Battle Of The Philippine Sea 1944

[jainso31]

Said to be the last great carrier battle in WW2.What was the catalyst for this
USN success? What was the dividend gained as a whole from this winning encounter?

jainso31





http://www.olive-drab.com/od_history_ww2_ops_battles_1944philippsea.php

[John Odom]

The most important factor was that we had broken the Japanese naval code and knew what they were going to do, and tracked the ships from the beginning.

The dividend was the total destruction of Japanese carrier aviation as a fighting force.

Another instance of the Japanese reliance on the Mahon doctrine of a decisive naval battle, only it decided in the Allies favor!

[jainso31]

Many thanks John for your erudite reply; and for your interest in this famous sea battle;but I feel there is more to tell about the "modus operandi"

jainso31

[Tiornu]

The Japanese strategy for a Pacific war was to inflict a debilitating amount of attrition during the American advance. Unfortunately for the IJN, it was Japanese forces that suffered attrition while the Americans grew progressively stronger despite their losses. The airmen that flew off Japan's carriers in the Philippine Sea were second-rate at best. In addition, the American use of radar in air defense was so advanced that the enemy literally never understood what was going on. If attack planes in 1942 had a rough go, trying to survive after being intercepted within visual range of the target, imagine what it was like for Japanese pilots getting intercepted a hundred miles away from the target.
It's good for the Americans that they had these great advantages, because Ozawa had Spruance maneuvered into a corner. If there had been any sort of parity, Spruance would have gotten hammered.

[jainso31]

Welcome back Tiornu,I take your point about radar;but what about the US aircraft and the manner in which they were deployed. Was there not a phase called the Mariannas Turkey Shoot? Was radar entirely responsible for this catastrophic mauling of the japanese fighters?
PS I shall return anon.
jainso31

[Tiornu]

The results of the battle are mind-boggling. In the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," the Japanese lost 476 planes with 445 airmen, while the Americans lost 130 planes (only fifty in combat) with 76 airmen. The loss of three Japanese carriers is almost a footnote by comparison. The fleet's next sortie (Leyte Gulf) included only 116 carrier planes.

[jainso31]

Yes by four strikes by which US navy fighter and how were they assisted ,other than by radar? As you said the USN had the drop on them all the way

[Tiornu]

We can also mention fighter vectoring, which was rather an iffy thing for the Japanese. Zekes had problems with their radios. The Americans got to be pretty good at fighter vectoring, thanks in part to input from the British. I'm not certain exactly what the British input was, but it probably had something to do with simplification. I think the tendency among the Americans had been to micromanage the pilots.

[jainso31]

I did not quite follow how it was that "Ozawa had manoevred Spruance into a corner"? I do however ,agree that the Grumman F6F Hellcat V Mitsubishi Zeke was a "no contest"-pilots being equal.Is fighter vectoring the same as a Ground Control, as seen in the Battle of Britain?

jainso31

[Tiornu]

The Hellcat was a superior plane, but the Zeke was still respectable. It was the quality disparity in pilots, not planes, that made such a difference.
Yes, fighter vectoring is directing the interceptors to the proper place.
Spruance got himself pinned between Ozawa and the land bases. He had his reasons for doing what he did, but if the Japanese airmen had been competent, they would have made him pay. Spruance's counter-attack against Ozawa was awfully weak. How many hits did the American pilots score?

[John Odom]

Except for our advance knowledge of the Japanese plan and the superior training of our pilots the battle could have turned the other way.

[jainso31]

My research indicates that F6F Hellcat was about 30-35mph better than Zeke
and was also armed with iX20mm cannon and 2X50calibre m/c guns in each wing and was much more ruggedly built.
Mitchners strike accounted for two oilers and a carrier plus65 planes-the USN
lost 17 planes in combat; but a horrendous 87 ran out of fuel and had to ditch; but most pilots were retrieved.
Are you referring to Spruance calling off the pursuit of Ozawa weak?
To my mind the whole mission led to the capture of the Marianas, which included Tinian-destined to become the strike base for B29 raids on Tokyo etc.

jainso31

[jainso31]

But John,the fact remains that the USN did have advance knowledge of the Japanese plans; and yes the USN pilots were better trained-the tide had turned at Midway and was still turning,

jainso31

[Tiornu]

Spruance basically sat there and let the Japanese make all the moves. Only very late did he take any sort of aggressive action. This was because he didn't know what the Japanese intended to do, and he was concerned that fast surface units would scoot around him and hit the invasion fleet. After the battle, there was considerable discontent in the USN that an opportunity had been lost. This helped cause Halsey to be overly aggressive in the next engagement, Leyte Gulf, and his orders there were written specifically to give him latitude in aggressively go after the enemy.

[jainso31]

Tiornu
I accept what you say- but I the way I uhderstand this operation, the USN were aware of the Japanese plans-that being the case why "didn't he Know what the Japanese intended to do"? Was he outside the loop?
Sorry- but you will I hope,be more explicit about Spruance not knowing what the Japanese were going to do-nowhere in the text is that even inferred.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_A._Spruance















.

[Tiornu]

I don't think I can be more explicit. Spruance didn't know if the Japanese would attempt to send fast units toward the invasion fleet.

[jainso31]

OK Tiornu- sorry that you could not further expand further on the subject but I thank you for your interest and input.By the way didn't Halsey take off on a wild goose chase; and leave Spruance to the mercies of the IJN in the next engagement? I understand that he was critised "for not being sufficiently aggressive" at Leyte Gulf; but not the battle in dicussion here.

jainso31

[Tiornu]

Spruance and Halsey were tag-team partners. They alternated command of the same units. Spruance was not at Leyte. You may be thinking of Sprague. Yes, Halsey was thoroughly snookered into doing exactly what he wanted to do, which was to charge the Japanese carriers with everything he had. But as I mentioned before, the Japanese carriers had few aircraft, and the pilots were so poorly trained that they didn't bother copming back to their ship after they made their strike; they flew to land bases. The carriers were just decoys so the battleships could get past Halsey and into Leyte Gulf.
There were no more fleet engagements after this, because the Japanese didn't have much of a fleet remaining.

[jainso31]

Post 15 link indicates he was at Leyte; and it was here, that he was criticised for a lack of aggressiveness-be that as it may,I always thought,like you that they were rivals.As it turned out it was Spruance and not Bull who succeeded Nimitz.Returning to the thread-these two USN Admirals were remarkable and were worthy of their fame.
After Midway it was downhill all the way for the IJN but in hindsight,Tiornu,
what could they have done differently-obviously quite a lot BUT WHAT in your opinion.? You presumably are navy, whereas I am a civilian.

jainso31

[Tiornu]

Anything saying Spruance was at Leyte Gulf is simply wrong, and dramatically so. I understand his caution at Philippine Sea, but his critics held that he should have met the enemy head-on. Certainly the Japanese would have suffered greater losses in ships.
The USN was suffering some Halsey-fatigue by 1945, due to Leyte Gulf and the two hurricane incidents. Not to mention the usual USN politics.

[jainso31]

I accept what you say about Spruance and Leyte, because I do not know better.The point is of course irrelevant and matters little now.I keep thinking about what happened at Midway, where the whole weight of IJN air came down to massacre Torpedo 8; and left the upper skies clear for the divebombers.The what if here is, would a firmer control over over the fighters, have lessened the ultimate loss suffered by the IJN?
jainso31

[Don Boyer]

An interesting thread on the Philippine Sea battle. Barrett Tillman has a new book out that covers the points discussed here very well -- "Clash of the Carriers." William T. Y'Blood's "Red Sun Setting" also provides excellent historical coverage of the battle as well as analysis. Tillmann goes into great detail on the success factors of the American side of the battle.

The Japanese plan, to launch aircraft out of range of American retaliation and to use the weather gauge, plus use the bases at Guam as refueling bases was a pretty good plan, except for a few minor details -- the American carriers could not only fight the Japanese carriers, they could cover the land bases like a blanket and few Japanese planes survived either encounter.

Spruance, despite his victory at Midway, and his experience with carrier aviation, was still a somewhat conservative thinker when it came to deploying airpower. He was concerned that the Japanese were quite capable of splitting forces and making some kind of "end around" that would allow them to attack the amphibious shipping at Saipan while the other carriers dealt with the US carrier Task Force. Thus he tied his carriers to "covering" the island invasion -- his primary directive was to support the landings -- instead of going bald-headed for Ozawa's carrier forces. He should have done so.

If there was an error here, it was that you coudn't really pull off an "end around" or flanking attack with 15 aircraft carriers deploying aircraft all around.
The old battleship adage of "concentration of force" was still the prime directive of many admiral's thinking, including Spruance. They didn't exactly modernize that thinking by including the rest of the directive, "at the point of attack." The US carrer task force was powerful enough to concentrate superior force against the enemy even if it had been broken into two main groups. The same applied even more at Leyte, where proper disposition of carriers and battleships would have provided superior force at ALL the points of attack. The fleet had gotten that big and that powerful, but the Admirals, in this case Halsey, were too old school to see it. Call it conservative, or whatever, it botched the Leyte engagement even though we still won every phase of the battle.

The superior performance of the US carriers at the Philippine Sea battle is very evident in radar control, fighter direction, superior tactics in the air, and most importantly, superb ship handling of the deck launches and recoveries. When the first Japanese raid came in, the carriers put up hundreds of F6Fs in twenty minutes.

Japanese thinking was that Saipan could not be lost to the enemy, thus they had to attack with the navy. Unfortunately, to do so was tantamount to suicide, as Tillmann points out.

[jainso31]

Many thanks Don for your excellent summing up,especialy expanding the BIG picture-being a cmparative neophyte at this, I need the education.I
found the Spruance/Halsey "relationship" intrigueing and it could have caused more damage than it did.
Thanks again for your interest and input.

jainso31

[Tiornu]

Great overview, Dan. I should mention one other book, The Battle of the Philippine Sea by David Dickson. [David would kick me if I failed to mention it.] It was written decades ago, but it still stands up well. In fact, as it directly addresses USN and IJN doctrine, it may be something jainso31 would want to track down.
And I neglected to mention before that I am not navy myself. I'm just a writer, in Missouri no less.

[jainso31]

Good afternoon or is it still morning in Missouri? I shall of course look for the book by David Dickson; but what I would like is,a complete history of the USN in the Pacific War at Sea-anything you would recommend to an "old deep coal mining engineer" to help him along the road to further
understanding?
This thread is now exhausted-but we will see what the morrow brings.
Thanks for all your help and encouragement-I do appreciate it.
PS My father was WW2 navy-all six years.

jainso31

[Tiornu]

My dad was army...so clearly something's wrong with me.
There are loads of books on the USN in WWII. You can try Two-Ocean War by Morison (who is the closest thing the USN had to an official historian), though obviously this covers both oceans. There's also The US Navy against the Axis by Vince O'Hara (who worked with David D and me on On Seas Contested); again, this covers both theaters, and it focuses solely on surface battles. Speaking of On Seas Contested, you may find that helpful; however, it is a reference book rather than a battle history. And, well, there are so many. You may want to go to Amazon and poke around there for a while.

[Don Boyer]

for jainso 31:

You can make no better start in an overall history of the US Navy in WWII than to start buying the 15 volume set of Samuel Eliot Morison's "History of US Naval Operations in World War II." Though written shortly after the war, it still stands the test of time, although of course many more modern historical information has modified a lot of what Morison wrote, not unexpected for someone writing immediately after the events -- Morison himself anticipated just such revisions in his introduction to the set. New volumes are being issued by the US Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD) with the same text as the originals, but new introductions by some of America's top war historians which provide new perspectives on the history of the naval war. USNI book prices tend to be a bit steep, and I am sure you can find cheaper volumes online with no problem. This set covers the entire war, of course, including the Atlantic, but you could start by getting only those that deal with the Pacific War if you wanted. There are single-volume Pacific War histories out there as well, but none with the in-depth coverage of Morison.

I would recommend one book above all others that will give you a great overall look at the carrier warfare of WWII in the Pacific -- "The Big E" by Edward P. Stafford. There is no book out there as well written and entertaining on the war of the big carriers. It covers the entire Pacific war from the flight deck of the most destructive warship in the history of the world, no mean feat for and "old" carrier.

Regards,

[jainso31]

Thank you both so much for your kind advice re.books for reference-it has been a pleasure having you both alongside ansd so onwards and upwards.

jainso31

[jainso31]

http://www.vf31.com/sorties/marianas_turkey_shoot.html

As an epitaph to the courageous pilots who took part,I have added a link to the day by day account of the Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot. Any comments will be welcome.

jainso31

[John Odom]

That was good, thanks for the link.!

[jainso31]

My pleasure John,the Philippine Sea battle had so many facets and vignettes-I had to choose one as a postscript:).

jainso31

[Don Boyer]

Very interesting vignettes from one of the light carriers. Glad you posted that!

Gives you an idea of just how the American fast carrier task forces had "matured" from just the year previously with effective radar fighter control, excellent combat tactics, and the ability to place massive numbers of aircraft where needed when they were needed. Note that even at the range the carriers were operating at, they could cover both the air attacks and Guam -- a fact whose significance wasn't quite grasped at the higher command levels with their worries about an "end around" by Japanese forces.

[jainso31]

Well Don I thought that it was such a magnificent effort by those Navy pilots
that I could allow it to go unnoticed-if I may, I would liken their spirit and tenacity, to our Battle of Britain pilots; but obviosly the " backdrop"was quite different.
Thanks again,Don for your observations cool:
PS. It must be way past your bedtime young man!
jainso31

[Don Boyer]

Lucky for me, I live in Hawaii -- it's 9:40 pm as I post this, 13 hours or so off GMT, so not so late for us old dudes....I happen to be re-reading Barrett Tillman's recent volume on the Battle of the Philippine Sea, "Clash of the Carriers" which is an outstanding look at the air battle from one of the top historians and authors in the field...highly recommend it to you. There are some parallels to the Battle of Britain, but in the Philippines battle it was the Japanese with their backs to the wall, and they lost. Fortunately for us the outcome was in our favor in the earlier battle.

[jainso31]

I guess I forgot you live in Hawaii-a good memory is not an attribute of the old.I did take up your suggestion of purchasing a copy of Morison's "Two Ocean War" which I am expecting any day; now the Spring Bank Holiday is over.
It 's just about 9am here; and been out into my rose garden to see how they have/Have not stood up to the recent rains-they've taken a battering but are looking fresh! On that note I'll close.:)

jainso31