Mariana Turkey Shooting
The "turkey shoot" ( The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot ) called air battle took place in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific War on the 19th June 1944 during the Battle of the Philippine Sea instead. The name goes back to Commander Paul D. Buie of Squadron VF-16 of the USS Lexington , who compared the dogfights to a turkey shoot .
The US Task Force 58 under Vice Admiral Marc Andrew Mitscher launched a landing attack on Saipan , the main island of the northern Mariana Islands. The nearby Japanese aircraft carriers tried to prevent this landing and launched a total of 372 machines. During the battle, 242 of these machines went through American flak and attacks by about 300 American fighter aircraft of type Grumman F6F Hellcat lost. The Japanese fleet lost another 50 aircraft on its retreat to Guam . The Americans, on the other hand, only lost 29 machines.
Since the kill rate was very high at around 10: 1, the American pilots spoke sarcastically of a big "turkey shoot". Reference is made to the defenselessness of turkeys, in German the term "clay pigeon shooting" is used similarly.
The reason for this disastrous performance of the Japanese air and especially sea air forces was primarily due to the lack of experience of their pilots and a lack of tactics. On the US side, the experience of the Battle of Midway was implemented. Sufficient radio channels were available for command and control, and the introduction of operations centers (OPZ) had made the units and units more efficient. The hunter's screen was targeted at the Japanese attack waves from the OPZ with the help of modern radar devices. The anti-aircraft guns had introduced shells with proximity fuses that fought Japanese planes hatched through the fighter's umbrella. Due to the earlier experiences against the Zero , the American naval fighter pilots had strict instructions to only go into dogfights if they were in the superiority position: consistent evaluation of the flight performance of captured and recovered enemy aircraft had shown that the Japanese piston engines were at certain flight altitudes and speeds had catastrophic performance gaps. This realization led to the development of various aerial combat tactics, when applied by timing, staggering the attack waves, etc., the Japanese were forced to attack. Most of the Japanese aircraft downed were torpedo bombers and dive bombers, which did not have the agility of a fighter. The young Japanese pilots were also inexperienced, as the Japanese naval aviators had suffered high losses in the previous battles.
Individual evidence
- ^ Samuel Eliot Morison: New Guinea and the Marianas: March 1944 - August 1944 . , Naval Institute Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-59114-554-7 , p. 257.
literature
- Barrett Tillman, Carrier Battle in the Philippine Sea: The Marianas Turkey Shoot , Specialty Press, 1994, ISBN 1-883809-04-5
