive battle and not Nimitz (or Fletcher, who he incorrectly believed to be leading the naval forces in that sector). MacArthur was barely half-way to the village of Kokoda in central New Guinea, and was still weeks away from the northern coast. An attempt at Rabaul could only come after that campaign was finished, which could well take until May or June. Furthermore, the Gilberts were of no use to a battle in the New Guinea sector, while the gap in the ocean between Wake and Eniwetok gave the Americans a route through which they could sail the Navy into the Central Pacific. Nagumo had been warning that MacArthur may be a diversion for months, and on February 14th Yamamoto finally began drawing up a plan for battle in the Carolines or Gilberts region. His previous plan, aimed at destroying an American invasion near Rabaul, had been limited by geography: the Admiralty and other islands posed numerous obstacles for fleets moving through the Bismarck Sea. Near Truk, islands were of only slight concern.

Shortly after the Gilberts raid, Nimitz and Spruance set the date of Operation Crossbones for March 17th. Intelligence efforts soon intercepted messages suggesting that Yamamoto’s attention had turned east instead of south, and that he was located in Palau, but proved unable to intercept any detailed plans for the Japanese side of the battle. An ambush, as had been so successfully conducted during the Battle of Samoa, would be out of the question.
Japanese efforts to locate the American fleet proved similarly unsuccessful. Without the Gilberts available to provide advanced warning, there was danger of an invasion directed anywhere from the Solomons (which Yamamoto wrote off as a lost cause), to the Carolines or even the Marianas. Plans had to be drawn up for each, while Yamaguchi and Nagumo spent day after day in Palau attempting to wargame every imaginable American operation, in every case severely underestimating the strength of the US Navy and thereby returning optimistic results. Yamamoto spent his time wrangling with the Army attempting to rush reinforcements to Truk to expand the tiny garrison there, although Sugiyama would hear none of it.

On March 14th, just three days before the invasion of Truk was set to begin, Yamamoto received two messages that would change the face of the war. The first came from Tokyo, informing him that an Army truck had been spotted moving the Emperor to a new location, and that this location could be reached within a matter of days by a Navy battalion stationed in Yokosuka. The second came from a long-range bomber acting as a reconnaissance plane, flying northeast of Truk. A large American fleet was heading to the southwest, bringing invasion craft towards the Navy’s most important base outside of the Home Islands. Yamamoto immediately ordered his fleet to leave Palau, ready for battle.
The G4M that had spotted the Americans was quickly shot down by a Wildcat, but the secrecy of the mission had been blown. Spruance was certain that the Japanese knew where he was headed: there were no other targets of consequence within hundreds of kilometres. Intelligence did pick up on Yamamoto’s movements around 1700, but they still did not know what Yamamoto’s battle plan was. What they did know was that the Imperial Navy lurked nearby…

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LVI: Power of Production, March 1944

By March 1944, the US Navy was by far the largest navy in the world, and nowhere was this more obvious than in the Central Pacific. US Task Force 39 had included more than half of the major American ships in the theatre since the invasion of Wake, and had been continually reinforced throughout the past year. By the time Yamamoto left Tokyo Bay in preparation for the decisive battle, which both sides knew would be fought somewhere near, probably north of, Japan’s major base at Truk, Task Force 39 had grown to a truly staggering size.
Yamamoto had long believed that in the decisive battle he would be facing around six to eight American carriers, and felt that his own eleven would give him the advantage in a battle that would likely be fought entirely in the air, with neither side’s ships seeing each other. Had Yamamoto considered only full-sized fleet carriers, he would have accurately guessed Spruance’s strength of seven: two veterans of the campaigns of 1942 in Saratoga and Hornet, and five newer carriers (Essex, Lexington, Yorktown, Bunker Hill and Intrepid), four of which had seen their first major action at Wake.
Spruance’s total carrier force grew to twenty-five decks once smaller ships were also counted. These included seven Independence-class light carriers (Independence, Princeton, Belleau Wood, Cowpens, Monterey, Langley and Cabot), and a further eleven escort carriers (Sangamon, Suwannee, Chenango, Santee, Casablanca, Liscombe Bay, Corregidor, Port Moresby, Timor, Fiji and New Caledonia).

Japanese intelligence efforts also greatly underestimated the strength of the American battle line, believing most of it to have been sunk at Pearl Harbour and several more lost in the actions of 1942. Yamamoto’s ten battleships were more than enough for the three or four Americans he expected to encounter, but only gave him parity with Spruance’s surface fleet, which was made up of the Pennsylvania, Tennessee, California, North Carolina, South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts, Alabama, Iowa and New Jersey.
Spruance could also call upon eight heavy cruisers and seven light, to Yamamoto’s seven and two respectively. Fifty-two destroyers would provide escort for the fleet, which also included a huge number of tankers, minesweepers, other supporting vessels and the landing craft that would allow 30,000 Marines to storm ashore and capture Truk.
Only in submarines did Yamamoto have a clear advantage, with no fewer than fifteen patrolling the waters north and east of Truk, where the battle was set to take place. American intelligence had yet to discover any major Japanese plans for the battle, forcing Spruance to guess Yamamoto’s strategy, but the signals teams had managed to intercept several orders describing the intended positions of many of these submarines. Efforts to sink those submarines that were known by March 15th proved unsuccessful however, as most were out of position. Yamamoto had hoped to ambush the American fleet before it could reach the Carolines, instead the only notable occurrence that day happened when the I-22 sank as a result of an accident.

One of Spruance’s submarines, the Paddle, had spotted part of the Japanese fleet shortly after it left port at Palau, finally confirming that this was going to be the battle that the Japanese had been waiting for. No-one among the American high command had any doubt that they would be fighting almost the entire Imperial Navy, and while intelligence was correct in believing that the Americans had a numerical advantage, the advantage was not so great as to allow the fleet to be recklessly divided into small groups.
Keeping the entire fleet together as one gargantuan mass would not be ideal either. At least until the invasion force could be landed and the transports unloaded, the advantage of mobility would lie with the Japanese. Any ships committed to the invasion, most importantly those tasked with protecting the vast transport and cargo fleet, would be forced to stay fairly close to Truk. Ships not directly assigned to the Truk mission would still need to stay within a few hundred kilometres of the island, in case Yamamoto struck the invasion fleet with his full force, in order to make supporting that fleet possible. The Japanese on the other hand had complete freedom to move throughout the Central Pacific before making their move. Intelligence had picked up on a major reaction in Tokyo after the sinking of two tankers at the end of the previous year, but the thought of the Japanese running out of fuel mid-battle was never taken seriously. Truk was in the very centre of the Japanese Empire. It was unthinkable that they would not be able to fight here.

Spruance thus decided to split his forces into two major groups. The first group (TF 39.1) was placed under Admiral Richmond Turner, who was tasked with protecting the invasion force and ensuring Truk was captured. As this force could not be moved without dooming the landing effort, the three slower battleships (Pennsylvania, Tennessee and California) were assigned to the force, in a conscious effort to avoid making the same mistake that had doomed Halsey in the previous great battle. If everything went according to plan, the battleships would not need to do anything more than provide gunfire support to the invasion, which was to be conducted in accordance with MacArthur’s suggestions. In the event that Yamamoto attempted to destroy the invasion force, battleship fire would be directed at any Japanese ships that came within range. As these would likely be surface vessels, Turner was also assigned four fast battleships, the Indiana, Massachusetts, Alabama and New Jersey. The eleven escort carriers, to slow to be attached to the main battle fleet, would provide air cover to the group, which was also assigned three heavy and three light cruisers.
Having extensively studied Yamamoto’s previous battles, off New Caledonia and the South Pacific, Spruance felt confident that once again it would be the carriers that decided the battle, and in all likelihood his opponent would target them at the first opportunity. Placing his second group (TF 39.2) under Admiral Marc Mitscher, Spruance concentrated the best of his carrier force into a huge strike force. The seven smaller decks were filled with fighters and ordered to maintain a massive combat air patrol; the seven large carriers (including Spruance’s flagship, the Saratoga) would hunt the Imperial Navy’s best ships.
Although three battleships and a swarm of smaller surface vessels were part of this group, Spruance was determined to avoid a surface battle if at all possible. The Japanese surface fleet had proven itself time and again to be a fearsome opponent, and the US Navy had come off second best many of those times. Mitscher was given orders to retreat to the east if the Japanese attempted to engage the carriers in a gunnery duel. This fight was to be decided in the skies. Judging by the atrocious performance given by Japanese airmen over the past year, Spruance was confident of a decisive victory.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LVII: Decisive Battle, March 1944

The dawn of March 17th, 1944, heralded the beginning of yet another great amphibious operation. ‘Crossbones’ would seek to capture several key islands that made up the Truk Lagoon in the centre of the Caroline islands, finally defeating Japan’s most valuable bastion in the Central Pacific. Truk had been home to large parts of the Imperial Fleet at various times during the war, and had been the launching point of a wide range of offensives, directed against Rabaul, Port Moresby, the Solomons and Fiji. The time had come for revenge.
The rivalry between the Japanese Army and Navy had become such a massive issue in no small part due to each side’s belief in how the eastern defensive perimeter should be handled, and Truk had been at the very centre of this dispute. Radio communications between the two services had been frequent and angry, but the Japanese had not known that Allied intelligence was intercepting the overwhelming majority of them. Ten months of argument had allowed them to put together a very detailed picture of the defences around the lagoon, given to America’s leading admirals as they planned the invasion. Much to Yamamoto’s frustration, the forces allocated to Truk were underwhelming considering the value the region had to the Japanese. Including a recent reinforcement effort, just 7000 Japanese soldiers were available to defend the base. They were to be opposed by a force four times their number.
Around 0600, the Marines began to land. Supported by the gunfire of seven battleships and a range of smaller vessels, they quickly secured beachheads on many of the islands, while airstrikes launched from Spruance’s carriers destroyed gun emplacements and other installations across the atoll. The airstrip on Eten island, the smallest of the three around Truk, was quickly put out of action, as were three of the four radar stations in the area. Several squadrons of Zeroes scrambled to oppose the American bombers, but the novice pilots manning them proved no match for the Hellcats and Corsairs serving as escorts. But as the dogfight raged on and the Marines were held up on the eastern coast of Moen island, eight Japanese recon planes got off the ground. Two were spotted and soon shot down. The others went off to find the American fleet, no matter the cost.

Four hundred kilometres to the northwest, Yamamoto was carefully monitoring the situation from on board the Musashi. Truk, the Americans’ invasion target, would be the most important part of his plan during the battle. As long as Japanese forces were still fighting on the islands, a part of the American fleet would have to operate nearby or their vast array of transport ships, most still loaded with supplies for the Marines, would be exposed. If reports from the ground were accurate, at least five American battleships were providing fire support to the invading troops, which after Pearl Harbour and subsequent losses, was sure to be their entire battle line. Yamamoto took this as evidence that the Americans were not properly prepared for a battle.
Truk was essential to the Japanese plans for another reason. Only very few of his ships were equipped with radar sets, so the sole surviving radar station on the ground would be very important in locating Allied aircraft. Failing that, he would be relying on reconnaissance aircraft, and with most of his carriers loaded with as many fighters and bombers as could be crammed into the hangars, it would fall to the planes based at Truk’s three (now two effective) airfields to locate the US fleet. In the mid-morning, they did just that, spotting several of Spruance’s carriers about 200 kilometres east-north-east of Truk. When Yamamoto was given the report, he immediately noticed a problem: there were many more American carriers than he had expected to fight. Yet this was the decisive battle: the American force had to be crushed no matter how large. There was no opportunity to rethink the plans now. This was the time to act.

Keeping only a minimal force of fighters back in reserve, Yamamoto ordered his planes into the sky. Their orders were simple: to fly directly towards where the American carriers had just been located, and to deliver an all-out attack. Surface vessels were to be ignored, left for a second air strike or a massive battleship battle. Only by disabling the American carriers could Yamamoto ensure that his fleet would not be exposed to potentially devastating retaliation.
Yamamoto’s strategy was more sophisticated than merely hitting hardest and fastest. Six hundred kilometres to the south, Admiral Nagumo commanded a second Japanese force containing four smaller carriers (the Hiyo, Junyo, Chiyoda and Chitose) and a handful of surface ships. Currently far to the south of Truk, Nagumo was tasked with staying out of sight of the Americans long enough to reach the eastern part of the Caroline island chain. Yamamoto and Yamaguchi would engage the main body of the American fleet with the bulk of Japan’s carrier forces, while the battleships pushed forward in the hopes that they could force the Americans into a choice of two bad options. Either they engage the Japanese surface fleet, where they would be promptly crushed by the three Yamatos, or they would retreat away from the battleships. This would lead them towards the southeast, where Nagumo would be waiting to ambush them. Once the main American fleet had been destroyed, those ships supporting the invasion of Truk would be easy pickings for the Combined Fleet.

***

On board the Saratoga, Admiral Spruance’s command had fast become a scene of chaos. The Japanese carriers had found him before he had found them, and now he had to face the full force of Yamamoto’s finest airmen. Radar had given the carriers a fair amount of warning, but many of his carriers had been receiving planes returning from the morning’s raids on Truk when the alerts came in, leaving the defences less powerful than he would have liked.
His radio operator looked up, wearing an expression that told Spruance the news would be bad. “Sir, we’ve lost at least twenty fighters from the northern carriers alone.”
“Veterans.” Spruance muttered. “Just when we thought we’d cleared them out for good.”
“Admiral Mitscher is reporting that the Princeton and Cowpens have suffered heavy damage,” the radio operator said.
“Any word on the Jap carriers?” Spruance asked.
“No sir,” the operator replied.
“Tell Marc to find them,” Spruance ordered. “and I’ll want a counterattack ready to be launched when he does.”
“Yes sir,” the operator said.
After a moment, a loud explosion shook the carrier. Somewhere to the north, Yamamoto had just sunk yet another American ship.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LVIII: Expectation of Victory, March 1944

Two hours after the decisive battle began, one of the war’s fiercest dogfights was being waged above the flight deck of the Bunker Hill. Positioned furthest west among Spruance’s seven major carriers, it was the first authorised target that many Japanese pilots saw. That the North Carolina was nearby, firing anti-air shells off as quickly as they could be loaded, did not appear to concern the Japanese in the slightest.
The Zero, by most accounts, was obsolescent by 1944. Woefully under-armoured and outgunned, the sole advantage it had left over its opposition was manoeuvrability, and against a Hellcat or Corsair, even this edge was becoming less decisive. In the hands of an average pilot, it would have had no hope against the American defences. Instead, the Zeroes were being crewed by the most well-trained pilots in the world. Half of them were veterans of Pearl Harbour or the actions in the South Pacific. Nearly all had spent every drop of fuel Japan could spare shooting down swarms of antiquated Chinese aircraft.
The result of having nothing better than the Zero was heavy Japanese casualties. Even though the American pilots had become used to fighting the Army’s incompetent airforce, it took only a well positioned round or two to tear through the Zero’s fragile body and send the aircraft plunging to the ground. Yet that did not mean that the threat was over: by Yamaguchi’s order, any pilot who was unable to bring his plane back to its carrier was to instead ram his aircraft into the nearest enemy warship, effectively turning it into a human-guided suicide missile. It was one of these ramming attacks, soon to become known as the kamikaze, that sealed the fate of the Bunker Hill.

***

Admiral Spruance looked again at the map he had pinned to the nearby door, and frowned. The first Japanese strike had taken out four carriers. Sure, three of them had been mere light carriers, and most of the sailors and airmen had been rescued, but the strike had done a lot more damage than anyone in the American high command had thought the Japanese capable of. If intelligence was to be believed, Yamamoto had no fuel, half of Japan trying to murder him and an air force that had been finished off a year ago. Under those conditions, four carriers sunk was unthinkable. Without even considering the Essex and Yorktown, which had both been damaged in the assault as well.
Amongst the apparent disaster, there was some good news. Admiral Mitscher’s scout planes had located a part of the Japanese fleet, four hundred kilometres to the northwest. As the last of the Zeroes, and those new Japanese bombers, had departed around midday, there was nothing to harass the Helldivers and Avengers as they took off from the undamaged carriers. Furthermore, pilot losses from the first wave looked to have been about even, possibly heavier for the Japanese. Considering the apparent skill of this group of Japanese pilots, the Americans were doing well.

***

The American counterattack struck the Japanese fleet at just after 1500, barely twenty minutes after Yamamoto had sent off his own second wave, and it did not take long for the flaws of the Japanese plan to become apparent. Yamamoto, who had focused virtually all of his strength into his offensive punches, had left his forces inadequately protected against an American reaction that he had not expected until at least the second day of battle. The forty or so fighter pilots tasked with keeping the Americans away from his fleet had been chosen precisely because they were deemed to be the least experienced of all those on board (though they were still far better than the pitiful standard of Army airmen). Without an extensive radar network (Yamamoto was relying on the battleship Ise and a handful of radar-equipped scout planes) to provide early warning, the only other available defences were two old battleships – the Fuso and Yamashiro, that had been loaded with dozens upon dozens of anti-air guns, earning them the nicknames “the floating porcupines”. Had these 25mm guns been anything approaching effective, they might have made a difference; as things were, they were more of a nuisance than a threat.
As Hellcats were dispatched to keep the Japanese patrols away, the American bombers began striking any Japanese ship they could see. Instead of ordering that his crews specifically target carriers, Spruance had authorised that any Japanese ships be targeted. If the decisive battle turned out to be fought purely in the air, he was risking a stronger Japanese aerial response in the future. Instead, he predicted that Yamamoto would at some point attempt to force a surface battle, an especially dangerous prospect considering Admiral Turner could not easily move his forces away from Truk, and sinking surface ships now would give him the advantage then.

***

With his fighters unable to hold the American attack wave back, Yamamoto could only watch as bomber after bomber attempted to sink the Musashi. This was not the first time he had been a part of such an attempted sinking: a year and a half ago he had been on board the Yamato off the coast of New Caledonia. The American bombers were better this time around, but it would still take a lot of bombs to destroy over seventy thousand tons of steel.
The radio reports soon flowed in, each one from a ship that had received one too many bombs. First the Oi and Tenryu, light cruisers that had seen extensive action throughout the war. Then the Aoba, one of the last surviving heavy cruisers in the Imperial Navy. Eight destroyers were also sunk, reducing the escort group for this part of the fleet to just nineteen. Nagato and Fuso both reported moderate damage, but it did not appear that any of Japan’s battleships were out of action yet. Akagi was the worst loss of all, one of just three surviving Pearl Harbour veterans, while the light carrier Unyo ensured Akagi would not sink alone.
The grand admiral felt his chances had improved when the Americans departed and his own aircraft returned, bearing news of another round of sinkings. One of the two large American carriers that had been damaged in the morning had been finished off, and a further light carrier sunk (the Americans knew that these were the Essex and Cabot respectively). Yet the two strikes had cost Yamamoto nearly 120 airmen combined, and a further thirty-one had been killed defending the fleet from the American attack. Such losses could not be sustained for very long, or there would be no-one left to claim victory.
No-one, except perhaps the Americans...

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LIX: Devastation, March 1944

When dusk made further air strikes impossible, Admiral Spruance ordered his ships to move to the southwest. The ground invasion of Truk was going better than expected, as Admiral Turner’s bombers had knocked out all the major Japanese airstrips, and several important islands had been captured. Only on Dublon island, home to the largest docks and storage facilities, and now it seemed the most anti-aircraft guns as well, had the Marines been held up in any significant way. Even there, the Japanese garrison was pinned down. After the previous day’s losses, Spruance’s priority was getting as many fighters as possible over his carriers, and now that the situation on Truk was under control, the slower escort carriers could finally play an important part in the naval action.
At dawn the following day, both sides launched their next strikes. The Americans had located the Japanese fleet first, which was now almost due north of their position, but as had been the case the previous afternoon, they were not fast enough to prevent Yamamoto from launching his own bombers. Yet the first loss of the day was not caused by aircraft at all: while the carriers were launching planes, the Japanese submarine I-26 had found the American fleet, and aimed a pair of torpedoes at the light cruiser Biloxi. Both missed, but two nearby American destroyers were alerted to the submarine’s presence. Within minutes, the submarine was sunk.
Spruance’s airstrike proved just as devastating as the depth charges that sank the I-26. With a quarter of his pilots killed the previous day, and another quarter sailing with Nagumo far to the south, Yamamoto was already feeling the lack of aircrews. Once again, the attack received the priority, leaving just thirty Zeroes to defend the five carriers in the area.
Spruance had sent nearly one hundred fighters to meet them, all but guaranteeing that the American bombers would get through and do some damage. With more than 300 Helldivers, SBDs and Avengers in the attacking force, there was a lot of damage to be done. The two surviving carriers from Pearl Harbour, the Hiryu and Shokaku, were among the first targets hit, exploding into balls of flame within minutes of each other. The Nagato, which had suffered moderate damage the previous day, was also sunk, and her sister ship Mutsu’s steering system was knocked out by a well-placed American torpedo. Anti-air fire once again proved ineffective, and when the survivors of the Japanese air strike returned in the late morning, there were not enough carriers to land them all on. Only Taiho and two small decks were left.

***

“Sir, these are the reported sinkings from the morning’s attack,” a lieutenant said as he passed the piece of paper to Grand Admiral Yamamoto.
Yamamoto looked over the report quickly. Two more of those small American carriers had been sunk east of Truk, which didn’t even come close to making up for today’s losses so far, which by now were confirmed to include two more heavy cruisers and four destroyers in addition to the battleships and carriers.
“This all happened within a hundred and fifty kilometres of Truk?” Yamamoto asked.
“Yes, sir!” the lieutenant said.
“Then Nagumo is out of position.” Yamamoto realised. “Lieutenant, send Nagumo a message ordering him to change his course north towards the island of Namoluk.”
As the lieutenant left, Yamamoto thought back to the radio silence order he had given Nagumo more than four days earlier. “No matter,” he said, “the Americans won’t find him.”
“Sir, did you say something?” another junior officer asked as he appeared in the doorway.
“No.” Yamamoto said at once. “What do you have for me?”
“Two messages, sir. First is that the Yokosuka Guard Battalion have intercepted an Army force not far from the naval base.”
That would be about the Emperor, Yamamoto remembered at once.
“Second is that the Americans – we think it was a submarine – have sunk the oiler Kyuei Maru.”
“Damn them!” Yamamoto shouted, bringing out a phrase he had not used much since his time in America many years ago.
“Sir?” the officer asked.
“That tanker was still fully loaded.” Yamamoto explained.

***

Admiral Spruance was reviewing his own losses. If his pilots had reported correctly, they had taken out a good part of the Japanese strength with only light losses of their own. 33 aircraft, although some of the crews had been saved. One of Turner’s escort carriers, the Chenango , which had been operating north of his main fleet, and a few destroyers. By the looks of things the Japanese had lost far more than that today – there hadn’t been much left of the striking force when the bombers had turned off to the northwest.
“Sir, we’ve intercepted an important Japanese radio message. There’s a second fleet coming for you from the south.” An intelligence officer said as he rushed into the room.
“What do we know about this fleet?” Spruance asked. “Where is it?”
“We’re not exactly sure yet, sir.” The officer said. “What we do know is that it is under the command of Admiral Nagumo, and that he has been ordered to change course northeast, towards the island of Namoluk.”
Spruance looked at a nearby map of the Caroline islands. Namoluk was due south of his current position. “Any information on the size of the fleet?”
“We think it is likely to contain all of the major Japanese assets not already known to be under Yamaguchi’s command to the north, sir. Four carriers and likely some smaller surface units.”
“Very well. Thank you.” Spruance said, dismissing the officer.
Next to his map of the Caroline islands, Spruance had the morning’s weather report. Information was limited and likely to be inaccurate, this was deep in Japanese territory after all, but it was thought that there was a cold front somewhere to the south of Namoluk, which was likely shielding Nagumo’s fleet from attack. Spruance pulled a small notepad out of his pocket and made a note.
Sink Nagumo when the weather clears to the south.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

LX: Shattering the Sword, March 1944

Late in the decisive battle’s second day, Spruance’s bombers returned for their third attempt to destroy Yamamoto’s carrier fleet for good. The two previous strikes, and Yamamoto’s own efforts to destroy the Americans, had quickly whittled down Japan’s last supply of well-trained pilots. What had begun as a rather threatening five hundred or so was now reduced to a paltry 175. The vast majority of them were far to the south under Nagumo’s command, where a desperate strike was planned for the following morning. Barely fifty Zeroes would protect the three Japanese carriers north of Truk.
Spruance’s orders to direct a maximum of fire towards the Japanese carriers represented a shift in the Allied strategy to win the battle. On day one, all of the senior American admirals had judged it possible, even likely, that Yamamoto would repeat his aggressive moves to force a surface battle, that had worked so well for him in the battle of the South Pacific. Doing so would require him to direct most of his forces to the south, whereas it appeared as though they were moving much more to the east. If the Japanese did not intend to close in with their battleships, then Spruance hoped that wiping out their carrier fleet would be sufficient to make the Japanese retreat. Judging by the panicked radio messages that kept being intercepted, they wouldn’t have the fuel to come back for another fight.

The Taiho, by far the largest of the three carriers, naturally attracted the most attention from the American bomber pilots. While Zero after Zero was swept from the skies by Spruance’s Coarsairs, Helldivers and Avengers pounded the new carrier. Three torpedo hits were recorded before the chaos of battle made it impossible to continue making accurate records. The Taiho’s armoured flight deck, built to resist a single direct hit, proved resilient for a time as bomb after bomb struck the ship, but when a great fire broke out in the lower decks, there was no saving it. Yet the cruellest irony of all came from a stricken Helldiver, which was crashed into the port side of the carrier. It killed Admiral Yamaguchi instantly, ending the life of a man who just days earlier had given an order requiring doomed Japanese pilots to do just that to the Americans.
Ryujo’s sinking was much less dramatic, as the small ship suffered just two bomb hits before falling victim to a fire no less devastating than that on the Taiho. The Taiyo escaped destruction only because it had initially been positioned as the northernmost of Yamamoto and Yamaguchi’s seven carriers, far from the two that had just been sunk and thus well out of the way for the Americans that had been struggling to locate it. Almost completely devoid of aircraft, and deemed too little of a threat to launch a separate strike against, the Taiyo had become a sad reminder of what the Imperial Navy had become.

***

In Tokyo, the Navy’s effort to “liberate” the Emperor could not have gone better. Just three Army guards had been tasked with moving the Emperor from his last location to some new one, yet more evidence that “Marshal” Sugiyama had grown lazy after months of absolute power. Against a company of the Navy’s most loyal soldiers, they had stood no chance in the brief fight that erupted. Two were shot, one stabbed through the heart, while none of the Navy’s men suffered serious injuries. An Army flag was ripped from the side of the car, before the battalion’s captain took control of the vehicle and had it driven to the Imperial Palace.
Once there, the utmost of urgency was given to the creation of a new government. Generals Sugiyama and Doihara were removed from their positions, effective immediately. Ex-Prime Minister Yonai was invited to return to his old position, and as soon as he accepted he passed on Yamamoto’s recommendation that General Terauchi be given the Army’s top job. All of the Army’s Imperial Guard units were dismissed, although civilian police units remained and new formations were raised from Navy ranks. Terauchi promptly sent his ex-Guards to the frontlines in China, where a new offensive aimed at taking control of several key railroads was about to begin.
At the end of the reorganisation, the Emperor spoke up again. “Do we know where Yamamoto is?”
“We believe he is still fighting the decisive battle with the Americans somewhere in the Central Pacific, Your Majesty.” IJN Chief Admiral Mikawa said.
“If he hasn’t won it yet, get him out of there. That man knows more about our enemies than anyone else. We can’t afford to have him die on my behalf.”

Even after the Emperor’s restoration and Sugiyama’s regime being toppled, the Navy knew that Japan’s latest coup was not yet complete. Sugiyama had repeatedly proven himself to be a capable adversary, and after months of ruling Japan, he was sure to have many followers that would seek to restore him. The only way to stop them was to make such a restoration impossible, with Sugiyama’s own method of choice. After the assassination of so many leading Navy figures, the time for revenge was at hand.
Sugiyama was located by a group of Navy agents within six hours of him being removed from his post, and shot dead without the slightest hesitation. The body was then dragged into a nearby alley and burnt, before being tossed into Tokyo Bay later that night.
His deputy, Kenji Doihara, was determined not to fall into Navy hands as well, knowing fully well that he would be killed if they ever saw him again. Instead, he fled to a nearby airfield and ordered that he be flown to Hsinking at once. In the heart of the Kwantung Army’s stronghold, he was surrounded by political allies and far from the Navy’s reach, free to continue running the great criminal enterprises he had built up in the region. The task of capturing him would fall to the Red Army as they stormed into Manchuria late in 1945.

- BNC