October 1944 began with the men aboard the Boston steaming north and west after a few days of rest and resupply in the lagoon anchorage of Eniwetok (Marshall Islands). Operation King was in full swing, and Task Force 38’s job was to support the various amphibious attacks on enemy strongholds in the Philippine archipelago. They were headed for the heavily-fortified Ryukyu Islands, where the airfields on the Okinawa and Amami Guntos were launching endless attacks against American forces in the Philippines.
On October 3 they hit the edge of a typhoon, and by Oct 5 they were in heavy seas – on Oct 7 the ship recorded a 32 degree roll in the height of the storm. On Oct10, the Task Group launched airstrikes against Okinawa. The next target (October 11) was the airfields at Luzon (near Manila), followed by the very heavily fortified occupied island of Formosa (Taiwan) on the next day.
from Pat Fedele’s Diary, compliments of Pat
And from the journal kept by Augustus Harris, S1C, compliments of his family:
(Note line 1, where seaman Harris identifies Oct 4 as “1 year from home.” Also, he adds the marginal note for Oct 12 that the Boston shot down 3 planes during the Battle of Formosa. The Captains’ logs for October 1944, (copied by Bill during his trip to NARA), confirm the B shot down three planes during this fierce two day battle. The action off Formosa resulted in the three separate torpedo strikes against cruisers in the Boston’s task group – one on the Canberra and two on the Houston). I want to express my profound gratitude to the men who contributed these incredible first-hand accounts (including Frank Studenski – whose war diary was the basis of my book “A Bird’s Eye View”).
More to come . . . . . . .