Aviation Radioman 1st Class Dave Cawley sat within the rear seat of his SBD Dauntless dive bomber aboard the USS Enterprise on the morning of Feb. 17, 1944, getting ready for essentially the most harmful mission of his life. His goal was Truk Lagoon, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s most fortified ahead base within the Pacific.
“For the earlier two years of the battle, the very considered approaching Truk appeared deadly,” Cawley later recalled.
Inside 48 hours, Cawley and tons of of different Navy aircrewmen would show that concern unfounded. Operation Hailstone, the two-day provider assault launched 82 years in the past this week, demolished Japan’s largest abroad naval set up and despatched greater than 40 ships beneath the waves. It was the primary time a significant portion of the U.S. quick provider drive operated independently as a raiding strike unit, untethered from an amphibious touchdown.
Japan’s Fortress at Truk
Truk Lagoon sits roughly 1,000 miles northeast of New Guinea within the western Pacific. A large barrier reef some 40 miles throughout encircles dozens of volcanic islands. Japan seized the atoll from Germany throughout World Warfare I and held it below a League of Nations mandate.
By means of the Twenties and Nineteen Thirties, Tokyo quietly reworked Truk into a significant navy base. 5 airstrips, seaplane amenities, submarine restore outlets and fleet anchorages turned the lagoon into the operational hub of the Mixed Fleet.
The bottom additionally housed storage for greater than 77,000 tons of gasoline oil, the most important Japanese depot outdoors the house islands. By February 1944, between 10,000 and 12,000 military and navy troops garrisoned the atoll. Coastal weapons lined all 5 lagoon entrances, which had been additionally rigged with electrically managed mines.
Regardless of all that firepower, the bottom had solely 40 anti-aircraft weapons, and none had been outfitted with hearth management radar.
Allied planners referred to as it the “Gibraltar of the Pacific.” No American drive had dared to strike it.
A New Form of Provider Power
That modified in early 1944. The U.S. Navy’s industrial surge had produced a provider fleet in contrast to something in historical past. Rear Adm. Marc Mitscher’s Job Power 58 included 5 fleet carriers and 4 gentle carriers armed with greater than 500 fight plane. Seven battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines bolstered them.
Mitscher had taken command of the quick carriers simply weeks earlier, changing Rear Adm. Charles Pownall, whom Adm. Chester Nimitz’s headquarters deemed too cautious. Mitscher ran issues in a different way.
“I inform them what I need finished. Not how!” he as soon as mentioned of his management method.
Vice Adm. Raymond Spruance, the Fifth Fleet commander and victor at Halfway, ordered the assault on Truk to neutralize the bottom forward of the upcoming invasion of Eniwetok within the Marshall Islands. Japanese plane at Truk may threaten that operation, and the bottom additionally served as a stopover for ferrying substitute warplanes to Rabaul.
Adm. Mineichi Koga, commander of the Mixed Fleet, had acknowledged Truk’s rising vulnerability. After Marine Corps PB4Y-1 Liberator reconnaissance planes had been noticed over the lagoon in early February, Koga pulled his capital ships, together with battleships, heavy cruisers and carriers, roughly 1,200 miles west to Palau.
They might by no means return.
Whole Shock
The operation’s first kill got here even earlier than provider planes launched. The sunshine cruiser Agano, badly broken months earlier at Rabaul, had departed Truk on Feb. 15 below escort by the destroyer Oite, limping towards Japan on solely two of her 4 propellers.
The submarine USS Skate intercepted Agano roughly 160 miles north of the atoll on the afternoon of Feb. 16 and put two torpedoes into her starboard facet. The cruiser burned by way of the evening and sank early the following morning. Oite rescued 523 of Agano’s crewmen and turned again towards Truk.
Solely days earlier on Feb. 12, three of TF 58’s 4 provider job teams departed Majuro for Truk. On the morning of Feb. 17, Mitscher’s carriers launched their first fighter sweep 90 minutes earlier than daybreak.
The Japanese had been caught utterly off guard. Pilots from the twenty second and twenty sixth Air Flotillas had been on shore go away, having relaxed after weeks of heightened readiness following American reconnaissance overflights. The atoll’s radar was blind to something flying beneath a sure altitude, and the phone traces connecting defensive positions labored poorly.
American F6F Hellcat fighters arrived over Eten, Param, Moen and Dublon islands earlier than Japanese pilots may get airborne.
Greater than 300 Japanese planes sat on the bottom throughout the atoll. Solely about half had been operational. American fighters tore by way of those who managed to take off and strafed dozens extra on the bottom. By noon, roughly two-thirds of Japanese air energy at Truk had been worn out. The airstrips themselves had been cratered past use.
Amongst these watching the destruction from the bottom was Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the Marine Corps ace and Medal of Honor recipient. Boyington had been a prisoner of battle since being shot down over Rabaul a month earlier. His captors flew him into Truk simply as the primary strikes started. He was shoved right into a concrete slit trench whereas a Hellcat destroyed the transport airplane that had carried him in.
Avenger torpedo bombers from Enterprise and Intrepid adopted shut behind, hitting Eten’s runways and Moen’s seaplane amenities with fragmentation and incendiary bombs. With Truk’s air defenses shattered, American strike plane turned their full consideration to the lagoon.
Mauling the Japanese Fleet
Koga’s heavy warships had been gone, however the lagoon was nonetheless full of service provider vessels, tankers, transports and auxiliary warships. Many sat at anchor with no air cowl, defended solely by shore-based anti-aircraft batteries. American aircrews had been disenchanted that the massive prizes had fled. They needed capital ships. However there was nonetheless lots to destroy.
Lt. James D. Ramage, government officer of Bombing Squadron 10 aboard Enterprise, led repeated dive-bombing strikes into the lagoon. He sank the broken fleet oiler Hoyo Maru and directed assaults in opposition to different delivery targets all through the day.
One of many single most devastating moments got here when Lt. James Bridges of Torpedo Squadron 6, flying off Intrepid, put a torpedo into the auxiliary cruiser Aikoku Maru. The ten,000-ton vessel was full of ammunition and carried practically 1,000 troopers and crew. The torpedo triggered a catastrophic secondary explosion that tore the ship aside and sank her nearly immediately.
Bridges and his two crewmen had been caught within the blast. Their plane was by no means recovered.
Ships that attempted to flee by way of the atoll’s North Move fared no higher. The sunshine cruiser Katori, auxiliary cruiser Akagi Maru, destroyer Maikaze and different Japanese vessels tried to interrupt out collectively. American bombers hit the group repeatedly. Cawley, returning to Enterprise after a strike, noticed the broken Katori from the air.
“After I sighted the cruiser, she was low within the water and barely transferring. Since we had been with out bombs and ammo, I opened up on guard channel, saying, ‘Any strike chief from 51-Bobcat, there’s a broken Japanese cruiser simply to the north of the lagoon. Come sink it,'” Cawley recalled.
Spruance needed the battleships to complete it. Mitscher personally spoke up and mentioned, “Bobcat chief, that is Bald Eagle. Cancel your final. Don’t, repeat, don’t, sink that ship.”
Assist arrived nearly instantly. Spruance had taken private cost of Job Group 50.9, which included the battleships Iowa and New Jersey and the heavy cruisers Minneapolis and New Orleans. The floor drive circled Truk, bombarding shore positions and looking fleeing enemy ships. Iowa’s 16-inch weapons completed off the crippled Katori. American cruisers despatched Maikaze to the underside.
Solely the destroyer Nowaki escaped, surviving a near-miss from New Jersey at greater than 20 miles. It marked the one time of their careers that Iowa and New Jersey fired their predominant batteries at enemy warships.
The Evening Raid
As darkness fell on Feb. 17, Lt. Cmdr. Invoice Martin of Torpedo Squadron 10 launched an operation that had by no means been tried. Twelve TBF Avengers catapulted off Enterprise for a low-level, radar-guided evening bombing run in opposition to Japanese delivery nonetheless within the lagoon.
Martin had spent months lobbying senior Navy management to show that carrier-based evening strikes had been viable. His crew, often called the “Buzzard Brigade,” had educated relentlessly in instrument flying and airborne radar methods. The Avenger was the one provider airplane within the fleet giant sufficient to hold an operational radar unit.
Every pilot navigated by radar, choosing out targets among the many coral islets that cluttered the display. They sank roughly one-third of the entire enemy delivery tonnage destroyed throughout your entire two-day operation.
Cliff Largess, one of many 12 pilots who flew that mission, described it many years later at a 2009 Veterans Day ceremony in Jamestown, New York.
“We took off in the dark. The outcomes had been spectacular,” he mentioned. “We had the proof that evening flights may very well be finished efficiently. The method caught on, and inside a 12 months, many of the plane may fly at evening. We had been the pioneers.”
The Japanese struck again late on Feb. 17. Between roughly 9 p.m. and midnight, small teams of bombers from Truk and Formosa probed the provider job teams’ defenses. A single twin-engine bomber from the 755th Naval Air Group penetrated the display and drove a torpedo into Intrepid’s starboard quarter. The hit killed 11 sailors and jammed the provider’s rudder. Intrepid limped again to the USA for repairs and missed the following six months of the battle.
Strikes resumed on Feb. 18. The destroyer Oite arrived on the lagoon’s entrance that day. TBF Avengers caught Oite as she tried to re-enter the move. A torpedo broke the ship in half. She sank inside minutes, taking all 523 Agano survivors and most of her personal crew to the underside.
By the point Mitscher recalled his plane, the injury was overwhelming.
Losses on Each Sides
American pilots destroyed roughly 250 Japanese plane and sank roughly 200,000 tons of delivery over these two days. The losses included gentle cruisers Katori and Naka, 4 destroyers, two submarine tenders, an plane ferry, 32 service provider ships and several other fleet oilers.
About 4,500 Japanese servicemen had been killed. Some 17,000 tons of saved gasoline had been additionally destroyed.
America misplaced 25 plane and 35 servicemen.
The tonnage despatched to the underside at Truk amounted to roughly 10 p.c of all Japanese service provider delivery misplaced throughout your entire Pacific in the course of the previous eight months. The destruction of treasured fleet tankers crippled the Imperial Navy’s skill to gasoline operations, a scarcity that grew to become painfully apparent in the course of the Battle of Leyte Gulf eight months later. In contrast to Pearl Harbor, the place U.S. oil storage tanks and restore yards survived the Japanese assault, Truk’s gasoline reserves and infrastructure had been gutted.
Fleet Adm. Nimitz summarized the result bluntly.
“The Pacific Fleet has returned at Truk the go to made by the Japanese Fleet at Pearl Harbor,” he mentioned.
The success of Hailstone satisfied the Joint Chiefs that Truk may very well be bypassed relatively than invaded. The atoll’s garrison was marooned.
The Japanese excessive command responded to the catastrophe by relieving Vice Adm. Masami Kobayashi of his command of the 4th Fleet two days after the raid. His substitute was Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, the identical officer who had commanded the Japanese provider strike drive at Pearl Harbor. The architect of that 1941 assault now presided over the smoldering wreckage of Japan’s personal premier Pacific base.
Mitscher despatched carriers again in late April, hammering what remained. Few worthwhile targets survived. By late 1944, the troops stranded on Truk spent most of their time rising meals in a shedding battle in opposition to hunger and tropical illness.
Historian David Hobbs later described the garrison as having been “decreased to ravenous impotence.” The Japanese commander and his employees formally surrendered aboard the heavy cruiser Portland in Truk’s lagoon on Sept. 2, 1945.
The Legacy 82 Years Later
Operation Hailstone hardly ever receives the popularity given to Halfway or Iwo Jima. A 2024 examine within the Journal of Maritime Archaeology famous that Truk “has not obtained vital historic examination” as a result of it was bypassed and thought of a hit with acceptable losses.
The ships that sank in 1944 created one of many world’s most extraordinary underwater websites. Greater than 60 wrecks sit on the ground of what’s now referred to as Chuuk Lagoon, their hulls lined with coral.
French explorer Jacques Cousteau introduced world consideration to the positioning in a 1969 documentary. The Federated States of Micronesia has designated the wrecks as protected monuments and battle graves. Divers nonetheless make pilgrimages on the anniversary each February.
Eighty-two years after Hailstone, 35 American servicemen from the February 1944 raids and as many as 225 from later assaults on Truk stay lacking in motion.
In 2024, researchers from Undertaking Get well situated three U.S. plane within the lagoon for the primary time. Every was crewed by servicemembers nonetheless listed as MIA.
The fleet resting on the backside of Chuuk Lagoon are what stay of an overextended empire that confronted an more and more highly effective U.S. Navy. For 2 days in February 1944, Job Power 58 proved that no Japanese base within the Pacific was past attain of American forces.
