Assault from the Sea by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Marianas, 1944.

All these had to assemble in the Marshalls in a specified order at particular times and then move out according to a carefully computed timetable toward the target 1,000 miles away. When finally assembled, the invading force consisted of about one hundred six thousand troops and no less than 535 combatant ships and auxiliaries.

Transporting the troops was the least part of the job; loading the supplies and equipment was the really difficult task. The operation plan provided that assault and garrison forces should be allowed thirty-two days of rations, twenty days of other classes of supply, and seven units of fire. Altogether, a total of about seventy-five thousand tons of cargo representing nearly eight million cubic feet was loaded by the Northern Attack Force alone.

The Saipan invasion force—the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions—made final preparations for the assault in Hawaii. The journey to the target began on 25 May. On that day, the slower landing ships, tank (LSTs) carrying the LVTs and the assault elements of the two marine divisions sortied from Pearl Harbor. All ships carrying the assault troops rendezvoused on 8 June at Eniwetok where last-minute preparations were completed. The LST left on the ninth, and, by the 11th the last of the attack transports had weighed anchor, and the mighty armada was steaming westward through hostile waters toward still more hostile shores.

Meanwhile, the U.S. bombardment of the Marianas, which had begun early in February in conjunction with the great raid against Truk, continued unabated. In March, land-based aircraft took up the task of pounding Japanese bases within reach of the Marianas. For three months now, they had been bombing the islands steadily, neutralizing Japanese airpower and simultaneously gathering aerial reconnaissance for the invading forces.

While land-based aircraft did their job, submarines on distant reconnaissance reported the assembly of a large Japanese fleet off Tawitawi in the Sulu Archipelago near the Borneo oilfields. This was the 1st Mobile Fleet led by Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa and under orders to seek out and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Japanese were as eager as the Americans for a naval showdown and had given Admiral Ozawa the bulk of the fleet and made elaborate preparations for the battle.

In May, as this fleet was assembling, Admiral Ozawa sent a screen of his own submarines south into the Solomons in the mistaken belief that the carriers were there and that Admiral William F. Halsey was getting ready to mount another offensive. It was a natural mistake, for the Southern Attack Force was, indeed, assembling off Guadalcanal, but it was a fatal mistake.

Admiral Halsey, with the escort carriers of the Southern Attack Force, hit the submarines hard. The loss of these underwater craft seriously crippled the reconnaissance capability of Admiral Ozawa’s fleet and deprived him of a weapon he could well have used against the invasion force just then beginning to move toward the Marianas. The Allied strategy of a two-pronged advance was paying off.

The ground forces of the enemy on the first target island, Saipan, numbered about thirty thousand troops.

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