Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (28 page)

Okamura and Nonaka did not agree with the admiral’s assessment of the American combat air patrol capabilities, and thus, could not share any of his optimism for the chances of the mission’s success. Topping the list of reasons not to be cheerful was that 5th Air Fleet Flight Ops had told them that there were only going to be fif
ty-five Zeros available for the escort
[141]
– thirty-two of the Jinrai’s own fighters plus another twenty-three from other units in southern Kyūshū that would rendezvous with the main force en route.
[142]
Moreover, many of these planes were in various states of disrepair and most were going to be flown by green pilots just out of flight school. They would be useless if the force ran into determined American CAP. Unless they could achieve near total surprise, the 711
th
HKT was going to be flying into its own massacre.

Okamura and Nonaka were painfully aware of the potential disaster that lay ahead, and had laid out good reasons for postponement during the staff meeting that had just finished, but their honor as officers meant that they had no choice but to follow Ugaki’s orders and go through with the mission when he dismissed their misgivings as unfounded. For the last item during a hurried session at the planning tables to go over the final operational details of the mission, Okamura – with reservations – yielded to Nonaka’
s insistence on flying the lead Isshiki Rikkō into battle. Neither of the men, by this point, doubted that the assignment would be fatal. They shook hands, then left the ops shack and walked down to the flight line, where Nonaka had choreographed in advance a scene taking place that must go down in history as one of the classic moments in gloriously doomed military exploits, right up there with the Foreign Legion’s bayonet charge at Dien Bien Phu, the Light Brigade at Balaclava and Pickett’s Charge.

All 160 pilots and aircrew who would be participating in the main attack element were standing tall in formation along the flight line under the late morning sun as
jindaiko
war drums, which Nonaka had borrowed from a local Shinto shrine just for the occasion, thundered out martial rhythms dating from antiquity. Nonaka’s beloved reproduction samurai banners – Masashige Kusunoki’s
Hirihokenten
pennant from the Battle of Minatogawa in 1336 and the
Nanmu Hachiman Daibosatsu
Minamoto clan battle flag immortalized in the medieval Genpei War – trailed multicolored streamers in a stiff breeze. Front and center in the place of honor, the fifteen Ōka pilots who would be flying the mission were wearing spotless uniforms and the pristine white headbands they had received from Admiral Toyoda in December. At their head was the ranking Ōka pilot, Lieutenant Kentarō Mitsuhashi (INA ’42), with a white pouch around his neck containing some of Lieutenant Ben Kariya’s ashes.
[143]
The Ōka’s first victim would also be participating – at least in spirit and corporeal dust – in its first combat sortie.

After Admiral Ugaki emerged from his fortified command
bunker to join the ceremony, Okamura gave the 711
th
the most rousing send-off speech he could muster without breaking down in tears. Still, there were few dry eyes when the Jinrai CO gave a final salute and the pilots and crews broke ranks to run to their aircraft with loud and lusty warrior yells, exchanging shouted farewells and encouragement with the throngs of onlookers who lined the field. Nonaka’s last words as he headed off for his command plane referred to the battle that resulted in the defeat and death of his personal hero, the legendary samurai Masashige Kusunoki.

“This is Minatogawa,” a glassy-eyed, glowing Nonaka had been heard to say to no one in particular, already half-slipped into a state of pre-self-sacrificial beatitude. No one who witnessed the scene would ever forget that he made the remark with a smile on his face.
[144]

At 1135 hours, sixty-six twelve-hundred-horsepower Sakae engines in a total of forty-eight aircraft coughed to life on a signal from the control tower. The Zeros – now whi
ttled down to thirty from thirty-two by engine failures – took off first to wild cheers. But the biggest roars from the onlookers were reserved for the take-offs of the three command Isshiki Rikkōs and the fifteen mother planes with light gray Ōkas slung under their bellies. When the final lumbering bomber crawled into the air, the massive formation circling the field straightened out and headed south. The cheering continued until the last echo of droning thunder from the formations engines faded away. As the crowd broke up and other personnel returned to their duties, Ugaki and Okamura walked off in the direction of the command bunker to begin their long day’s vigil in the radio shack.

*****

Approximately three hours later, radarmen in the American carrier group picked up the first contacts of a large formation of unidentified aircraft approaching from the direction of Kyūshū. The carriers
Hornet
and
Belleau Wood
wasted no time putting up a CAP of forty-eight Hellcats split into high and medium altitude elements to meet the bandits.
[145]
When the Jinrai planes finally came into view, the Hellcats already had the tactical picture sewn up. While the medium altitude Hellcats waded into the ranks of the top cover Zero escorts – which had been even further depleted by engine failures on the way down from Kyūshū – the high altitude CAP element peeled off into long, diving attack runs on the Isshiki Rikkōs farther below.

Anyone who has watched a History Channel documentary or two on World War II air combat has most like
ly seen at least a few seconds of American gun camera footage from the slaughter that ensued. I would imagine that documentary editors favor this particular collection of footage for the almost Hollywood quality of its pyrotechnics. The photographic record has left us with some grainy imagery of cool explosions, but film cannot begin to evoke the feeding frenzy of devastation the Hellcats wrought on that March afternoon so long ago.

Fire belched from the engine nacelles of the Isshiki R
ikkōs almost the instant the first .50 caliber rounds began perforating the aluminum airframes of the Jinrai planes and the flesh of their crews. Unarmored, non-self-sealing fuel tanks exploded, turning aircraft into giant torches within seconds. Catastrophic structural failures led to wings collapsing and tumbling away. The big bombers lurched at sickening angles with the dead weight of the useless Ōkas still slung under their bellies, shuddering under hits before disintegrating in midair.

The 711
th
never had a chance. The engagement was all over in less than twenty minutes.

By the time the last shred of Japanese airframe fluttered down into the East China Sea, fifteen Ōkas, eighteen Isshiki Rikkōs and ten Zeros had been destroyed. One hundred sixty men we
re dead. One American Hellcat was lost.
[146]

As this massacre unfolded, Ugaki and Okamura had been in the radio shack for nearly three hours now, standing with a crowd of staff officers, pilots and clerks that surrounded a radio set. Close to the attack force’s ETA of approximately 1500 hours, the radioman’s Morse ticker registered a single, enigmatic MISSION CANCELLED message.
[147]
After that, dead silence.

Late in the afternoon, the few shot-up Zero stragglers that were the only survivors of the debacle began l
anding at Kanoya. Their eyewitness reports confirmed everyone’s worst fears – the devastation had been total. The force had not gotten anywhere near being close enough to drop the Ōkas before all of the bombers were shot down. Nonaka, the other section leaders, all of the Ōka pilots and everyone else who had been on an Isshiki Rikkō were lost, along with over half the escort fighters. Nobody else was coming back.

The enormity of the disaster only became more emotionally crushing as the initial numbing shoc
k wore off, the evening wore on, and every man in Kanoya was left left alone to face a long night of brokenhearted bitterness. By most accounts, Admiral Matome Ugaki was the most despondent of them all, and was never the same man again after being told the news. Perhaps the smiling faces of the Jinrai pilots were projected in his mind’s eye when, less than five months later on August 15, he ignored the surrender announcement and disobeyed his Emperor’s orders for the only time in his life to fly the final tokkō sortie of the war.
[148]

From a morale standpoint, no one could accept another debacle like the March 21 outing, and Ugaki waited ten days before committing to another sortie with the Ōkas. And this time around, he was going to keep his gamble small. On April 1, the second Jinrai attack force left Kanoya with only three Isshiki Rikkō/Ōka strike teams. Although small, the mission saw the Jinrai’s first successes, with the American battleship
West Virginia
and three transport ships damaged.

Ugaki – a brave but never rash or daring man – refused to allow the minor successes of April 1 go to his head, and he waited until April 12 for just the right conditions to order the next Ōka attack. He was, however, emboldened enough on this day to up his ante to eight Isshiki Rikkō/Ōkas.

*****

On the afternoon of April 12, eighteen-year-old Radio Operator Third Class Charles Stanford was at battle stations in the “radar shack” of
Mannert L. Abele
, a Task Force 54
[149]
destroyer on picket duty with several other “tin cans” at radar patrolling station 14 (“Sugar Charlie”) about seventy miles northwest of Okinawa in the East China Sea. The job of the picket destroyers was to protect the American invasion fleet by their keeping a constant radar search vigil over the area of operations, and vectoring in CAP to intercept anything deemed a potential threat. Since the introduction of tokkō tactics by the Japanese, this function had taken on crucial importance. Since the start of the Okinawa campaign, it had become a matter of life and death.

Veterans of fierce action during the defense of the Iwo Jima invasion fleet, the
Abele
’s radarmen were good at their jobs – experts at the arcane art of IFF (Identify Friend or Foe). When Stanford picked up a large formation of unidentified aircraft approaching from the northeast at a range of 286 miles, the well-oiled human machinery of the radar shack clicked into gear:

“We went to battle stations 5 minutes later after satisfying ourselves that the threat was real,” Stanford writes fifty-eight years later.
 “Captain (Alton E.) Parker called down to the radar shack, instructing us to advise "Delegate Base" (Command Post for the sixteen Destroyer Picket Stations surrounding Okinawa) of our radar contact…They scrambled additional aircraft immediately.  We had four Hellcats under our direct control but had released them earlier to check on other "bogies" who were closer to the Hellcats position than our incoming contact.”
[150]

In short, Sugar Charlie’s dedicated CAP was too far out to get back to help before the bogies arrived, assuming they maintained present speed and heading. Whatever the planes were and whoever was flying them, they were coming in, and there was nothing Stanford and his shipmates could do now but wait for them to show up and play their hand.

At about 1340, the first of the Japanese attackers – three obsolescent Aichi Val dive bombers – appeared over Sugar Charlie, where they were made quick work of by the AA crews of
Abele
and the other ships on station. By 1400, however, another fifteen to twenty Japanese planes were swarming overhead, circling the American ships like sharks in a feeding frenzy. At about 1440, a Zero with
Abele
’s number jinked AA fire to crash her amidships, knocking out the engine room and leaving the destroyer as good as dead in the water.
[151]

About five minutes after the Zero strike, three Japanese heavy bombers were observed approaching from a distance, then turning away before closing any further. A moment later, the
Abele
’s survivors and AA gunners on the other ships caught a split-second glimpse of something they had never seen before. Visible only as a light gray streak against a light gray horizon, a missile of some sort came whistling in at extreme speed and wave cap altitude, cracking the
Abele
with a tremendous explosion right above the waterline and nearly splitting the ship in half. Stanford and Captain Parker were the last two men to leave the ship alive.

Within minutes, the
Abele
slipped under the waves. But the Jinrai was not through with her crew. As Stanford and those shipmates still able treaded water, clutching for dear life onto anything that floated and kicked at the sharks that were beginning to gather, two of the Jinrai’s escort Zeros barreled in and began strafing and bombing the
Abele
’s survivors.
[152]

The Ōka had just killed its first ship.

O
n April 14, Suzuki and Naitō and about forty other Ōka pilots were flown from Kōnoike down to Kanoya to replace the steep operational losses of the previous three weeks. When news of the March 21 debacle reached Kōnoike, the pilots there shook off their initial sadness and disappointment with the rationalization that there was no accounting for the fortunes of war. The only thing the pilots could do was to give it a better showing when it was their turn to strap into the Ōkas. But no one on the April 14 flight to Kanoya had any idea when they were going to be given a chance to prove their mettle.