Operation Vengeance
The Operation Vengeance ( English for revenge was) one of the Americans during the Pacific War run business on the Solomon Islands . It took place on April 18, 1943 and resulted in the death of the Japanese admiral Yamamoto Isoroku .
Yamamoto was considered by the Americans to be the admiral responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When the Americans became aware of the admiral's inspection trip to Bougainville through the interception and decoding of a Japanese radio message at all times, the Admirals Chester W decided Nimitz and William F. Halsey to carry out an attack on Yamamoto. A season long range fighter that of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal began, explained the plan and shot the bomber with Japanese Admiral aboard near the airfield of Buin from. With Yamamoto, two rear admirals, his secretary and the pilot of the machine died.
The radio message
The Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy , Admiral Yamamoto, decided to undertake an inspection trip to bases on the Solomon Islands and Bougainville in order to raise the morale of the troops after the defeat at the Battle of Guadalcanal and to thank the airmen deployed in Operation I. On April 14, 1943, the American naval intelligence service with the code name "Magic" intercepted a radio message with the details of the planning and decoded it.
The original message NTF131755 was addressed to the headquarters of the Japanese 11th and 26th Air Fleets and was encoded with the key JN-25D. Three "Magic" listening stations in the USA, including those of the Pacific Fleet , intercepted the radio message. In it there was talk of a planned inspection trip of the admiral to three front bases in the area around Bougainville. The arrival and departure times at the bases were just as much part of the radio message as the number and types of aircraft used. The flight was scheduled for April 18th.
The message, decrypted overnight by Major Alva Lasswell, was first delivered to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. At the beginning of his deliberations, he asked himself whether any of the possible successors of Yamamoto would be better suited for this post than Yamamoto himself. Nimitz had already stressed several times that Yamamoto represented the greatest danger to him. He agreed with his staff that there was no other high-ranking Japanese officer who could match him in strategic and tactical brilliance, as well as his popularity with the military and the people. Yamamoto's death would undoubtedly mark a severe cut in morale and fighting power for the Japanese.
Nimitz discussed his views shortly thereafter with his colleague Admiral William F. Halsey, who was in command in the Solomon Islands area . Halsey was also for the interception mission, for which Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher recommended using the Lockheed P-38 stationed at Henderson Airfield . Earlier assumptions that the order to do so had been issued by the highest authority have proven to be baseless. Nimitz and Halsey telegraphed their request to Secretary of the Navy William Knox for information, but neither Knox nor US President Roosevelt intervened in the planning.
The planning
Nimitz authorized the mission on the morning of April 17th and left the planning to Halsey, Mitscher and his staff.
The decrypted radio message revealed that Admiral Yamamoto would leave Rabaul on April 18 for Ballalae airfield south of Bougainville in the Northern Solomon Islands. Yamamoto and his companions were to fly two Mitsubishi G4M Betty medium bombers of the 205th Kokutai Naval Air Force, which would be accompanied by six Mitsubishi A6M Zero of the 204th Kokutai Naval Air Force as protection. The specified departure time was 6:00 a.m. Tokyo time and the arrival time was 8:00 a.m. Tokyo time.
The commander of the 339th Fighter Squadron on Guadalcanal, Major John W. Mitchell, received an order from Rear Admiral Mitscher to carry out the mission with his P-38 fighters. On the afternoon of April 17th, Mitchell, Thomas Lanphier , one of the unit's top pilots, and intelligence officer Joe McGuigan sat down to study maps. A course was worked out that should lead the hunters at a low altitude of only a few meters above the water surface and about 80 kilometers away from the Japanese-occupied islands of the New Georgia archipelago towards Bougainville. With a route length of around 645 kilometers, the flight should take two hours and the calculated meeting point should be reached at 9:35 a.m. Since the leadership had spoken of an unconditional success , Mitchell decided to use 18 P-38s for the mission.
The range problem of the almost 1,300 kilometers to be flown, plus a reasonable waiting and search time, should be solved with additionally mounted drop tanks.
The fighters were divided into three groups by Mitchell, whose pilots were informed by Mitchell shortly before midnight. Four machines formed the so-called killer group , which consisted of the pilots Thomas Lanphier, Rex Barber, McLanahan, and Moore. The six fighters in the cover group were flown by Mitchell himself, Doug Canning, Jack Jacobson, Goerke, Frank Holmes and Hine, with the latter two being the alternative for the killer group. The second cover group was formed by eight pilots of the 12th Squadron, led by Louis Kittel.
Execution
In the early morning of April 18, the ground technicians at Henderson Airfield installed the new auxiliary tanks under the aircraft, which were ready for use at dawn. In a meeting scheduled after breakfast, Mitchell explained the plan again and ordered absolute radio silence.
The P-38 Lightning took off at 7:00 a.m., taking the full length of the runway due to the additional tank load. Two machines had to turn around immediately; McLanahan's tire burst at takeoff and the Moore machine's auxiliary tank did not activate. Therefore, Hine and Holmes replaced the two in the killer group . The remaining 16 P-38 went on a north-westerly course and tried to maintain a dangerous altitude of just 10 meters above the water surface.
After an hour's flight, the machines were still around 460 kilometers from their destination. At that time, the Japanese bombers and fighters took off in Rabaul and began the flight towards Bougainville to reach the first base at 10:00 a.m. In the second bomber, Admiral Ugaki Matome , Yamamoto's chief of staff, accompanied the admiral on his inspection tour.
At around 8:20 a.m., the American fighters made their first course correction and turned a little further north. After leaving the island of Vella Lavella in the north of the New Georgia Archipelago, a second correction was made again to the north. The third course correction took place at 9:00 a.m. With a slight turn to the northeast, the planes were now heading straight for the island of Bougainville, which was only about 40 miles away. At the same time, the hunters began to climb and tested the functionality of their on-board weapons.
When the mountains of Bougainville came into view, the hunters of the two cover groups climbed higher to protect the interceptor group from possible approaching Japanese hunters. At 9:34 a.m. Doug Canning sighted the approaching group around the bomber with Admiral Yamamoto on board in a northwesterly direction. The Americans dropped their auxiliary tanks and turned to attack the approaching Japanese. Holmes and Hines had drop problems, so only Barber and Lanphier quickly got behind the Japanese bombers. All other hunters kept their course for cover.
The two operational American P-38 fighters pounced on the Japanese bombers and immediately began to fire. The dogfight was short-lived and not fully understandable for those involved, which can explain the contradicting statements shortly after the attack. The processes are still uncertain today and are discussed controversially. Lanphier and Barber both claimed to have shot down a bomber over the island's jungle. Frank Holmes, who could not immediately intervene in the fight because of his technical problem, stated that a few minutes later he met a "Betty" over the water, who then fell.
Japanese sources, including the diary of the surviving Admiral Ugaki, report the following: Only two bombers were involved in the fight. The G4M1 Betty model 11 with the serial number 2656 rudder T1-323 with Admiral Yamamoto, the frigate captains Ishizaki and Toibana, Rear Admiral Kitamura, Rear Admiral Takata and the pilot Koyani Takeo on board as well as a second identical Betty with an undisclosed serial number, the Admiral Ugaki Matome, Frigate Captain Tanimura Hiroaki, the pilot Hayashi Hiroshi and an unidentified other passenger on board. Yamamoto's bomber fell into the jungle at Moila Point, a few kilometers from the road between Panguna and Buin, where it still lies today. There were no survivors. The second bomber spun into the sea. The pilot Hayashi and Admiral Ugaki survived and were able to land.
After a long period of time, the US pilots saw in their testimony for the intelligence officers' minutes that the assumption that a third bomber had been shot down was incorrect.
Aftermath
After the Japanese stationed there had reached the crash site, they took Yamamoto Isoroku's body to the headquarters. There she was subjected to an autopsy on April 20 , which showed that the cause of the Admiral's death was not the crash, but several machine gun hits. Yamamoto was then cremated immediately to keep his death a secret, as he was a great leader and identification figure for the Japanese people. His ashes were flown aboard a "Betty" to Rabaul and from there brought to the Japanese main island on board the battleship Musashi . In Tokyo, he received a state funeral and great honors in the Yasukuni Shrine . Admiral Koga Mineichi was appointed as the successor to the Japanese supreme command .
The USA did not initially announce the successful downing either, in order not to reveal to the Japanese that they could decode their encrypted radio messages. It was only a few days later that the American media reported the admiral's death. The mission was portrayed as very difficult and a lucky coincidence, in which US coast guards had spotted the approaching bombers in the Bougainville area and a P-38 squadron happened to be in this airspace.
The three pilots involved in the kills Lanphier, Barber and Holmes fought all their lives over whether the success of the downing of Yamamoto should be attributed. When the diary of the surviving Admiral Ugaki appeared in 1969, it turned out that Holmes could definitely book one of the bombers, namely the one that fell into the sea. In order to settle Lanphier and Barber's public dispute over the second bomber and to discredit neither of the two, the US Navy quickly attributed half a kill to each of them.
swell
- ^ The Yamamoto Shootdown ; Retrieved July 16, 2006.
- ↑ G4M1 Model 11 Betty Manufacture Number 2656 Tail T1-323 (Yamamoto's Bomber) ; Retrieved July 16, 2006.
literature
- Donald A. Davis: Lightning Strike. The Secret Mission to Kill Admiral Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor. St. Martin's Griffin, 2006, ISBN 0-312-30907-4 .
- John Stanaway, Tom Tullis: P-38 Lightning Aces of the Pacific and CBI. Osprey Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1-85532-633-7 .
- Carroll V. Glines: Attack on Yamamoto. Schiffer Publishing, 1993, ISBN 0-88740-509-6 .
- Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon: Fading Victory. The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941-45. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, ISBN 0-8229-5462-1 .
- R. Cargill Hall: Lightning over Bougainville. The Yamamoto Mission Reconsidered (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series). Smithsonian Institute Press, 1991, ISBN 1-56098-012-5 .
- Burke Davis: Get Yamamoto. Barker, London 1973, ISBN 0-213-00348-1 .