THE FAST CARRIER TASK FORCE
In the first months of World War II in the Pacific, the only major battles in which the American task forces achieved some degree of success were all carrier-versus-carrier engagements in which the two carrier forces, Japanese and American, never made visual contact. These were the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz. During the Battle of Midway, the American fast carrier task forces achieved a singular victory that today has come to be viewed by many historians as the turning point of World War II. The U.S. carrier aircraft inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese carrier fleet, sinking four of their carriers and decimating the experienced corps of Japanese carrier aviators, whose skill and leadership would be critically absent in future carrier-to-carrier battles, such as the Battle of the Philippine Sea. There, U.S. Navy fighters took a staggering toll on the inexperienced Japanese carrier pilots.
The Battle of Midway, America’s first clear-cut victory in the Pacific in World War II, was won by U.S. carriers and so crippled the Japanese carrier fleet that major Japanese offensives in the Pacific came to a halt. As the war went on, the shipyards and aircraft factories of U.S. industry delivered modern carriers and superior carrier fighting aircraft to the fleets to replace the earlier losses and build up the force levels. The fleet carriers (CVs) were of the Essex class, thirty-four-thousand-ton ships designed from the keel up to be the capital ships of the U.S. Navy. The light carriers (CVLs) of the Independence class, displacing about ten thousand tons and capable of speeds of more than thirty knots, were a remarkably useful adaptation to expand the carrier force. Nine Independence-class and sixteen Essex-class carriers were delivered during the war.
It was largely with these modern carriers at Okinawa that the Pacific Fleet faced its greatest challenge, as the U.S. task forces operated within close range of the complex of Japanese bases positioned to defend the Japanese home islands. Okinawa saw the use of kamikaze aircraft for the first time on a large scale, and more than fourteen hundred kamikaze attacks were carried out on the carrier striking forces. The fleet survived in spite of this concentrated offensive by the highly effective manned “guided missiles.” It is a matter of record that although a number of carriers were hit by kamikazes and by bombs, not one modern Essex-class fleet carrier was sunk during World War II by enemy action.
During the war, the U.S. Navy had operated 110 aircraft carriers in the fleet, of several types, designs, configurations, and missions. The fleet carriers, as exemplified by the sixteen Essex-class ships, carried sixty to seventy modern aircraft and were used as the nucleus of the fast carrier striking groups. The nine light carriers of the Independence class were converted from cruiser hulls and because of their speed assigned to the fast carrier striking groups with the CVs. Their complement of aircraft included F-6F Hellcats and TBM Avengers.
ESCORT CARRIERS
Early escort carriers were originally designed or built as tankers and cargo ships and were converted to small carriers for escort duty in the Atlantic. These CVEs launched Wildcats and Avengers in hunter-killer attacks against hostile submarines and were a major factor in defeating the German submarine threat and winning the Battle of the Atlantic. The success of these small converted “merchantman carriers” prompted the construction of fifty “keel up” CVEs, which were known as the Casablanca class. Henry Kaiser, the American industrial genius, was turning out these carriers on a production line. Nineteen improved Commencement Bay—class CVEs were in commission or being built when World War II ended.
In the Pacific, CVEs were used to provide air support to troops ashore during and immediately after amphibious assaults, before land-based aircraft could be brought in to fly off the former Japanese airstrips. Their aircraft complement consisted principally of FM-2 Wildcat fighters and TBM Avenger bombers.
The Wildcat, produced by General Motors and designated the FM-2, was inferior to the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair as a fighter against the Zero. But the Wildcat could handle Japanese bombers and torpedo planes, especially the older Japanese aircraft that had been pressed into service as kamikazes.
The Bennion was one of the earliest of the few destroyers to be outfitted with a fighter director team to control the CVE-based fighters on combat air patrol for the defense of naval forces operating outside of the protective cover of TF 38 and TF 58. For example, the CVEs provided fighter cover for the amphibious forces, underway replenishment vessels, shore bombardment combatants, and picket destroyers.
It had been the Bennion’s task, while a screening destroyer with the amphibious force, on the gun line with the shore bombardment units, and when on picket station, to control the Wildcat fighters flying from the CVEs as the fighter cover for these surface task forces, directing the fighters to intercept the raids of Japanese bombers and kamikazes, which could number as many as a hundred aircraft. There would be as many as thirty to forty Wildcats under close control of the Bennion’s embarked fighter director officers, and these fighter planes were able to shoot down as many as 80 percent of the aircraft in a Japanese air raid, turning back the strike or disorganizing the formations to the extent that the ship’s antiaircraft (AA) guns could handle the confused remnants.
TRANSITION TO NAVAL AVIATION
In the summer of 1944 I had received a letter from my father, then a captain in the U.S. Navy and in command of the USS Iowa, the first of that class of battleship and at the time the largest warship afloat. When the keel had been laid in 1940, it was the most powerful ship in our Navy, capable of more than thirty-two knots, with sixteen-inch armor, nine 16-inch guns, and twelve 5-inch guns in twin mounts. My father’s letter had a purpose: He recommended that I get into flight training and become a naval aviator as soon as possible. These were strange words coming from a career naval officer who had served in destroyers, cruisers, and battleships all his life. He had commanded a destroyer division and a destroyer squadron already in World War II before taking over the Iowa. He was assigned to TF 38, which had just taken part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, an important victory for the U.S. Navy but a battle in which the surface ships on both sides never made contact with one another. The carrier aircraft were the principals. Although the Iowa was in the thick of the fight, its role was to help defend Halsey’s TF 38 from the Japanese carrier planes, using her 5-inch gun batteries, 40mm rapid-fire guns, and 20mm machine guns. During World War II, the Iowaclass battleships’ principal combat roles were in TF 38 and TF 58. As my father put it, “The war in the Pacific is being won by the carriers. The future of the U.S. Navy lies in naval aviation.”
Up until then I had delayed my final decision on flight training. I was comfortable in the destroyer navy, and my commanding officer assured me that I had a future in tin cans. The letter from the Iowa did it. My application for flight training went off in the next mailbag headed east.
On 7 November 1944, I left the Bennion in Tacloban Harbor and embarked in a retrograde Lykes freighter for the first leg of the long hitchhike back to the states and a new career as a naval aviator. The Bennion went on to Lingayen Gulf and Okinawa, where, as one of the few destroyers to survive the kamikaze assaults, it was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its performance on an early warning picket station, shooting down eighteen enemy planes in a two-day period.