Who won the Battle of the Philippine Sea?
The United States won. On 19 and 20 June 1944, west of the Marianas, Task Force 58 destroyed most of Japan's carrier aircraft and aircrews, and American submarines and planes sank three carriers, without losing a single ship. Japan's carrier force never recovered, and the Japanese garrisons in the Marianas were left without hope of relief.1
The Battle of the Philippine Sea was the largest carrier battle of World War II, and the last of the great carrier against carrier fights between the American and Japanese navies. It was fought to decide the fate of Saipan, where American Marines had landed four days earlier. Americans remember its first day as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” For the wider story, see our guide to the Pacific War, the military history of Japan and the military history of the United States.2
Why was the Battle of the Philippine Sea fought?
The Americans wanted the Mariana Islands as bases from which the new B-29 bombers could reach Japan, and on 15 June 1944 they landed on Saipan. For Tokyo, the Marianas lay inside what Japan's national archives call the “absolute national defense sphere,” the area that had to be held at all costs to win the war. The Naval History and Heritage Command historian Guy Nasuti notes that Saipan lay only about 1,200 nautical miles from Tokyo.3
The Imperial Navy had long hoped for one decisive fleet battle, and the landing gave it the occasion. On 15 June Admiral Soemu Toyoda, commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, ordered the fleet to attack the enemy in the Marianas. Morison records that Toyoda repeated the words Admiral Togo had sent his fleet before Tsushima in 1905, that the fate of the empire rested on this one battle, and a Japanese government weekly reported the fighting under the headline “Hoisting the Z flag on the inner South Sea.”4
What was Japan's plan, Operation A-Go?
Operation A-Go was issued by Toyoda on 3 May 1944. It expected the Americans to strike farther south, around the Palau Islands and the western Carolines, where Japan's short supply of fuel would let the fleet fight close to its bases. The Army historian Philip Crowl suspected wishful thinking in that guess. When the blow fell on the Marianas instead, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's First Mobile Fleet sortied from Tawi Tawi, in the southern Philippines, on 13 June.5
Ozawa knew he was outnumbered and counted on three advantages. His carrier planes, built without armor or self-sealing fuel tanks, could fly farther than the American ones: by Morison's figures they could search out to 560 miles against 325 to 350, and strike at 300 miles where American strikes reached not much beyond 200. He could therefore launch from beyond the Americans' reach. His planes could also fly on after attacking to the airfields of Guam and Rota, refuel and rearm there, and strike again on the way back. Morison describes this shuttle plan, and both Morison and Ozawa himself record carrier planes from the fleet landing on Guam.6
The third advantage was land-based air power. Under the A-Go plan, the navy's First Air Fleet, commanded from Tinian by Vice Admiral Kakuji Kakuta, was to have about 500 planes on the islands, and Ozawa himself told American interrogators after the war that the land-based planes totaled about 500. They were to wear down the American carriers before the fleets met. The plan failed before the battle began. When General MacArthur's forces landed on Biak, off New Guinea, on 27 May, Crowl writes, one third to one half of these planes were sent south, where many were lost or their pilots fell ill with malaria; American carrier strikes then wrecked much of what remained in the Marianas. Morison adds that Kakuta played down his losses, so that Ozawa still expected strong help from Guam on 18 June.7
How strong were the two fleets?
Admiral Raymond Spruance commanded the Fifth Fleet, and under him Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher led Task Force 58, the fast carriers, in four carrier groups, with Vice Admiral Willis Lee's fast battleships as a separate battle line. Morison and Crowl count 7 fleet carriers and 8 light carriers, 7 battleships, 21 cruisers, 69 destroyers and 891 carrier planes. Ozawa had 5 fleet and 4 light carriers, 5 battleships including the giants Yamato and Musashi, 13 cruisers, 28 destroyers and 430 carrier planes. He was weaker in every class of ship except heavy cruisers.8
The gap in skill was wider than the gap in numbers. Japan had lost many of its veteran naval aviators in the battles of 1942 and 1943, while the US Navy rotated experienced pilots home to train new ones. Ozawa told his American interrogators in 1945 that the training of his air groups had been very insufficient, and that his pilots could land on a carrier by day but not at night.9
Why did Spruance hold back on the night of 18 June?
By the evening of 18 June American submarines and radio direction finders had placed the Japanese fleet several hundred miles to the west. Mitscher proposed to steam west during the night so that his planes could strike Ozawa at dawn. Spruance discussed it with his staff for an hour and, just after midnight, refused. His orders were to cover the landing at Saipan, and he feared that the Japanese might send part of their fleet around his flank, an “end run,” to strike the transports while he chased the rest. Task Force 58 turned east for the night.10
No end run was coming. Ozawa told his interrogators that his plan was to go in straight, because the longer route would have cost too much fuel, and Crowl agrees that the Japanese commander never contemplated one. Spruance's choice handed Ozawa the first blow, but it also meant that the Americans would fight on the defensive, with every fighter at home to meet the attack.11
What was the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot?
On 19 June Ozawa's search planes found Task Force 58 first, and from the morning he launched four large raids. Morison, working from Japanese records, counts 373 planes sent out in searches and raids that day, of which only 130 came back. American radar picked up the raids far out, and Hellcats met them 50 to 60 miles from the carriers, usually with an advantage in height. The few attackers who got through hit the battleship South Dakota with one bomb, killing 27 men, and near-missed several carriers; no American ship was seriously damaged.12
American fighters also patrolled over Guam and Rota all day, shooting down planes there as they took off or came in to land, so that the planned shuttle never worked. Crowl writes that Ozawa lost 330 of his 430 carrier planes that day, while only 24 American planes were shot down and 6 lost in accidents.13
The name came from the pilots of Fighting Squadron 16 in USS Lexington. Morison credits their commander, Paul D. Buie, who liked to compare shooting down Japanese planes to hunting wild turkey. The Navy historian Guy Nasuti credits an unnamed shipmate of Vraciu's, the squadron's ace, who exclaimed that it had been “just like an old-time turkey shoot.” Both accounts place the phrase aboard Lexington.14
How did American submarines sink Taiho and Shokaku?
While the air battle raged, American submarines found the Japanese carriers. That morning USS Albacore fired a spread of six torpedoes at Taiho, Ozawa's brand-new flagship and the largest carrier in the Japanese fleet. A Japanese pilot dived his plane into one torpedo to stop it, and only one hit. The damage seemed slight. But gasoline vapor from the ruptured tanks spread through the ship, and later that day Taiho blew up and sank. The Navy historian Guy Nasuti counts 1,650 dead; Morison writes that only about 500 of a crew of 2,150 were saved.15
Around noon USS Cavalla hit Shokaku, a veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack, with three torpedoes while she was handling her planes. Fires spread through the carrier, and in the afternoon she exploded and sank. Ozawa shifted his flag to the cruiser Haguro and later to the carrier Zuikaku. Both the Navy's historians and Morison stress how much the submarines contributed: they shadowed the Japanese fleet from Tawi Tawi and gave Spruance much of what he knew about its movements.16
What happened in the American strike of 20 June?
That night Task Force 58 turned west in pursuit, but American searches did not find Ozawa until the late afternoon of 20 June. The first report put the nearest Japanese ships about 275 miles away, beyond the normal range of the American strike planes, and so late that the planes would have to come back after dark. Mitscher decided to strike anyway. Between about 1620 and 1636 his carriers launched 216 planes; soon afterward a corrected report placed the enemy some 60 miles farther off, and Mitscher held back his second wave.17
The strike reached the Japanese fleet just before sunset. Its fighters met perhaps 35 to 75 Japanese defenders while the bombers went for the carriers. The carrier Hiyo was sunk, and two oilers were so badly damaged that they were scuttled; Zuikaku, Junyo and Chiyoda were hit. Morison credits Hiyo's sinking to torpedoes from Avengers of the light carrier Belleau Wood, led by Lieutenant (jg) George Brown, who was lost on the way home; Ozawa said she sank mostly from bomb damage, and noted that as a converted carrier she had too little protection.18
Why did Mitscher turn on the carriers' lights?
The planes started back in the dark, short of fuel, across more than 200 miles of open sea, and most of their pilots had been trained to land by day. When they began circling the task force after 2045, Mitscher ordered the carriers lit up, although Japanese submarines might be near. Ships switched on their deck and truck lights and fired star shells, and searchlights pointed straight up as beacons. Many planes still ran out of fuel and ditched, and others crashed on the crowded decks; cruisers and destroyers spent the night pulling aircrews from the water.19
The cost fell on the planes more than on the men. Of the 216 planes, Morison and the Strategic Bombing Survey agree, 20 were lost in combat and 80 more ditched or crashed, 100 in all. Most of the aircrews were saved: Morison puts the net loss at 16 pilots and 33 crewmen, 49 in all, the figure Crowl also gives, while the Bombing Survey counts 38 aviators killed or missing. Nasuti writes that rescuers recovered 143 of the 185 airmen who came down in the sea.20
How many planes and men were lost in the Battle of the Philippine Sea?
Japanese losses are counted in very different ways. Morison, working from Japanese fleet records, found that Ozawa had 430 carrier planes and 43 floatplanes at dawn on 19 June and only 35 carrier planes and 12 floatplanes on 21 June: 426 planes lost, plus about 50 land-based planes at Guam, 476 in all, and about 445 carrier aviators. The National Park Service gives 480 aircraft, about three quarters of Japan's total there, while the Naval History and Heritage Command historian Guy Nasuti gives nearly 600 and EBSCO more than 600, and the Navy's historians put Japanese dead at nearly 3,000 airmen and sailors.21
American losses were far smaller. Morison counts 130 planes lost over the two days and 76 aviators; Nasuti gives 123 aircraft and 109 dead. No American ship was sunk.22
Was Spruance too cautious at the Philippine Sea?
Ozawa escaped with six carriers, and the argument began at once. Morison records that at naval air headquarters in Pearl Harbor the verdict was that this was what came of putting a non-aviator in command of carriers. Mitscher had wanted to strike at dawn on 19 June and had protested when Spruance overruled him. Spruance did not release Lee's battleships to chase Ozawa on the night of 20 June, and on 21 June he broke off the pursuit.23
Spruance himself admitted that, as a matter of tactics, going after the Japanese carriers would have been more satisfying, but he wrote to Morison that his duty was to protect a large amphibious operation he could not gamble with. Morison defends him: had the Americans attacked first, Ozawa's full air strength and the planes on Guam might have hit back, and the one-sided slaughter of the Turkey Shoot would not have happened. He also concludes that Spruance won command of the air and sea around the Marianas, which was his mission.24
Who won the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and why did it matter?
The United States won decisively. The Japanese surface fleet survived, but the Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japanese carrier aviation was substantially finished as a naval force, and the National Park Service that the Imperial Navy lost the bulk of its carrier air strength and would never recover. Morison judges that without its air arm the fleet was crippled, and that its six surviving carriers were useful afterward only as decoys, the role they played at Leyte Gulf in October 1944.25
The battle also decided the Marianas campaign. With the Japanese fleet gone, the garrisons of Saipan, Tinian and Guam could not be reinforced, and the National Park Service calls American control of the islands a foregone conclusion from then on. Japan's national archives date the loss of part of the absolute national defense sphere to this battle, and its forces fought on the defensive in the Pacific from then on. Compare the carrier battles at the Coral Sea and Midway in 1942, and see where this one stands among the greatest naval battles in history and the greatest battles of the Pacific War.26
Where was the Battle of the Philippine Sea fought?
The battle was fought over a wide area of the Philippine Sea west of the Mariana Islands, between the Philippines and Saipan. Task Force 58 met the first day's raids within a few hundred miles west of Saipan and Guam, the submarines struck farther south and west, and the strike of 20 June hit Ozawa's fleet some 300 miles west of the American carriers as it withdrew toward Okinawa.27
Test what you remember in the World War II battles quiz, meet the admirals among the commanders of the Pacific War, or read about the days of the battle in 19 June in history and 20 June in history.
