Iwo Jima

February 19 – March 12, 1945

“Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was.” — Marine Major General Graves Erskine, March 14, 1945

If Enterprise and Task Group 58.5 had played a secondary role during the Tokyo Raids, they made up for it at Iwo Jima. Retiring south from Kyushu with Task Force 58, Enterprise’s TG 58.5, accompanied by TG’s 58.4 and 58.1, parted ways with the remainder of the Task Force the afternoon of February 18, and headed for a refueling rendezvous southwest of Iwo Jima. The next morning — D-Day for the Marines on Iwo Jima — Enterprise refueled, and then set course with TG 58.5 for point 60 miles northwest of the “Sulfur Island”.

No other battle is as strongly associated with the United States Marines as is Iwo Jima. Between the time the assault began — precisely 0900, 19 February 1945 — and the time the island was declared secure on March 16, 4,189 Marines were killed and 19,938 wounded. The toll eventually reached nearly 26,000. Japanese defenders numbered about 21,000, but only 1083 survived. To this day, the debate continues: was Iwo Jima — eight square miles of foul-smelling volcanic ash and cinders, with three precious airfields — worth the price paid for it?

H-Hour at Iwo Jima: 0900, 19 February 1945. Mt. Suribachi looms in the south.

As early as July 1944, the Army Air Force had recommended taking Iwo Jima. The island is almost exactly halfway between Saipan, 625 miles to the south, and Tokyo, 660 miles to the north. Its airfields could serve as safe-haven for damaged Saipan-based B-29s returning from raids against Japan. Army P-51 fighters could be based on the same airfields, to protect the bombers beyond the range of Saipan-based fighter escorts. Moreover, in Japan’s hands Iwo Jima and two neighboring islands — Haha Jima and Chichi Jima — were a thorn in the AAF’s side. From these islands, enemy fighters harassed formations of B-29s on their long missions to Japan. And when bombing raids against Japan began in earnest in November 1944, Iwo-based bombers and fighters lashed out against Saipan’s airfields, eventually destroying eleven of General “Hap” Arnold’s precious bombers, and damaging nineteen others.

For the AAF, there was no question that Iwo Jima must be seized. “Without Iwo Jima I couldn’t bomb Japan effectively,” AAF Major General Curtis LeMay explained to Fifth Fleet commander Admiral Raymond Spruance. For Spruance, that settled any doubts in his mind. The Marines would go in, and the Navy would back them up.

Enterprise got into action at Iwo the afternoon of D-Day, February 19. Her mission was to protect the amphibious forces from air attack, so at 1630 she launched six Night Air Group 90 Hellcats to provide dusk CAP over the island. This mission proved uneventful, but the first night CAP, launched two hours later, had a busier time. Operating just north of the island, the four VF(N)-90 fighters were vectored on eight interceptions. Frequently the enemy planes would turn away as soon as contact was made; other times the American planes had to pull back when their pursuit took them in range of friendly anti-aircraft fire.

Persistence paid off, however. Shortly before 1930, VF(N)-90’s LT James Wood made radar contact with an enemy “Helen” — a twin-engine heavy bomber — and thirty minutes later splashed it. A bogey at 2012 sent the Big E to General Quarters, but she secured an hour later and passed her first night off Iwo without further incident.

The next day marked the first day since February 10, when the Big E had sailed from Ulithi with TF 58, that Enterprise engaged in night air operations exclusively, providing dusk and night CAP for TF 58, as well as over Iwo Jima. Aside from a mine encountered in the morning, no contact was made with enemy.

Shortly after 0900 on February 21, TG 58.5 — Enterprise, Saratoga CV-3, and their escorts — dissolved. Saratoga and three destroyers departed to join TG 52.2: Rear Admiral Calvin Durgin’s force of escort carriers, operating northeast of Iwo, providing direct air support for the Marines. Enterprise and the remainder of TG 58.5 operated with Lexington CV-16 and Hancock CV-19 in TG 58.2. Saratoga was now “Queen of the Jeeps” (escort carriers were known as “jeep” carriers), but her reign was short-lived.

Just before 1630, her radar picked up a large bogey, estimated at 20 to 25 planes, 75 miles distant. With CAP and anti-submarine patrols returning to the task force, these planes were first identified as friendly. At 1650, however, six Saratoga fighters vectored to investigate positively identified the planes as enemy, and moments later downed two Zeroes. At 1659, six planes emerged from the low cloud cover and dove on Saratoga. Despite the old carrier’s deadly anti-aircraft fire, three bombs in three minutes plunged into her, two planes glanced off her starboard side, and two more planes slammed into her flight deck.

For ninety minutes, her crew fought fires blazing in the hangar deck, while the carrier built up speed to 25 knots, and her planes were directed to land on the nearby escort carriers. By 1842 her fires were under control, but four minutes later a second attack began. This time five suicide planes targeted her. Four were shot down but one dropped a bomb which exploded over her flight deck, before the plane itself bounced over the side. Though Saratoga was able to begin recovering planes later in the evening, her war was over. Her losses that night were 192 wounded, 123 killed or missing.

The aft end of USS Bismarck Sea CVE-95 explodes, minutes after she was struck by a Kamikaze, 21 February 1945.

Saratoga was spared further assaults, but the raids continued into the night. On Enterprise, every available fighter was manned at 1700, but none were launched for forty-eight minutes, when she launched her first night CAP. The two Hellcats, operating with planes from Essex CV-9 and Randolph CV-15, were vectored on numerous intercepts until an hour after sun down, but as on the nineteenth, the enemy planes seemed reluctant to engage.

To judge from Enterprise’s Action Report, dusk must have reminded any Midwesterner top-side of summer lightening storms, as anti-aircraft fire flared up and faded around her:

1912: Screen firing on port quarter. 1915: Screen firing on starboard beam. 1934: Screen firing. 2001: Firing on horizon.

The Big E’s task group made it through the night unscathed, but Durgin’s escort carriers, which Saratoga had just joined when the attacks began, continued to draw the enemy’s wrath. At 1845, Bismarck Sea CVE-95 was struck by a suicide plane; two minutes later an explosion devastated the ship and she was ordered abandoned just 20 minutes after the attack. After burning fiercely for three hours, she rolled over and sank, with a loss of 218 men and officers. Lunga Point CVE-94, cargo ship Keokuk and a landing ship (LST-477) also came under attack, but escaped with relatively light damage.

Early the next afternoon, Enterprise launched eight VT(N)-90 Avengers, led by VT(N)-90’s commander LT C. B. Collins, to search for eight Saratoga planes missing since the raids the night before. Flying under a low ceiling and hampered by generally poor visibility, the planes searched a 60° sector due south of Iwo Jima out to 150 miles, before returning to a rendezvous point five miles east of the island. Four of the planes — piloted by Collins, LT(jg) Gordon Hinrichs, LT(jg) Ernie Lawton and LT(jg) Joe Jewell — arrived first at the rendezvous, and circled lazily waiting for the remaining four planes. Emerging from the overcast at just 400 feet, they found themselves astern of Seventh Fleet battleship. Turning hard away to port, the four planes came abeam of a second battleship. The Seventh Fleet’s gunners — alert and on edge from ongoing Kamikaze attacks — opened fire: first an LST, then every ship that could bring guns to bear.

Lawton and Jewell clawed back to safety in the clouds, but Collins and Hinrichs dove for the surface, only to find themselves flying at masthead height between two lines of friendly ships, all firing furiously at the “enemy” planes. Under continuous, heavy, accurate fire, Hinrichs managed to ditch his shattered plane, only to be nearly run down by a sub-chaser. The sub-chaser, its crew lined up at the rail with pistols and sub-machine guns, circled back towards the downed “enemy” plane. An enraged Hinrichs “cussed them out in considerable detail and length,” informing one deckhand that “if he was as handy with a line as he was with those God damn guns, they’d have been aboard five minutes earlier.” Hinrichs and his crew were then promptly rescued. Collins and his crew were never seen again: he was the second VT(N)-90 commander lost in as many months.

The next morning, February 23, Marines reached the summit of Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi, and raised a small American flag, which was replaced two hours later by a flag nearly twice the size. The battle for Iwo Jima was still raging, but this moment raised the spirits of every man on the island.

In the afternoon, Enterprise refueled, then reformed TG 58.5, operating independently of TG 58.2. At 1850, Task Force 58, less Enterprise’s TG 58.5, began a high-speed run to the north, returning to the Japanese Home Islands, to strike at the airfields supplying the suicide planes harassing the forces at Iwo Jima.

Enterprise was now the only fleet carrier operating at Iwo Jima. Her mission, as it had been since the 19th, was to provide dusk and night CAP for the amphibious forces and her own screen, but now she was assigned additional tasks. The Kamikazes which had mauled Saratoga, sunk Bismarck Sea and regularly harassed the amphibious forces, were being staged through airfields in the northern Bonin Islands. So, it fell to the Big E to eliminate that threat by suppressing those airfields. And, starting on February 24, Enterprise provided daytime CAP for the escort carriers of Admiral Durgin’s TG 52.2, which she formally joined at 0600, February 24.

Taken together, these missions required the Big E to have planes in the air 24 hours a day, day in and day out. At 1625 on February 23, eight VF(N)-90 Hellcats roared off Big E’s deck. For the next seven days and seven hours, Enterprise kept at least two and as many as twenty-two Night Air Group 90 planes in the air without interruption: an unprecedented achievement in naval air operations.

While the flights launched from Enterprise were small — generally four to eight planes, unlike the entire deck-loads day carriers launched in a single strike — round-the-clock operations meant continual flight deck activity. By February 25, the Big E had settled into a grueling routine. Beginning at 0630, flights of four VF(N)-90 Hellcats were launched every three hours to provide CAP for the force. At 1645, six to twelve fighters would be launched for dusk patrol over Iwo. These would be relieved by the first of six nightly flights of two Hellcats launched at 1815, and every two hours afterward until 0415 the next morning. The last day CAP mission, launched at 1530, would be relieved by the first night CAP at 1815, which in turn would be relieved every three hours, until the last mission at 0315 the next morning.

During the day, VT(N)-90 Avengers would fly anti-submarine patrols for the task group, conduct search missions, or tow targets for anti-aircraft practice. Most evenings, two Hellcats and four Avengers would take off on schedule to arrive at dusk over Chichi Jima to the north, to neutralize airfields there. Beginning at 1815, a single Hellcat or Avenger would be launched to “heckle” the enemy on Chichi Jima, slowing their efforts to repair the airfield damage caused by the dusk strike. Four heckler missions were launched each night, the last at 0145, and were required to be over target for two-and-a-half hours each. And beginning on March 6, predawn strikes at Chichi Jima were added to the rotation.

The effort weighed heaviest on the Air Group 90’s Hellcat pilots and the flight deck officers, but all hands had to adapt to new routines and procedures demanded by round-the-clock flight operations. The air department divisions were split into day- and night-shifts, each with only half the number of men normally available for flight operations. Ordinarily, seven crews of plane handlers managed planes on the flight deck, but for continuous operation, only three crews were available in the day and four at night. Accordingly, flight deck operations were organized to require as little “spotting”, or movement, of the planes as possible. Planes were spotted forward, leaving the aft portion of the flight deck free for landing operations, and most flights were launched by the two forward catapults, minimizing the amount of deck required for takeoffs. Similarly, hangar deck operations were rearranged to reduce the number of plane handler crews needed by half.

With only three landing signal officers on board, the LSO’s were sometimes required to work 13 hour shifts, more than twice as long as believed to be reasonable for the position. And Enterprise’s single qualified catapult officer was required to work 18 hour shifts, and be present for all catapult-assisted launches. Round-the-clock operations put an immense strain on the entire crew, but if any crew could carry it off, it was the Big E’s.

Apart from long hours, another challenge faced by Enterprise’s crew was a lack of tangible results for their efforts. Enterprise herself never came under attack during her Iwo Jima operations, and her planes destroyed or damaged only three enemy planes and eight freighters and barges, between February 23 and March 9. But there was more to this record than meets the eye. As Captain Grover B. Hall’s Action Report for February 10–22 notes: “One does not employ a night watchman and determine his worth in terms of the number of bandits he kills. His value is determined by the number of bandits which his presence discourages from approaching…”.

Also, one unfortunate aspect of early night air operations was that it was difficult to impossible to determine exactly what damage had been inflicted on the enemy. Daytime photo reconnaissance helped, but could not identify all damage done, and introduced additional operational problems that a day-and-night carrier like Enterprise could ill afford.

None-the-less, Enterprise did inflict damage on the enemy, primarily on the airfields and harbor at Chichi Jima. At 1416 PM February 24 — the day the Marines reached Airfield Number 2 at the Iwo Jima’s center — Enterprise launched six Avengers and four Hellcats for a strike against Chichi Jima and neighboring island Haha Jima. At Susaki airfield on Chichi Jima, LT(jg) Charles Gerbron and LT(jg) George McLaughlin unleashed rockets and fragmentation bombs, destroying one “Betty” bomber, and possibly three other planes. LT(jg) Bill Balden and LT(jg) Robert Heid strafed and rocketed a grounded freighter in Sakay Inlet, while LT Charles Henderson bombed the town of Omura. The attack continued, as the airmen turned their attention to a radio station on Chichi Jima and the town of Okimura on Haha Jima. Anti-aircraft fire damaged one Hellcat, but the pilot was able to ditch some 45 miles off Chichi Jima, and was picked up later by a destroyer.

VT(N)-90 Avengers in late 1944 or early 1945. Note the wing-mounted radar pod.

In the evening, Enterprise launched a single VF(N)-90 Hellcat flown by LT K. D. Smith, to fly a heckler mission over Chichi Jima. Over target for two hours, he rocketed the town of Omura, and strafed Susaki airfield, a seaplane base and other installations. Shortly before his scheduled return, Smith caught a “Helen” heavy bomber unawares as it was preparing to land, and shot it down with a single long burst of .50-caliber machine gun fire.

Two days later, on February 26, six VT(N)-90 Avengers escorted by four Hellcats took off at 0510 for a predawn strike against Chichi Jima. Again, the airfield at Susaki drew the most attention — bombs, rockets and strafing — but three cargo ships in Futami Ko harbor were damaged or sunk by rockets and strafing, and an oil storage installation erupted in flames after being struck by six rockets.

The Japanese gunners on the ground, however, were not sleeping, and caught the Avenger piloted by LT James Moore. Moore managed to ditch northeast of the island, where he and his crewmen, LT(jg) Robert Hadley and ARM 1/c Thomas Watts, crawled into their raft and awaited rescue.

Rescue eventually came, but not without difficulty. During the morning, Enterprise launched three separate search missions for the downed Avenger, with no success. The destroyer USS Gregory DD-802 was ordered to the scene, and she didn’t waste a minute getting there. Nearly two hundred miles from the stranded airmen, she built up steam to 38 knots and raced northwards, the ship shaking so much one crewman fretted she was “bound to pop a few bolts.”

Shortly before 1230, Gregory drew within sight of Chichi Jima, and set about finding the raft and its crew. When her search began, she was approximately 4000 yards offshore, but successive turns brought her as close as 3500 yards. For long minutes she searched, but still there was no sign of the airmen or their raft. The Japanese on Chichi Jima, however, knew just where the destroyer was, and soon opened fire, the first salvo falling distressingly close to Gregory’s port side. The destroyer immediately made smoke and scooted out of range of the Japanese battery, though not before being rattled by several more salvoes.

Finally, at 1402, Enterprise’s fourth search mission located the raft, reported its position, and circled overhead protectively. Minutes later, Gregory arrived on the scene and promptly pulled Moore, Hadley and Watts from the water, where they’d been anxiously waiting for nearly eight hours.

Landing Signal Officer (LSO) ENS Robert H. Grant hard at work, March 1945.

Strikes against Chichi Jima were repeated nearly every day, targeting the Susaki airfield, a seaplane base in Futami, and shipping as it was found. Despite the tiring routine and near-continuous flight deck activity, only three serious accidents took place on the Big E. On the evening of the 27th, a returning Hellcat plowed into the aft end of the island: the pilot escaped without injury but the plane was destroyed. On March 1 and again March 5, a Hellcat lost its tail hook on landing and crashed into the barriers protecting the planes spotted forward.

Late March 2, the Big E’s flight deck grew quiet for the first time in 174 hours, as a thick warm front passed over the task group, bringing heavy rain and zero visibility. In continuous operation since the afternoon of February 23, Enterprise had launched 406 flights, averaging fifty every twenty-four hours. Flying against targets in the northern Bonins — Chichi Jima primarily, as well as Haha Jima, Imoto Jima and Ani Jima — Air Group 90 had pummeled the enemy with 261 100lb bombs, 154 3-1/2” rockets, 94 5” rockets, and tens of thousands of rounds of .50-caliber ammunition. In addition to trail-blazing the all-weather carrier operations common today, she’d also demonstrated how to neutralize enemy airfields through continuous small-scale heckler missions, a less expensive alternative to periodic, large-scale heavy bombing raids.

The heavy weather brought operations to halt for a brief forty-five minutes; then round-the-clock operations resumed. On March 3, a daylight strike by six VT(N)-90 Avengers struck at Chichi Jima, and torpedoed a small freighter in Higashi Harbor on Haha Jima. Aside from a few interruptions due to continuing poor weather, the Big E maintained the same aggressive operating schedule she had for the previous week.

On March 4, the first B-29 made an emergency landing on Iwo Jima’s Airfield Number 1, and by March 6, the Marines on Iwo Jima had progressed far enough that Army fighters could begin operating from that island’s airfields, relieving the Big E of her Iwo CAP duties. The same day, however, bright moonlight before dawn necessitated NAG-90 adding predawn strikes against Chichi Jima’s airfield to its agenda.

Enterprise remained off Iwo Jima until March 9. By that time, enough Army fighters and bombers were operating from the captured airfields on Iwo Jima to relieve her Air Group. At 2120, March 9, the last plane from the last strike against Chichi Jima banged down on the Big E’s deck. The next minute, literally, Enterprise set course due south, and left Iwo Jima behind, putting twenty miles between herself and the island every hour.

Just before 0700, March 12, Enterprise and her screen formed a column and slipped into Ulithi Atoll. Task Force 58, after striking Tokyo on February 25 and Okinawa on March 1, had returned to Ulithi on March 4, and was still there when Enterprise returned over a week later. There was no rest for the Big E’s fatigued crew, however. Less than 48 hours after entering the lagoon — during which time she hurriedly refueled and replenished — she was underway again, sortieing at 0610 with Yorktown CV-10 and Intrepid CV-13, as Task Group 58.4.

Once again part of Marc Mitscher’s Fast Carrier Force, Enterprise steamed northwest at 18 knots. Task Force 58 was returning to Japan, but this time the target was Kyushu, the southernmost Home Island. In preparation for the Okinawa landings, scheduled for April 1, Mitscher was determined to suppress the formidable Kamikaze threat based on Kyushu’s airfields. It was a mission, and a threat, the Big E was to become very familiar with.