BREAKOUTBUNGO STRAIT
APRIL 6, 1945
In the darkened space of Yamato’s upper radar compartment, Ens. Mitsuru Yoshida watched the slow, monotonous sweep of the radar. The room reeked of sweat, ozone, and cigarette smoke. Four off-duty sailors lay like bundles of laundry, asleep in a corner of the compartment. Four more were hunched over their direction finders, plotting bearings from what appeared to be radar emissions from two separate enemy submarines. When they directed Yamato’s own radar to the bearings, they received confirmation: two weak but telltale returns.
The task force had passed the midchannel point in the Bungo Strait. From here on they were in hostile waters. Vice Admiral Ito had redeployed his ships, putting them in the standard antisubmarine formation, destroyer screen in front, sonars pinging for enemy submarines. Yamato was in the center of the formation, the cruiser Yahagi bringing up the rear, each ship keeping a 2,700-yard separation from the others.
Enemy submarines were out there. It was no surprise. The exit of the Bungo Strait into the Pacific Ocean was a favorite hunting ground for American submarines. Thousands of tons of Japanese shipping had gone down here, and so had a fair number of U.S. submarines. It was a deadly cat-and-mouse game, matching the speed and agility of the screening destroyers against the nerve and skill of the submarine crews. American submarine captains liked to maneuver on the surface at night, both to recharge their batteries and to use their best speed to reach a firing position. They depended on radar to warn them of oncoming threats and also to pick up approaching targets.
The Yamato could hardly be missed on anyone’s radar. Yoshida could imagine the size of the blip made by a 72,000-ton battleship. A U.S. submarine captain would be ecstatic at picking up such a contact.
Apparently, one just had.
In the fore of the destroyer screen, Isokaze went charging off in the direction of the nearest contact. After a hurried sweep, the destroyer lost the contact and came back to rejoin the formation. Minutes later, another contact. Again the destroyer went racing out toward the open sea.
On the southern side of the formation the destroyer Asashimo was doing the same thing, zigzagging over the blackened surface like a hound sniffing for rabbits. Each time the elusive contact would fade away. The game went on for nearly half an hour, thrusting and parrying, while the task force zigzagged and finally cleared the mouth of the Bungo Strait.
Their best defenses were speed and geography. The submarines couldn’t match the speed of the task force, now moving at 22 knots. As the task force turned south and hugged the long coastline of Kyushu, it presented the submarines with only one side from which to attack. The task force was relatively safe—at least until dawn.
It was damned frustrating. Lt. Cmdr. John Foote, skipper of USS Threadfin, watched his target fade into the distance. His orders, which ran against the grain of any submarine commander, were not to attack until a contact report had been transmitted to Pearl Harbor. Pacific Fleet headquarters was expecting a breakout through the Bungo Strait by the battleship Yamato. It was critical that the movement of Yamato and her task force be reported before attempting an attack.
Despite his frustration, Foote knew the reason for the order. Two U.S. subs had been lost in these waters in the past two months. If Threadfin were sunk before making the contact report, Yamato’s breakout might go undetected.
Foote’s problem was that Threadfin had to remain on the surface while the report was transmitted. This time of night, the airwaves were jammed with military communications traffic. While the signalman tapped out the message, trying to break through the clutter of transmissions, a Japanese destroyer had been alerted to Threadfin’s presence. Now the destroyer was racing like a greyhound in their direction. Foote had the diesel engines screaming at full power, thrashing across the surface at Threadfin’s maximum speed of 19.5 knots. It wasn’t enough. Judging by the radar blip, the Japanese destroyer was making a good 30 knots.
Foote was playing it down to the wire. In the near blackness of the overcast night, the Japanese gun crews wouldn’t be able to fire on him until they were very close, probably inside a mile. If they had radar-controlled guns, of course, they could start firing any minute now, but Foote was betting that they didn’t.
The signalman continued keying his transmitter, trying to get through. Foote kept trying to urge a few more knots from his already straining engines. The destroyer kept coming.
At 2000, after nearly half an hour of trying, the signalman was successful. At almost the same time, the Japanese destroyer gave up the chase. Threadfin was out of danger, at least for the moment. At 2020 came the acknowledgment that Pearl Harbor had received the report. But while Threadfin had been occupied with transmitting the report, her shot at glory—sinking the world’s biggest battleship—had slipped away. The fast-moving Japanese task force had pulled out of range and Threadfin would not be able to catch up.
Another sub, USS Hackleback, was on station 20 miles to the south. Her skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Frederick Janney, was watching the oncoming task force on his radar from 11 miles away. Judging from the size and disposition of the blips, there could be no doubt. It had to be Yamato and her entourage. Janney’s radio transmission at 2030 to Pearl Harbor would be a confirmation of Threadfin’s earlier report.
Before Hackleback could set up a torpedo attack, she, too, drew the attention of the destroyer screen. The submarine was forced to turn her stern to the target and retreat from another onrushing destroyer. By the time the Japanese destroyer withdrew, Hacklebackwas also out of firing range.
As Yamato and her task group headed south, the news of their sortie was causing a hubbub in Pearl Harbor. The report was forwarded to Chester Nimitz’s headquarters on Guam, to Fifth Fleet commander Raymond Spruance aboard New Mexico, and to Marc Mitscher on his flagship, the carrier Bunker Hill.
The flashed reports from the American submarines were also received in the communications room of Yamato. Staring at the intercepted message, the intelligence officer was perplexed. It was not encoded. The report had been sent in plain language, for all the world to read.
Enemy task force headed south. Course 190 degrees, speed 25 knots …
To Mitsuru Yoshida, in the radar room in Yamato, it was an ominous sign. It meat that the Americans were tracking Yamato’s every movement, and they didn’t care whether the Japanese knew it.
Looking at the intercepted message, Yamato’s navigation officer thought it was ironic. “I do believe we learn about our position faster from their side than from ours.”
By dawn on April 7, Yamato was transiting Osumi Strait, the narrow and shoal-filled passage between southern Kyushu and the northernmost island of the Ryukyu archipelago. Admiral Ito was still hoping to deceive the Americans about Yamato’s objective. On a tracking map, it would appear that Yamato was hugging the coast of Kyushu, making her way to the port of Sasebo on the northwestern tip of the island. Of course, the presence of such an escorting force—eight destroyers and a heavy cruiser—would be setting off alarms in every American intelligence office.
Ito’s only advantage that morning, he decided, was the weather. Intermittent rain showers were peppering the decks of the task force. Dark clouds scudded low over the tossing sea. The whitecaps provided ideal camouflage for the gray warships of the task force. Ito liked the forecast even better. The barometer was still falling, and the route to Okinawa was covered with squall lines and patches of heavy rain.
Since leaving the mouth of the Bungo Strait, there had been no more submarine contacts. Still, Ito knew the Americans were watching. All he had to do was gaze overhead. Enemy reconnaissance planes—fighters, long-range bombers, even lumbering Martin PBM flying boats—were flitting in and out of the clouds. Occasionally Yamato’s antiaircraft batteries would open up, but the gunfire was mostly a gesture of defiance. The planes were staying carefully out of range. They weren’t there to fight, just to watch.
While they were still close to the Kyushu shoreline, Ito ordered the two remaining floatplanes on Yamato to be catapulted and returned to land. Yamato normally carried a complement of seven “Pete” and “Jake” floatplanes. They were used for over-the-horizon reconnaissance and spotting to help direct Yamato’s big guns.
The two pilots, looking incongruous on Yamato’s bridge in their flight suits and leather helmets, dutifully asked permission to remain aboard the ship. The executive officer, Captain Nomura, waved them away. The floatplanes would be of no use in the coming battle, nor would the pilots, who would just get in the way. In any case, they should be spared for a future airborne mission.
Each of the floatplanes was hoisted to one of the two immense catapults. Minutes later, one after the other, they hurtled down the catapult track and wobbled into the sky. After a cursory search for submarines in the path of the task force, they turned north and vanished in the murk.
Ito ordered another course correction, heading the task force back to the east. He planned to continue the deception into the morning by returning to a westerly course, letting the American spotter planes report the zigzagging to their headquarters. At the right moment he would abruptly wheel to the south and race at flank speed toward Okinawa. Sometime after nightfall he would be closing with the American fleet, bombarding the enemy shore positions, spreading havoc with the U.S. invasion force.
Yamato’s task force would have no air cover. That much had been decided even before the order for Ten-Go was written. Whatever airpower the Japanese Imperial Navy still possessed had already been allocated to the kikusui operation, the massed tokko attacks on the U.S. fleet.
The previous day, April 6, had been the first day of the first kikusui. The planners of Ten-Go, including Ugaki, Toyoda, and Ohnishi, were gambling that the American carrier-based warplanes would be too busy countering the waves of tokko raiders to mount a serious air attack on Yamato.
It was a pipe dream, Admiral Ito knew. Yamato’s fate was in the hands of the gods.
One of the screening destroyers, Asashimo, was having trouble. With the task force still steaming on the diversionary northwestward course, Asashimo was drifting slowly behind, unable to keep station. From the bridge of Yamato, Ens. Mitsuru Yoshida read the signal flags hoisted on the destroyer: “Engine trouble.” A few minutes later came another message: “Repairs will take five hours.”
It was bad news. Without the collective support of its task force, a lone destroyer in the waters south of Kyushu was as good as dead. If a submarine didn’t pick it off, a flight of American warplanes would find it.
Aboard Yamato, Admiral Ito considered the situation. Asashimo’s problem seemed to be a damaged reduction gear in her power plant. Ito decided to give them time to repair the problem. The task force would reverse course, go back to gather up Asashimo, then steam at high speed for Okinawa. If Asashimo could maintain station, she would share in the glory of the coming battle. If not, she was on her own.
Abuzz of excitement crackled in the flag plot compartment in New Mexico. Unlike similar spaces on other ships, the air on Raymond Spruance’s bridge was not clouded with cigarette smoke. Spruance, a tobacco hater, had banned smoking in his flag spaces.
Spruance was studying the newly received reports about the Japanese task force. Seldom had his staff seen their boss’s cold, gimlet eyes flash like this. The last of Japan’s great battleships was coming out to fight.
Spruance was a black-shoe admiral—a surface sailor who had cut his teeth on battleships. In the Navy of 1945, he was something of an oddity—a nonaviator whose command now included the greatest naval air force ever deployed. But Spruance also commanded a task force of battleships and cruisers whose only duty until now had been the bombardment of enemy shore positions on Okinawa.
The last major engagement of surface forces had been the October 1944 night battle at Surigao Strait when a Japanese fleet of two battleships, one cruiser, and four destroyers, commanded by Adm. Shoji Nishimura, charged blindly into the waiting guns of the U.S. Seventh Fleet battleships. Nishimura himself went down with his flagship Yamashiro. For the Americans, it had been a sweet revenge. Five of the Seventh Fleet’s six old battleships had been salvaged from the wreckage of Pearl Harbor.
Now, nearly six months later, the normally cool and analytical Raymond Spruance was hearing the siren song of a last epic sea battle. He signaled Rear Adm. Mort Deyo, who commanded Task Force 54, to prepare his battle line to meet the Yamato task force. Spruance’s own flagship, New Mexico, was one of Deyo’s six battleships. It meant that Spruance himself was going to observe the great battle from a front-row seat.
In addition to his aging battleships, Deyo’s task force included seven cruisers and thirty-one destroyers—enough firepower to counter anything the Japanese task force could mount. The prize of sinking the world’s greatest dreadnought could go to the battleship admirals.
Maybe. On the eastern side of Okinawa, in his own flag plot aboard the carrier Bunker Hill, another admiral was eyeing the same prize.