Strong Men Armed

and the Marines who went in after them with heavy machine guns and mortars sank up to their waists in muck. It would be many days before Lake Susupe was cleared.

On the right or southern front the Fourth Division’s gains were followed by the entry of the 165th Infantry on the Marine right flank. The 165th would attack Aslito Airfield in southern Saipan the following day.

On the extreme edge of the left or northern flank, the Second Marines under Colonel Walter Stuart moved cautiously upcoast in a column of battalions until a point 1,000 yards below Garapan had been reached. They were to sit there until southern Saipan had been cleaned out.

Out on the ocean Kelly Turner was already taking the transports and cargo ships away from Saipan to empty blue seas many, many miles to the south and east. There they joined all the ships and men of the Guam invasion force, circling, circling, circling, to the extreme disgust of the troops, until word arrived of the victory or defeat of Mitscher’s Task Force 58.

And at a point about 500 miles west of the Philippines, the fleets of Admiral Ozawa and Ugaki rendezvoused and refueled, and were now streaking east for Saipan, their scout planes conducting searches many hundreds of miles before and around them, hunting for the American fleet.

Tracking the Japanese for Admiral Spruance was a submarine called Cavalla. She was making her first cruise. She had sighted Ozawa’s carriers astern at dusk. Commander Herman Kossler had quickly turned tail and put 15,000 yards between them and Cavalla. It turned dark, but Kossler could still see the vast silhouette of a monster carrier.

“Christ!” Kossler swore. “It looks like the Empire State Building.”

Then Kossler had been forced to take Cavalla down. She submerged 100 feet and Kossler and his men tried to count the screws of the ships passing overhead in a half-hour-long procession. They counted 15, but Kossler thought that was too low.

Cavalla surfaced and got off her report to Spruance. She went down again for two hours. When she surfaced, shortly before midnight, she had lost contact.

On Saipan in the early morning of June 18 the Japanese had received a message from Premier Hideki Tojo. It said:

Because the fate of the Japanese Empire depends on the result of your operation, you must inspire the spirit of the officers and men and to the very end continue to destroy the enemy gallantly and persistently. Thus alleviate the anxiety of our Emperor.

Back flashed the message of Colonel Takuji Suzuki, the 43rd Division’s chief of staff. It said:

Have received your honorable Imperial words and we are grateful for boundless magnanimity of Imperial favor. By becoming the bulwark of the Pacific with 10,000 deaths we hope to requite the Imperial favor.

At daylight, Lieutenant General Saito began burning his secret documents preparatory to moving his headquarters farther north from the American invaders even then breaking out of their beachhead.

By the night of July 18 the Fourth Marine Division had struck straight across the island to the shores of Magicienne Bay—“Magazine Bay” as it would be forever called—while beneath them the 27th Division’s 165th Infantry had overrun Aslito Airfield.

All was gradually shaping up for the drive to the north planned by Lieutenant General Howlin’ Mad Smith, who had set up headquarters at Charan Kanoa the day before. Smith now had three divisions on Saipan and he hoped to attack to the north on a three-division, cross-island front. He already had seen to the emplacement of his corps artillery—30 155-millimeter “long toms” and howitzers which would fire in support of the assault-but he would not launch the clean-up drive until Mount Tapotchau in the center of the island was seized.

Cavalla was going down again. A night-flying Japanese plane had sighted the American sub and Commander Kossler was submerging. It was three o’clock in the morning of June 19.

At seven o’clock Cavalla was up again-but once more an enemy plane spotted her and drove her down. Something was stirring. Kossler could guess it from the number of enemy planes abroad. At ten o’clock he brought Cavalla up. Again the Japanese planes menaced him.

Cavalla went down. Kossler decided to wait fifteen minutes….

Albacore was cruising at periscope depth and Commander J. W. Blanchard was peering into the glass.

He started. There was a big carrier, a cruiser and the tops of other ships about seven miles away—and that carrier was big! It was Taiho, the carrier Commander Kossler had first sighted and the biggest flattop that Japan was able to float. She was 33,000 tons, brand-new, and she flew the eight-rayed, single- banded flag of Admiral Ozawa. She was launching planes, for Ozawa’s attack on the Americans was already begun.

Commander Blanchard retracted his periscope and made plans to attack. He calculated the range and ordered a spread of six torpedoes prepared. Then something went wrong with the torpedo data computer. The “Correct Solution” light refused to flash—and Taiho was fast moving out of range.

Blanchard upped periscope and fired by sight.

Then he sent Albacore plunging down deep and awaited the arrival of both the enemy destroyers and the sound of a torpedo explosion.

They came swiftly-three destroyers and one great explosion.

Blanchard was disappointed. He could never hope to sink the biggest enemy carrier he had ever seen with a single torpedo.

The quarter-hour had passed and Cavalla was up to periscope depth.

There were four planes on the starboard bow. But they did not molest Cavalla. Kossler watched. He saw the mast of a destroyer over the horizon. He moved to his right. He saw the mast of a carrier. She was taking on planes. She was not as big as the monster he had seen last night, but she would still rate around the 22,000-ton Shokaku class. Wanting to be sure she was Japanese, Kossler came in closer.

“Goddam!” he exploded when the ship’s flag came into view. “It’s the Rising Sun-big as hell!”

Cavalla began firing torpedoes. She got four off in rapid succession and another pair as she began to submerge.

Going down, Kossler heard three of his fish hit. And then he heard and felt the wrath of the Japanese depth-charges. For two hours the enemy worked Cavalla over, while above the surface mighty Shokaku was a holocaust of burning gasoline and exploding bombs.

At about three o’clock in the afternoon Cavalla’s sound gear picked up monstrous water noises. Kossler and his crewmen heard great concussions.

“That damn thing is sinking,” Kossler said.

He was right. One of Shokaku’s bomb magazines had exploded and the big ship fell apart and sank.

A single torpedo hit did not alarm Admiral Ozawa, nor should it have. Taiho was much too big, much too modern, to be so easily knocked out.

But aboard her was a damage-control officer who was not very experienced, and after Albacore’s fish had ruptured one of Taiho’s gasoline tanks, the damage-control officer ordered all ventilating ducts turned on full blast while the ship tore ahead at 26 knots. He hoped to blow the fumes away, but he only succeeded in distributing them. He filled Taiho with gasoline fumes, and also the vapors of the crude petroleum then being used for fuel, and he turned her into an enormous floating gas-bomb. All that was needed was friction.

It came at half-past three. Taiho’s flight deck blew up, her hangar sides blew out