Most importantly, it highlights the crucial role that warfighters both individually and collectively play in the success of operations, as well as the heavy demands placed on them in a prolonged engagement against an enemy determined to wage a war of attrition at all costs.
Their objective would be to secure the island of Okinawa, thus removing the last barrier standing between the U. With both this and Iwo Jima firmly in hand, the U. Before then, however, they would have to endure one of the most brutal battles of the war. A preview of the carnage that awaited came on 19 March while TF 58 conducted strikes against targets on mainland Japan to prepare for the invasion.
Her crew heroically saved their ship, but more than Sailors died in the attack. The Japanese military was greatly diminished by this point, but U. Navy planners fully anticipated that the ferocity of their resistance would increase the closer they got to the mainland. With the action now mainly concentrated around the Central Philippines and the Ryukus, the Japanese were now close enough to bring their land-based aircraft at Taiwan and Kyushu to bear.
They would not, however, be using them to conduct conventional air campaign, but rather, to act as human-guided missiles against U. Such tactics had previously been deployed at Leyte Gulf , Luzon and Lingayen, and Iwo Jima, but not on a particularly alarming scale.
Now, with Fifth Fleet so close to the Japanese mainland, Navy planners feared that as many as 3,—4, planes could be expected. Regrettably, these estimates proved to be quite on the mark, with the prolonged land battle enabling the Japanese to launch numerous air attacks that proved even more effective than anticipated. Spruance received an early taste of what was to come on 31 March when a diving kamikaze clipped his flagship Indianapolis , severely damaging her with a bomb as it splashed into the sea.
This forced Indianapolis to San Francisco for repairs and placed her on a fateful trajectory. Despite this threat from above, the initial stages of Okinawa proceeded as planned.
Minesweeping, pre-invasion bombardments from warships, and tactical strikes from carrier-based aircraft paved the way for an uncontested amphibious landing of Lt.
General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. Tenth Army made up of U. The force landed on the western side of the island close to the primary objective, two airstrips. Incredibly, these too were taken without contest. Immediately after, the ground force split. Marines moved northeast to secure the northern portion of the island, while the Army moved south towards Shuri.
By mid-April, the Marines secured their less defended portion. Army forces, on the other hand, faced more formidable defenses, which led to a slower, more methodical advance. Later joined by the Marines, Army forces slogged it out with the Japanese, suffering high casualties against the well-defended Shuri Line.
The fierce nature of the fighting and appalling numbers of casualties taken by U. This prolonged land battle had important consequences for the war at sea. By the time this occurred in June, the protracted naval action had exacted a bloody toll, becoming the costliest naval action of the war both in terms of men and ships. It is estimated that nearly one out of seven naval deaths in the entire war occurred during these two bloody months off Okinawa.
Possession of Iwo Jima and Okinawa gave the American military considerable latitude as to how it could conduct the war going forward, but the human cost of these ventures raised serious questions among the public and American civil and military leaders as to the practicality of invading the Japanese home islands. With the lessons of Okinawa fresh in his mind, he would make the fateful decision to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing the war to a close. Thus, the Battle of Okinawa became not only the final major engagement of the war, but a grim testament to what the future might have held for U.
This was, however, just one of the important lessons learned during this period. Fifth Fleet engaged in more than two months of sustained combat against a battle-weakened enemy who employed desperate, non-conventional tactics to mitigate U. Participants from the command level to deck plate were pushed to their very limits, sustaining losses of nearly 5, personnel and an equal number of wounded, an almost unprecedented killed-to-wounded ratio.
Their ships suffered equally, with 36 ships sunk and more than more sustaining varying degrees of damage. Such losses could have been considerably higher were it not for the perseverance and preparation of their crews. Employing the most advanced damage control and firefighting techniques seen in the war thus far, these well-prepared and highly-determined Sailors kept their ships afloat and carried on the fight well past the normal limits of their endurance.
The plane hit the ship's side below the main deck, causing minor damage and no casualties on board the battleship. A 40mm quad gun mount's crew is in action in the lower foreground. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W.
The Battle of Okinawa often evokes images of psychologically spent Soldiers and Marines engaged in a grueling land battle. American ships feverishly defending themselves against kamikazes and diving Ohka craft must also have a place in our collective memory, as the number of Sailors killed in the battle actually eclipsed the figures of the other services. Wounds are frequently destructive, mutilating, and fearfully mortal.
There were 10 large coordinated kamikaze attacks between early April and mid-June totaling nearly 1, planes. On average, 1 out of 6 planes struck an American ship. As a result, Sailors and ships sustained the longest period of prolonged combat of the war. It extended over a period of nearly 3 months during which time forces afloat were subjected to almost daily air attacks and night heckling.
Some ships reported a tendency toward carelessness and a disregard of safety precautions which, under normal conditions, would be followed almost automatically. Despite these difficult circumstances, Sailors performed remarkably well and instinctively drew from past experiences and training. Indeed, the losses caused by Japanese air attacks both conventional and kamikaze might have been considerably worse were it not for the preparedness and perseverance of U.
Navy crews who, across the fleet, worked efficiently to extinguish conflagrations before they raged out of control. On board Wasp CV , for example, a five-deck fire caused by a bomb explosion on 19 March was extinguished within 15 minutes, allowing the ship to resume flight operations after it had been hit.
The efforts on board aircraft carrier Franklin that same day were even more heroic. After being hit with two bombs at , her crew worked tirelessly to keep her afloat, even as bombs and ammunition on board exploded all around and smoke threatened to overwhelm them.
Elsewhere, Lt. Even more remarkably, she suffered more casualties killed, wounded than any other ship during the war, save Arizona BB After obliterating Japanese troops in the brutal Battle of Iwo Jima , they set their sights on the isolated island of Okinawa, their last stop before reaching Japan. They knew if Okinawa fell, so would Japan.
As dawn arrived on April 1, morale was low among American troops as the Fifth Fleet launched the largest bombardment ever to support a troop landing to soften Japanese defenses. Soldiers and Army brass alike expected the beach landings to be a massacre worse than D-Day. Wave after wave of troops, tanks, ammunition and supplies went ashore almost effortlessly within hours. The troops quickly secured both Kadena and Yontan airfields.
Mitsuru Ushijima, defended Okinawa. The military force also included an unknown number of conscripted civilians and unarmed Home Guards known as Boeitai. Japanese troops had been instructed not to fire on the American landing forces but instead watch and wait for them, mostly in Shuri, a rugged area of southern Okinawa where General Ushijima had set up a triangle of defensive positions known as the Shuri Defense Line.
American troops who headed North to the Motobu Peninsula endured intense resistance and over 1, casualties but won a decisive battle relatively quickly. It was different along the Shuri Line where they had to overcome a series of heavily defended hills loaded with firmly-entrenched Japanese troops. But Allied submarines spotted the Yamato and alerted the fleet who then launched a crippling air attack.
The ship was bombarded and sank along with most of its crew. Torrential rains made the hills and roads watery graveyards of unburied bodies. Casualties were enormous on both sides by the time the Americans took Shuri Castle in late May. Defeated yet not beaten, the Japanese retreated to the southern coast of Okinawa where they made their last stand.
On April 4, the Japanese unleashed these well-trained pilots on the Fifth Fleet. Some dove their planes into ships at miles per hour causing catastrophic damage.
American sailors tried desperately to shoot the kamikaze planes down but were often sitting ducks against enemy pilots with nothing to lose. During the Battle of Okinawa, the Fifth Fleet suffered:.
The Maeda Escarpment, also known as Hacksaw Ridge, was located atop a foot vertical cliff. The American attack on the ridge began on April It was a brutal battle for both sides. To defend the escarpment, Japanese troops hunkered down in a network of caves and dugouts.
They were determined to hold the ridge and decimated some American platoons until just a few men remained. Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand and particularly ruthless. The Americans finally took Hacksaw Ridge on May 6. Reinforcements moved to fill gaps that developed due to rapid advances by the 4th, 7th and 22nd Marines.
Divisional and IIIAC artillery battalions landed routinely, and many batteries were providing fire by hours. The IIIAC advance halted between and to avoid more gaps and to help the Marines on the far right maintain contact with the 7th Infantry Division, whose left flank outpaced the 1st Marine Division right-flank unit by several hundred yards.
The halt also gave artillery units outpaced by the rapid advance time to move forward and register night defensive fires. Both airfields, Kadena and Yontan, were firmly in American hands by nightfall, and engineers were already at work to get them operational in the shortest possible time.
While by no means a romp, the days that followed on L-day were nearly bloodless. Enemy troops were encountered here and there as the two Marine divisions swallowed up miles of territory against, at most, desultory opposition.
Captives proved to be second- and third-rate troops, mostly technicians and other noncombatants drafted into ad hoc defensive units, lightly armed and miserably trained. Also, many thousands of civilians turned themselves in to Marines, to be passed along to temporary stockades in the rear. The most hard-pressed Marine units were engineers, then supply troops. Roads were barely discernible paths, so they had to be engineered for modern traffic, and many bridges had to be built over gullies and other breaks in the terrain.
Even with roads in place, it was difficult to push supplies forward to the rapidly advancing ground units; they moved ahead thousands of yards a day and were constantly on the brink of outrunning their supply dumps. It was difficult, also, for artillery units to keep pace with the advance, and the infantry had a difficult time maintaining contact with flank units, because the advance tended to broaden an already broad front.
By April 3, the Marine divisions were on ground slated to fall on L-plus As the advance continued with surprising ease, a picture slowly emerged from prisoner interrogations. The main Japanese effort had gone into deeply fortifying the southern portion of the island. But the Marines were oriented east and north, and swallowing miles of lightly defended ground each day.
Before the two Marine divisions could join the fight in the south, they had to secure the rest of the island. By April 4, the 1st Marine Division had completed its cross-island advance and had thus run out of objectives.
It turned to scouring land already in its hands and building up its logistical base. By then, Japanese troops cut off in the IIIAC zone had begun to coalesce into what the Marines eventually characterized as guerrilla forces that lived off the land in wild areas and exploited opportunities to attack patrols and rear-area facilities. Such forces also appeared in the rear of the 6th Division.
These so-called guerrillas had to be painstakingly tracked by Marine units far more suited for intense modern conflict. Fortunately for the Americans, although the Japanese guerrillas were well motivated, they were not trained for such operations and were easily hunted down if they showed themselves. To help quell civilian complicity in the guerrilla operation, several thousand Okinawan males were interned in camps beginning on April This seemed to end the problem of civilian aid to guerrilla operations, but those small groups of isolated Japanese soldiers continued to operate in diminished circumstances throughout most of the campaign.
The 6th Marine Division continued to drive north — literally driven on tanks and other vehicles. One reconnaissance force advanced 14 miles unopposed, then turned back to the main body. The 6th Engineer Battalion had a tough time widening and improving roads and replacing or bracing bridges at such a pace. On April 9, supplies began to come ashore on beaches much closer to the 6th Division front, and the 1st Armored Amtrac Battalion was committed to provide artillery support because the 15th Marines artillery battalions had such a difficult time keeping up with the rapidly moving infantry.
This relieved some of the ground-support burden on carrier air units, which were increasingly drawn into a battle of attrition with kamikaze units located in Japan and intermediate bases. Indeed, Marine air became almost wholly committed to XXIV Corps as it hit increasingly stiffer resistance in the south. It took the 6th Marine Division until April 13 to locate a well-led, competent and powerful Japanese force — on Mount Yae Take, in extreme northern Okinawa.
A four-day battle involving Marine air and artillery and naval gunfire support reduced the enemy force of 1, and opened the door for the final northern push, which was completed on April Marine air, amply assisted by a sophisticated array of modern tools such as search, control and weather radars; landing force air-support control units equipped with advanced radio equipment; and frontline air control teams played a key role in supporting ground operations and forestalling kamikaze and conventional air attacks on the huge fleet that seemed to be a permanent fixture off Okinawa.
These included nocturnal kills by Marine squadrons equipped with F6F-5N Hellcat night fighters based ashore. Also, six Marine F4U Corsair squadrons were based aboard three fleet carriers, and they provided ground support and fleet cover. Indeed, Marine Corsairs took part in attacks on Kyushu airfields on March 18 and 19 that nearly swept kamikaze and conventional air units from the skies for several days.
In return, Japanese aircraft damaged several American carriers, including USS Franklin , embarking two Marine F4U squadrons that saw a total of one day of offensive operations. By April , Marine air was at the leading edge of technique and technology in support of modern combat operations across all three battle dimensions — land, sea and air.
Thereafter, resistance became more violent and better organized. The defenses extended across the entire width of the island and to an undetermined depth.
0コメント