World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Crescendo

The tempo of airborne blows against Japanese positions in the Pacific was quickening; the weight of the blows was increasing. U.S. Army and Navy air forces were confidently advertising coming events. The Japs read the signs and proclaimed the obvious truth: new invasions were imminent.

Lieut. General George C. Kenney sent heavy bombers north to Palau, 560 miles east of Mindanao. They struck at noon with 90 tons of bombs. Simultaneously, fighter planes from Vice Admiral Marc A. (“Pete”) Mitscher’s Pacific Fleet carriers swept the islands in force, destroying ammunition and fuel dumps. There was not a Jap fighter in the air. Jap aircraft on the ground were fired.

Cut to the Bone. The same day, other carrier planes began a series of bombing and strafing strokes against Yap, 275 miles northeast of Palau, and Ulithi, an atoll 120 miles farther to the northeast. Yap’s cable and radio station (a bone of U.S.-Japanese contention at Versailles) was destroyed. Next day, U.S. cruisers and destroyers shelled Palau. This once-proud capital of Nanyo, the Japs’ mandated island empire, adjoining the principal fleet base in the area, was shorn of sea or air defenses: the bombarding craft withdrew unscathed. Again, Navy planes added to the destruction.

Mitscher’s carriers, now operating as part of Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey’s Third Fleet, bored in to the coast of Mindanao. In the first Navy assault on the southern Philippines, they bombed five airfields, destroyed 68 planes, and hunted Jap shipping in half-a-dozen of the big island’s mangrove-lined coves. They set afire 17 cargo ships, a patrol boat, 17 sampans.

But the most explosive action took place near Hinatuan Bay. There, dive bombers, Grumman fighters and torpedo bombers found a huge Jap convoy: 32 cargo ships and 20 sampans. When the planes were out of bombs and ammunition, cruisers and destroyers steamed among the madly scattering convoy and annihilated the remnants. Not a ship, not a sampan got away. Not a U.S. ship was damaged.

For Jap garrisons aground both in the Philippines and in the western Carolines, the only question was: “How long now?”