Flightdeck Friday: The Last Great Battle in the Pacific – Okinawa
The conversation this past week has been centered on the Maritime Strategy – appropriate in light of the events of sixty-three years ago and the signatory role seapower and all three maritime services played then. While we have yet another post on the current strategy in the Alert 30 posture (day time jobs do have such a way of interfering with one’s desires, eh?) we thought it appropriate to devote this week’s Flightdeck Friday to the last great battle of the Pacific War. – SJS
1 April 1945:
1300 Allied ships including 40 carriers, 18 battleships and over 200 destroyers – over 200,000 US soldiers, sailors and Marines opposed by a 77,000-man garrison on Okinawa with a civilian population estimated at around 435,000. The force is landed on the 1st and beginning on 6 April and running to 25 May over 1,500 kamikazes would attack the fleet:
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72,000 immediate combat losses were suffered by US forces. Thirty-six ships (including 15 amphibs and 12 destroyers) sunk and another 368 damaged, some so badly they would be withdrawn from battle for the remainder of the war including carriers Bunker Hill and the veteran Enterprise.
“Victory at Sea”!!!!! This is how it all started for me. My father, former QM3 on DD859 would lay on his side on the couch with the lovely young Princess Crabby ensconced in the spot his bent legs made. Popcorn and history lessons being passed down. By high school I knew more WWII stuff than my history teacher, Sr. Nancy Brennan.
Last summer the Plymouth Philharmonic featured an evening where the highlight was Richard Rogers “Victory at Sea” score.
Early exposure this end to Victory at Sea as well — expect to see more in these spaces in one form or another…
– SJS
I spent two years (civil service brat) on the island in 62-64. Old enough to understand the past war (always warned about not play with left over ordnance found in the boonies), but not to totally absorb it all. Many years later, I read Tennozan”. It was the first book I found with the view from the other side (which pointed out 16″ rounds do little harm to coral formations), and also Goodbye, Darkness”. Having walked the very ground those two others wrote about, it really brought meaning to the intensity of that struggle….and then, in 2005, I dug into Desmond Doss’ life story…
Incredible times…hopefully we will never have authors able to write of future battles such as this.