Last week, we covered one of the most important battles of the Pacific War,
the milestone that stopped the expansion of the Japanese Empire and allowed the Americans to go
on the offensive for the first time in the war. But concurrent to the Battle of Midway and the
death of the 1st Kido Butai, Admiral Yamamoto had devised a plan to strike Dutch Harbor
and invade the first territory in North America: the Aleutian Islands.
With huge resources allocated to this operation, the American defenders in Alaska
were about to meet one of the most significant invasion forces this soil would ever see,
so join us as we delve deeper into the struggle for Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.
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Since the early planning of the Pacific War, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands in particular,
were seen as important staging grounds for dangerous invasion prospects, both by Japanese
and American strategists. As we’ll recall, the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty banned military
bases and fortifications all across the Pacific, including both the Kuril Islands and the Western
Aleutians in the North Pacific. This had left the American northern flank extremely vulnerable,
with people in the US believing that “Alaska could be taken almost overnight by a hostile
force” . By 1940, with the threat of war with Japan looming on the horizon,
the American government had begun efforts to fortify and reinforce Alaska with the allocation
of $350 million for defense, the arrival of the 4th Regiment and the construction of
military bases across the territory. Under the leadership of Lieutenant-General John DeWitt,
the Western Defense Command would be established to protect the Pacific Coast,
nominating the unorthodox Colonel Simon Buckner Jr. to command the defense of Alaska.
Buckner’s main priority was to construct an adequate air force, and as such, he began
to illegally build airfields in the Aleutians via funds he had embezzled. He would succeed,
and by the start of the war, the now Major-General Buckner had 5 operational airfields and some 22000
Army personnel. In the meantime, the Alaskan navy was assigned a small force of WWI-era destroyers,
requisitioned Coast Guard cutters and S-boat submarines, while a small force of outdated P-36
Hawks, short-in-range P-40 Warhawks and obsolete B-18 Bolos was delivered to the Alaskan Air Force.
Within months of Pearl Harbor, however, the hard-working Buckner now boasted
14 operational military bases and 30 operable airfields supporting 45000 Army personnel,
four infantry regiments , three coast artillery regiments and a tank company . Additionally,
Brigadier-General William Butler was put in command of the recently-established 11th Air
Force, consisting of some 95 fighters and 46 bombers . As for the Japanese,
like we’ve already seen, Admiral Yamamoto had decided to launch an invasion of the Aleutians
and a strike at Dutch Harbor that was going to be executed concurrently with the invasion of Midway.
Operation AL was thus assigned to an overwhelming naval force under Admiral Hosogaya of the 5th
Fleet, divided into several smaller forces that included the 2nd Kido Butai of Rear-Admiral
Kakuta Kakuji, two invasion fleets mainly built around light cruisers and destroyers, a submarine
detachment , a seaplane tender force , Hosogaya’s main fleet built around the heavy cruiser Nachi,
and a distant covering force under Vice-Admiral Takasu Shiro. We’ve previously said that this
operation was used by Yamamoto to disperse his forces, in that regard giving the Americans the
notion that they were not going to be terribly overwhelmed if they chose to meet the Japanese
in battle at Midway. But the Aleutians also held another valuable purpose, as they could cover
the northern flank of Midway once it was taken and could also completely shield Japan from any future
American strike similar to that of the Doolittle Raid. At least, this is what modern historians
believe nowadays, since in the past, historians tended to portray the operation as a feint to
lure the American carriers away from Midway. Just as it had been done with Operation MI,
American cryptanalysts and codebreakers had deciphered the Japanese plans for an
offensive against the Aleutians, concluding it was a diversion from the main attack against Midway.
Admiral Nimitz then decided accordingly to leave Aleutian defense to local Alaskan forces while the
bulk of the Pacific Fleet was directed to ambush the enemy at Midway. Yet he ended up sending
Rear-Admiral Robert Theobald’s Task Force 8 out of a personal recommendation from Admiral King.
Built around 2 heavy cruisers , 3 light cruisers and a variety of destroyers , submarines and other
naval units , Task Force 8 had the mission to defend the North Pacific Area, to which
it arrived on May 27. Theobald and Buckner would have to work side by side to oppose the Japanese
landings and to reverse the gains achieved by the enemy. By May 25, Hosogaya’s Northern Force
had been assembled at the Ominato Naval Base, departing towards its objectives one day later.
The Japanese would invade Kiska Island with 1260 SNLF marines , while the North Seas Detachment
of Major Hozumi Matsutoshi, consisting of 1200 troops of the 301st Independent Battalion,
was charged with the occupation of the islands of Attu and Adak. At this point, American
intelligence had successfully identified Kiska and Attu as the first objectives of the invasion,
yet Admiral Theobald disregarded this information, believing these islands
were too worthless to warrant an invasion and therefore choosing to defend Dutch Harbor instead.
He then departed Kodiak on June 1, heading to a position 500 miles east of Unalaska , although
he was unable to do much due to the strict radio silence imposed for the Battle of Midway.
By the night of June 2, Kakuta’s carriers had gotten to their launch point 165 miles south of
Dutch Harbor. They had been concealed by the dense fog of the Pacific coast under a cold weather of
around -13 °C. On June 3, eight minutes before the northern summer’s local sunrise , Kakuta
had decided to launch his strike with some 46 aircraft , led by Lieutenant Abe Zenji, yet he
was still worried that his pilots might not know how to return to their carriers due to the heavy
weather. Prevented by the thick fog from flying in formation, the planes had to make their individual
way towards their objective, but their flight was suddenly stopped when the experienced Abe,
who had taken part in the strikes at Pearl Harbor and the Indian Ocean, detected that the overcast
was too low for effective dive-bombing. Thus, 15 dive bombers and 11 Zeros aborted the strike,
leaving only 19 aircraft under the command of Lieutenant Samejima Hiroichi to execute the attack
on Dutch Harbor. The Japanese were expecting almost no resistance, yet to their surprise,
they would be met by US fighters from Cold Bay and by several coastal artillery batteries.
Furthermore, the defenders had been expecting a strike for several days,
so they duly went to General Quarters an hour before the detection of the Japanese aircraft,
which was carried out by the seaplane tender Gillis around 05:40.
Five minutes later, the Zeros finally appeared and made a strafing pass of Dutch Harbor’s facilities,
destroying one PBY Catalina that was trying to get on air.
Immediately, anti-aircraft fire erupted from the coastal artillery and from the vessels
in the harbor, yet they couldn’t prevent the enemy bombers from dropping their deadly load
over Fort Mears’ installations . Sixteen bombs managed to destroy three warehouses, two barracks
and three Quonset huts, while the next six drops were accidentally delivered over Mount Ballyhoo
without achieving much damage. The following six bombs got knocked out a radio transmitter
and destroy another Quonset hut, and the final six drops hit a firewatcher’s bunker,
an Army truck and some naval facilities at Power House Hill. All in all, only superficial
damage had been achieved , and the vessels at harbor, although detected, hadn’t been damaged.
With his strike over, Samejima led his torpedo bombers northwards, missing the appearance of Cold
Bay’s Warhawks by ten minutes. Upon learning that there were destroyers at Dutch Harbor,
Kakuta decided to dispatch a second wave of 33 aircraft to destroy these ships,
but the immense coldness of the weather iced up the planes’ carburetors, forcing them to return
to their carriers. Additionally, 4 Type-97 E8N floatplanes from the cruisers Maya and Takao
were launched, but they were discovered by Umnak’s Warhawks and suffered two losses in the struggle.
In the following hours, Kakuta’s carriers were spotted by two PBYs,
yet their transmissions didn’t reach Dutch Harbor and they were quickly shot down. The Japanese
Admiral now had to turn southeast to support the invasion of Adak, but he was disappointed
with his Dutch Harbor strike and ended up deciding to launch a second attack instead.
On the morning of June 4, however, this time two PBYs would get to actually report
Kakuta’s location before getting destroyed. Six Marauder bombers from Umnak and six from Cold Bay
were launched to strike at the Japanese carriers, but they were thwarted by the
heavy fog and had to abort. Only one B-26, under Captain George Thornbrough,
kept on and managed to find the enemy, but he was shot down without achieving any hits.
In the afternoon, two B-17s and Captain Robert Meals’ Marauders from Umnak
also managed to find Kakuta’s carriers, though their attacks were very unsuccessful as well.
At 16:00, all preparations were finally ready and Kakuta was at last able to launch
his second strike on Dutch Harbor with some 30 aircraft under the command of Lieutenant Abe.
By 17:40, the Japanese planes started to appear on the horizon and got to destroy one PBY that was
intercepted in their route. Just fifteen minutes later, Abe’s dive bombers began to attack Dutch
Harbor’s facilities, managing to destroy four brand new 6666-barrel steel fuel tanks, some 22000
barrels of fuel and the merchantman Northwestern . This attack was followed by Lieutenant Masatake
Yamagami’s torpedo bombers, which blew a hole on the top of the seaplane hangar at Mount Ballyhoo,
destroyed an AA gun and severely damaged an ammunition storage before departing around
18:30. At this point, some Warhawks from Port Glenn had come to meet them,
resulting in a struggle that ended with one Japanese dive bomber and two P-40s destroyed.
Concurrent to the second attack on Dutch Harbor, the Battle of Midway had developed unfavourably
for the Japanese, resulting in the almost complete destruction of the 1st Kido Butai.
Alarmed about his failure to decisively defeat the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto had ordered
the 2nd Kido Butai southwards to join the carrier Hiryu in its final efforts to destroy the American
forces. But Kakuta was already committed to his strike on Dutch Harbor, knowing full well
that his carriers had to refuel and that they couldn’t get to the battlefield quickly enough.
After conducting a successful refueling during the night, Kakuta’s 2nd Kido Butai commenced its
travel southwards on the morning of June 5, but they would be promptly stopped by Yamamoto, who
by now had realized that the Midway disaster was unsalvageable. While the Japanese forces retreated
and Kakuta advanced to rendezvous with Hosogaya’s fleet, Theobald and Butler decided to launch a
worthless scouting operation over the empty Bering Sea, believing that an invasion of Dutch Harbor
was imminent. With the American airbase at Umnak revealed, the invasion of the nearby Adak Island
was also discarded, yet Yamamoto decided to go on with the invasions of Kiska and Attu anyway.
On the night of June 6, the 1260 SNLF marines of Commander Mukai Nifumi were
put ashore at Kiska’s Reynard Cove and rapidly managed to advance south towards the harbor.
By 02:15 on June 7, the 10 American sailors deployed at a weather station on Kiska Harbor were
startled awake by the overwhelming attack of the Japanese forces. Eight of them managed to escape
into the mountainside and survived for a couple of days under dastardly cold weather, but in the end,
they eventually had to surrender . At the same time that the Japanese were capturing Kiska,
Major Hozumi’s North Seas Detachment was landing at Holtz Bay. They faced no resistance,
only the difficult task of climbing the difficult snow-covered Holtz Bay-Chichagof Harbor Pass; and
soon, the island was taken and its 44 inhabitants were turned into war prisoners . With Operation
AL concluded, Yamamoto dispatched a strong fleet to support Kakuta and the Japanese forces at the
Aleutians. Meanwhile, with the Battle of Midway also over, Admiral Nimitz had decided to refit
the aircraft of Admiral Spruance’s Task Force 16 and then send them northwards to hunt down
the 2nd Kido Butai. But just as Spruance had gotten halfway to his objective, the American
reconnaissance managed to discover the Japanese presence in the islands of Kiska and Attu. Nimitz
feared that the Japanese land-based aircraft could be waiting for the American carriers,
so he decided to recall Spruance’s task force and not risk getting into a possible enemy trap.
The Japanese then began to turn the islands of Kiska and Attu into their major bastions
in the North Pacific, bringing a wide array of aircraft, midget submarines, coastal defense and
anti-aircraft guns. In response, the Americans decided to evacuate the Western Aleutians,
interning some 881 native Aleuts in relocation camps in southeastern Alaska
and burning their villages to the ground so the enemy could not use them for shelter.
Although the Midway operation had been a disaster, with the full extent of it being concealed from
the public, the Japanese had managed to secure a foothold in North America, something that caused
great concern amongst the American population. But, as Buckner said, having in mind the hostility
of both the unforgiving terrain and of the staunch American defenders, “If the Japanese come,
they may get a foothold. But it will be their children who get as far as Anchorage, and their
grandchildren who’ll make it to the States. And by then they’ll all be American citizens anyway”.
With the Japanese fortifying their newly-conquered islands, Buckner, Theobald and Butler wouldn’t
sit idly by either. A grim, long-range air-sea war of attrition would thus begin,
lasting for some 11 months in which the US was in no position to launch a major offensive to
recapture the Aleutians. Fittingly dubbed the “Thousand-Mile War”, the Americans would launch
approximately a dozen different air raids over Kiska in the month of June alone, including the
three-day Kiska Blitz . Furthermore, on June 20, American intelligence detected Kakuta’s carrier
force reentering the Bering Sea and believed that it was a renewed invasion of Alaska.
This prompted the execution of Operation Bingo, the first mass airlift in US history, in which 140
cargo planes’ worth of reinforcements were brought to Alaska through 46 seized civilian aircraft.
Although Buckner wasn’t ready yet to recapture his lost territories, he had now been sufficiently
reinforced to completely hold Alaska against any force that the Japanese could throw at him.
Next week, we are going to turn southwards to cover the disastrous attack on Sydney Harbor
and the key role of the Japanese midget submarines during the war. If you want to be notified about
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