10-8-16
In late September, task force planes were bombing Leyte in preparation for the upcoming invasion. The Boston spent the last five days of the month anchored in Eniwetok. On Oct 1, the ships headed west toward Okinawa to begin a systematic reduction of Japanese aircraft in bases that could be used against American assault troops. The task groups hit a typhoon, and for several days they were unable to launch any planes. On October 10, after refueling the day before, they launched planes against Okinawa.
I have mentioned many times over the years that the Japanese had a series of defense plans to counter American advances – all designed to be crushing defeats of the Americans as they advanced across the Pacific.
From The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy by Masanori Ito* Following the defeat in the Marianas in mid-June 1944, Japanese planners had estimated that it would take eight months for the Navy to be back in fighting trim. In just half that time Combined Fleet was obliged to sortie with all available forces. It was shattering to naval staff men when Operation Sho 1 had to be activated so precipitously on October 18, after scarcely three months of training at Lingga [Lingga Roads, near Singapore, was where the Japanese Navy relocated after Task Force raids drove them from the “impregnable fortress” of Truk (Carolines)]. Yet has they stopped to think of it, in view of the amazingly rapid advances the enemy had made in the third year of the war, the Japanese Navy was fortunate to have had even that long for a breathing spell.
Operation Sho 1 was designed to counter any enemy attempt to invade the Philippine Islands. Its tasks may be summarized as follows:
- Land-based naval air forces were to meet the enemy invading forces at a distance of 700 miles from the islands; to reduce his strength by means of aerial attack with bombs and torpedoes; and, in cooperation with the Army Air Force, to annihilate the remainder of the enemy force at the invasion point.
- Combined Fleet was to assemble at Brunei Bay, north of Borneo; and, at an opportune time, sortie to intercept the enemy’s convoys and escorts.
- Once the enemy had begun landing operations, Combined Fleet was to storm the invasion point with full strength and annihilate the invading forces.
- Vice Admiral Ozawa’s carrier division was to assist by coming south from Japan to lure the enemy force northward. [This was the “decoy carrier fleet” that Halsey had TG38.1 chase during the latter part of the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea. Boston was a unit of TG38.1.]
All the above factors played out over the rest of October and the Boston was in the middle of all this as both the Battle Off Formosa and Battle for Leyte Gulf (the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea) unfolded.
*The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy by Masanori Ito English Translation copyright 1962 by WW Norton Company