Battle of the Philippine Sea

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of the Philippine Sea, fought on the 19th and the 20th of June 1944, was the largest carrier-to-carrier naval engagement in history. Twenty-four aircraft carriers and roughly 1,350 carrier-based aircraft clashed as American and Japanese forces collided in the waters west of the Mariana Islands. American aviators nicknamed the aerial slaughter the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. One pilot, returning from the carnage, was overheard saying: "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!" By the time the guns fell silent, the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost the bulk of its carrier air strength and would never replace it. How did a single two-day battle decide the fate of Japan's naval aviation? What decisions, accidents, and stolen secrets tipped the scale so overwhelmingly toward the Americans? And why did the victorious admiral face fierce criticism from his own officers even as he achieved a stunning result?

• 2. Stolen Plans

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  On the 31st of March 1944, Admiral Mineichi Koga climbed aboard a Kawanishi H8K flying boat and flew into a typhoon. His aircraft crashed, and Koga died. His chief of staff, Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, was in a companion plane carrying the Z Plan documents. Fukudome survived the crash, but his briefcase did not sink with the wreckage. Filipino guerillas recovered it and over the following weeks transported the papers to General Douglas MacArthur's Military Intelligence Service in Brisbane, Australia. The translated plans were then forwarded to Admiral Chester Nimitz in Honolulu and dispatched to fleet commanders in the Philippine Sea just weeks before the battle. Koga's successor, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, finalized his own plan, called Operation A-Go, in early June 1944. It changed very little from the Z Plan. The Americans, reading their copy, knew almost exactly what was coming. This intelligence windfall meant that when Toyoda committed the Japanese fleet, the U.S. Navy was not surprised. Spruance and his commanders understood the Japanese intended to draw the Fast Carrier Task Force into a decisive engagement rather than attack the landing fleet directly, a detail that would later shape every decision Spruance made.

• 3. Mismatched Pilots

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  Lieutenant Alexander Vraciu downed six Japanese dive bombers in a single mission on the 19th of June 1944. His feat was exceptional, but the gap in pilot quality that day ran much deeper than individual skill. Earlier carrier battles at Coral Sea, Midway, and the long Solomon Islands campaign of 1942-43 had stripped the Japanese Navy of its most experienced aviators. Reconstituting the carrier air groups after the Solomons campaign alone required nearly a full year. By June 1944, Japan had replacement pilots with inadequate flight hours and little or no combat experience. American pilots, by contrast, were often veterans. The aircraft gap was equally severe: the Japanese A6M Zero that had been a revelation in the early Pacific War was by 1944 underpowered, fragile, and obsolete. The D4Y "Judy" dive bomber, though fast, caught fire easily. American F6F Hellcats carried heavier armor, superior firepower, and a more powerful engine. When Japanese aircraft did break through to the American fleet, they faced another layer of defense: a top-secret anti-aircraft proximity fuze fitted to shipboard guns that dramatically increased the lethality of every shell fired. The Americans also used a radar-vectored combat air patrol system that intercepted attackers well before they reached the carriers, deploying fighters in layered formations at multiple altitudes. Against seasoned pilots flying better planes guided by better technology, the Japanese losses reached proportions that seemed almost unbelievable to those who witnessed them.

• 4. The Turkey Shoot

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  At 05:50 on the 19th of June, a single Mitsubishi Zero found Task Force 58, radioed its position, and was shot down by a picket destroyer. Within minutes, Japanese forces on Guam began launching aircraft for an attack. Thirty Hellcats from a U.S. carrier intercepted them while planes were still taking off from Orote Field. Thirty-five Japanese aircraft were shot down at the cost of one Hellcat. At 09:57, Mitscher spotted a massive inbound wave on radar and ordered all fighters into the air. The first Japanese carrier wave, 68 aircraft, was met at 10:36. Within minutes 25 were shot down, then 16 more. Of the 68, only a handful broke through to attack picket destroyers with no damage. The battleship South Dakota was the only American ship hit in the first wave, struck by a bomb that killed or injured over 50 men. The second wave, 107 aircraft, fared worse: 97 of the 107 were destroyed. A third raid of 47 aircraft suffered fewer losses but pressed no effective attack. The fourth Japanese wave, given wrong coordinates for the American fleet, couldn't find it. Stumbling toward Rota and Guam to refuel, these aircraft were intercepted over Orote Field by 27 Hellcats. Thirty of the 49 aircraft were shot down and the rest left too damaged to fly again. By day's end, Japanese losses exceeded 350 planes. About 30 American aircraft were lost. Naval aviation and anti-aircraft fire destroyed nearly 480 Japanese aircraft across the battle, with 346 carrier aircraft lost on the 19th of June alone.

• 5. Submarines Under the Fleet

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  At 08:16 on the 19th of June, the submarine USS Albacore maneuvered into position against the largest and newest carrier in the Japanese fleet: Taihō, Ozawa's own flagship. As Albacore prepared to fire, her fire-control computer failed. Lieutenant Commander James W. Blanchard decided to press the attack anyway, firing all six torpedoes in a single spread to compensate. Japanese pilot Sakio Komatsu, who had just launched from Taihō, spotted one incoming torpedo from the air and dived his aircraft into its path, sacrificing himself. A sixth torpedo struck the carrier on her starboard side and ruptured two aviation fuel tanks. The flooding was quickly contained, and Taihō seemed to recover. Then an inexperienced damage-control officer, hoping to clear the fumes, ran the ventilation system at full blast. Instead of venting the gas, he spread the fumes throughout the ship. At approximately 14:30 a spark from an electric generator ignited the accumulated vapors. The resulting explosions were catastrophic. Of a crew of 2,150, some 1,650 officers and men were lost. Meanwhile, USS Cavalla found the 25,675-ton carrier Shōkaku around noon and fired a spread of six torpedoes, three of which struck her starboard side. One hit the forward aviation fuel tanks directly above the main hangar. Aircraft refueling on her deck exploded into flames, ammunition cooked off, and burning fuel poured from shattered pipes. Within minutes a catastrophic explosion of built-up vapor blew the ship apart. She rolled over and sank north of the island of Yap, killing 1,263 men; 570 survived, including her captain, Hiroshi Matsubara.

• 6. Spruance's Choice

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  Arleigh Burke, Mitscher's chief of staff, recalled the tension plainly: "We knew we were going to have hell slugged out of us in the morning. We knew we couldn't reach them. We knew they could reach us." Burke and Mitscher had wanted to move Task Force 58 west through the night of the 18th of June to reach attack range by dawn. Rear Admiral Willis Lee, who had personally survived a confused night action off Guadalcanal, strongly opposed a night surface engagement, doubting his crews were ready for it. Mitscher sent his request to Spruance, who considered for an hour and then refused. Spruance was following orders from Nimitz that made protection of the Saipan invasion fleet the primary mission. He feared a Japanese diversionary feint would pull him away while a separate attack force struck the landing ships. His critics later argued he squandered the chance to destroy the entire Japanese Mobile Fleet. Admiral John Towers, a naval aviation pioneer and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, demanded Spruance be relieved; Nimitz refused. Admirals Kelly Turner and Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations, backed Spruance's judgment. The comparison with Admiral William Halsey at Leyte Gulf, four months later, became the enduring counterpoint: Halsey chased an actual Japanese decoy force, leaving the invasion fleet protected only by five small American ships that fought off a 23-ship Japanese fleet by sheer aggression. Spruance's conservative posture, whatever its cost in missed opportunities, kept his own carriers intact.

• 7. The Night Strike

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  At 15:12 on the 20th of June, a garbled message from an Enterprise search plane reported a sighting. By 15:40 the position was confirmed: the Japanese fleet was moving due west at 20 knots. It was at the outer limit of TF 58's strike range and daylight was running out. Mitscher launched 226 aircraft anyway. The strike force consisted of 95 Hellcat fighters (some carrying 500-pound bombs), 54 Avenger torpedo bombers, and 77 dive bombers including 51 Helldivers and 26 Dauntlesses. A third message arrived after the first group was already airborne: the fleet was farther away than reported. Mitscher canceled a second launch but did not recall the first. The aircraft found the Japanese fleet just before sunset. Only about 35 Japanese fighters were airborne to defend the fleet. The carrier Hiyō was hit by bombs and torpedoes from four Grumman Avengers from Belleau Wood, set afire by leaking aviation fuel, and sank stern-first with the loss of 250 officers and men. The carriers Zuikaku and two others were damaged. Returning American crews overestimated the harm, mistaking large water geysers from near-misses for direct hits. Then night fell on 226 aircraft that had burned most of their fuel attacking at extreme range. At 20:45 the first planes reached Task Force 58. Admiral Joseph J. Clark of his carrier decided to illuminate his ship, pointing searchlights skyward despite the submarine risk. Mitscher approved, and every ship in the task force lit up. Planes were cleared to land on any available deck. Even so, 80 aircraft were lost, the majority from fuel starvation. Roughly three-quarters of downed crews were rescued, either that night or by search planes and destroyers in the days that followed.

• 8. What Remained

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  Toyoda ordered the fleet to withdraw that night, and the battle was over. Across the four Japanese air strikes, 373 carrier aircraft had launched; 243 were destroyed, and many of the 130 that returned to carriers were subsequently lost when Taihō and Shōkaku sank. Counting two days of fighting, Japan lost three carriers, more than 350 carrier aircraft, and around 200 land-based aircraft. The Japanese had spent nearly a year rebuilding their carrier air groups after the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. In two days at the Philippine Sea, the American Fast Carrier Task Force destroyed 90 percent of what had been rebuilt. So few trained pilots survived that Japan could staff the air group of only one light carrier. Four months later at Leyte Gulf, the Japanese sent out a carrier decoy group with just 108 aircraft spread across six carriers (two of which were hybrid carriers), a force designed to be sacrificed rather than to fight. The surviving Japanese carriers spent the rest of the war largely in port. Japan turned instead toward kamikaze tactics, hoping that suicide attacks could inflict costs severe enough to force negotiated peace terms. In the five major carrier-versus-carrier battles from Coral Sea through Philippine Sea, the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost nine carriers; the U.S. Navy had lost three. The loss of Zuikaku at Leyte Gulf four months after Philippine Sea would leave Japan without a single operational fleet carrier, the last survivor of the force that had struck Pearl Harbor in December 1941.