The 19th June 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy headquarters received reports from the Philippine Sea.
The first mobile fleet had engaged American carrier forces.
The battle was ongoing, but the numbers being reported were impossible.
Aircraft losses, 200 fighters, 100 bombers, more than 300 aircraft total in a single day.
Japanese staff officers questioned the reports.
This had to be errors.
communication problems exaggerated American claims.
No naval air battle in history had produced losses like this.
Not even close.
But the reports kept coming from different ships, different sources, all saying the same thing.
The carrier air groupoups were gone, destroyed, wiped out in hours.
Vice Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa commanded the first mobile fleet, nine aircraft carriers, over 400 carrier-based aircraft, the largest Japanese carrier force assembled since midway 2 years earlier.
His mission was to destroy the American carrier fleet approaching the Maria Islands.
The plan seemed sound.
Japanese carriers would launch aircraft at extreme range.
The new Yokosuka D4Y Judy dive bombers had ranged to reach American carriers from 300 miles away.
Attack the Americans before they could counterattack.
Sink enough carriers to force American withdrawal.
Save the Marianas.
The American carriers had been spotted by Japanese reconnaissance aircraft on June 18th.
Task Force 58, 15 carrier carriers, seven battleships, dozens of cruisers and destroyers, over 900 carrier-based aircraft, the largest naval force ever assembled.
Ozawa knew he was outnumbered.
Japanese carriers had approximately 430 aircraft.
Americans had over 900, but Japanese carrier pilots were trained to believe they were superior to American pilots.
better training, better tactics, better aircraft.
Quality over quantity.
This belief was outdated.
It had been true in 1941 and early 1942.
Japanese carrier pilots at Pearl Harbor and in the Indian Ocean raids were the best naval aviators in the world, thousands of hours of training, years of experience, elite units.
But most of those pilots were dead.
By June 1944, Japanese carrier air groupoups were filled with replacement pilots.
Average flight time 100 to 200 hours, minimal combat experience, rushed through training because Japan needed pilots immediately.
American carrier pilots in June 1944 averaged 300 to 500 flight hours.
Many had combat experience from previous operations.
They flew better aircraft.
F6F Hellcats that were faster, tougher, and more heavily armed than Japanese Zeros.
TBF Avengers that could absorb damage and keep flying.
Radios that worked.
Radar that could detect enemy aircraft at long range.
June 19th, a.m.
Ozawa launched his first strike.
69 aircraft, Zeros, Judies, and Nakajima B6N torpedo bombers.
Their target was Task Force 58, approximately 200 m to the east.
The strike flew toward the Americans in loose formation.
American radar detected them at 150 mi.
Task Force 58 had new SK2 radar systems, long range air search capability.
The Japanese strike was spotted while still far from the fleet.
Fighter direction officers aboard American carriers vetored F6F Hellcats toward the incoming raid.
Dozens of fighters launched, climbed to intercept altitude, positioned themselves between the Japanese strike and the American carriers.
The Japanese pilots didn’t know American fighters were waiting.
They had no radar, limited radio communication.
They were flying toward what they thought would be a surprise attack.
At approximately a.m., the American Hellcats found them.
What happened next wasn’t a dog fight.
It was a slaughter.
American pilots had altitude advantage, speed advantage, numbers advantage.
They dove on the Japanese formation from above.
The Zeros and bombers scattered.
Defensive formations broke apart.
Individual Japanese aircraft tried to evade.
Most failed.
F6F Hellcats were designed specifically to kill Zeros.
More heavily armed 650 caliber machine guns versus the Zeros two 20 mm cannons and two machine guns.
Better powertoweight ratio at combat altitudes.
Self-sealing fuel tanks that the Zero lacked.
Armor protection for the pilot.
American pilots had trained for this.
They knew not to dogfight zeros at low speed where the Japanese fighters maneuverability was superior.
They used speed and diving attacks, hit and run, boom and zoom tactics.
Fire, disengage, climb, attack again.
Japanese pilots tried to fight back.
Some Zeros attempted to engage the Hellcats, but the American fighters were faster.
When Japanese pilots maneuvered to get on an American’s tail, the Hellcat would simply accelerate away.
The Zero couldn’t catch it.
Of the 69 aircraft in the first Japanese strike, 42 were shot down before reaching the American carriers.
The remaining 27 pushed through, attempted to attack.
American anti-aircraft fire from the fleet was intense.
Every ship firing, hundreds of guns, creating walls of explosive shells and tracer fire.
Six more Japanese aircraft were shot down by anti-aircraft fire.
The remaining aircraft dropped bombs and torpedoes.
Most missed.
The American carriers maneuvered violently, dodging, presenting minimal targets.
A few near misses, minor damage to one battleship, but no American carriers hit.
The surviving Japanese aircraft turned for home.
Of 69 aircraft launched, approximately 20 made it back to their carriers.
49 lost, over 75% casualties, and they’d achieved nothing.
Ozawa didn’t know this yet.
Radio communication was limited.
He assumed the first strike had inflicted damage.
He launched a second strike.
130 aircraft, larger force, hit the Americans while they were recovering from the first attack.
American radar detected the second strike at a.m.
More Hellcats launched, positioned to intercept.
The pattern repeated.
American fighters found the Japanese formation, attacked from altitude.
The Japanese aircraft scattered.
Some tried to fight, most tried to evade.
Neither worked.
Hellcats shot them down systematically.
97 of the 130 aircraft in the second strike were destroyed.
33 survivors, 75% losses.
Again, minimal damage to American ships.
A few bombs hit the battleship South Dakota and carrier Bunker Hill.
Damage was repable.
Neither ship was knocked out of action.
Ozawa launched a third strike, 47 aircraft, then a fourth, 82 aircraft.
The results were the same.
American radar detected them.
American fighters intercepted them.
Most were shot down before reaching the fleet.
The few that got through faced intense anti-aircraft fire.
Minimal damage inflicted.
Catastrophic losses sustained.
By the end of June 19th, Japanese carrier air groupoups had launched approximately 330 aircraft in four strikes.
Fewer than a 100 returned.
Over 200 aircraft destroyed, pilots killed or lost at sea.
This didn’t include operational losses, aircraft that crashed on landing, mechanical failures, navigation errors that resulted in aircraft running out of fuel and ditching.
Total Japanese aircraft losses for June 19th, approximately 330 out of 430 embarked.
Over 75% of the carrier air strength gone in one day.
American losses, 29 aircraft, most from operational accidents, not combat.
Fewer than 10 shot down by Japanese fighters or anti-aircraft fire.
June 20th morning.
Ozawa received damage reports from his carriers.
The numbers were devastating.
His nine carriers had fewer than 100 operational aircraft remaining.
Most air groupoups were destroyed.
Some carriers had no aircraft left at all.
American submarines had also been active.
Two Japanese carriers, Taiho and Shokaku, were sunk by submarine torpedoes during the battle.
Taihaho was Japan’s newest fleet carrier.
Shokaku was a veteran from Pearl Harbor.
Both gone.
Ozawa’s fleet was crippled.
Seven carriers remaining, but almost no aircraft to operate from them.
No realistic capability to continue offensive operations.
The mission to destroy the American carrier fleet had failed completely.
Japanese pilots who survived told consistent stories.
They couldn’t fight the American Hellcats effectively.
The American fighters were too fast, too wellarmed, too numerous.
Japanese Zeros that had dominated the Pacific in 1941 and 1942 were now outclassed.
The few Japanese bombers that reached the American fleet described anti-aircraft fire so intense it seemed impossible to penetrate.
Hundreds of guns, radar directed fire control, proximity fused shells that exploded near aircraft without needing direct hits.
Flying through that defensive fire was suicide.
But the deeper problem was pilot quality.
Japanese replacement pilots in 1944 weren’t ready for combat.
They had basic flight training.
They could take off and land on carriers, but they couldn’t fight experienced American pilots in superior aircraft.
The skill gap was insurmountable.
One Japanese carrier pilot who survived described it later.
We flew toward the American fleet expecting to fight like our predecessors at Pearl Harbor.
We were told we were elite pilots.
We believed it.
Then we encountered American fighters and realized we weren’t elite.
We were barely trained.
We died because we weren’t ready.
The battle became known as the Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot among American pilots.
The name came from turkey shooting, a traditional American competition, where shooters competed to hit the most turkeys.
The battle was so one-sided it resembled target practice more than combat.
American pilots returned to their carriers, describing easy kills.
Japanese aircraft that didn’t maneuver effectively, that flew predictable patterns, that were slow and vulnerable.
American afteraction reports noted that many Japanese pilots seemed inexperienced, poor tactical decisions, inadequate, evasive maneuvers.
Some Japanese pilots appeared to freeze when attacked, not reacting, just flying straight while American fighters shot them down.
This wasn’t arrogance or exaggeration.
This was accurate assessment.
Japanese carrier pilot training in 1944 was inadequate.
Japan couldn’t replace the experienced pilots lost earlier in the war.
Training programs were shortened.
Standards were lowered.
Pilots were rushed to carriers before they were ready.
The results were visible on June 19th.
Japan lost over 300 carrier aircraft and most of their trained pilots in one day.
This was irreplaceable.
Japanese aircraft production couldn’t keep up with losses.
Pilot training couldn’t produce replacements fast enough.
Fuel shortages limited training flights.
The carrier air groups destroyed at the Philippine Sea couldn’t be reconstituted.
American losses were minimal.
29 aircraft, pilots rescued, carriers undamaged.
Task Force 58 continued operations.
The next day, June 20th, American carriers launched strikes against the retreating Japanese fleet, sank another carrier, damaged others.
The Japanese fleet withdrew.
The battle was over.
The strategic consequences were immediate.
The Marianas were now defenseless from Japanese air attack.
American forces invaded Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.
Captured them within weeks.
These islands became bases for B29 Superfortress bombers.
the same B29s that would bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities for the rest of the war.
Japan’s carrier fleet still existed.
Seven carriers survived the Philippine Sea, but they had almost no aircraft, no trained pilots, no ability to conduct offensive operations.
Japanese carriers after June 1944 were effectively useless, mobile airfields with no aircraft to operate from them.
At the battle of Lee Gulf in October 1944, Japanese carriers were used as decoys.
They sailed north to lure American carriers away from the invasion fleet.
They had almost no aircraft aboard.
They weren’t expected to fight, just to be seen and draw American forces out of position.
The plan worked tactically, but failed strategically.
The Japanese fleet was destroyed anyway.
The Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot wasn’t just a tactical defeat.
It was the end of Japanese carrier aviation as an effective force.
Everything Japan had built since the 1920s.
The carrier doctrine, the pilot training programs, the elite air groupoups was gone.
Destroyed not in one decisive battle like Midway, but through attrition Japan couldn’t replace.
By June 1944, Japan had lost too many experienced pilots.
Training couldn’t produce quality replacements.
American industrial production overwhelmed Japanese capacity.
Better aircraft, more aircraft, better trained pilots, more pilots.
The numbers told the story.
330 Japanese aircraft lost.
29 American aircraft lost.
This wasn’t combat.
This was execution.
June 19th, 1944, Japanese carrier air groupoups launched over 300 aircraft to attack the American fleet in the Philippine Sea.
Fewer than 100 returned.
Over 200 aircraft and their pilots vanished in one day.
The largest carrier air battle in history became the most one-sided slaughter in naval aviation.
American pilots called it the Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot.
Japanese survivors called it the end.
The carrier air groups that had struck Pearl Harbor, that had dominated the Pacific in 1941 and 1942, were gone, replaced by inadequately trained pilots flying obsolete aircraft against an enemy that was better equipped, better trained, and overwhelmingly numerous.
Japan’s carrier fleet survived the battle physically.
Seven carriers made it back to Japan, but they were empty.
No aircraft, no pilots, just steel holes that would never again pose a threat to American operations.
The 200 fighters that vanished on June 19th represented more than just aircraft losses.
They represented the end of Japanese naval air power, the end of any realistic hope of defeating American carrier forces.
The end of Japan’s ability to defend its empire from the air.
One day, one battle, 200 zeros gone.
