Battle 360: U.S. Air Power in the Pacific War DD

NARRATOR: February 15, 1944, Central Pacific. USS Enterprise is steaming toward the Caroline Islands. She’s not alone. On either side of her, stretching nearly as far as the eye can see, are eight other aircraft carriers, six battleships, 10 cruisers, and dozens of destroyers. 500 miles ahead of these ships, at the heart of the Caroline Islands group, is Truk Atoll– one of the largest atolls in the Central Pacific.

An atoll is an island formation in which a coral reef encircles a lagoon. The reef that rings Truk Atoll is 140 miles long, and 33 miles in diameter, creating a massive lagoon that is home to five major islands and dozens of smaller ones. This island formation provides a very large and very secure harbor area, and the Japanese Navy typically anchors over 100 ships here.

It was, for the Japanese, one of the most important fleet-operating bases that they maintained during the Second World War. NARRATOR: Many compare it to Pearl Harbor. It had two ship anchorage areas, three or four airfields, machine shops, you name it. NARRATOR: Three of Truk’s islands– Moen, Param, and Eten– contain airfields with runways, hangars, and fuel storage facilities.

The main island, Dublon, is home to headquarters and communications buildings. To protect these extensive assets, the atoll is bristling with anti-aircraft batteries based around weapons like a dual-mounted type 89 127-millimeter gun. A fearsome aircraft menace, it delivers a five-inch, 50-pound projectile and can pick up aircraft at altitudes up to 25,000 feet.

USS Enterprise fighters and bombers will soon face those guns. Enterprise and her massive task force are on a mission. Target, Truk Atoll. Objective, USS Enterprise aircraft will destroy enemy ships at anchor, crater airfields, and explode parked enemy bombers. Strategy, Enterprise fighter planes will gain air superiority, while dive bombers sink enemy ships and torpedo bombers decimate airfields with contact bombs.

February 16, 1944. 6:45 AM. Morning of the attack. 12 Hellcat fighters launch from aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. [planes whirring] The fighters join up with 60 additional Hellcats from other nearby carriers, and the combined force of 72 planes speeds toward Truk Atoll. The Hellcats’ mission, gain air superiority, take out any Japanese Zeros that come up from Truk to meet them.

90 miles southwest, 7:15 AM. More than 50 enemy fighters take off from airstrips at Truk Atoll. Their mission, intercept and kill the encroaching American fighter planes. The Zero is more maneuverable and has a longer range than the Hellcat. But the American fighter is faster, has better armor, and better armament.

And most important of all, American pilots are far better trained than their Japanese counterparts by this point in the war. Soon, when enemy meets enemy over Truk’s outer coral reef– [shooting] –it’s a frantic, murderous aerial clash. There was all kinds of crazy air combat going on. It must have looked like fly soup up there.

And about every 30 seconds or so, you could see a Japanese Zero on fire steaming straight for the water. [explosion] NARRATOR: 10 miles northeast, a squadron of 12 torpedo bombers from Enterprise meets another from USS Yorktown– the new carrier named for Enterprise’s sister ship lost at Midway. They are just finishing their 90-mile flight for the American Task Force and are starting to reach the edge of Truk’s barrier reef.

But before the avengers can drop their payloads, they have to make it to their various targets. Airfields on the major islands of Eten, Moen, and Param, 6 miles inside Truk’s barrier reef. It’s a challenge because the moment the avengers begin crossing the barrier reef, anti-aircraft guns open up on them. [missiles firing] These guys are trying to get to their target with all the flak exploding around them and maybe taking a little piece out of their wing here and there.

You know, there’s nothing you can do to defend yourself. You’re in major formation, so you’re not going to be doing massive, unplanned janky maneuvers because you’re going to run in to your fellow pilots. So you just fly on through it and hope for the best. NARRATOR: 10 dive bombers are incoming from USS Enterprise.

They buzz in to attack the ships in the harbor. They’re hoping to get a crack at the carriers and battleships. With antiaircraft fire coming at them from all directions– [ship firing] –and stray Zero fighters streaking through the harbor area, spraying lead, the pilots nose their planes over into a 70-degree dive angle.

Air attack was pretty canned. It was a vertical dive from about 10,000 to 12,000, with a release at 2,000, and out by 300 to 500 feet. NARRATOR: Hurdling earthward, they release their 1,000-pound contact bombs. Bombs large enough to damage a battleship and designed to explode on contact with the targets. No need for delayed fuses here.

The bombers will pull out high enough, and soon enough, that the exploding bombs but not endanger them. [explosion] [missiles whirring] [explosion] Moments later, multiple vessels in Truk’s prime air anchorage, between Dublon and Eten Islands, explode with stunning violence. [explosions] I can remember looking over to the port side, and I saw a ship go up.

It looked like the A-bomb, later on. I mean, tremendous. [explosions] NARRATOR: The hammering of Truk Atoll continues throughout the day. As Enterprise and Yorktown bombers make their way back to the task force, squadrons from other carriers swoop out of the sky toward the Japanese stronghold to continue the assault on enemy ships and airfields.

[explosions] Bombers from USS Enterprise make additional runs throughout the day. And when evening darkness finally brings a pause in the action, the Big E has broken its record for tonnage of bombs dropped in a single day– more than 900 tons. [engine roaring] [music playing] NARRATOR: Second battle of Truk Atoll.

In mid-February 1944, [bombs whistling] [explosions] aircraft from USS Enterprise and her sister carriers devastated the most heavily fortified Japanese naval outpost in the Pacific, Truk Atoll. [gunfire] Thousands of tons of shipping sunk, [explosions] dozens of bombers destroyed on the ground. But just 10 weeks after this hammering of the Japanese outpost, new aerial reconnaissance photos have revealed a worrisome development.

The Japanese have repaired much of the damage from the attack and have re-fortified the atoll as a bomber base. [engine roaring] The Japanese must not be allowed an airbase from which they can disrupt the American island-hopping efforts. [engine roaring] In the predawn hours of April 29, 1944, USS Enterprise and her fellow carriers are back in the waters off Truk Atoll to pummel the vexing outpost once again.

[engine roaring] The aerial reconnaissance photos make clear that Truk Atoll has again become a formidable defensive bastion. The Japanese have added many new anti-aircraft gun emplacements, some radar-controlled– a technology that makes the weapons much more accurate. It will, again, be a perilous job for Enterprise bombers to approach the atoll to take out the new airfields.

Once again, this morning’s attack leads off with a sweep of the skies by Hellcat fighters. [engine roaring] The fighters launch in the predawn darkness to clear the way for the bombers to follow. With the fighters on their way toward the target, dive bombers and torpedo bombers begin launching from Enterprise and other task force carriers, many miles out ahead of the bombers.

The Hellcat fighters cross Truk’s barrier reef prepare to meet a storm of angry Japanese zeros. Enterprise task force bombers spend the rest of the day streaking into the lagoon to pummel parked planes, hangars, and bomber strips on the island of Moen. [explosions] The bombers also pay special attention to anti-aircraft batteries on Moen, exploding gun emplacements and occasionally sending long metal barrels hurtling skyward.

[explosions] [gunfire] The formidable Japanese hideout has proven to be a paper tiger. The assault on Truk has decimated a vast and irreplaceable quantity of Japanese shipping and bomber aircraft in the Central Pacific– three light cruisers, four destroyers, three patrol craft, and some 36 merchant ships and auxiliaries.

They left a lot of ships there. And I’m glad to report we got them all. NARRATOR: The Japanese have also suffered the loss of some 270 aircraft, fighters and bombers. [explosions] Hundreds of Japanese soldiers, sailors, and air crewmen are dead. And the loss of support facilities and airfield infrastructure is momentous.

Enterprise is responsible for one third of the enemy’s total loss. American forces, on the other hand, have suffered one aircraft carrier damaged, 25 aircraft downed, and 40 air crewmen and sailors killed. For the stunned Japanese, Truk will be of no further use for the rest of the war. When the reports first filtered back to Imperial naval headquarters that they had lost 220,000 tons of shipping, one Imperial naval diarist said that the shock was beyond comprehension.

It was a truly devastating event. [explosions] [music playing] NARRATOR: Dawn, June 13, 1944. In the waters off Saipan in the Mariana Islands, aircraft carrier USS Enterprise clears for action. Her massive flight deck is alive with revving engines as the TBF Avengers of Torpedo Squadron 10 prepare to hit enemy positions on Saipan.

Their target is a Japanese flak battery on the southern tip of the island, where, in just a few days, US ground troops will be slogging ashore. The enemy’s stronghold is covered with antiaircraft artillery. And it’s Enterprise’s job to wipe them out. If the US can capture Saipan, the island will offer an ideal base for US Army B-29 superfortress bombers.

From here, the massive warplanes can begin strategic bombing of the home islands. MARTIN MORGAN: We would be able to contribute to the battle a major strategic air campaign against the Japanese home islands. And it was thought that, by subjecting the Japanese home islands to a protracted strategic air campaign the likes of which we were doing to the Germans in Europe, would accelerate the end of the war.

NARRATOR: Target, Saipan. Objective, seize the heavily defended enemy island, crush the Japanese garrison. Strategy, carriers like Enterprise will hammer the island with warplanes. Battleships will pummel it from the sea. And US Marines and soldiers will battle the enemy on land. As Allied forces push in on the empire from all sides, the Japanese army and navy will be divided, faced with fighting a multifront war.

By 1944, the Axis powers are on the defensive as the Allies prepare for massive invasions in the Pacific, in France, and in Italy. When you consider that American forces are heavily engaged in combat in Italy, that American forces are also about to conduct the opposed amphibious landing in Normandy on June 6, so the United States military, it’s demonstrating that it is capable of engaging in broad offensive operations on opposite sides of the world, simultaneously.

NARRATOR: Saipan will be one of the most important invasions of the war, a Normandy of the Pacific. And D-day is set for June 15. June 15, 1944, D-day in the invasion of Saipan. Enterprise launches a major airstrike of SBD dive bombers, Hellcat fighters, and Avenger torpedo planes. It’s part of a massive support mission.

As the American airmen battle the Japanese positions with round after round of bombs and bullets, 20,000 US Marines wade ashore and face the Japanese defenders in hellish combat. [gunfire] In one single day of battle, 2,000 Americans are killed or wounded on Saipan– 2,000 men for less than a half a mile of Japanese real estate, a gruesome start to one of the biggest battles in the Pacific War.

[engines roaring] 7:00 PM, carriers Enterprise, Lexington, and Bunker Hill cruise the waters off Saipan. As the sun begins to set on D-day, the ships prepare for another night in the hostile Central Pacific. Suddenly, the main search radar on the Enterprise picks something up. It’s an incoming air assault.

22 miles away, seven land-based Fran torpedo bombers head right for Enterprise and carrier Lexington. Within minutes, the enemy planes will be within striking distance. 10 miles ahead of the Frans, spotters on Enterprise can now clearly see the incoming assault. Seconds later, the guns of the task force roar into action.

[gunfire] 5-inch, .38 caliber rifles from Enterprise and Lexington thump out a volley of explosive projectiles. 40-millimeter and 20-millimeter antiaircraft guns spray red-hot streams of fire into the air. Wave after wave of enemy planes are wiped out by the fighter planes of Enterprise and the other carriers.

The killing goes on for hours. The Japanese air attack is a complete failure. [engine roaring] [cannon fire] Nearly 400 enemy aircraft are blown out of the sky by American Hellcats and the guns of USS Enterprise and the US fleet. It’s one of the greatest victories for the American Navy and a horrific defeat for the Japanese.

The poorly-trained enemy fliers are no match for the Big E. A young American pilot will later compare it to an old-fashioned turkey shoot. The name sticks. I forget how many– we downed nearly all of them. And the pilots came back. Laughing And it was a turkey shoot. If I’m not mistaken, the Enterprise was credited with downing around 70 of all those planes that day.

NARRATOR: The great Marianas Turkey Shoot completely devastates Japan’s naval air forces. Our fighters just completely annihilated them. The biggest, real air battle of the war, there was a tremendous day for aircraft carrier aviation. NARRATOR: June 20, 1944. [propeller whirring] The Imperial Navy has been sent to halt an American offensive at Saipan.

[gunfire] The US fleet has been putting up a vicious fight, blasting hundreds of enemy planes out of the sky. Yet, Enterprise and her carrier comrades have been unable to locate the main enemy fleet. Now the skies over the Philippine Sea are filled with American airplanes on the hunt for Admiral Ozawa. Target– the Japanese fleet.

Objective– drive the remains of Ozawa’s task force from the Philippine Sea. Strategy– fly constant searches until the Imperial ships are spotted and destroyed. But the seek and destroy mission goes on for hours, and still Admiral Marc Mitscher cannot find Admiral Ozawa. Tension is high aboard the Big E as the afternoon wears on.

But at 3:40 PM, they hit pay dirt. 300 miles away, Enterprise search planes finally discovered enemy fleet. 6:30 PM, finally, after two hours in the air, Killer Kane’s air group spots the enemy fleet. 12,000 feet below, they’ve discovered a major part of Ozawa’s force, three carriers, Ryuho, Junyo, and Hiyo, and cruisers Mogami and Nagato.

It’s a free-for-all. Kane’s forces immediately split up and make a run for the enemy vessels. The Japanese surface ships open up with a deadly fuselage of flak, as the dive bombers and Hellcats begin their assault. But they keep right on coming. “Jig Dog” Ramage and five SBDs line up for a bombing run on the carrier Ryuho.

Jig Dog wings over and makes a steep dive on the enemy ship. [engine whirring] I put the pipper, as we called it, just forward of the bow and went down to the– the 2,000 feet, maybe a little lower, dropped my bomb. [gunfire] NARRATOR: Ramage delivers 1,000 pounds of tear on the Ryuho and immediately pulls out of his dive.

It’s a crippling near miss. [music playing] One by one, four other SBDs drop their payloads over the Imperial flat top. From his rear seat position, [inaudible] gets a choice opportunity to admire the grisly work of his comrades. Ryuho has been mauled, and carrier Hiyo is wounded by torpedoes and is burning.

Enterprise bomb hits help finish her off. [explosions] Just as the Hellcats rejoin the dive bombers, “Flash” Gordon spots a target of opportunity. Way down on the water maybe 10 miles east, I saw a Zero headed west about 900 feet. NARRATOR: Gordon immediately firewalls the Hellcat and pulls the big plane into a half loop and a half roll.

He races after the Zero, draws a bead, and cuts loose with his rapid fire 50s. Pulled up in the top of a loop and shot him down. He blew up. Then we came back down and– and joined up with the bombers. NARRATOR: The Zero was Flash Gordon’s seventh and final kill of World War II. He and his fellow pilots escaped the last enemy flak bursts and head for home.

[engines whirring] [music playing] [explosion] The Battle of the Philippines Sea is a disaster for the Japanese Navy. Admiral Ozawa has failed to drive the US fleet from Saipan, and the defeat has cost him hundreds of Imperial pilots and three aircraft carriers– Hiyo, Taiho, and Shokaku. [bomb whistling] [explosion] Some of the best news we got there was to hear that our old nemesis, the Shokaku, had been put down.

For the Japanese, the aftermath of the battle is a recognition that their carrier force is finished. They may still have vessels, but they no longer have aircraft or– or pilots to put aboard those vessels. NARRATOR: But the Japanese fleet is not finished yet. The Big E’s nemesis, Zuikaku, is still afloat, and so are the battleships.

Massive battle wagons Musashi and Yamato, along with an armada of cruisers and destroyers, are ready to meet the Enterprise in battle. [explosion] The bloody combat on Saipan goes on for another three weeks. It becomes one of the most costly battles of the entire Pacific War. [cannons firing] NARRATOR: By October 1944, the American and Japanese aircraft carrier forces have been slugging it out for three years.

[gunfire] And now, following the recent clash over the Philippine Sea in which 400 planes were lost, the enemy’s carrier force is a shadow of its former self. Their carriers at this point are empty. They have vessels, but they don’t have planes or pilots to put on those vessels. NARRATOR: Just over 100 planes remain to distribute amongst the surviving carriers.

Even so, the Japanese Navy has another skilled and menacing combat arm. JONATHAN PARHALL: The remaining strength of the Japanese navy at this point is in its battleships and its heavy cruisers. They still have a very formidable array of heavy gun warships that they can bring to bear. NARRATOR: Among the warships are Japan’s two super battleships, the monsters Musashi and Yamato.

The biggest battleships ever built. They were massive battleships. 863 feet long, 172 foot beam, weighing 72,000 tons. The Yamato and the Musashi both had a main battery of nine 460 millimeter guns. That’s 18.1 inches. The largest naval guns used in combat. They’re extremely heavily armored, yet relatively fast.

Very powerful, graceful warships. And they’re able to sustain a level of punishment that was considered inconceivable even at the beginning of the war. NARRATOR: Japanese admirals must now rely on these large surface warships to stop the American advance through the Pacific. They believe the best way to do it is to disrupt the American beach landings.

It’s recognized at this point in the war that it’s important to hit the American invasion forces. So the point of attack for the Japanese battleships, for the first time, is not their American opposite numbers, but it’s rather the beachhead itself, and the transports, and the logistical apparatus that are supporting this invasion.

NARRATOR: On the opposite side of the equation, the American carrier forces are holding their own– so far. They still have plenty of carriers and aircraft. US admirals also have battleships and cruisers at their disposal. They feel they have enough strength at this point in the war to finally target the Philippines.

Taking the Philippines will place US forces between Japan and its navy’s oil supply in Indonesia. But any attempt at landing in the Philippines will be hotly contested. Japanese occupiers will defend this crucial ground to the death. The American strategy for taking back the Philippines calls first for the capture of the centrally located island of Leyte.

It’s felt that Leyte needs to be captured so that we can put air bases into operation. And then we’ll extend our air umbrella over further portions of the Philippines, and go on eventually to the liberation of Luzon, which contains the capital of Manila. NARRATOR: Japan’s battleships and cruisers will steam north toward Leyte from Singapore.

The warships will split into two groups, one for sailing through the Sulu Sea and Surigao Strait, and approaching Leyte Gulf from the south. The other half sailing through the Sibuyan Sea and San Bernardino Strait, and coming down on Leyte from the north. JONATHAN PARHALL: They have a southern and a northern pincer composed of battleships and cruisers that will hopefully meet up off of the island of Leyte, and there crush the invasion convoys.

NARRATOR: When Japanese and American forces collide, the numbers of ships involved, and the hundreds of miles separating major battle areas will distinguish the struggle for Leyte Gulf as the largest naval battle in the history of mankind. [explosion] [gunfire] NARRATOR: Battle of Leyte Gulf. While William Halsey’s Third Fleet has been pummeling the Japanese carriers off Cape Enga o, the American landing forces in Leyte Gulf have been caught completely off guard.

[cannon firing] Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Center Force. The force Halsey thought was retreating in fact turned around, sailed all night through the San Bernardino Strait, entered the Philippine Sea, and steamed south toward Leyte Gulf early this morning. With Halsey’s Third Fleet well north sinking carriers, Kurita reached the Gulf unopposed and is now bearing down on the American landing forces.

Seventh Fleet’s battleships are too far south to lend immediate aid, and the destroyers and carriers simply don’t have adequate firepower. They are hopelessly outgunned. There’s no weapon larger than a 5-inch gun on any of the American ships in the area. And on the Japanese side, you have Battleship Yamato, which is armed with 18.

1-inch guns, the largest naval rifles ever installed afloat. They have a second battleship. They have numerous heavy cruisers. This is a mismatch of mythic proportions. NARRATOR: But the commander of one of the small destroyers chooses to stand and make the best showing he can– despite the odds. Lieutenant Commander Ernest E. Evans, commanding the destroyer USS Johnston, determines to charge the enemy.

He had two choices. He could flight or fight. What he did is he turned his ship, and he actually went, and he attacked this Japanese armada. NARRATOR: Evans orders his little vessel to speed toward the vastly superior Japanese force. He knows the enemy’s guns will be firing on him, but he plans to weave to try to avoid the killing rounds.

And if he gets close enough, he might just score a lucky hit. [explosions booming] Evans’s bold charge inspires other commanders around him, and soon, many destroyers join the attack. They go after the Japanese with both gunfire and torpedoes. They’re laying smokescreens to try to screen the escort carriers as they’re trying to dawdle their way out at 17 or 18 knots.

NARRATOR: Finally in range, Evans unleashes a torpedo at the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano. The torpedo courses through the sea, and minutes later– [explosion booming] Blew the valve right off the front of a Japanese cruiser. NARRATOR: Soon, the Japanese cruiser Suzuya stops to assist the wounded Kumano. He fired another torpedo, and he also hit and sunk that ship.

NARRATOR: Amid the heavy gunfire, torpedo attacks, and the hundreds of planes harassing them, Admiral Kurita and his commanders are bewildered. The Japanese are thrown into confusion. They believe that they’re being attacked by more powerful forces than they are. You start seeing Japanese cruisers getting knocked out.

The Japanese battleships are taking damage to their top sides. It makes it very difficult for the Japanese to fight a coherent action against the Americans. They’re constantly maneuvering to avoid air attacks, which in turn makes it difficult to direct gunfire against the American Jeep carriers. NARRATOR: Like a bear under attack by a swarm of bees, the Japanese Center Force falters.

Where they thought that they had a mismatch– and they really did in terms of raw material terms– they are unable to close with the Americans. They’re increasingly harassed by American air power. And eventually, the Japanese admiral decides that he’s had enough, and he leaves. WILLIAM BODETTE: They said, the hell with this.

They turn around and they hightail it out of there. NARRATOR: The battle of Leyte Gulf has ended in utter disaster for the Japanese Navy. The Japanese losses at Leyte include 4 aircraft carriers, 3 battleships, 10 cruisers, 11 destroyers, and nearly 14,000 sailors and air crewmen. American losses, by contrast, are relatively light.

One light aircraft carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, two destroyer escorts, and 1,500 sailors and air crewmen. This really marks the final demise of the Japanese Navy, and they’ll never really be able to do anything of a concerted nature to repel any further attacks by the US Navy at this point.

It really is the end of an era. NARRATOR: The US Navy has now eclipsed the force that started a mode of warfare– carrier warfare– whose supreme potential no one had recognized before December 7, 1941. No one knew how carriers were supposed to operate. Pearl Harbor really was the initial battle that sort of announced the beginning of the carrier age warfare.

Leyte is the battle that announces that there’s only one navy in the world that is really capable of doing that sort of warfare, and it’s the US Navy. NARRATOR: The Battle of Leyte Gulf has another pre-eminent distinction. It is the largest naval confrontation in the history of mankind. NARRATOR: January 5, 1945, five days before combat begins, Enterprise meets up with its task force.

There are six full-sized carriers, six light carriers, battleships, destroyers, and support craft, 116 ships in all– the most powerful naval strike force the world has ever seen. The task force makes its way to the South China Sea. It is the first time that Allied forces have entered the Japanese-controlled sea since the war began.

[gunfire] [artillery whistle] [explosions] The night attack on the Japanese convoy is only the first strike. [gunfire] Over the next three days, Bill Martin’s night group bombs Japanese-held Saigon, Hong Kong, and Canton, the first strikes on these vital mainland ports. [artillery whistle] In less than two weeks, the pilots of the Big E fly 4,000 miles, sink 200,000 tons of shipping– [explosion] –and strike at the mainland outposts of Japan’s empire.

The night fighters are already proving their worth. Two weeks later, Enterprise gets its biggest challenge. Target– Kiirun Harbor, Formosa. Objective– destroy enemy shipping and supply bases. Strategy– night attack with bombers. January 22, 2:00 AM. Seven TBM Avengers launch into the night. Each carries two 500-pound bombs, six 5-inch rockets, one pilot, one electronics officer, and one radar operator.

Bill Martin personally leads three planes in the Formosa strike. The other section is led, once again, by Lieutenant Russ Kippen. They fly due west for 212 miles, then northwest for another 100 miles until they reach the island of Formosa. The radar man picks up the pattern of Kiirun Harbor on the radar scopes at 4:30 AM.

The attack begins. The TBM’s targets are the outer and inner harbors, fat with supply ships. Land-based targets are vital oil tanks and a small-arms factory. But those who fly by radar can die by radar. Japanese radar picks up the incoming attackers, and antiaircraft fills the sky. [flak fire] Bill Martin has a simple plan based on his intimate knowledge of radar operations.

He climbs to 8,000 feet and flies toward the inner harbor guided by radar. Japanese antiaircraft point toward him. [flak fire] What the enemy doesn’t know is that Russ Kippen is flying 8,000 feet directly below him so that both planes show up as a single blip on the Japanese radar. As the antiaircraft targets the high planes, Kippen’s Avengers soar in undetected.

The flight group makes three runs using the same technique, dropping their bombs on tankers and warehouses. One Avenger unleashes its rockets on a small-arms factory. It makes a satisfying fireworks display. The night bombers of Enterprise keep up the pressure on the enemy, with midnight attacks on the Japanese home islands and even on Tokyo itself.

[gunfire] And now that the Japanese know they can be hit, they become more ferocious in their defenses and more desperate in their attacks. So for the Japanese, they’re turning up the intensity. They’re fighting more savagely. They’re resisting with more and more stubbornness. NARRATOR: Nowhere is Japan’s desperate newfound ferocity more evident than at the tiny strip of Pacific land called Iwo Jima.

It’s a small island, but America needs it as an airbase to launch B-29 bombers to strike the Japanese mainland, and the Japanese have no intention of giving it up. NARRATOR: On May 8, 1945, the war in Europe is over. The Nazi menace has been put to rest, and people across America cheer and celebrate. But in the Pacific, there is no end in sight.

Enterprise steams back to Okinawa where the brutal battle is entering its eighth relentless week. It is 5:30 AM, May 14. For the round-the-clock warriors of the Big E, the day is just beginning. We’d come back in about 5:30 and about 6 o’clock or so. We’d crawl in our bunks and we’d get some sleep. And here comes the kamikaze.

NARRATOR: At 6:56, a single Zero begins to tail the Big E. From dead astern, the Japanese fighter begins its dive. Enterprise keeps turning, bringing her guns into play. Then, to the shock of all on board, the Zero rolls left, turns upside down, and perfect, elegantly dives straight down into the ship’s number one elevator.

The largest explosion in the ship’s storied history shakes her from bow to stern. Five decks below, the Zero’s 500-pound bomb goes off with such power that the entire flight elevator flies straight up into the air. A photograph taken from the nearby USS Washington captures the astonishing moment where the explosive power of a single kamikaze rockets a 15 ton elevator over 400 feet straight up.

Like a knife to the heart, Enterprise has been hit as never before. The ship lists with holes blasted in the hull. Fires have damaged her planes. As the wounded giant limps off the battlefield, the repair crews assess the damage. It is not good news. With a missing flight elevator and a buckled deck, launching and landing planes is impossible.

She’s an aircraft carrier who can’t launch aircraft. In nearly four years of war, the Big E has survived multiple attacks from air, sea, and beneath the waves. It took just one pilot with suicidal intent and brilliant flying skills to do what the rest of the Japanese Navy could never do, take Enterprise out of the war.

The wounded Enterprise must return home for repairs, not just at Pearl Harbor but to the States– Bremerton, Washington. PEDRO SANDOVAL: That was the end of the war for us. We hated to leave because the war was still going on, but we could not operate, not the condition of the ship. NARRATOR: Enterprise is still in dry dock in August when the Japanese surrender.

Lloyd and I went into a bar in Bremerton to have a beer, and somebody came running in and said the war’s over. The war’s over. And I’ll tell you, it was a great feeling. NARRATOR: In Tokyo, representatives of the emperor signed the unconditional surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri. On the day of the surrender, kamikaze Admiral Onishi writes a note of apology to the 4,000 pilots he sent to their deaths.

Then he commits ritual suicide. The long war is over. The men of Enterprise breathe a sigh of relief, as does the rest of America. The story of USS Enterprise is the story of World War II, from her actions during the first attack on Pearl Harbor to the final battle of the Pacific at Okinawa. But Enterprise’s heroic actions were simply a reflection of the heroes who sailed her, the last of a generation who literally saved our nation by risking everything.

ARTHUR KROPP: I didn’t see any glamour in it at all. All I saw was a lot of destruction, a lot of bad things. There’s nothing glamorous about war, but this country’s worth fighting for. That’s why we do it. A lot of people come up to me now and say thank you for what you did. Thank you. ALAN PIETRUSZEWSKI: You know, if it wasn’t for those guys, we wouldn’t be here.

We climbed on the backs of their sacrifice. Their history is my tradition. And without the sacrifices that they made, I wouldn’t even be here to fight. NARRATOR: USS Enterprise was one of the greatest weapons in the arsenal of democracy, a fierce and deadly machine whose purpose was to win a devastating war.

But to her men, the Big E was less of a weapon than a home. It was like a big mother hen or something to me. You know, you’d go out on 300-mile searches and come back, and here’s the little beacon flickering. And you’d hone in on that beacon and get back aboard. You know, just our home was taking care of us.

NARRATOR: Enterprise may disappear, and her men may die, but she is still one of the most decorated, most valiant, and fightingest ships in US history, and Enterprise and her band of brothers will remain as beacons of valor, sacrifice, and grit as long as her tales are told, as long as there are Americans who remember.