Japan’s godlike zero aces roared with contempt at the grotesque American monster Hellcat.
Then were exterminated in the Mariana’s cataclysmic aerial holocaust.
June 19th, 1944, 0500 hours, the vast expanse of the Philippine Sea, 300 m west of Saipan, where dawn cracks the horizon like a jagged wound.
You feel the salt spray whipping across the flight deck of the Japanese carrier Taihaho.
Flagship of ice Admiral Disob Ozawa’s mobile fleet.
The air hums with the growl of Mitsubishi 6M0 warming up.
Their radio engines spinning blue exhaust flames into the pre-dawn gloom.
Pilots in white scarves and leather helmets climb into cockpits.
Faces etched with the stoic resolve of samurai.
Lieutenant Zengab, a veteran ace with kills from Pearl Harbor etched on his fuselov, grips the stick, heart pounding in rhythm of the carrier’s massive screws churning the waves below.
These men are legends.
The Zero sleek feather light at 5,300 lb.
Armed with two 20 mm cannons and twin machine guns, dances through the air like a predator unbound.
No armor weighs it down.
Speed and agility are its armor.
Abe and his comrades have ruled the Pacific since December 1941.
Shredding American wild cats in dog fights over Guadal Canal and the Solomons.
Ratios of 10 to1, sometimes 20 to1.
They whisper a divine wind.
Kamicazi spirit fueling their dives.
Ozawa’s fleet nine carriers for 130 aircraft.
Steams toward the American invasion force at the Marianis.
Operation Ago launched to crush the Yankee advance once and for all.
Below decks, mechanics bow in reverence of machines.
The sea rolls heavy.
Typhoon remnants stirring white caps that crash against holes.
Aes radio crackles.
Bonsai for the emperor.
He throttles up the zero leaping off the deck into blood orange sky.
Ahead lies task force 58.
Rear Admiral Mark Mitchell’s behemoth with 15 carriers and over 900 planes.
But to these aces, the Americans are fools in heavy crates.
Yet, as Abe climbs to 20,000 ft, a shadow stirs on a radar scopes far away.
Something new, something monstrous waiting to pounce.
November 1943, flight deck of USS Enterprise, Task Force 50, Gilbert Islands campaign.
The first Grumman F6F Hellcats thunder off a catapult.
Their massive Pratt and Whitney are 2,800 engines roaring like enraged beasts.
At 12,000 lbs fully loaded, more than twice the weight of Zero, the Hellcat is a brute.
650 caliber machine guns in the wings, heavy armor plate behind the pilot, self-sealing fuel tanks, a cockpit canopy that can take a bullet.
To the Japanese pilots who glimpse them from afar, it looks grotesque.
A lumbering American monster built for comfort, not combat.
Lieutenant Commander David McCellbell, commanding Air Group 15, pushes a throttle forward.
The Hellcat surges ahead, climbing at a rate the old Wildcat could only dream of, 3,500 ft per minute.
Mccell has studied the enemy.
He knows a Zero can outturn anything in a slow speed knife fight.
So, the doctrine is simple.
Never play their game.
Dive from above.
Strike with overwhelming firepower.
Extend away.
Hit and run.
The Hellcat is built for exactly that.
Raw power, durability, the ability to absorb hits and keep fighting.
Early encounters confirm the shift.
In the skies over Terawa and Min, Hellcats tear into Japanese formations.
A Zero tries to loop inside a Hellcat.
The American pilot simply rolls away, climbs, and comes back down in a blazing deflection shot.
Flames erupt.
One zero spirals into lagoon, then another.
Word filters back to the Japanese carriers.
Pilots gather in ready rooms, shaking heads.
Too heavy, they say.
It will never match our maneuverability.
Veterans like Warren Officer Satam Makamichi, who has flown since China in 1937, dismiss reports of growing American successes.
The new plane is a desperation measure.
Nothing more.
But the kills mount.
By spring 1944, the Hellcats tally climbs past 1,000.
Experienced Japanese pilots begin to vanish.
The irreplaceable core, the men trained before the war, the aces with hundred of hours and zeros are being bled away faster than new recruits can replace them.
And now in June, Ozawa launches his desperate Counter-Strike.
His pilots, many with only months of training, climb into their cockpits, believing the old myths still hold.
They are about to learn how wrong they are.
June 19th, 1944.
0830 hours.
Radar screens aboard USS Lexington blaze with incoming blips from massive Japanese raid waves.
Over 300 aircraft strong streaking toward Task Force 58 on the bridge of the Lexington.
Rear Admiral Mark Mitcher appears through binoculars.
Voice calm over the TBS.
Launch everything.
Hellcats vector to intercept.
Catapults hiss and slam.
Hellcats roar off the decks and waves, climbing hard under full military power.
Commander Dave McCellbell leads VF 15 upward, throttle firewalled, the double Wasp engine shaking the airframe with 2,200 horsepower.
60 mi out, Lieutenant Za leaves a first strike wave.
69 aircraft from Ozawa’s carriers.
Zeros escorting Judy Dive bombers and Kate torpedo planes.
Abe feels a familiar surge.
The Americans are still launching.
He thinks we’ll catch them flatfooted just like midway in reverse.
But high above, unseen, the Hellcats are already diving.
Mccell spots the enemy formation at 25,000 ft.
Perfect altitude advantage.
Taliho.
Bandits below.
The Hellcats roll over and plummet.
Blue noses glinting in the sun.
Speed builds over 400 knots.
Japanese lookouts shout warnings too late.
The sky erupts.
Tracers arc like golden rain.
A zero disintegrates mid turn as 650 calibers hammer its fragile fuselov.
Fuel tanks ignite.
No self-sealing means instant fireballs.
Abe whips his zero into a desperate split s.
But the Hellcat on his tail refuses to follow into the slow turn.
Instead, it zooms past, climbs, and comes screaming back down.
One Judy dive bomber folds its wings under concentrated fire and spirals into the sea.
Then another Kate’s jettison torpedoes in panic trying to flee.
In minutes, the first wave is shattered.
Over 40 Japanese aircraft gone, many before dropping a single bomb.
A breaks away, heartammering, watching comrades burn and fall.
The American fighters are everywhere, relentless, refusing dog fights, striking like hawks and vanishing upward.
Back aboard the Japanese carriers, Ozawa receives a fragment of reports.
Pilots claim the new enemy fighter is fast, heavily armed, impossible to shake, but the admiral presses on.
More waves are already airborne.
He does not yet know that the slaughter has only begun.
June 19th, 1944.
Midm morning, the Philippine Sea boils with chaos as the second and third Japanese raid waves.
Over 200 aircraft plunge toward the American fleet.
Hellcats swarm like a storm of steel hornets.
Commander Charles Brewer, leading VF-16 from USS Lexington, dives through scatter clouds at 450 knots.
Gunsite fixed on formation of zeros, escorting Vald Dive bombers.
His wingman calls out, “Bogies at 2:00 low.
Brewer rolls inverted, pulls a nose down, and fires a long burst.
A zero snaps in half, wings shearing off as a pilot bails into empty sky.” Below, the Japanese pilots fight with desperate fury.
Many are young, barely 100 hours in zero, trained in haste as Japan’s pilot pool evaporates.
They try the old tactics, tight turns, climbing spirals, luring the heavy Americans into slow speed duels.
But the Hellcats refuse the invitation.
They boom down, fire, zoom upward again.
The six Browning 50s chew through unarmored fuselages like chainsaws through paper.
One burst, a flash, a fireball tumbling end over end.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Alex Racu, already an ace, claims seven kills in eight minutes.
He spots a Kate torpedo plane lumbering low, drops behind it, and sends it flaming into the waves.
Then another, and another.
His Hellcat’s guns never seemed cool.
On the radio, American voices crackle with controlled exhilaration.
Splash one, Judy, got a zero on my six.
Somebody take him.
Fox 2, Fox 3, he’s burning.
The Japanese formation disintegrates.
Pilots who survive Guadal Canal and Rebel watch in horror as rookies die by the dozen.
No bombs reach the American carriers.
Anti-aircraft fire from the screen ships barely fires a shot.
The Hellcats have already done the killing high above.
By noon, the scoreboard is apocalyptic.
Over 240 Japanese aircraft destroyed, most in air-to-air combat.
American losses 29.
The ratio approaches 20 to1 in places.
Ozawa aboard the sinking Tahoe torpedo by USS Albakor earlier receives reports in stunned silence.
His fourth and final wave is still launching.
The slaughter is far from over.
June 19th, 1944.
Late afternoon, the sun hangs low of the Philippine Sea, turning the water into a mirror of fire as Ozo’s fourth and final raid.
128 aircraft scraped from depleted decks, launches into bloodstream sky.
Many pilots are barely trained.
Cadets pull from classrooms, given a few dozen hours and outdated trainers before being thrown into zeros.
They climb with mechanical determination.
Radios filled with four shouts of bonsai.
But fear crackles beneath bravado.
Veterans like Lieutenant Ken Marada who flew over Pearl Harbor grip their sticks tighter than ever.
He knows the odds.
He has seen the earlier wave vanish aboard USS Essex.
Commander David McCambell already with multiple kills today leads another combat air patrol skyward.
Fuel is low across the task force, but Mitcher’s order stands.
Destroy the enemy in the air.
Hellcats streak westward at 300 knots.
Radar vectors guiding them unairringly toward the incoming swarm.
Contact.
The Japanese formation appears ragged.
Strung out.
Escort struggling to maintain cohesion.
Hellcats drop from 30,000 ft like meteors.
McCell picks a zero, climbing desperately.
Fires a short burst.
Wings fold.
The fighter flips once and plummets.
His wingman splashes at Judy seconds later.
Below, chaos reigns absolute.
Japanese pilots scatter in every direction.
Some diving for cloud cover.
Others turning back toward their carriers in blind panic.
Few bombs are dropped, few torpedoes armed.
The Hellcats hunt methodically, guns hammering in discipline bursts.
Fireballs bloom across the horizon.
Orange, black, silent at this distance.
Herata twists and turns, trying every trick from the old days.
A Hellcat overshoots, but another takes his place.
Tracers stitch across his wing.
Fuel ignites.
He pulls a canopy.
Bails out into empty air.
Parachute blooming as a zero spirals down in flames.
By dusk, the tally is complete.
Over 600 Japanese aircraft destroyed.
373 in air combat alone against 123 American losses, most from operational causes.
Three carriers sunk or crippled.
Ozawa’s mobile fleet limps westward.
Its air groups annihilated.
The veterans, the godlike aces who once mocked the grotesque American monster are gone, scattered across the sea or drifting beneath parachutes into captivity.
Japan’s naval aviation has been gutted in a single day.
But the battle is not yet over.
June 20th, 1944.
Dusk falls crimson over the Philippine Sea as Rear Admiral Mark Mitcher makes the gamble that seals the battle’s legend.
From the bridge of USS Lexington, he watches the western horizon swallow the sun.
Japanese carriers Zuikaku, Choku, Taiho, already lost.
Flee at full speed 300 m away.
Fuel gauges on returning Hellcats flicker near empty.
Many pilots will never make it back in the dark.
But Mitcher utters the words that echo through history.
Launch them.
Turn on the lights.
Flood lights blaze across Task Force 58.
Deck lights, search lights, even star shells burst overhead.
Beacons guiding the hunter’s home.
Over 200 Hellcats, Avengers, and Dauntless roar westward into the gathering night, chasing Ozawa’s retreating fleet.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Winston leads a strike group low over the waves.
Radar guiding them through cloud banks.
At 1900 hours, they spot the enemy.
Carrier silhouetted against dying light.
Escorts throwing up frantic anti-aircraft fire.
Avengers bore in torpedoes splashing into water.
Hellcat strafe decks, igniting parked aircraft in chains of explosions.
The carrier hyo erupts in a massive fireball.
Her magazines detonating as Avengers torpedoes rip her open.
She rolls and sinks, taking hundreds with her.
Zuaku and Chyota take crippling damage.
Zero scramble desperately, but there are too few left.
Pilot exhausted, aircraft fuel starved.
Back over the task force, the night becomes a desperate ballet of survival.
Hellcats ditch in the Black Sea.
Pilots bobbing in life rafts as destroyers race to rescue them.
80 aircraft are lost to fuel exhaustion or deck crashes in the dark.
But the cost of Japan is incalculable.
In 2 days, the Imperial Japanese Navy has lost three carriers, over 600 aircraft, and nearly all remaining elite pilots.
The Mariana’s Turkey shoot June 19th alone claiming 373 enemy planes has annihilated the fleet air armuilt over decades.
No longer can Japan contest the skies.
The road to Lati Ewima Okanawa lies open.
As the last Hellcat traps aboard in the floodless chaos, Mitch stand silent on the bridge.
The grotesque monster the Japanese once mocked has become their executioner.
Japan’s godlike aces are gone.
The divine wind has turned against the empire and in the vast indifferent Pacific.
The tide of war has turned forever.
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Give me motivation.
Thanks.
Japan’s godlike zero aces roared with contempt at the grotesque American monster Hellcat.
Then were exterminated in the Mariana’s cataclysmic aerial holocaust.
June 19th, 1944, 0500 hours, the vast expanse of the Philippine Sea, 300 m west of Saipan, where dawn cracks the horizon like a jagged wound.
You feel the salt spray whipping across the flight deck of the Japanese carrier Taihaho.
Flagship of ice Admiral Disob Ozawa’s mobile fleet.
The air hums with the growl of Mitsubishi 6M0 warming up.
Their radio engines spinning blue exhaust flames into the pre-dawn gloom.
Pilots in white scarves and leather helmets climb into cockpits.
Faces etched with the stoic resolve of samurai.
Lieutenant Zengab, a veteran ace with kills from Pearl Harbor etched on his fuselov, grips the stick, heart pounding in rhythm of the carrier’s massive screws churning the waves below.
These men are legends.
The Zero sleek feather light at 5,300 lb.
Armed with two 20 mm cannons and twin machine guns, dances through the air like a predator unbound.
No armor weighs it down.
Speed and agility are its armor.
Abe and his comrades have ruled the Pacific since December 1941.
Shredding American wild cats in dog fights over Guadal Canal and the Solomons.
Ratios of 10 to1, sometimes 20 to1.
They whisper a divine wind.
Kamicazi spirit fueling their dives.
Ozawa’s fleet nine carriers for 130 aircraft.
Steams toward the American invasion force at the Marianis.
Operation Ago launched to crush the Yankee advance once and for all.
Below decks, mechanics bow in reverence of machines.
The sea rolls heavy.
Typhoon remnants stirring white caps that crash against holes.
Aes radio crackles.
Bonsai for the emperor.
He throttles up the zero leaping off the deck into blood orange sky.
Ahead lies task force 58.
Rear Admiral Mark Mitchell’s behemoth with 15 carriers and over 900 planes.
But to these aces, the Americans are fools in heavy crates.
Yet, as Abe climbs to 20,000 ft, a shadow stirs on a radar scopes far away.
Something new, something monstrous waiting to pounce.
November 1943, flight deck of USS Enterprise, Task Force 50, Gilbert Islands campaign.
The first Grumman F6F Hellcats thunder off a catapult.
Their massive Pratt and Whitney are 2,800 engines roaring like enraged beasts.
At 12,000 lbs fully loaded, more than twice the weight of Zero, the Hellcat is a brute.
650 caliber machine guns in the wings, heavy armor plate behind the pilot, self-sealing fuel tanks, a cockpit canopy that can take a bullet.
To the Japanese pilots who glimpse them from afar, it looks grotesque.
A lumbering American monster built for comfort, not combat.
Lieutenant Commander David McCellbell, commanding Air Group 15, pushes a throttle forward.
The Hellcat surges ahead, climbing at a rate the old Wildcat could only dream of, 3,500 ft per minute.
Mccell has studied the enemy.
He knows a Zero can outturn anything in a slow speed knife fight.
So, the doctrine is simple.
Never play their game.
Dive from above.
Strike with overwhelming firepower.
Extend away.
Hit and run.
The Hellcat is built for exactly that.
Raw power, durability, the ability to absorb hits and keep fighting.
Early encounters confirm the shift.
In the skies over Terawa and Min, Hellcats tear into Japanese formations.
A Zero tries to loop inside a Hellcat.
The American pilot simply rolls away, climbs, and comes back down in a blazing deflection shot.
Flames erupt.
One zero spirals into lagoon, then another.
Word filters back to the Japanese carriers.
Pilots gather in ready rooms, shaking heads.
Too heavy, they say.
It will never match our maneuverability.
Veterans like Warren Officer Satam Makamichi, who has flown since China in 1937, dismiss reports of growing American successes.
The new plane is a desperation measure.
Nothing more.
But the kills mount.
By spring 1944, the Hellcats tally climbs past 1,000.
Experienced Japanese pilots begin to vanish.
The irreplaceable core, the men trained before the war, the aces with hundred of hours and zeros are being bled away faster than new recruits can replace them.
And now in June, Ozawa launches his desperate Counter-Strike.
His pilots, many with only months of training, climb into their cockpits, believing the old myths still hold.
They are about to learn how wrong they are.
June 19th, 1944.
0830 hours.
Radar screens aboard USS Lexington blaze with incoming blips from massive Japanese raid waves.
Over 300 aircraft strong streaking toward Task Force 58 on the bridge of the Lexington.
Rear Admiral Mark Mitcher appears through binoculars.
Voice calm over the TBS.
Launch everything.
Hellcats vector to intercept.
Catapults hiss and slam.
Hellcats roar off the decks and waves, climbing hard under full military power.
Commander Dave McCellbell leads VF 15 upward, throttle firewalled, the double Wasp engine shaking the airframe with 2,200 horsepower.
60 mi out, Lieutenant Za leaves a first strike wave.
69 aircraft from Ozawa’s carriers.
Zeros escorting Judy Dive bombers and Kate torpedo planes.
Abe feels a familiar surge.
The Americans are still launching.
He thinks we’ll catch them flatfooted just like midway in reverse.
But high above, unseen, the Hellcats are already diving.
Mccell spots the enemy formation at 25,000 ft.
Perfect altitude advantage.
Taliho.
Bandits below.
The Hellcats roll over and plummet.
Blue noses glinting in the sun.
Speed builds over 400 knots.
Japanese lookouts shout warnings too late.
The sky erupts.
Tracers arc like golden rain.
A zero disintegrates mid turn as 650 calibers hammer its fragile fuselov.
Fuel tanks ignite.
No self-sealing means instant fireballs.
Abe whips his zero into a desperate split s.
But the Hellcat on his tail refuses to follow into the slow turn.
Instead, it zooms past, climbs, and comes screaming back down.
One Judy dive bomber folds its wings under concentrated fire and spirals into the sea.
Then another Kate’s jettison torpedoes in panic trying to flee.
In minutes, the first wave is shattered.
Over 40 Japanese aircraft gone, many before dropping a single bomb.
A breaks away, heartammering, watching comrades burn and fall.
The American fighters are everywhere, relentless, refusing dog fights, striking like hawks and vanishing upward.
Back aboard the Japanese carriers, Ozawa receives a fragment of reports.
Pilots claim the new enemy fighter is fast, heavily armed, impossible to shake, but the admiral presses on.
More waves are already airborne.
He does not yet know that the slaughter has only begun.
June 19th, 1944.
Midm morning, the Philippine Sea boils with chaos as the second and third Japanese raid waves.
Over 200 aircraft plunge toward the American fleet.
Hellcats swarm like a storm of steel hornets.
Commander Charles Brewer, leading VF-16 from USS Lexington, dives through scatter clouds at 450 knots.
Gunsite fixed on formation of zeros, escorting Vald Dive bombers.
His wingman calls out, “Bogies at 2:00 low.
Brewer rolls inverted, pulls a nose down, and fires a long burst.
A zero snaps in half, wings shearing off as a pilot bails into empty sky.” Below, the Japanese pilots fight with desperate fury.
Many are young, barely 100 hours in zero, trained in haste as Japan’s pilot pool evaporates.
They try the old tactics, tight turns, climbing spirals, luring the heavy Americans into slow speed duels.
But the Hellcats refuse the invitation.
They boom down, fire, zoom upward again.
The six Browning 50s chew through unarmored fuselages like chainsaws through paper.
One burst, a flash, a fireball tumbling end over end.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Alex Racu, already an ace, claims seven kills in eight minutes.
He spots a Kate torpedo plane lumbering low, drops behind it, and sends it flaming into the waves.
Then another, and another.
His Hellcat’s guns never seemed cool.
On the radio, American voices crackle with controlled exhilaration.
Splash one, Judy, got a zero on my six.
Somebody take him.
Fox 2, Fox 3, he’s burning.
The Japanese formation disintegrates.
Pilots who survive Guadal Canal and Rebel watch in horror as rookies die by the dozen.
No bombs reach the American carriers.
Anti-aircraft fire from the screen ships barely fires a shot.
The Hellcats have already done the killing high above.
By noon, the scoreboard is apocalyptic.
Over 240 Japanese aircraft destroyed, most in air-to-air combat.
American losses 29.
The ratio approaches 20 to1 in places.
Ozawa aboard the sinking Tahoe torpedo by USS Albakor earlier receives reports in stunned silence.
His fourth and final wave is still launching.
The slaughter is far from over.
June 19th, 1944.
Late afternoon, the sun hangs low of the Philippine Sea, turning the water into a mirror of fire as Ozo’s fourth and final raid.
128 aircraft scraped from depleted decks, launches into bloodstream sky.
Many pilots are barely trained.
Cadets pull from classrooms, given a few dozen hours and outdated trainers before being thrown into zeros.
They climb with mechanical determination.
Radios filled with four shouts of bonsai.
But fear crackles beneath bravado.
Veterans like Lieutenant Ken Marada who flew over Pearl Harbor grip their sticks tighter than ever.
He knows the odds.
He has seen the earlier wave vanish aboard USS Essex.
Commander David McCambell already with multiple kills today leads another combat air patrol skyward.
Fuel is low across the task force, but Mitcher’s order stands.
Destroy the enemy in the air.
Hellcats streak westward at 300 knots.
Radar vectors guiding them unairringly toward the incoming swarm.
Contact.
The Japanese formation appears ragged.
Strung out.
Escort struggling to maintain cohesion.
Hellcats drop from 30,000 ft like meteors.
McCell picks a zero, climbing desperately.
Fires a short burst.
Wings fold.
The fighter flips once and plummets.
His wingman splashes at Judy seconds later.
Below, chaos reigns absolute.
Japanese pilots scatter in every direction.
Some diving for cloud cover.
Others turning back toward their carriers in blind panic.
Few bombs are dropped, few torpedoes armed.
The Hellcats hunt methodically, guns hammering in discipline bursts.
Fireballs bloom across the horizon.
Orange, black, silent at this distance.
Herata twists and turns, trying every trick from the old days.
A Hellcat overshoots, but another takes his place.
Tracers stitch across his wing.
Fuel ignites.
He pulls a canopy.
Bails out into empty air.
Parachute blooming as a zero spirals down in flames.
By dusk, the tally is complete.
Over 600 Japanese aircraft destroyed.
373 in air combat alone against 123 American losses, most from operational causes.
Three carriers sunk or crippled.
Ozawa’s mobile fleet limps westward.
Its air groups annihilated.
The veterans, the godlike aces who once mocked the grotesque American monster are gone, scattered across the sea or drifting beneath parachutes into captivity.
Japan’s naval aviation has been gutted in a single day.
But the battle is not yet over.
June 20th, 1944.
Dusk falls crimson over the Philippine Sea as Rear Admiral Mark Mitcher makes the gamble that seals the battle’s legend.
From the bridge of USS Lexington, he watches the western horizon swallow the sun.
Japanese carriers Zuikaku, Choku, Taiho, already lost.
Flee at full speed 300 m away.
Fuel gauges on returning Hellcats flicker near empty.
Many pilots will never make it back in the dark.
But Mitcher utters the words that echo through history.
Launch them.
Turn on the lights.
Flood lights blaze across Task Force 58.
Deck lights, search lights, even star shells burst overhead.
Beacons guiding the hunter’s home.
Over 200 Hellcats, Avengers, and Dauntless roar westward into the gathering night, chasing Ozawa’s retreating fleet.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Winston leads a strike group low over the waves.
Radar guiding them through cloud banks.
At 1900 hours, they spot the enemy.
Carrier silhouetted against dying light.
Escorts throwing up frantic anti-aircraft fire.
Avengers bore in torpedoes splashing into water.
Hellcat strafe decks, igniting parked aircraft in chains of explosions.
The carrier hyo erupts in a massive fireball.
Her magazines detonating as Avengers torpedoes rip her open.
She rolls and sinks, taking hundreds with her.
Zuaku and Chyota take crippling damage.
Zero scramble desperately, but there are too few left.
Pilot exhausted, aircraft fuel starved.
Back over the task force, the night becomes a desperate ballet of survival.
Hellcats ditch in the Black Sea.
Pilots bobbing in life rafts as destroyers race to rescue them.
80 aircraft are lost to fuel exhaustion or deck crashes in the dark.
But the cost of Japan is incalculable.
In 2 days, the Imperial Japanese Navy has lost three carriers, over 600 aircraft, and nearly all remaining elite pilots.
The Mariana’s Turkey shoot June 19th alone claiming 373 enemy planes has annihilated the fleet air armuilt over decades.
No longer can Japan contest the skies.
The road to Lati Ewima Okanawa lies open.
As the last Hellcat traps aboard in the floodless chaos, Mitch stand silent on the bridge.
The grotesque monster the Japanese once mocked has become their executioner.
Japan’s godlike aces are gone.
The divine wind has turned against the empire and in the vast indifferent Pacific.
The tide of war has turned forever.
Subscribe for more world war stories and hit the like button for motivational.
You’re one click on subscribe and like.
Give me motivation.
Thanks.
