Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

WAR AGAINST JAPAN
Two U.S. Navy task groups returned to Kyushu on March 28-29. Secondary
targets-airfields-were hit, “a familiar story” now, in Admiral
Sherman’s words. About 130 carrier planes hit air facilities at Kanoya and
eastern Kyushu and shipping at Kagoshima on the afternoon of the 28th.
Next day, from early morning, some 600 carrier aircraft struck targets from
Miyazaki and Kagoshima to Sasebo, Matsuyama, and Kochi. The rising
power of the American forces was demonstrated by the fact that 2 U.S.
Navy seaplanes, escorted by fighters which beat off enemy interceptors,
were able to scoop up and haul to safety 2 U.S. pilots whose aircraft had
crashed inside Kagoshima Bay. On April 16 the U.S. Navy task groups
launched new fighter sweeps north to Kanoya, where 30 Japanese planes
were downed; another 6 were splashed near the carriers.84
Having encountered kamikazes in the autumn of 1944 in the Philippines
and in early 1945 at Iwo Jima, the Americans had anticipated suicide
attacks to be a standard Japanese tactic. Nevertheless, as Seventh Air
Force historians wrote: “For many men who had survived every other kind
of fantastic battle experience, [kamikaze] was the most bewildering and
terrifying experience of the war. It was.. .like being surrounded every minute
of the day and night by a forest fire.” Particularly unnerving was the
fact that “there was no defense against [kamikaze] pilot short of blowing
him up in the air. ‘The son of a bitch dives straight at you, and what are you
going to do about it?’ “85
The sheer magnitude of the kamikaze effort also vastly exceeded
expectations. Admiral Spruance later admitted that “none of us.. .foresaw
the scope of the suicide plane threat while we were making our plans for
Okinawa.” American postwar analysts asserted that the kamikaze assaults
caused serious losses and were regarded with great concern by the United
States; “had the Japanese been able to sustain an attack of greater power
and concentration, they might have been able to cause us to withdraw or to
revise our strategic plans.”s6
Spruance, in fact, had had to ask Nimitz for all the air power he could
proffer. Such help was forthcoming in support of Admiral Nimitz’s command,
including 2,000 B-29 sorties (75 percent of XXI Bomber Command’s
total effort during the period) diverted from bombing attacks against strategic
targets in Japan to tactical strikes until May 11 against kamikaze fields
in Kyushu, where AAF judged. the greatest threat existed.87
VII Fighter Command also launched counteroffensive fighter sweeps
from Iwo Jima and, beginning on May 14, from Okinawa. Between April 1
and June 30, the AAF fighters flew a total of 436 sweeps, those in the
latter phase being strafing, bombing, and rocketing strikes against 50
airfields in southern Kyushu and the Amami and Sakishima Gunto
archipelagoes. AAF analysts regarded the total P-51 effort as “not very
fruitful.” Although VII Fighter Command claimed to have destroyed 64
and damaged 180 Japanese planes on the ground and to have shot down
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