Okinawa '45: Death Of The Yamato

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The sixth, seventh, and eighth waves of the attack come one after the other, each about a hundred planes, from the port side and from astern.

A hunch sends shivers up my spine.

Is the enemy taking advantage of our loss of speed and trying to damage the rudder?

We are covered all over with wounds.

What is more, we are down to half our power, helpless.

Forming beautiful patterns, two torpedo tracks chase after our giant stern.

I turn my back to the stern, wringing my sweaty hands, and wait for the impact with senses honed.

The torpedoes hit aft.

Floating in the air for a moment, the stern is mantled in pillars of flame, pillars of water.

Although damage to both rudders, main and auxiliary slight, the auxiliary rudder steering room falls victim to flooding.

The auxiliary rudder is stuck hard to port, so even with the main rudder to starboard, the ship can make turns only to port.

One side of our body is paralyzed.

And that is Ensign Mitsuro Yoshida, a radar officer aboard the Imperial Japanese Naval Battleship Yamato on the 7th of April, 1945.

Welcome to We Have Ways to Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, for the second episode in our series about Okinawa.

And today we're focusing on the battle at sea because, after all, it's in the Pacific.

This battle, it's a naval battle with some army and marine stuff as a sort of salad dressing.

Is that the right, isn't it, Jim?

Is that the right way of looking at it?

Yeah, no, I think so.

And, you know, Okinawa might be 60 miles long and intermittently 3 and 15 miles wide, but it is absolutely in the middle of the Pacific.

So the sea everywhere.

You know, the Japanese who are aircraft are coming over, they've got to come from Kyushu, they've got to come from southern Japan, 360 miles away, something like that.

The Americans have got to come from all corners.

They've got to come from, obviously, originally the United States, but then naval bases such as Alefi and Guam and so on.

Pearl Harbor.

It's a massive, monster operation, and it's all converging over the dark blue waters of the Pacific.

And a really, really key feature of this is Operation Tengo launched on the 6th and then 7th of April 1945.

And this is the all-out sort of kamikaze bansai attack, both from aircraft but also with surface vessels.

So this is an offensive the Japanese have been planning and building up to.

In the meantime, the Americans have launched their offensive, Operation Iceberg, on Okinawa itself.

The landings have begun on the 1st of April, April Fool's Day, Easter Sunday.

If you're a GI, choose which one is more appropriate.

But this kamikaze effort has been a thing that the Japanese have been summoning up and getting together, and it's finally unleashed.

And I think kamikaze is, it's one of those things with the Second World War, it cuts through.

Everyone knows what we're talking about.

Everyone knows what that word means.

Everyone knows what it is symbolic of.

But what's actually going on underneath the hood here with these kamikazes, it's quite the most amazing story.

Well, it really, really is.

And the kamikaze is really slow.

They first come in sort of the second half of 1944.

You know, there's kamikazes over the Philippines, for example.

But boy, are they here in Okinawa?

And this is largely because, you know, they're running out of everything.

They're running out of fuel they're running out of planes and they want a kind of pointless symbolic gesture

and also let's face it getting someone to fly a plane into a ship if you can persuade them to do that is easier than getting someone to dive bomb a ship technically simpler isn't it they don't need to learn how to dive bomb you could take a less experienced pilot and get more out of him in this desperate stage he's probably going to get shot down dive bombing anyway so you might as well if you're going to spend his life yeah might as well spend his life this way there's so much um murder a load of obsolescent aircraft that you might as well get rid of them.

Exactly.

The sort of murderous cynicism at the core of so many of these Japanese decisions is sort of plainly in view in the kamikaze project, but also people's reactions to it, which I think are very, very interesting.

And, you know, some people may think of this as sort of you put on the headband and off you go automaton style, but that's not what's going on at all, is it?

No, it really, really isn't.

At Kanoya Air Base, for example, which is where Admiral Yugaki, who's the commander of those who've listened to the first episode in this series will remember that that he's the commander of the Japanese Fifth Air Fleet, which is a combined naval and army air fleet.

But there's a whole load of kamikaze pilots living there as well, and they're living in the absolute finest barracks.

You know, their quarters are perched on a babbling brook that weaves its way gently through lush bamboo forests, meadows dotted with wild roses.

And, you know, clearly the shadow of death hangs over these young men in a very big way.

But because they're about to pay the ultimate sacrifice, they're allowed to kind of relax, wander through the meadows, you know, write poetry, drink well.

And when much of the nation is starving, you know, they're getting gifts from the locals, which includes chickens, pigs, you know, eggs, the odd oxen to be slaughtered the night before, all that kind of stuff.

And they've also got local girls sort of washing and cooking for them.

It's kind of sort of lower end kind of geisha thing going on.

They're called labor service maidens, and they serve them and they do become emotionally attached.

But it seems that in a pretty chaste way, the whole thing is just extraordinary.

This isn't the REF going to the pub, though, is it, in Lincolnshire?

Absolutely not.

No, there's a kind of spiritual side to it, a kind of sort of Zen side to it.

You know, where they spend these last days in sort of quiet contemplation and, you know, gather their thoughts.

Yeah, the service maidens are covering their aircraft with cherry blossoms and cloth and origami dolls and stuff, aren't they, at night?

Yeah.

What is different about this to, say, the RAF in Lincolnshire?

Is it the RAF in Lincolnshire?

Is this as a death cult?

There's a sincere hope you're coming back.

You know the casualty rates if you're flying in Bomber Command or whatever.

You know it's a sticky wicket, but there's not the idea that this is a completely one-way ticket.

I mean, this is death cult stuff, isn't it?

It's complete death cult, yeah.

God, shocking.

It absolutely is.

And dolling this up as some sort of great spiritual ascetic is ridiculous because it's not.

It's ultra-violent and selfish and cruel.

Well, it's the murderous cynicism at the core of things.

Yeah, just disgusting.

Murderous cynicism, exactly.

And so when it's time for them to get into their planes, the service maidens line the flight lines and weep and they wave bowers of cherry or rising sun flags.

And they also, I mean, and how Makaba do you like it, folks?

They also collect locks of hair and nail clippings to send to the pilot's family.

Grim, isn't it?

Really grim.

But what's really interesting is when the kamikazes are first created in 1944, they do attract plenty of volunteers.

But by the spring of 1945, and this is where we're at with Okinawa, commanders notice that attitudes are definitely shifting.

It turns out that a lot of them have been asked to volunteer in inverted commas in such a way that it's been impossible to refuse because, you know, there's a huge amount of play particularly in 1930s and 40s japan about honor and you know not disgracing your family and all this kind of stuff and so you know that is how it's presented and one staff officer notes they developed a pressure not entirely artificial which encouraged volunteering and it is understandable that this change in circumstance would affect a change in the attitude of the men concerned yeah quite right because they've been coerced into doing something they don't want to do for obvious reasons turbocharged white feather idea isn't it basically yeah yeah yeah yeah There's this amazing story of this one cadet who, you know, there's a training base at Mito and the entire flight of cadets, they think they're volunteering for the Air Force to be trained as pilots, you know, where they've got a sporting chance.

And they're suddenly told the whole class is basically said, right, we'd like you to volunteer for the kamikazes.

And, you know, he says, I don't even remember telling my feet to move.

It was like a strong gust of wind whooshed up from behind the ranks and blew everyone forward a step, almost in perfect unison.

Peer pressure, you know.

But what's remarkable about this is you hear stories of whole lines of men stepping forward to volunteer from the war.

That's an absolutely common occurrence, isn't it?

There are enough accounts of that in every service,

in every nation.

But for a thing where you actually know that you are going to die rather than that you're going to risk your life, it takes everything.

It's on a different level, isn't it?

It's everything to the next level, yeah.

The other thing I think is really interesting is that half the kamikazes of 1945 have been drawn from university students.

You know, they're cosmopolitan, intellectual, fully versed in Western ways, as Christians, as communists.

They're not all kind of sort of automatons, pro-the government, you know, ultra-nationalists by any stretch of the imagination.

But them being drawn from university isn't necessarily the surprise.

You know, the guys who did 9-11, Mohamed Atta, they're all university graduates, weren't they?

They're all clever people.

Yeah, but they're really into it.

Yes, that's true.

They are really into it.

It's this kind of pressure, this kind of volunteering, isn't the sort of province only of the stupid.

You know what I mean?

It can affect anybody, can't it?

This desire to...

And they know they're going to die.

Although, as we'll see, there is a way of kind of bending some of this.

But you're volunteering definitely to die.

Very, very peculiar, isn't it?

I mean, you have...

Increasingly, the men don't want to go, though, do they?

And Admiral Yokoi notes attitudes range from the despair of sheep headed for the slaughter to open expressions of contempt for their superior officers.

You know, the night before the missions, kamikazes hold these sort of Bachanalian piss-ups, you know, where they drink lots of sake and they rage and they weep and they sing songs and they curse and they know it's the last night of life.

So it's kind of last meal stuff.

And, you know, I mean,

what they then find in into sort of March and into April and May 1945 is that pilots more and more begin to return complaining of engine problems.

Well, we touched on that in the last episode, didn't we?

Several

are ditching planes in the sea near islands.

You know, pilots have been known to sneak out at night and sabotage their aircraft.

And after returning to base nine times, one pilot was then executed by firing squad you know but you can get away with turning a couple of times god do you remember there was the attack on one of the task force 58 ships in a leafy 24 went out didn't they and only one actually makes it a whole lot of them just disappear i mean presumably into the ocean but i mean because they're not very good but you do wonder whether some of them have just sort of you know crash landed on islands or something very inexperienced too aren't they so got lost run out of fuel put it down in the sea, lost track of the horizon, all those, all those

different problems.

So they're not really getting banged for their buck, are they?

Not entirely.

There's a couple of examples we can give here.

And one is Tadeo Hayashi.

So he is drafted from Kyoto University.

And, you know, in his student writings, Hayashi denounced the war aims and holds that Japan's defeat is desirable and necessary.

But at the same time, he's determined to die for his country.

And he writes in his notes, the situation is tense indeed, but for me, it is all right for Japan to be destroyed.

Historical necessity led to the crisis of our people.

We rise to defend our people in the land we love.

And he dies age 24 during the Okinawa battle.

And then we've got this other chap, Ichizo Hayashi, who's a Christian from Fukuoka.

He takes a Bible with him, along with Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, and a photo of his mother.

And he writes her a last letter: I will put your photo right on my chest.

I shall be sure to sink an enemy vessel.

When you hear over the radio of our success in sinking their vessels, please remember that one of them is the vessel I plunged into.

I will have peace of mind knowing that mother is watching me and praying for me.

And he dies age 23 near Okinawa on the 12th of April, 1945.

And it's not just aerial kamikaze, but marine sea-borne kamikazes as well.

Marine-born kamikazes.

Let's just kind of hold that thought for a moment and actually go to the landings because we should explain what happens on love day.

And the reason it's called love day rather than D-Day is because by this point, D-Day is so famous.

Everyone just associates D-Day on the 6th of June in the cross-channel invasion.

And suddenly you can't have D-Day again because it's too confusing.

So they just call it Love Day, which is a bizarre choice of words.

Well, there's some murderous cynicism on the other side as well in that case.

Well, quite.

Yeah.

So thing is, though, even before they hit the troops, and we said that Japanese strategy is to basically bunker themselves, hunker down, and pick their battles in order to preserve ammunition and to bleed the Americans as hard as they can, knowing they're going to lose.

Yeah, so don't expose yourself.

Don't do what the Germans do, which is counter-attack and expose yourself and get cut to pieces.

Just stay in your tunnels.

This is not about driving the Americans back into the sea.

No.

This is about holding them and delaying them and causing as much damage to their navies and air forces as they possibly can.

That's what this is about.

Exactly.

So even before they hit the beach, they know there's little or no enemy fire.

There's a few machine guns.

The odd mortar round comes over, but that's about it.

And most come ashore without facing any enemy fire at all.

And by the end of the first hour, 16,000 men are ashore.

Eat that, Omaha Beach.

Can you imagine release on that when you've been so G'd up?

When the first Marine Division has been told, you know, to expect casualties of 80 to 85%.

And then suddenly it's a walk in the park you imagine how casual you're going to become as a result of that by sunset on love day on the 1st of april 1945 the landing forces of beach headed more than eight miles in length three miles in depth 50 000 men ashore and just 28 killed in action 104 wounded and 27 missing and that's it that's amazing isn't it yeah so they're ashore they've been killing that many soldiers 50 000 guys 28 kia is could on a quiet day anywhere just be sporadic fire or whatever isn't it or road traffic accident sort of thing.

Yeah, and Love Plus One and Love Plus Two and Love Plus Three and all the rest of it is similar.

You know, there's not a lot going on.

They're probing inland.

The forces are splitting.

A whole load of them are heading north, clear the northern part of the island, then pushing southwards.

And there's literally nothing going on at all.

You know, it's incredibly quiet, incredibly easy in those first days of the Okinawa invasion.

Yeah.

And, you know, the Americans are clearly making all the running.

But then all that changes on Friday, the 6th of april 1945 when the japanese finally launch operation ten go

now the thing about ten go is again as you said jim it's been quiet up to this point there's been air enemy air attacks but there's not really much going on and Spruance assumes this is Admiral Spruance, the commander of the 5th Fleet.

Yeah, assumes that this is because the raids they've done on Kyushu have been effective ahead of the invasion.

They've done the job of suppressing Japanese air power.

And the Americans consistently underestimate Japanese air numbers, fighting numbers and aircraft numbers.

They never get it right.

Well, this ability of the Japanese to just constantly replicate themselves.

Yeah.

Yes, they're like a video game.

There's a touch to the hydra head about this.

Yeah.

Yeah, respawning.

And each carrier group's conducting three flight operations per day.

And on the fourth day, they withdraw to replenish.

So they've been relentlessly attacking Kyushu.

Yeah.

So come Friday the 6th of April, it's cool and breezy day.

Task Group 58-2 are replenishing.

So Admiral Sherman's 58-3 and Clark's 58-1 of Task Force 58 are who are on the line.

They're rotating their assets, basically.

So effectively, 58-2 are in reserve, as it were, as they replenish.

Then an hour after dawn, here it comes.

A picket destroyers north of Okinawa will pick up radar traffic inbound from the north.

Japanese planes have scattered a vast amount of window, but the raid is too big to hide.

So the Japanese are using window now.

Mitcha.

Yeah, so Mitcha is the commander of the Task Force 58.

And he says, basically, get my fighters up.

We're going to get the bombers in the hangars and get the fighters to provide as much cover as possible.

Because that's what they do.

They stick the fighters up, don't they?

In anticipation of this raid.

raid.

On CAPs and caps, which are known as combat air patrol rubber.

Yeah.

Soon they're vectored towards this incoming raid.

Because they've all got radar.

I know.

This is like the air defense system of fighter command in 1940, but at sea.

I mean, the scales of sophistication are just extraordinary in comparison to what they were in 1940.

Because they've got radar, because they've got controllers on the picket ships directing the air patrols, they're able to vector the naval fighters onto the incoming masses.

And the US fighters are just tearing into the Japanese air formations.

You know, this is exactly like, you know, when we were doing the series on Big Week and we were talking about the qualitative difference, advantage of the Americans

arriving in England with 350 hours in their logbooks compared to kind of Luftwaffe and new boys who are kind of, you know, lucky if they've got 90 to 100.

And it's just such a mismatch.

And this is exactly the same here.

There are still a few veterans around, but they're few and far between.

The vast majority of pilots, particularly if they're kamikazes, are roughly trained and they're just simply not a match for the highly skilled, experienced pilots of the

United States Navy.

And, you know, in moments, you know, 60 Japanese planes are going down in flames just from the first wave.

Amazing.

Lieutenant Lewis Midgley Walker is a naval officer aboard a transport ship and he's watching the battle and he goes, hell, they came in singles, twos, and bunches, gliding, diving, swooping, some hugging the water.

It seemed they never never stopped coming.

This is a massed attack and a half.

Yeah.

And you've also got watching the Time and Life war correspondent Bob Sherrod, who's on Admiral Turner's flag, the El Dorado.

And he goes, terrific streams of ACAC poured toward the plane from every ship within two miles.

When the Jap was 300 feet from his target, he flamed, winged over, and fell into the shallow water.

But by the end of the 6th of April, for all this, by the end of the 6th of April, 26 American ships have been hit by chamikazes.

Some get through.

Yeah, because they're going to, aren't they?

Yeah.

Six of these ships are sunk, including two victory freighters and one minesweeper, one landing ship tank, two destroyers, the Bush and the Calhoun.

Yeah, it's like playing British Bulldog.

Some will always get through.

Yeah, it's the picket destroyers who are out detecting this.

They're the key to any further.

No, we'll touch on those in a minute.

It's an amazing job that they do.

And again, another example of the sort of increased sophistication.

Yeah.

And the USS Essex nearly breaks the single-day carrier air kill record by by shooting down 65 enemy aircraft, but it's still not enough.

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because you compare it to the Germans in Big Week.

The Germans haven't come to the conclusion.

Well, in that case, the thing to do is fly directly into the bombers, but fly into the bomber stream.

And that's the way to disrupt it, is to use the aircraft as a suicide weapon.

They haven't come to that conclusion.

The Japanese have.

And it's one way through the fact that they have inexperienced pilots and the Americans are much better flyers.

A peculiar Achilles heel, but it's one that's actually working.

And then we also have the Yamato, which is where we started this episode.

Oh, my goodness, me, what a story this is.

I mean, Yamato Banzai attack is ordered by Admiral Soimo Toyota, the commander-in-chief of the combined fleet, from his command bunker in the Oshi.

Very easy to issue orders like that when you're in a bunker

on land.

Well, his officers aren't happy about this, of course, and they aren't happy that he's still in the middle of the middle.

Well, not on the Yamato.

So, Vice Admiral Seiichi Ito, who's the commander of the second fleet, you know, is strongly against sending the Yamato on a suicide mission.

He tells Vice Admiral Ryonosuke Kusuka, who's tired as chief of staff, that this is a pointless sacrifice of ships, ammunition, fuel, and trained fighting men who would be needed to defend the homeland.

Well, quite.

So the idea behind it, the reason why they don't want to do it is Imperial General Headquarters don't want to see the mighty Yamato surrendered at the end of the war.

So what they think is, right, what we'll do is we'll do a sort of sacrificial bansai charge with the Yamato at the head, you know, with a cruiser, the yahagi and eight destroyers and they'll just like the kamikazes they'll just plow straight towards okinawa get there beach their vessels and then just be used as a firing platform until they're kind of destroyed on on no level is this a good idea you know it's it's a terrible murderous idea and completely pointless and and you know we've talked over and over and over again about the delusion scales of the nazis at the end of the war but also the imperial japanese and this is right up there with one of the most delusional bonkers missions of all.

But that's what they've got to do.

It's got to be said, though, every single one of these decisions is sort of, as I said, murderous cynicism.

It's so about death.

Yes, it's just disgusting, isn't it?

Yeah.

Another naval officer, Tomechi Hara, who's the commander of a light cruiser, the Yahagi, calls it a ridiculous mission, just like throwing an egg at a rock.

And he's quite right.

He's got that right, isn't he?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But Kazakh tells him that, you know, Imperial General Headquarters just don't want the disgrace of seeing these ships surrendered at the end of the war.

So everyone who's on this, who's earmarked for this fought, you know, there had been terrific pride to be part of the crew of the Amato, which is, you know, one of two of the largest battleships ever built.

Absolutely enormous.

I think there's 72,000 tons, if I remember rightly.

You know, when a normal battleship is about 36, 38, something like that.

I think the Duke of York was something like 42, perhaps.

But this is 78.

You know, it is absolutely colossal.

It has been the pride of the Imperial Japanese fleet, state-of-the-art, and the scale of it just enormous.

Yeah.

Now, this crew, they've got to sort of channel that pride into a suicide.

It's just crazy.

But anyway, the night before the Yamato gets put to sea, on that, so this is, we're now on the 5th of April, rather like the kamikazes, you know, there's a general ration of sake handed around to the entire crew.

Everyone gets pissed.

The second in command bellows over the tanoi, kamikaze Yamato, be truly a divine wind.

Well, you know, I'm sure that perked everyone up.

Hooray!

Hooray!

Oh no.

Apparently, there's sort of bottles of sake sort of rolling around the decks the following morning.

But anyway, they get up very, very early.

Free cigarettes are handed out to all the crews who are sort of still nursing their hangovers.

And later, the column forms up, and this is Yamato, the Yahagi, and eight destroyers, and they sail down the coast of Kyushu.

And they're still off the coast.

They haven't cleared the southern tip of Kyushu.

When dusk falls, and crewmen on the Yamato notice that ashore, the cherry trees have started to blossom.

this sort of symbol of the beauty of the Japanese home islands.

And there they are leaving it behind for the last time.

By dawn the following morning, there's a waning crescent moon, you know, ahead of the rising sun.

And behind them, Kyushu is receding.

And ensign Mitsuro Yoshida, who we quoted at the beginning of this episode, he's a radar officer on the Yamato's bridge.

He goes, not a single escorting plane could be seen, nor was one to be seen from this time on.

We were literally abandoned.

And they all, you know, they all feel this clearly, you know, very sort of powerfully.

Of course, they're tracked from the outset because U.S.

submarines off the Bungo Suido, which is a channel between Kyushu and Shikoku, they've picked up the Amato's progress and then search planes from the USS Essex also spot the force at around 8.23 a.m.

on the morning of Saturday, the 7th of April.

And they're then circling out of range, high above the whole time.

And everyone down below on this little force of 10 ships can see these planes twinkling in the sunlight, circling over them, charting

their every move.

I mean, just as we're telling this story, aren't you feeling a kind of a sense of sadness about this?

No, disgust.

I can't be sad about this.

So awful.

I can only be disgusted by it all.

that anyone would think this was a good idea and that anyone would then obey these orders.

And the Americans don't, they think the Yamato is trying to evade detection and deception.

Because of course they can't comprehend that you're going to do this with a warship.

Yeah.

But equally, you know, Spruance recognizes that this is a chance to kind of see these guys off and see off the famous, infamous Yamato there and then.

So he sends a powerful battleship cruiser destroyer squadron under Admiral Deo, who you may remember was sort of hammering the in charge of hammering the coast.

But Admiral Mitcher and the Task Force 58 aviators, you know, they're thinking, well,

that we want to get this baby.

Yeah.

Their range from their carriers is 238 miles.

So timing is clearly key.

But they're in the race to intercept the Yamato and his escorts.

These guys are going to to win.

And from 10.18 a.m.

on the Saturday, the 7th of April, three carrier task groups launched 386 aircraft.

So this is 180 fighters, 75 dive bombers and 131 torpedo planes.

And they're all heading for the Yamato, the Hagi and these eight destroyers.

And all morning, they've got seaplanes high over the Yamato, out of range but watching the progress.

There's a growing sense of doom on the ship.

And the first wave of incoming carrier planes appeared on the Yamato's radar screens at 1220 p.m.

The navigator says over 100 hostile planes are headed for us 10 minutes later the first US planes are spotted and we will take a break there and you will after the break find out exactly what happens to the Yamato I think you're a pretty pretty good idea though ladies and gentlemen yeah but but you know what happens and how it happens we'll see you in a tick

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk.

We left you 10 minutes later, the first US planes were spotted.

There's over 100 hostile planes headed for the Yamato, which is on a kamikaze mission.

So, as I said in the last part, this is disgusting.

These lives being squandered for nothing.

And bright people and well-trained people, and it doesn't matter how bright or well-trained they are just people it's vile the whole thing so there is no japanese air cover so the americans can take their time they don't have to worry about fending off fighter escort or any of that do they go it vile they first start off the american fighters start off for swooping in dropping smaller bombs and strafing then you've got the sb2c curtis dive bombers who are dropping a thousand pound bombs and then avengers with torpedoes most aiming at the yamato's port side in the hope of capsizing her in that direction of course there's absolutely loads and loads of Japanese anti-aircraft fire.

I mean, sort of pumming away.

Black puffs sort of dotting the skyline, but it's pretty inaccurate.

And without having to kind of sort of dodge Japanese aircraft as well, you know,

naval anti-aircraft fire is incredibly good and effective when you've got very, very good, highly trained crews, but they're clearly not the best on this lot at this stage of the war.

What becomes very clear is the greatest concern for the American pilots is it isn't anti-aircraft fire.

It's actually colliding with one another.

There's so many of them coming from different heights and different angles.

But the Japanese ships are, you know, they're surging along at 27 knots, which is a decent lick.

The Yamato maneuvers violently as the first sort of bombs fall around it.

You know, there's geezers of water spewing all around her and the first hell divers sort of narrowly missing.

But then four heavy bombs

strike the great battleship one after the other, hitting anti-aircraft batteries and tossing bodies and debris into the air.

And the superstructure is then strafed with 50 caliber machine guns.

and several on the bridge are killed.

And then suddenly, there's the silvery wakes of torpedoes streaking towards a ship from several directions.

And the Yamato manages to dodge some, but not all.

And three hit the port side in quick succession, and then a fourth hits kind of further aft.

Every single blow, the huge ship is sort of lurching and kind of almost lifted out of the water with this huge, huge blow.

One of the destroyers on its port side, the Hamikaze, is then hit as well and drops out of formation and soon after sinks.

And when it sinks, it just leaves a little sort of circle of white foam on the surface.

The one cruiser, the Hagi, is also struck in the engine room, killing the entire engineering crew.

And then six to between six and seven bombs then straddle her entire length.

And the Hagi is soon reduced to a burning, listing wreck, incapable of any kind of maneuver whatsoever.

So the destroyer, the Isukaze, moves in to help, but is hit in turn by two bombs.

And, you know, fires rage and she slews off helplessly, flames and smoke gushing.

And the Suzutsuki is also hit and crippled, but that one does manage to limp away.

So, you know, they're all being absolutely hammered.

And the bottom line is, is, you know, the Yamato is in big trouble already.

So the listing is corrected by counter-flooding, but fires are raging through the ship and the firefighting and damage control teams have been decimated already.

So the fires are never really brought properly under control.

You know, that's the problem.

And then the second wave of American Planes arrives.

It's just relentless, isn't it, Jim?

Yeah, absolutely.

And on the bridge, Admiral Seichi Ito is seen standing resolutely, arms folded.

Oh, to know what he's thinking.

Control between different parts of the ship are breaking down.

Well, because they can't communicate because there's fire's raging, you know, electrical cables are being burned and cut and water's pouring in.

Wow.

I mean, you know, it's just horrendous.

Around 10 past one in the afternoon, in this second round, the Yamato takes five or six more torpedoes on the port side, at least one on starboard.

Just boom, boom, boom.

I mean, you know, it's just like one after the other.

Yeah, there are no spoilers in this story.

A further torpedo then explodes against her stern, destroying the rudder, which is the one in the description at the start.

Hell divers drop countless bombs and along her decks and fire their cannons and machine guns, while hellcats and corsairs swoop in and shoot up the remaining anti-aircraft positions.

You've just got this image, haven't you, of smoke.

Puffs of anti-aircraft fire still dotted above, but just this swirling swarm of hornets kind of, you know, hurtling across the decks, bullets flying, bombs falling, the silvery streak of torpedoes.

You know, you're sort of thinking of sort of hyenas on a dying elephant or something.

This once mighty beast just being kind of mortally wounded and more so with every kind of hit.

Just terrible.

Or they're swooping in like seagulls after a trawler, aren't they?

Yes, yes, yes, that's an even better, even better description.

Yeah.

So anyway, Ensign Yeshida records incessant explosions, blinding flashes of light, thunderous noises and crushing weights of blast pressure.

I mean, goodness me.

I mean, the other thing is that the ships with it are also being smashed to pieces, aren't they?

It's a complete free-for-all.

And I think it's interesting, isn't it?

Before the war, all sorts of people had to convince the US Navy that air power was an important component in naval warfare.

It was going to be.

There was great argument over whether you could use air power in war.

And here are the Americans absolutely perfecting its effect and bringing it to decisive and deadly effect.

So the remaining destroyers are hit.

Asashimo and a Kasumi are damaged and sunk.

The Yahagi's hit by four more torpedoes.

So that means all eight of them have been hit by this point.

It's crazy.

The Yahagi, yes, has been hit by seven or eight bombs as well as four more torpedoes.

Captain Hara knows the end's near.

Bomb blaster hurtling debris and bodies into the air.

He feels the entire ship crumbling.

A dying ship quaked with the detonations.

Well, and he sees rivets popping on the deck.

Explosions finally stopped, but the list continued as waves washed blood pools from the deck and dismembered bodies fell into the rolling sea.

So now the Yamato is listing badly.

The captain, Kosaku Aruga, now takes the decision to flood the starboard engine and boiler rooms, but in doing so, it's consigned all the men in there to death.

They sound a buzzer, but it's not enough time for them to escape, and they all drown.

And then there's a third wave of aircraft.

Then there's the third wave.

I mean, can you believe it?

You know, so by this point, the Yamato is listing really badly.

Speed has dropped to 10 knots.

More bullets, more bombs, more torpedoes.

Then it's listing to 35 degrees.

Then it's listing at 45 degrees.

And Admiral Ito shakes hands with the surviving staff officers, then retreats to his cabin, and he's never seen again.

At 2.06 p.m., six minutes past two in the afternoon, Captain Hara, who is the skipper of the cruiser Yahagi, gives the order to abandon ship.

And he finds himself in the water, repeatedly sucked down, but manages to resurface and eventually cling to an oil-drenched bit of debris with a handful of others.

And he's picked up and rescued, which is why we have his account, because he kept an account of what happened.

But meanwhile, the Yamato is now listing at 80 degrees.

So basically, it's almost over.

Yeah.

And Captain Aruga lashes himself to a binnacle, but Ito's chief of staff now orders every man for themselves.

So Ensign Yoshida jumps out and finds himself swimming through congealed oil.

And as the Yamato began sinking, he finds himself repeatedly sucked under.

The ship is pulling down.

It's pulling him too.

And he's below the surface and thinking, this is it, I'm going to drown, when suddenly there's this immense underwater explosion and a giant pillar of flame and a blinding flash of light sort of bursts through the water and leaps up into the sky.

And the force of this pushes him back to the surface.

And this is what saves him.

So again, we have his account.

And I strongly recommend anyone who wants to know more about it.

It's called Requiem for the Battleship Yamato.

It's an incredible account.

It's a very, very short account, but it's an amazing piece of wartime literature.

He begins treading water, looking for the debris to kind of clutch onto and eventually find some.

And like the captain of the Ohagi is also picked up.

But the column of smoke above this immense battleship rises to 20,000 feet.

And the explosion of it is seen in Kagashima, which is 125 miles away.

And when the cloud and the smoke lift, there's no sign of the Amato.

Only 23 officers and 246 enlisted men survive.

So the ship has gone down with more than 3,000 men.

4,000 Japanese sailors die in this entirely pointless.

Headquarters are gone where they wasped.

You're sad, I'm disgusted.

Well, I'm sad and disgusted, but

I feel this sort of lead weight, this albatross of despair.

Just talking about it, just the awfulness of it.

It's just, it's so tragic.

It's so needless.

It's just, you know, so close to the end of the war.

What's the point?

Well, Task Force 58's aircraft have been away.

The ship have been attacked by a further 100-plus kamikazes and most are shot down, although one does hit the battleship Maryland and another hits the flight deck of the carrier Hancock.

But these are, you know, contained pretty quickly.

And these, you know, Operation Tengo is known as floating chrysanthemum attacks.

Japanese love sort of painting things in terms of blossom and flowers and.

everything else.

So so floating chrysanthemum attacks and actually there's 10 of them.

So 6th of April and now the 7th of April, those are the first two of 10.

And in between these large-scale raids, there's further daily attacks of kind of, you know, a smaller nature.

So in other words, there's sort of no let up.

These kamikazes keep coming, as well as conventional bombers as well.

And they're always delivered by an assortment of aircraft.

You know, a number of them are these sort of obsolescent planes.

And they've also been bolstered by ochre rocket-propelled manned suicide missions, which are also kind of insane.

These are kind of like rocket-powered things, which are attached to kind of mother vessels and then released and piloted straight in.

I mean, just bonkers.

So desperate.

But anyway, the amazing thing, you know, to continue the theme of grand delusion, you know, Imperial General Headquarters, you know, they allow themselves to believe that Tengo has been this sort of huge success and that future floating chrysanthemum are a huge success.

And even Admiral Yugaki concludes that some 150 vessels have been hit just on Operation Tengo alone.

And he records in his diary that the sea around Okinawa had thus turned into a scene of carnage.

Well, yes, it had, but from wrecked kamikazes and Japanese aircraft plunging into the sea in balls of of flame rather than burning vessels, he's convinced that four carriers of American carriers have been sunk on the 6th of April alone.

But after reports have come in from the 32nd Army on board Okinawa, which has been watching all this, these figures are adjusted from 150 ships to 35 that have been hit and 22 sunk.

But it wasn't even that.

Only six vessels are sunk on the 6th of April.

So some are getting through.

They are a constant pain in the ass.

They're exhausting for the defenders to have to deal with.

But in terms of effect, they're pretty half-cock, is the truth of it, or even quarter-cock.

Yes, it's sort of in the balance, isn't it, though?

Because the Americans are very much perturbed by this.

They haven't accommodated this in their planning, have they, to start with?

This is sort of new and unexpected and unprecedented in its amount.

So combat crews and air crew are really there feeling the strain of having to stick these cat patrols up all the time.

And it's the picket destroyers.

You mentioned the picket destroyers earlier, Jim.

Yeah.

Well, they're amazing, and they're a kind of new development.

Yeah, a radar screen well north of Okinawa.

And they're early warning, basically, but simultaneously very vulnerable.

And I think people who remember the Falklands War will remember this, that ships would go out on picket and they were the ones that got exocetted, weren't they?

It's the thing.

Iran Navy destroyers.

So it's a similar thing.

They're on 24-hour watches, continuous radar sound and visual searches.

During daylight hours, they've got...

air patrols, as we said, that have got a flight director officer on board the picket destroyer, basically organizing them, calling them in.

FDOs, yeah.

As you said it's like the it's like a battle of britain air defense system it's like nautical dowding system but what i think is absolutely amazing is is there's this dialogue between the pilots and the fdos the fighter director officers they broadcast it on the inter-fighter director known as the ifd which is then played out through loudspeakers throughout each ship in the fleet so everyone can hear it this isn't so to sort of keep morale up this is so that everyone is absolutely clued into what is going on they're getting a live commentary so instead of having the kind of the controller over the dais overlooking the map board, you know, in the bunker at Uxbridge, for example, with the Battle of Britain, this is a further development of a system where every sailor is alert and keyed up to what is going on.

So they can all see it.

And one AA gunnery officer writes, the AFD net was at once our salvation and our entertainment.

It prepared us to defend ourselves by following the progress of approaching enemies.

And of course, under the circumstances, it was perfectly fascinating.

Incredible.

Imagine listening to that.

But they're a decoy as much as a a tripwire.

That is the truth of these radar picket destroyers.

And they bore the brunt of the kamikazes throughout the whole long Ockenhauer campaign.

Yeah.

And, you know, they're learning on the job.

They're learning to maneuver more swiftly and effectively.

But, you know, it's an absolute nightmare.

You know, so one picket destroyer, the USS Laffey, which actually survives and then later serves in Korea, was at radar picket station number one on the 16th of April when it was attacked by 22 aircraft in 80 minutes.

So it was hit by four bombs and six kamikazes.

Loses 32 killed in action, 71 wounded.

You know, so that's nearly one-third of the crew, but amazingly survives, you know.

So again, it says something of the skill of the crews to manage the damage that's inflicted upon them, but also the strength and sturdiness of U.S.

shipbuilding, you know, which is obviously pretty good.

You know, we were talking about sort of quality of steel and things and the kind of depleted steel on tiger tanks at the end of the war.

Well, it's really, really good.

on the U.S.

Navy and saves a lot of lives.

You know, that's the truth of it.

But it's a steep cost, isn't it?

It's one in three.

15 picket destroyers are sunk, 50 are damaged, so that's one in three.

Total casualties: 1,348 killed in action, of 1,586 wounded.

So that's a lot of people.

Admiral Turner, I think it's really interesting that he does this, sends a massive photos of damaged picket destroyers to Nimitz with a note.

These will give you an idea of what our boys are going through.

How they ever get their ships back is a mystery, but they are cheerful and do everything they can to keep their ships up here instead of being sent to the rear areas.

Morale seems very high, even among our radar picket vessels, who well realize what they're up against, as do all of us.

And they are willing to fight it out on this line.

Obviously, it's a big strain, isn't it?

And if you're on one of those picket destroyers, are you going to get it this afternoon?

Possibly.

Yeah.

Tough wicket, this, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it really is.

And of course, you know, from, you know, the Japanese are sending down all these kamikazes and bombers, conventional bombers and stuff, but also the US are obviously sending bombers up to bomb Japan as well.

And Mitcha is sending carrier task groups continually throughout this battle.

It's not just in the build-up to Operation Iceberg.

It continues once Iceberg begins.

You know, and they're repeatedly hammering the Kyushu airfields.

You know, they're bombing runways, they're shooting up installations.

Never ever managed to crush the Japanese air menace.

And that's because Yugaki's 5th Air Fleet is properly dispersed and hidden and camouflaged.

And what they do is they keep them well hidden under cover of daylight.

And then at night, they position them undercover, you know, that they move them out so that they're taking off at kind of, you know, crack of dawn.

Craters are quickly filled.

Super fortresses are also coming over, you know, B-29s on every day that the weather allows.

And they fly 1,600 bombing sorties on airfields on Kyushu and Shikoku between 8th of April and the 11th of May.

But it doesn't seem to matter how much damage they cause or how many Japanese workers they kill, there's always more.

And this goes back to that whole point about sort of replicating, you know, there are plentiful numbers of Japanese civilians who are kind of drawn in for this work.

You know, by this stage of the war, 88% of the Japanese economy is spent on defense.

So everyone is part of this.

You You know, this is total war and everyone's involved.

And you've got a kind of, you know, they haven't got much mechanization now.

So it is teams of ant lines of workers with buckets and shovels and doing all this work.

But such is the control of the Japanese government and the Japanese imperial hierarchy that they're able to do this.

I mean, it's just amazing.

Well, so the Americans, there are developing defense techniques, though, to deal with the to deal with the kamikaze menace, aren't they?

Yeah.

So the IFD net will report a bogey and an alarm buzzer will run.

A bugler will play

sublime of ancient and modern here.

A bugler plays boots and saddles to the loudspeakers and the captain sets conditioned zebra, which means all watertight doors and hatches are slammed shut.

And Admiral Deo's Task Force 54, the bombardment ships, they fall into defensive circular formation.

They emit smoke.

Covered wagons.

Wag control west.

Yeah.

They put up a smoke screen.

Gunners and fire directors scan the skies and listen to the radio dialogue or the IFD as we talked about earlier.

The gunners on the firing line, they man all sorts of anti-aircraft guns from from five inch to 20 mil and there's a 40 millimeter Bofors gun that's the most effective and they're in pairs or quads the guns of has a muzzle velocity of 2,890 feet per second and a cyclone rate is pretty tidy isn't it?

It's pretty thin that'll catch pretty much what you're aiming at and a cyclic rate of 160 rounds per minute per barrel.

I mean that's a hell of a lot isn't it 160 rounds per minute.

Yeah.

That's a lot of shells.

And it's cannon shells, isn't it?

The Bofors.

So there's explosive shells as well.

So a Bofors with a good crew, could hit the Kamikaze a mile out with a flat trajectory range of over two miles.

So as Lieutenant Robert Wallace, who's an anti-aircraft gunnery on the Idaho, writes, no kamikaze could get past even a single quadfotty if its people knew what they were doing.

So basically, if you know what you're doing, you couldn't, and they're getting better and better.

I mean, this is one of these things, isn't it?

As ever, people are getting better at this the more they have to deal with it.

And so you might be caught out the first time round, but as it evolves, you're getting better at defending yourself.

You know, say you're on an 88 millimeter anti-tank gun and you're firing up at a B17, you know, 24,000 feet above you.

That's very difficult to hit.

You've got something like a 0.002% chance.

But if you're trained on a single kamikaze coming towards you, you know, it is coming on a kind of single trajectory.

So you've got time to kind of get your bead, start pumping in shells.

You know, they also have incendiaries on them as well.

So you can see where you're going.

And, you know, you're going to hit it.

Yeah.

That's the truth.

It's a hell of a lot easier than it is doing high-level kind of vertical.

Less deflection, haven't you?

And you have a proximity fuse, which will explode as it gets very close to the aircraft, which will set the shell off.

So hopefully you disintegrate the enemy aircraft rather than allow it to crash into you.

April the 12th, so there's another major floating chrysanthemop ordered by Admiral Ugaki, who thinks it's working.

It's 185 kamikazes, 150 fighters, 45 torpedo bombers.

And now we know how this goes.

So the radar pickets pick them up at around 1 p.m., 129 aircraft.

The first Aichi dive bombers, they target the picket destroyers at number one station, and a wall of anti-aircraft fire comes up from the destroyers Purdy and Cassin Young, and 12 enemy aircraft are shot down pretty much immediately.

After this, the captain of the USS Project.

I love this line.

Yeah, well, then give it everything, Jim.

So, this captain of the USS Purdy writes in his after-action report, he goes, The prospects of a long and illustrious career for a destroyer assigned to radar picket station duty is below average expectancy.

That duty is extremely hazardous, very tiring, and entirely unenjoyable.

That's almost British in its understatement.

Yeah, it is.

I'm struck by how, you know, we've talked about the naval war

in the Battle of the Atlantic and how that works, how completely different this is.

Yeah, isn't it?

Radically different.

I know, I'm just absolutely, I'm so stunned by its violence.

But this is as different as jungle warfare is different to, you know, North Western Europe warfare on the land, conventional land warfare.

It might have Navy written on on it, but it couldn't be any more different.

Later on the 12th of April, Deo's Task Force 54, they're assaulted again to the west of Okinawa in waters now known as Kamikaze Gulch.

That nickname's on the nose, isn't it?

Idaho and Tennessee are both hit, as was the destroyer Zealous, although they're not knocked out, but they're hit.

Tennessee suffers 23 killed in action, 106 wounded in action.

Zealous loses 26 killed in action when they're kamikaze on the port side.

But meanwhile, Task Force 58 avoids any hits, but claims 151 Japanese aircraft shot down.

And the fighting goes on till dusk.

This is relentless.

And it's like, isn't it?

This is like something from a zombie film.

That is exactly what it's like.

Waves and waves and waves.

And they're already dead, in effect.

And, you know, you have to destroy them to stop them.

It's got that flavor, hasn't it?

So anyway, the next day, the 13th of April, the news finally reaches them that FDR has died, the president.

Most are shocked, saddened, but they're also concerned.

You know, where's that going to leave us?

You know, what does that mean for us?

The Japanese, on the other hand, are absolutely delighted and think this is all kind of, you know, means that they've got a lifeline.

Japanese news reports that seven of every 10 carriers have already been sunk and hit, and that the US Navy has suffered 150,000 casualties.

And on Okinawa, they released leaflets, propaganda leaflets, which have inevitably been pretty poorly distributed by the Japanese.

And on this, and not only does it announce these ridiculous claims, it also says, not only the late president, but anyone else would die in the excess of worry to hear of such an annihilative damage.

The dreadful loss that led your late leader to death will make you orphans on this island.

The Japanese Special Attack Corps will sink your vessels to the last destroyer.

You will witness it realized in the near future.

But I think it's good that we leave with this nod to the troops still battling it out on Okinawa, because, you know, here we are on the 13th of April.

And trust me, by that stage, it is no longer the easy ride that it once was.

Things are turning very, very badly for the American troops troops or the experience of the American troops on Okinawa, as they are for the Japanese troops of the 32nd Army.

And in that next episode we do, episode three, that is when we're going to be turning to the land campaign.

And particularly, we're going to do something a little bit different.

We're going to be looking at this battle through the experiences of one young Marine in particular, a chap called Bill Pierce.

We're going to zoom in, aren't we, Jim?

That's what you're going to do.

Do a slightly different take on this.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

We hope that you're as sad, disgusted, and what was the other emotion?

Dismayed with this entire business as we are.

If you want to listen to these in one streak, of course, subscribe to our Patreon.

And it always amazes me that I have to say this.

Come to We Have Ways Fest, 12th to 14th of September.

We get an entire weekend of war waffle of this caliber from not just us, but all sorts of speakers of every subject you could possibly want to grapple with to do with the Second World War.

Thanks everyone for listening.

We will see you all again very soon.

Cheerio.

Cheerio.

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