punch, believed they’d scored a knockout. A Helldiver pilot would swear his bomb sank a battleship. A torpedo plane pilot refused to believe that after he’d penetrated a wall of flak to deliver his weapon, the enemy vessel could still be afloat. A fighter pilot, seeing his tracers hitting an enemy plane,
knew
that he’d shot the bandit down.
And not just pilots. Intelligence officers, squadron skippers, even fleet commanders were biased toward swollen damage estimates. This sometimes resulted in dangerously flawed decisions. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when dive-bomber and torpedo plane pilots, full of hubris and adrenaline, reported fatal hits on the battleships and cruisers of Admiral Kurita’s striking force, Adm. William Halsey concluded that the Japanese force was no longer a serious threat.
It was a nearly fatal mistake. Hell-bent on pursuing the Japanese carrier force, Halsey left the San Bernardino Strait unguarded while he chased after a decoy Japanese carrier force. Kurita’sstill-formidable striking force slipped through the strait and by dawn were firing point-blank into the unprotected ships of the Taffy group.
However, the Japanese were even more susceptible to believing their own exaggerations. One of the most willing believers was Adm. Matome Ugaki, who concluded that after the
tokko
attacks of March 18–19 on the U.S. fleet, his pilots had sunk five carriers, two battleships, and three cruisers. Whether or not Ugaki actually believed such nonsense, it reflected theJapanese high command’s detachment from reality.
Because of the finality of the
tokko
missions, results were difficult to assess. When it could be confirmed that a kamikaze pilot did, in fact, crash into a ship, the vessel was usually declared sunk. The Japanese public was fed a steady stream of lies about the successes of the
tokko
warriors. During the battle for Okinawa,
tokko
airmen would be credited with sinking half a dozen U.S. aircraft carriers when, in fact, not one was actually sunk. The carrier
Lexington
received the distinction of being reported sunk four times.
One purpose of the misinformation was to divert attention from the rain of incendiary bombs falling nightly on Japanese cities from American B-29s. Bad news was glossed over or not reported at all. The truth about the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, in which most of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s airpower was lost, was kept from the public. So was the fall of Iwo Jima in February and March of 1945, when almost all of the twenty-one thousand defenders of the island perished.
A ction was light for the next few days while Mitscher reorganized his task force into three task groups, leaving one—TG 58.2—to protect the wounded
Franklin, Enterprise
, and
Yorktown
as they limped to Ulithi. The only combat missions being flown were those by CAP fighters and a few sweeps over the enemy airfields to keep the Japanese fighters grounded.
Off Okinawa, the armada of attack transports and landing craftwas swelling in numbers as new arrivals came from their staging bases at Ulithi, Leyte, and Saipan. Two naval bombardment forces under Rear Adm. Mort Deyo had moved in toward the western shore of Okinawa, and the big guns of Deyo’s battleships and cruisers were shelling Japanese positions, preparing the landing zones for the coming invasion on April 1.
Aboard
Intrepid
, Johnny Hyland took advantage of the breather to evaluate his air group’s performance. In a dizzying two days of action, his pilots had bombed, rocketed, and strafed targets up and down the coasts of the Japanese home islands. There had been losses, some of them avoidable. Hyland’s own wingman, George Tessier, had run out of fuel and put an expensive Corsair into the sea. Several others, including Erickson, had come close to joining him in the water.
It was one of several lessons that were being learned the hard way. Long-range mission planning, particularly fuel management, would take some
knew
that he’d shot the bandit down.
And not just pilots. Intelligence officers, squadron skippers, even fleet commanders were biased toward swollen damage estimates. This sometimes resulted in dangerously flawed decisions. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when dive-bomber and torpedo plane pilots, full of hubris and adrenaline, reported fatal hits on the battleships and cruisers of Admiral Kurita’s striking force, Adm. William Halsey concluded that the Japanese force was no longer a serious threat.
It was a nearly fatal mistake. Hell-bent on pursuing the Japanese carrier force, Halsey left the San Bernardino Strait unguarded while he chased after a decoy Japanese carrier force. Kurita’sstill-formidable striking force slipped through the strait and by dawn were firing point-blank into the unprotected ships of the Taffy group.
However, the Japanese were even more susceptible to believing their own exaggerations. One of the most willing believers was Adm. Matome Ugaki, who concluded that after the
tokko
attacks of March 18–19 on the U.S. fleet, his pilots had sunk five carriers, two battleships, and three cruisers. Whether or not Ugaki actually believed such nonsense, it reflected theJapanese high command’s detachment from reality.
Because of the finality of the
tokko
missions, results were difficult to assess. When it could be confirmed that a kamikaze pilot did, in fact, crash into a ship, the vessel was usually declared sunk. The Japanese public was fed a steady stream of lies about the successes of the
tokko
warriors. During the battle for Okinawa,
tokko
airmen would be credited with sinking half a dozen U.S. aircraft carriers when, in fact, not one was actually sunk. The carrier
Lexington
received the distinction of being reported sunk four times.
One purpose of the misinformation was to divert attention from the rain of incendiary bombs falling nightly on Japanese cities from American B-29s. Bad news was glossed over or not reported at all. The truth about the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, in which most of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s airpower was lost, was kept from the public. So was the fall of Iwo Jima in February and March of 1945, when almost all of the twenty-one thousand defenders of the island perished.
A ction was light for the next few days while Mitscher reorganized his task force into three task groups, leaving one—TG 58.2—to protect the wounded
Franklin, Enterprise
, and
Yorktown
as they limped to Ulithi. The only combat missions being flown were those by CAP fighters and a few sweeps over the enemy airfields to keep the Japanese fighters grounded.
Off Okinawa, the armada of attack transports and landing craftwas swelling in numbers as new arrivals came from their staging bases at Ulithi, Leyte, and Saipan. Two naval bombardment forces under Rear Adm. Mort Deyo had moved in toward the western shore of Okinawa, and the big guns of Deyo’s battleships and cruisers were shelling Japanese positions, preparing the landing zones for the coming invasion on April 1.
Aboard
Intrepid
, Johnny Hyland took advantage of the breather to evaluate his air group’s performance. In a dizzying two days of action, his pilots had bombed, rocketed, and strafed targets up and down the coasts of the Japanese home islands. There had been losses, some of them avoidable. Hyland’s own wingman, George Tessier, had run out of fuel and put an expensive Corsair into the sea. Several others, including Erickson, had come close to joining him in the water.
It was one of several lessons that were being learned the hard way. Long-range mission planning, particularly fuel management, would take some
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