GIMLET EYES AND THE ALLIGATOROKINAWA SHOTO
MARCH 26, 1945
From the bridge of his flagship, the cruiser Indianapolis, Adm. Raymond Spruance had a panoramic view of the amphibious force. The ships looked like brooding whales, one gray shape after another, stretching from horizon to horizon. On the opposite side of Okinawa were the flattops and escort ships of Mitscher’s Task Force 58. Together they constituted an armada of more than thirteen hundred ships.
The man whom destiny had placed in command of this force was not a charismatic figure in the mold of Horatio Nelson, John Paul Jones, or even Bull Halsey. Raymond Ames Spruance, in fact, was the reverse image of the flamboyant Halsey, possessing none of Halsey’s ebullient temperament or flair for self-promotion. Though he and Halsey were fast friends, Spruance worried about the effect an adoring press had on a senior commander. “His fame may not have gone to his head,” Spruance wrote, “but there is nevertheless danger in this. Should he get to identifying himself with the figure as publicized, he may subconsciously start thinking in terms of what this reputation calls for, rather than of how best to meet the action problem confronting him.”
By personality and style, Spruance was a cautious commander. Halsey, who had been criticized for the opposite tendency, alluded to this when he wrote, “I wish that Spruance had been with Mitscher at Leyte Gulf, and I had been with Mitscher in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.” Coming from Halsey, it was both a rueful comment on his own actions at Leyte Gulf and an implicit criticism of Spruance at the Philippine Sea. The aggressive Halsey was undoubtedly thinking that he would have pursued and destroyed the Japanese carriers at the Philippine Sea, and the Leyte Gulf battle never would have been fought.
Spruance’s lean face had a sober, calculating expression, with darting eyes that always seemed to be absorbing new information. “Gimlet Eyes” was a nickname staff officers gave him, but never to his face. The mild-mannered Spruance never indulged in the profane, tough talk of admirals such as Kelly Turner or John “Slew” McCain. His only noticeable vice was a passion for exotic coffees, which he was able to indulge as his forces seized one coffee-growing island after another in the Pacific.
No one, including his bosses Chester Nimitz or Ernest King, doubted Spruance’s brilliance. Spruance himself never took credit for being bright, claiming that he was actually just a good judge of men. “I am lazy,” he wrote, “and I never have done things myself that I could get someone to do for me.” It was Spruance’s style to choose bright officers for his staff, then get out of their way.
On the gray morning of March 31, 1945, as Spruance’s fleet was preparing to invade Okinawa, a warning was flashed from the CIC of Spruance’s flagship, Indianapolis: four bogeys were inbound. In the next few minutes, CAP fighters splashed two of the enemy planes. A third was shot down by gunners on the cruiser New Mexico.
The fourth somehow slithered through the screen. Dodging the combined gunfire of the task force’s heavy ships and their screens, the kamikaze crashed into Indianapolis’s port quarter.
The kamikaze plane itself did little damage. The starboard wing clipped the cruiser’s port bulwark, and most of the wreckage plunged into the water. Its bomb, released just prior to impact, smashed through several decks, including two messing and berthing compartments, before exploding in an oil bunker. Nine men were killed and twenty wounded.
Indianapolis could still fire her guns, and she could make her own way to the newly captured anchorage at Kerama Retto. Inspection revealed that her propeller shafts were damaged, her fuel tanks ruptured, and her water-distilling equipment ruined.
The cruiser was ordered back to the United States. When she returned to war in July 1945, Indianapolis would carry the components of a world-altering instrument—the “Little Boy” atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima. In a tragic finale to her career, Indianapolis would be sunk by a Japanese submarine two weeks before the end of the war, incurring the greatest seagoing loss of life aboard any U.S. warship.
For Spruance, the kamikaze strike on his flagship was a minor deterrent. Without missing a beat, he transferred his flag to the battleship New Mexico and continued planning the next morning’s invasion.
Aboard Eldorado, Vice Adm. Kelly Turner was keeping the pressure on his staff, firing off his daily blizzard of memos that his officers called “snowflakes,” monitoring the arrival of the amphibious forces as they converged on Okinawa from staging bases at Ulithi, Saipan, Leyte, and Guam. A heavy weather system with high seas in the western Pacific had slowed their progress. True to form, the Alligator was accepting no excuses from his task group commanders.
Love Day—the day the first U.S. troops would hit the beaches at Hagushi, on the western shore of Okinawa—was now twenty-four hours away. Turner’s gunfire and covering force, Task Force 54 under Rear Adm. Mort Deyo, was on station off the western shore of Okinawa delivering a preinvasion bombardment of enemy positions.
The problem was, there were no readily identifiable targets. And the enemy wasn’t cooperating by firing their shore batteries and revealing their positions. As far as anyone could tell, the western shore—and the landing beaches at Hagushi—were deserted.
The Alligator knew better. He’d seen this before. The Japanese never showed their hand until the battle had begun.
The mood in Boys’ Town changed again that night. Out from the lockers came the stashes of Coon Range, but not to mourn the loss of another Tail End Charlie. This was a night for celebration. The report had just reached Intrepid: Windy Hill, last seen floating in the Pacific off Kyushu, was alive and aboard an American submarine.
Hill’s life, in fact, had been saved by one of the VF-10 Grim Reaper pilots, Lt. George “Bee” Weems, who relieved Erickson on station over the place where Hill went down. Realizing that Hill had left his sinking Corsair without a raft, Weems managed to haul his own raft free and drop it to Hill. With the last of his energy, Hill had made a hundred-yard swim through the high seas and clambered aboard the raft. Thirty minutes later, he was astonished to see the gray shape of a submarine swell up from the ocean.
Eric Erickson’s incessant jabbering on the radio had produced results. Alerted by the transmissions, USS Sea Dog proceeded to the area. The sub skipper spotted the circling Corsairs through his periscope and made directly for Hill’s raft.
Hill had been rescued, but it didn’t mean he was coming home to the Intrepid. Not for a while. The Sea Dog had embarked on its war patrol only a few hours before picking up the downed pilot. Now the submarine was heading back into the Pacific. Like it or not, Windy Hill was along for the ride.