Editor’s Note: I had a rare opportunity to see something completely new in Washington. Retired CAPT Ted Bronson took me on a tour of the Cold War Museum at the Navy Yard. He has been instrumental securing the funding and obtaining the necessary permissions to modify the history structure that houses the collection of artifacts. It is sort o stunning, walking into the lobby and seeing the business end of a Trident D-4 submarine-launched ICBM. Naturally I was interested- I spent, officially, fifteen years of my life as a Cold Warrior. The memories of those days jousting with the Communists will never fade far. I have rationalized the cascade of emotion by telling myself it was all just big kabuki show with the Iranians and other assorted jihadis running arond in the background, but that isn’t true. The Soviets stood ten feet tall back then, and getting out of the rack in the morning meant slipping the lanyard around our necks- the one that held the codes to open the safes that contained the launch authorization authenticators. It was scary stuff, if you actually thought about it. This interlude with Mac is a nice demonstration of the concept of total war. No mercy, no regret. And it was Mac and Eddie and Iron Pants and the brave aircrews of the 313th Bomb Group who were going to bring the Empire of the Sun to heel. They had a term for it. The war in the Pacific was going to get much hotter before it grew deathly cold.
– Vic
Operation Starvation
(313th Bomb Wing aircraft drops aerial mines, March 1945. Air Corps Picture)
I nodded as Mac told me of the revolting matter of Pear Pie, made out of the grainy fruit contained in sugary syrup in gigantic cans and crushed crackers as a revolting crust.
I was having the neighborhood bar menu Spring Rolls with dipping sauce, and was considering getting an order of the mini Fish and Chips, which is not what you would think as prepared at the Willow Restaurant. Tracy O’Grady’s kitchen team floats out a little fantasy plate that is more akin to the finest Japanese tempura, garnished with slender rings of onion in the same delicate batter.
“There is nothing that sailors care more about than their chow,” I said, after Mac described the constant searching for something decent to eat on Guam in 1945. When afloat, in war or peace, there is nothing to do except work, sleep or eat. Consequently, what Cookie manages to get on the mess line or down to the Dirty Shirt Wardroom is the only thing that marks the passing of the hours in the endless sameness of the ship’s routine.
Bad food is bad morale. I remember vividly the stories of the Peanut Butter riots on the Coral Sea during the Vietnam conflict, when the wardroom treasurer ran short of funds, and the brown paste was the only thing for lunch for weeks.
Ashore, as Mac was on Guam, there was no adequate means of transporting fresh food, and the Staff forward was reduced to the dreary and numbing sameness of canned C-rations.
Mac said the driving from the Headquarters complex on CINCPAC Hill on Guam helped to vary the boredom. They could watch the strikes launch from Anderson Field in the morning and grab breakfast at the Air Corps mess when the tempo of operations permitted. The flyboys were able to get fresh food via cargo planes from Hawaii and they had things like real butter. Their mess was a treat, a taste of home in the forward area.
The ring was closing on Japan, and that is why Chester Nimitz took his command element forward. The main event, the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands was going to come in this pivotal year. There were other options, of course, but in January there was no certainly that a wonder weapon would appear that would change the course of history.
For the foreseeable future it was going to be B-29 Super Forts in endless waves, putting the torch to the enemy from the new airbases in the Marianas.
Everyone had moved forward to join the fight. The Joint Radio Analysis Group, Forward Area (RAGFOR), set up shop as soon as the shooting died down in September of 1944.
The CINCPAC Staff began preparations to join them shortly thereafter.
In August 1944, Iron Pants LeMay transferred to the China-Burma-India theater and directed first the XX Bomber Command in China. In January, the disappointing results of Brigadier General Haywood Hansell’s high-altitude precision campaign resulted in iron Pants being transferred to relieve him in January, the same time Mac and the little Fleet Intelligence organization set up shop on CICAC Hill.
Iron Pants would henceforth command the XXI Bomber Command. In that role he was responsible for all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands. Consequently, he attended the 0900 staff briefing at the CINCPAC HQ.
LT Mac scanned the classified traffic generated by RAGFOR and FRUPAC in Hawaii to which they had a direct line. Armed with the most sensitive communications information, he was able to shape the reporting collected from Japanese public radio stations to form a perfectly unclassified and uncannily accurate assessment of the conditions in Tokyo.
The shortage of petroleum products (POL) revealed in public media reports of was one of the key issues that Mac hammered home under the guidance of Fleet Intelligence Eddie Layton. Lemay heard each morning that the targets his aircrews were hitting were the wrong ones to put the squeeze directly on the Japanese war machine.
Mac would dictate the Foreign Broadcast Intercept reports that fit the all-source intelligence assessment to Yeoman First Class Harry Truman who typed up the notes as fast as the words were spoken.
Besides POL, the key issue for the Japanese was food, a large percentage of which arrived by ship across the Inland Sea, or from fishing grounds in the Sea of Okhotsk.
LeMay knew he had a hell of a problem. It was readily apparent that the tactics developed for use in Europe against the Luftwaffe were unsuitable against Japan. His bombers flying from China were dropping their bombs near their targets only 5% of the time. Operational losses of aircraft and crews were high, due to Japanese air defenses and the continuing mechanical problems with the B-29 engines.
In Washington, the Air Corps leadership viewed anything except high explosives against land targets as “the Navy’s job.” Even today, the aviators of both services still enjoy “visually pleasing destruction” as the direct feedback of a dangerous job well done.
I am sympathetic to that view, but it was not the answer to bringing down Japan.
Mac said that as an island nation, the Japanese relied on imports of nearly everything, including 80% of its oil, 90% of its iron ore, and food of course.
PACFLT submarines has carried the burden of attacking the Japanese merchant fleet since 1943, but with the loss of USS Wahoo, no offensive operations had been permitted by SUBPAC in the Inland Sea. It was an open road from the Asian mainland to the west coast ports.
Bolstered by the assessments provided by Captain Layton and Mac, Chester Nimitz decided to push Japan over the edge. That meant an effective and complete blockade, but he needed Lemay’s Super Forts to do it. He intended to use the bombers to deliver not bombs, but sea mines in the strategic choak-points that entered the inland sea. Submarines would continue to shut down the east coast ports.
Even the pointy-headed targeteers of the Committee of Operations Analysts in Washington took the Fleet Admiral’s request seriously. They too were beginning to understand the assessment from Guam that the only way to shut down the Home Islands was an effective and complete blockade.
Iron Pants was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, and was reluctant to give up control of any of his bombers. But Mac’s briefings convinced him of the merit of mine-warfare. He agreed to devote the 313th bomb wing to strike what was euphimistrially called “local targeting,” which was a way to say “naval targets” without acknowledging that the Fleet Intelligence people were calling the shots.
The B-29 aerial mining campaign began in late March of 1945.
Mac dipped a spring roll in the dipping sauce and downed it in two bites.
“I never heard anything about this, Admiral,” I said in wonder.
“You never will. The Air Force historians are not interested in the very brave performance of Air Corps crews that doesn’t support the notion of an independent service. I have offered to tell them the story, but got no takers.”
“Did the operation have a name?” I asked, looking back at the menu.
“Yep,” he said quietly. “We called it Operation Starvation.”
Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com