On June 20, 1944, one of the decisive engagements of the Pacific War—the Battle of the Philippine
Sea—was underway, but not yet decided.
The previous day, Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s Mobile Force had been badly mauled.
The Japanese fleet had lost two carriers to U.S. submarines and 303 planes had failed
to return from the air strike that Ozawa had hoped would annihilate Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s
Task Force 58.
During the night, Ozawa’s remaining ships headed north, away from the American carrier
fleet.
Transferring his flag to the fleet carrier Zuikaku—the last surviving carrier from
the Pearl Harbor operation—Ozawa made plans to take his ships out of aircraft range, refuel
them, and then go back into action.
Although his superior, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, advised against another attack, Ozawa believed
he still stood a chance of winning.
Undaunted, Ozawa vowed to crush the American fleet on June 21 and end the invasion of the
Marianas Islands once and for all.
But Task Force 58 beat him to the punch.
On June 20, the U.S. Navy’s carrier pilots ended his hope for victory.
It happened because Mitscher took the initiative to pursue the retreating foe.
He did not want to play defense for a second day in a row.
All morning and all afternoon, he ordered his scout planes to scour the wide, empty
Philippine Sea.
At 1:30 P.M., one of Mitscher’s carriers, USS Enterprise, launched a search mission
consisting of eight TBF Avengers and four F6F Hellcats.
Two hours and ten minutes after takeoff—and after crossing some 325 miles of ocean—LT
Bob Nelson of Torpedo Squadron Ten saw a small ripple on the horizon just to the left side
of his engine cowl.
Curious about its identity, he signaled to his wingman and went to investigate.
Climbing to 3,000 feet, Nelson cautiously approached.
At 3:15, the mighty Japanese Navy came into view, ten miles away.
Jackpot!
When he could see the ships clearly, LT Nelson broke radio silence and delivered his contact
report, sending his messages over radio and through Morse Code.
Unfortunately, because of foul weather and because of the tremendous distance over which
Nelson transmitted, it took a full fifteen minutes before anyone with Task Force 58 could
hear or decipher the young pilot’s entire message.
During that time, Japanese crewmen on the cruiser Atago intercepted Nelson’s transmission
and reported it to Ozawa.
Realizing his fleet had been spotted, he ordered the refueling operation to cease and he advised
all ships to head northwest—away from the Americans—at twenty-four knots.
Nelson’s contact report—which had to be corrected by his wingman—finally reached
Marc Mitscher’s flagship at 4:05 P.M.
Mitscher had a difficult choice to make.
Nelson’s report placed the Japanese fleet at 275 miles away, and less than four hours
of daylight remained.
Was it even possible to send out a strike over so great an expanse and so late in the
day?
For a few minutes, Mitscher agonized over the decision:
"Taking advantage of this opportunity to destroy the Japanese fleet was going to cost us a
great deal in planes and pilots because we were launching at the maximum range of our
aircraft at such a time that it would be necessary to recover them after dark.
This meant that all carriers would be recovering daylight-trained air groups at night, with
consequent loss of some pilots who were not familiar with night landings and who would
be fatigued at the end of an extremely hazardous and long mission."
But the lure of the Japanese carriers was too tempting to pass up.
Turning to his staff, Mitscher commanded, “Launch the first deck loads as soon as
possible!
Get the carriers!”
Down in the ready rooms, the yeoman took Mitscher’s message and scrawled it on the chalkboards.
After a whole day of waiting, the pilots suddenly learned that they had a mission to accomplish.
On eleven different carriers, the pilots dashed onto the flight deck, mounted their planes,
and started their engines.
At 4:41 P.M., the carriers turned into the wind, launching the airstrike.
With haste, they made their way toward the setting sun, hoping to catch up with their
quarry before night closed the scene.
Among the swarm of planes, LT Harold Buell of Bombing Squadron Two piloted a Curtiss
SB2C Helldiver.
As he took to the skies, Buell pondered the danger of this evening assignment:
"From a purely personal viewpoint, I have always thought that the most amazing thing about
this mission was that it ever took place at all.
Almost all the pilots leaving the carriers, certainly all the flight leaders, knew they
were going beyond normal gas range to hit the enemy.
If the Japanese had made such a strike against our fleet, we would dub it a suicide mission,
but when U.S. leaders launched us on June 20, 1944, it was considered an acceptable
risk.
It was, of course, much more than that, and the terrible losses in aircraft that resulted
mark this as the costliest single mission in naval aviation history, except, perhaps,
for the Battle of Midway.
Yet, almost to a man, we went on the mission as ordered, knowing that our chances of a
safe return to a flight deck were at best severely limited.
These young men departed with an eagerness to engage with the enemy and to hell with
the consequences.
Unlike the Japanese foe, these Americans loved life and lived it to the hilt.
There were no thoughts of suicide or hara-kiri, only a deep desire to take part in the big
one—to win at all costs.
The men who flew into the sunset on June 20, 1944, were perpetuating all those treasured
traditions of the first naval aviators."
After more than two hours in the air, the air strike caught up with Ozawa’s fleet.
The pilots sighted a cluster of six oilers chugging along at the end of the Japanese
column.
The dive bomber group from USS Wasp—the flight with the least amount of fuel—went
into the attack.
They damaged two of the oilers so badly that the Japanese were forced to scuttle them.
Meanwhile, the U.S. fighter planes tore into Ozawa’s combat air patrol craft, overwhelming
them.
The airstrike’s 95 F6F Hellcat fighters tore through the Japanese, and in the ensuing
dogfight, the Japanese lost 65 fighter planes.
With these Japanese fighters out of the way, the dive bombers and torpedo bombers charged
for the center of the Japanese task force, where the aircraft carriers were located.
The American pilots could see seven of them.
Maneuvering to their attack altitudes, the squadrons dispersed, doing their best to hit
as many carriers as they could simultaneously.
At low altitude, LT George B. Brown of Torpedo Squadron Twenty-four charged at the carrier
Hiyō alongside seven other torpedo bombers.
The Hiyō and its escort ships unleashed a hail of AA fire at the TBMs as they skimmed
above the water.
Leading the pack, Brown’s plane was struck by AA and it caught on fire.
His two gunners bailed out, but Brown stayed in the flaming cockpit, pushed his plane through
the flak, and dropped his torpedo, which detonated against Hiyō’s starboard side.
The torpedo destroyed the carrier’s starboard engine room and reduced its speed.
Meanwhile, dive bombers from Bombing Squadrons Ten and Sixteen struck from above, putting
two bombs into the carrier, one of which detonated atop the bridge, killing the command crew.
Two hours later, after the damage control crews failed to contain the spreading flames,
Hiyō exploded when leaking gasoline vapor connected with the fires below decks.
With that, Hiyō sank stern-first, taking 247 sailors to a watery grave.
LT Brown, the torpedo pilot who had likely delivered the mortal blow, was never seen
again.
After the battle, he received a posthumous Navy Cross.
The American pilots went after the other carriers just as aggressively.
Chiyoda received a bomb hit, killing twenty men.
Junyō took two hits from American bombers, and Ryūhō suffered damage from several near
misses.
But the pilots hungered for Zuikaku, the last carrier that had been involved in the December
7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
Dive bombers from USS Hornet saw it turning in tight circles and they gave it a pounding.
Leading a division of six dive bombers, LT Harold Buell requested permission to make
the first diving attack on Zuikaku.
His air group commander replied, “Go ahead, Hal.
Show them how it’s done!”
Thrusting his plane’s stick forward, Buell dived straight down at 80 degrees from 12,000
feet.
Buell remembered the exciting descent: "Words cannot describe the AA fire that began
coming up from the huge circular Japanese task force formation of eleven ships as my
Helldiver group moved into a position for our dives.
In the lead plane, I was the focal point, and with the mass of shells passing all about
me, I felt like I was diving into an Iowa plains hailstorm.
I had never encountered so much flak.
My dive brakes were already open and I was well into a good dive, but because of the
potent defensive fire, I felt like I was moving in slow motion in quicksand.
I would never make it.
At this point, I did something I had never done before in a dive—I closed my dive brakes.
My plane responded by dropping like a stone toward the target below, leaving the heavy
AA fire behind.
So much for that problem, but now I had another more serious one.
My speed was building up and, in the condition without flaps, I could never expect to pull
the plane out of the dive after firing my bomb.
Shouting a prayer to my guardian angel, at six thousand feet, I placed my dive brake
selector back into the open position.
The wing dive brakes did what no manufacturing specs said they would—they opened!
It was as if a giant hand grabbed my plane by the tail.
My headlong plunge slowed and there was the enemy carrier dead in my sight below me, turning
into my flight path along its lengthwise axis.
At pointblank range of two thousand feet, I fired my bombs."
One after another, Buell’s pilots released their 1,000-pound bombs.
Two or three of them made contact with Zuikaku’s flight deck, starting tremendous fires.
Yorktown’s air group followed, adding four or five more hits.
The leader of the dive, LT Buell, nearly died in the process.
Just as his dive bomber leveled off, an AA shell burst directly underneath his starboard
wing, blasting a flaming hole right through it.
A large shell fragment passed through the cockpit, slicing across Buell’s back from
his right ribcage to his left shoulder.
The shell tore open his flight suit and severed his parachute rigging as if it had been cut
by a straight razor.
A second, bullet-sized piece of shell bored its way into Buell’s back, causing him searing
pain.
He cried into the intercom, “Oh God!
I’ve been hit bad!”
Wafting only 100 feet above the water with his plane’s right wing on fire, Buell sped
over the ring of escort destroyers, which continued to fill the air with shells.
Before he could check his injuries, Buell had to deal with his damaged wing.
The fire had burned a hole, one foot in diameter, and as he flew along his inbound path, that
hole grew larger with each passing second.
The edges of the aperture burned white hot, which meant that air flow over the wing was
causing the flame to spread.
In desperation, he decided to cut his power, reducing his plane’s speed.
Before stalling out, Buell throttled up again.
He did this over and over, reducing the air flow and choking off the fire.
Of course, this technique grew harder as the hole got larger, and he wore out his arms
just keeping the plane level.
Finally, while cruising at a paltry 125 knots, the fire snuffed out.
With that, Buell took stock of his condition.
"With the fire out, and the plane on a homeward heading and still flying, I could now think
for myself.
How bad was I wounded?
I was feeling little actual pain, and was not dizzy or faint, but that could be because
my body was still running on natural adrenaline from the excitement of the attack.
Reaching behind with my left hand, I felt my lower back—it was wet and sticky.
My hand came away covered with blood!
While there was a considerable amount of it, I realized that the wound must not be a serious
one, as I was not feeling weak or having the kind of pain that a major one would cause.
Apparently it was something that I could live with.
Setting my feet firmly on the cockpit deck, I unbuckled seat belt and shoulder harness
and raised myself up from the aircraft seat.
The result of this action was that the severed parachute backpack and harness fell away.
There would be no bailing out—any emergency would mean a water landing."
Of the 226 U.S. planes sent on the June 20 mission, twenty had been shot down.
Dozens of other pilots were in Buell’s situation, flying battle-damaged aircraft back to the
fleet.
As they headed east—into darkness—they left behind a wrecked Japanese task force.
One fleet carrier and two oilers were about to sink and three other carriers had taken
non-fatal hits.
It was not the decisive, fleet-destroying blow that Mitscher had envisioned, but it
ended the Japanese threat to the Marianas.
The real question remained: would Mitscher’s aviators make it back home before their fuel
ran out?
If Task Force 58 failed to recover the bulk of their pilots, the long-term success of
Operation Forager would be in peril.
Fifth Fleet needed its aviators for the rest of the operation.
If they all perished on June 20, would the Americans have to surrender the Marianas by
default?
Although the last shots of the engagement had been fired, the gripping drama of the
Battle of the Philippine Sea was not yet over.