Night of the Banzai Charges: The Strange and Bloody Struggle for Saipan

Part Three

By William R. Trotter

This article is the second part of a serial feature on the battle for Saipan. The first and second installments are still available via the Matrix Games website.

The "pre-assault" phase of the aerial bombardment began on June 3 and was vigorously pressed against all three targeted islands. An estimated 36 Japanese aircraft were destroyed on the ground, and another 20-30 were downed in aerial encounters or by ships' anti-aircraft gunners. Not a single Japanese bomb or torpedo struck an American ship, and only four US planes were downed by ground fire. After June 13, there simply was no more enemy air activity; hour after hour, the picket ships' radar screens showed not a single bogey. These feeble and ineffectual ripostes indicated now parlous was the true state of Japanese air power by this point in the war.

When the American heavy ships arrived on June 13 (D-minus-two) the "softening up" process shifted into high gear. It is interesting to note that fire from the sleek "new" battleships, with their puissant 16-inch main batteries and state-of-the-art radar assisted gun-laying and range-finding systems, was conspicuously less effective than the meticulous, old-fashioned, much slower pounding administered by the "old" (pre-Pearl Harbor) BB's, with their obsolescent 14-inch guns. Crews aboard the elderly battlewagons were much more accustomed to shore bombardment missions; they tended to fire very slowly at first, and were much given to making fine incremental adjustments in-between salvos, until most of their projectiles landed on or at least very close to their intended targets. Guns crews serving on the newer capital ships tended to fire more rapidly and "by the book", and due to the foibles of human depth-perception and wishful thinking, they assumed their salvoes were landing where their high-tech gear told them the shells were exploding - the result was a lopsided amount of "overs", which smashed the bejeezuz out of the sugar-cane processing plants and other non-military buildings, but largely missed hitting the forward trench lines, dugouts, and bunkers.

Still, effectual or not, the opening day's bombardment was a riveting spectacle. Admiral Morrison - who had by now witnessed seven amphibious assaults -- never tired of watching the "fireworks" and, again, wrote a compelling, if slightly blasé, description for posterity:

There are few things prettier than a naval bombardment, providing one is on the sending and not the receiving end and providing (as in this case) one has lost all feeling of compassion for the human victims. Nearby ships belch great clouds of saffron smoke with a mighty roar. Distant ones are inaudible, but their flashes of gunfire leap out like the angry flick of a snake's tongue. Planes drop white phosphorous bombs which explode in clouds white as new-fallen snow, and throw out silver streamers which ignite cane fields, whence arise clouds of yellowish sugar-cane smoke. Cape Nafutan, with green foliage atop steep cliffs, made a noble spectacle when "shorts" from the Pennsylvania's main battery threw up columns of spray hundreds of feet high, like those tossed up by breaking waves after a storm.

Not all the shellfire was to be one-way traffic, but not a hostile shot appears to have been fired on June 13, because Saito had ordered his shore batteries not to fire without clear permission, and then, when permission was given, to unmask their positions only long enough to loose a few rounds at hard-to-resist targets, then ceasing fire promptly, before the American observers could pinpoint their locations.

So despite enormous frustration, the Japanese shore guns laid low all throughout June 13, hoping thereby to lull their opponents into thinking Saipan was toothless, with all its batteries knocked out. When they did get permission to fire, on the 14th, they did so sparingly and with some effect. The first salvo from Saipan very neatly straddled the Honolulu at 0539 (which caused one bluejacket on the cruiser's bridge to look incredulously at the Captain and growl: "The nerve of them bastards!", to which the skipper, unbothered by the sailor's unseemly tone of familiarity, could only grin and nod in agreement. Radio traffic with spotter planes, however, later confirmed that the shell splashes had been from poorly-aimed anti-aircraft fire, not from a skillfully aimed anti-ship salvo!

When Oldendorf's gun-line steamed around Marpi Point, twelve diagonal miles from his starting point and with visibility growing better by the minute, a well-hidden enemy battery took a crack at the Maryland and the California, but by now the fleet's observation planes were getting used to the light. Muzzle flashes were seen and both BB's cranked off several broadsides (5-inch now as well as 14-inch), which appeared to silence the Jap gunners for good.

But throughout the day, although the defenders fired very seldom, they did achieve some success. The Cleveland and Honolulu were both repeatedly straddled (suffering minor damage from shell splinter and shipping some water from sprung hull-plates); the California was struck, as was the destroyer Braine, and a direct hit from a 4.7-inch shore battery destroyed a five-inch turret aboard the Tennessee (had the Jap shell been of higher caliber, it might have ignited one of the secondary magazines, with horrendous consequences). As it was, the bombardment fleet suffered a total of 11 killed and 41 wounded, and except for the smashed five-inch turret, sustained only minor structural damage; no fires were ignited and no fire-control systems put out of action.