200,000 Miles Aboard the Destroyer Cotton by Robinson C. Snelling;

Author:Robinson, C. Snelling;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Kent State University Press

23

Air Strikes

against Tokyo:

Iwo Jima

D Day

The transfer of command from Admiral Halsey (Third Fleet) to Admiral Spruance (Fifth Fleet) was accompanied by a reorientation of the Pacific Fleet toward the Central Pacific objectives. To emphasize this change, Admiral Nimitz had moved his own command headquarters from Pearl Harbor to Guam.

The Pacific Fleet would no longer have strategic ties to the Philippine campaign. By now the air force had adequate facilities in the Philippines to provide MacArthur with satisfactory air support, releasing the Fast Carrier Task Force, again designated Task Force 58, for strategic support of amphibious operations of the Fifth Fleet. The first of these objectives was Iwo Jima, where D day was now scheduled for February 19, having been delayed a month by the use of the carriers in extended support of the Luzon operation. The second objective would be the invasion of Okinawa, now scheduled for late March.

The new operation plans called for air strikes against military targets on Honshu, to reduce Japanese tactical air power in advance of the landings on Iwo Jima. The air force B-29 bombers had started strategic bombing attacks on military production facilities in the Japanese home islands, flying the 3,100-mile round-trip between Honshu and our airfields on Saipan and Tinian. The Japanese had airfields on Iwo Jima, two-fifths of the way between Saipan and Tokyo, from which they could deploy fighters against the B-29s or at least give advance warning of incoming raids. Japanese fighters had recently been able to defend against the B-29s with some success, rising to an altitude of thirty thousand feet to do so.

It therefore seemed vital to seize Iwo Jima, both to deny its use to the enemy aircraft and to provide an airstrip on which crippled B-29s could land on their return from Japan. Lacking Iwo Jima, B-29s in serious trouble would otherwise have to set down in the ocean, where their crews had small likelihood of survival. It was assumed that the Japanese on Iwo Jima would be well dug in, as the defenders would have enjoyed a six-month period between Task Force 58’s first attacks during the summer of 1944 and the delayed D day in which to install well-prepared defensive positions. The marine commanders and Admiral Spruance were convinced that the coming operation would be a brutal one.

Destroyer Division 99 would be employed both in the screen of the new task group and as part of a scouting line of destroyers to be deployed thirty-six miles in advance of the five carrier task groups during the high-speed approach to Honshu. In addition, DesDiv 99 was designated as the destroyer screen for the battleships and cruisers that would be detached from Task Force 58 upon its return from Honshu to provide additional gunfire support when the marines landed on Iwo Jima. We were therefore going to serve in a wide variety of duties, wherever we could be used effectively, before being sent back to the West Coast for a navy yard overhaul.

Because the scouting line

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