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World Battlefronts: Mitscher Shampoo

4 minute read
TIME

It was audacious—but it was the calm audacity of a gambler who bets his stack on a four-ace hand. The main striking force of the U.S. Pacific Fleet—so much greater than any other of the world’s fleets that such comparisons have become meaningless—steamed undetected, through filthy weather, to within easy fighter-plane range (200 to 300 miles) of Tokyo. It was organized into the Fifth Fleet, under precise, calculating Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance. Its carriers again had become Task Force 58, and were under the command of slight, puckish Vice Admiral Marc Andrew (“Pete”) Mitscher.

Before dawn on Feb. 16, a date which will be ringed in red on many a Navy calendar, the carriers turned into the wind to launch planes. Mitscher had been almost as far as this before: he was skipper of the Hornet when she carried Doolittle’s daring little squadron toward Tokyo. But in the intervening 34 months, America’s seaborne air force had grown beyond recognition. Now, hundreds of planes circled the carriers as they formed up: for two simultaneous dawn strikes, there were (by Jap count) 300 planes in each attack group.

It was 7 a.m. in Tokyo when the made-in-U.S. whirlwind struck. Most of the regimented millions in Japanese war factories were already at their benches or assembly lines. But the Hellcats, Hell-divers and Avengers (perhaps also Corsairs and Dauntlesses) had other targets this day: the great complex of airfields around the capital, such as the Kasumigaura naval air base (used by both land and sea planes), 50 miles north of the city, and the Tachikawa army air base, 15 miles out.

Out of the Overcast. The Japs claimed to have known, two days in advance, that the blow was coming. But they were strangely unprepared when the white-starred fighters dropped out of the overcast above each of the main airfields around Tokyo and tore across the strips, strafing scores of enemy planes still aground. Dive bombers screamed down almost vertically; Avengers roared in at a steep glide, each with a 2,000-lb. bomb. The Jap air bases erupted flames and smoke.

At 25,000 feet, high above the Navy planes, a lone B-29 droned around. It carried no bombs: its job was to photograph the results of the carrier planes’ bombing. Aboard the Superfort was a Navy observer, Lieut, (j.g.) David C. McMillin, listening to the carrier air group commanders and pilots over the inter-plane circuit. He heard:

¶ “Field Number Five—60 planes—give ’em hell!”

¶ “Attack Field Number 85—there are 50 single-engine planes on the ground there.”

¶ “The bastards have gone up into the overcast. Let’s go get ’em.”

Despite thick weather, First Lieut. John T. Garvin of the kibitzing B-29 estimated that he had seen 1,200 U.S. planes in the air. The strikes continued for nine hours, so the Mitschermen must have flown 2,000 sorties or more.

Hot Towel Too. By the end of the day, when the war birds homed to their carriers, columns of smoke towered 7,000 feet over Tokyo’s airfields. Mitscher’s boys call this treatment the “Mitscher shampoo.” Next day, they were at it again, but there were fewer parked aircraft, and many loosed their bombs and bullets at inviting fixed targets: an aircraft factory and three engine plants. Along the waterfront were floating targets, choicest of all in Navy flyers’ estimation: they sank a destroyer, two destroyer escorts, a freighter and many coastal craft; an escort carrier was fired and overturned.

In the air the score was fantastically lopsided:

¶ 332 Jap planes shot down, 177 destroyed aground, more than 150 damaged or probably destroyed.

¶ 49 U.S. planes lost.

And not a ship of the rampaging Task Force 58 was damaged.

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