WHERE WERE THE CARRIERS?

Most everyone will recall that one significant shortcoming of the Pearl Harbor raid from the Japanese perspective was its failure to destroy the American Navy’s aircraft carriers.  Yamamoto had targeted them in particular, appreciating as he did, the importance of naval air power.  It was with some disappointment that the airstrike launched knowing the carriers were not in port.  But just where were our carriers at 0755, 7 December 1941?

For the past year, US attentions had focused on the Atlantic where four of our seven carriers were based.  German U-boats had already attacked US warships escorting freighters on Roosevelt’s “Neutrality Patrol.”  In fact, REUBEN JAMES (DD-245) had been sunk in September 1941 on just such a mission.  Dawn on December 7^th found YORKTOWN (CV-5) in Norfolk and RANGER (CV-4) a day out, both having just finished Neutrality Patrols.  Brand new HORNET (CV-8), just 2 months in commission, was also readying herself in Norfolk.  WASP (CV-7) was serving as our training carrier and lay at anchor in Grassy Bay, Bermuda, observing the usual Sunday morning routine between Caribbean cruises.

In the Pacific, SARATOGA (CV-3) was fresh out of dry-dock in Bremerton.  The morning of December 7^th found her pulling into San Diego to embark Marine Corps aircraft intended for Wake.  After hearing the news from Hawaii, SARATOGA got underway immediately, hoping to reinforce the besieged garrison at Wake.  She reached Pearl Harbor on the 15^th, stopping only for fuel.  But the tiny island outpost at Wake fell before SARATOGA could arrive.

Two carriers were in the waters around Hawaii.  ENTERPRISE (CV-6) was returning from an aircraft ferrying assignment, having delivered VMF-211 to Wake Island.  She had planned to make Pearl that day, in fact, her scout planes arrived over the harbor in the midst of the Japanese attack and joined the defense.  She pulled in on this day, pausing briefly to refuel, then departed to hunt down the Japanese.  Though she did not locate the enemy strike force, her aircraft did sink the sub I-170 on the 10^th.  Our oldest flattop in service, LEXINGTON (CV-2), was returning from Midway, having likewise delivered a squadron of Marine fighters.  Upon learning of the Pearl Harbor attack she promptly launched search planes in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the Japanese fleet, then diverted south to rendezvous with ENTERPRISE and INDIANAPOLIS (CA-35).

After today’s disaster, YORKTOWN cast off for Hawaii on December 16^th.  HORNET was readied for Doolittle’s Tokyo raid, departing Norfolk on 4 March 1942.  WASP was pulled from training duties and eventually transferred to the Pacific after the loss of YORKTOWN at Midway in June 1942.  RANGER remained in the Atlantic.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  13 DEC 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 356.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 368, 434.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, pp. 47, 104.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, pp. 31, 85, 340.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 8 “W-Z”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 144, 534.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  RANGER is perhaps the least well-remembered of our seven pre-WWII carriers.  She remained in the Atlantic and Mediterranean until August 1944, when she also transferred to the Pacific.  Here she was relegated to pilot training duties off the California coast.

Our first carrier, the former LANGLEY (CV-1), was still in service, but had been converted to a seaplane tender (AV-3) in the 1930s.  She was operating with the Asiatic Fleet at the war’s outbreak and was sunk by Japanese planes in late February 1942.

The post Where Were the Carriers? appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                             FLEET PROBLEM IX

Between the World Wars, US military planners began to imagine the Pacific as a direction from which a future enemy might emerge.  They listed Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Alaska, and the Panama Canal as potential targets of such an enemy’s first strike.  In fact, periodically during the 1920s and 1930s our Navy conducted exercises near these sites, practicing various attack and defense scenarios.  The exercise of 1929, Fleet Problem IX, was staged in the eastern Pacific around Panama.  A “Black Fleet” aggressor force was tasked with attempting to “destroy” the Panama Canal.

Fleet Problem IX was historic before it started.  It would be the first exercise in which aircraft carriers played a role.  LEXINGTON (CV-2) and SARATOGA (CV-3) had been commissioned just a year earlier; the former being assigned to the force protecting Panama, and SARATOGA, under the command of CAPT Harry E. Yarnell, would scout for the Black Fleet.  Most tacticians in this day saw little role for flattops in direct combat.  The battleship was capital; aircraft carriers were but supporting auxiliaries, scouting over the horizon as the “eyes of the Fleet.”  Only a few forward thinkers saw a potential for naval aviation in direct offensive combat.  One of these was RADM Joseph M. “Bull” Reeves, commander of Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet.          

On January 25^th, as Fleet Problem IX proceeded, Reeves quietly detached SARATOGA from her Black Fleet duties and sent her south under escort of a single cruiser.  She made a large end sweep around the southern arm of the defending forces, closing undetected to within 150 miles of the Canal during the early morning hours of this day, the 26^th.  From here she launched 69 biplanes into the pre-dawn darkness.

The surprise was total.  SARATOGA’s planes arrived over the Canal at sunrise, unnoticed until their “bombs” were falling.  Though defenders had been on alert throughout the exercises, opposition could not be mounted in time.  Referees ruled the vital Miraflores and Pedro Miguel Locks destroyed, effectively disabling the Panama Canal.  Her strike planes sustained no combat losses, though SARATOGA herself was discovered and “sunk” by the defending force later that day.

Naval planners were stunned by the effectiveness of SARATOGA’s coup d’etat, but the raid was so “outside the box” that it was dismissed out of hand by doctrinal experts.  Indeed, the utility of the offensive naval airstrike was re-demonstrated in later Fleet Problems, but traditional thought prevailed.  It was not until the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that the concept of offensive airstrikes gained wide endorsement in the American Navy.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  2 FEB 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 339-40.

Department of the Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare).  United States Naval Aviation 1910-1980.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 66-67.

Johnson, Brian.  Fly Navy:  A History of Naval Aviation.  New York, NY: William Morrow & Co., 1981, pp. 138-41.

Potter, E.B.  Sea Power: A Naval History, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1981, p. 237.

Reynolds, Clark G.  The Fast Carriers:  The Forging of an Air Navy.  New York, McGraw-Hill, 1968, p. 17.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, p. 153.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  CAPT Yarnell (1875-1959) fought at the Battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War and received the Navy Cross for his work in the CNO’s Office during WWI.  By the interwar period he had developed a reputation as an expert in Naval aviation.  He was promoted to Flag in 1930 and served later as the CIC of the Asiatic Fleet.  He retired on 1 November 1941, a month before Pearl Harbor but was recalled to Active Duty twice during the war.  He died 7 July 1959 in Newport, Rhode Island.  Seventeen months after his death the Navy launched our second of the Leahy-class guided missile cruisers, HARRY E. YARNELL (DLG-17).  Like her Leahy-class sisters, YARNELL  decommissioned after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and was sold for scrap.

Admiral Reeves is also remembered with a Leahy-class cruiser, REEVES (DLG-24). 

The post Fleet Problem IX appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                   TWO CARRIERS IN HARM’S WAY

As the third day of the battle for Iwo Jima began, the ships of Task Force 58 kept up their shore bombardment and their efforts against Japanese sea and air defenses.  Indeed, on this morning, USS SARATOGA (CV-3) and three destroyers were detached from Task Group 58.5 to provide combat air patrol over the amphibious landing zones from a position 35 miles to the northwest of the island.  But just as SARATOGA arrived on station at 1628, an inbound flight of aircraft was seen on radar.  Initially identified as “friendlies,” it was not for 20 minutes that the inbounds were revealed to be 25 enemy kamikazes.  In only ten more minutes the planes were upon SARATOGA!  The first two fell ablaze from anti-aircraft fire, but bounced into the carrier at the waterline, releasing bombs that penetrated and exploded.  Another crashed the anchor windlass on the bow, taking out of action most of the forward flight deck and a plane about to launch.  All within a span of three minutes, yet another kamikaze struck the port catapult, and a fifth took out the starboard crane and gun gallery.  The carrier got up headway and turned away from the wind while damage control parties fought the fires.  The situation gradually improved, but at 1846 a final suicide plane slammed unseen out of the darkness onto the flight deck.  The bomb it dropped blew a 25-foot hole in the deck and started new fires.  Despite losing 36 planes to fires and water landings, 123 sailors killed, and 192 injured, SARATOGA was not crippled.  She ultimately steamed under her own power to Eniwetok for repairs.

But at that same 1845 moment, 45 miles east of Iwo Jima, the escort carrier BISMARCK SEA (CVE-95) was approached on her port bow.  All eyes turned in that direction as anti-aircraft guns blasted the onrushing manned missile.  Quietly from the opposite side a G4M3 “Betty” bomber glided in low.  She wasn’t spotted until only 1000 yards out.  The guns couldn’t be depressed sufficiently, and she struck the after aircraft elevator.  Debris and flaming gasoline shotgunned through the hangar, and the elevator platform crashed to the deck, cutting the fire mains.  Fully gassed planes and bomb and torpedo lockers were engulfed.  That same moment from above, another kamikaze carrying two bombs struck vertically at the same spot on the flight deck.  Exploding aircraft and ordnance spread uncontrollable fires throughout the ship.  Moments after CAPT J.L. Pratt called “Abandon Ship!” and stepped off, a tremendous explosion blew off most of the carrier’s stern.  BISMARCK SEA burned for three hours, rolled, then sank.  Some 218 sailors went down with the carrier.  Six destroyers crisscrossing the area through the night rescued the rest of her 943 crewmen.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 FEB 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A-B”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1959, p. 126.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol XIV  Victory in the Pacific.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1960, pp. 52-55.

Poolman, Kenneth.  Allied Escort Carriers of World War Two in Action.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1988, pp. 239-40.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 185.

Wheeler, Richard.  Iwo. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1980, p. 145.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  As above, by the Iwo Jima campaign the kamikaze was proving to be Japan’s most effective weapon against our Navy.  During the course of WWII more sailors and ships were lost to kamikazes than to Japanese submarines, surface actions, conventional air attacks, mines, or manned torpedoes.

The post Two Carriers in Harm’s Way appeared first on Today in Naval History.