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Cuttlefish -> RE: Small Ship, Big War (9/21/2008 1:57:11 AM)
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August 5, 1944
Location: 225 miles northeast of Morotai
Course: East
Attached to: TF 23
Mission: Air combat
System Damage: 1
Float Damage: 0
Fires: 0
Fuel: 282
Orders: Strike Allied shipping at and around Ulithi
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Excerpt from "Naval Battles of the Pacific, Volume 7: Ring of Steel" by Morris Elliot Samuelson; Harper, Row, and Fujimori, New York, 1965:
The goal of Ami-Go (“Operation Net”) was to disrupt the American build-up of troops and supplies in the Central Pacific, thus buying time for Japan to strengthen its defenses. On paper, at least, this goal was achievable. The plan was sound and the long Allied supply lines were vulnerable. Had the Japanese achieved their aims the next Allied operation, an early September assault on Tinian, would almost certainly have been delayed. It is hard to say what the long-term effects of such a delay might have been but given subsequent events in the theater one can speculate that Japan would have put the time gained to good use.
That the operation failed was not due lack of planning or execution but to sheer mischance. As Admiral Nimitz remarked later “We were not smart, we were lucky. And sometimes that’s better.” Certainly prior to the Battle of the Eastern Marianas some of his commanders were bitterly critical of their orders. Halsey in particular was vitriolic. “The bastards have finally come out where we can hit them and we’ve been ordered to withdraw?” he said to Mitscher. “What kind of [censored] is that?”
But even given the events of the subsequent battle the western Japanese strike force might still have salvaged something from the situation had not a further stroke of bad luck intervened. But instead of the Allied fast carrier task forces Japanese misfortune this time took a much different form…
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U.S. weather report from Ulithi:
Wind speed now 27 knots from the SE, bp 998 and falling. Precipitation moderate to heavy. All ships and planes are advised that tropical storm conditions are expected to persist for the next 24 to 48 hours as the system moves to the northwest…
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