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

WAR AGAINST JAPAN
opposition from the ground or air, for whatever reason, portended the last
crisis for Japan. Indeed, a number of U.S. planners and commanders
became convinced that the combined impact of direct air attack and blockade
could compel the final decision without an invasion. Japan had
been brought to such dire straits despite the fact that the weight of the
American air offensive in general “had as yet reached only a fraction
of its planned proportion,” as U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey analysts
later observed. For example, air assaults against Japan’s rail and
transportation network were merely getting underway at the outset of
August
Allied decisionmakers, however, were still uncertain about the decisiveness
of the air and naval offensive in convincing the Japanese government
and high command to negotiate an early termination of hostilities.
Strategic planning therefore proceeded on the basic assumption contained
in directives issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on April 3, 1945, that ground
armies would have to be used to invade Kyushu and Honshu in order to
compel Japan to capitulate unconditionally. On May 28, 1945, General
MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila drafted the first edition of a comprehensive
“strategic plan for operations in the Japanese archipelago.” The
Kyushu invasion (Operation OLYMPIC, scheduled for November 1945) and
the Honshu invasion (Operation CORONET, set for March 1946) were
grouped under the collective code name of DOWNFALL.^^^
The OLYMPIC operation was particularly designed to project U.S. landbased
air forces into southern Kyushu, with a view to supporting the second,
“knock-out blow to the enemy’s heart” in the Tokyo-Yokohama
region. American planners had no illusions regarding the intensity or tenacity
of the Japanese response. The landings were expected to be opposed by
all of the enemy’s available military forces using every means, and by a
“fanatically hostile population” resisting to “the utmost extent of their
capabilities.” Once the Allies had secured control of Kyushu, the invasion
forces committed to Operation CORONET would be able to draw upon a
minimum equivalent of 40 land-based Army and USMC air groups and
upon naval elements for direct support and blockade. The land-based “air
garrison” of about 2,800 planes would specifically include 16 fighter and
fighter-bomber groups and 4 night-fighter squadrons.122
The OLYMPIC landings would require intensive air preparation, the
heaviest practicable neutralization of enemy air, ground, and naval forces
capable of interfering with or limiting the success of the invasion. Attacks
by carrier task groups would be coordinated with prolonged action by landbased
units of the lbentieth Air Force and other air forces striking massively
from the Marianas and the Ryukyus. All-out effort would peak during
the ten days preceding the invasion, bringing about offensive air
superiority from the outset. It was intended therefore to destroy hostile air
power in Kyushu and nearby, to isolate the objective areas of Miyazaki,
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