Play That Failed

Watching her Okinawa outpost crumble before U.S. attack, a desperate Japan played small cards for high stakes last week--and lost. In two disastrous days 417 Jap planes went spinning into the sea. In 30 fateful minutes of the second afternoon, two cruisers, three destroyers and her last naval trump, the 45,000-ton battleship Yamato, were battered to the bottom.

The plan had been simple. The Japanese admirals proposed to launch the heaviest air blow they could muster against the U.S. ships off Okinawa, perhaps sink a few. The next day the blow would be repeated, in hopes that the jittery fleet would scatter. Into the melee the fastest, heaviest ships Japan possessed would be sent to smash more vessels, then run for home again. It was a good enough plan, but it did not work.

At noon on Friday, heavy U.S. ships were pounding Japanese-held sections of Okinawa's shore when the red-balled planes flashed in to attack. From a small landing boat TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod watched a twin-engined Jap bomber sneak over a hillside and head into the fleet, apparently picking out a transport near Sherrod's craft as its intended victim. Sherrod radioed:

"The antiaircraft fire, 20-and 40-mm., seemed a solid flame of tracer shells, converging on him from a cone formed by a hundred ships. When he was about half a mile away he caught fire, started to roll over. What looked like an engine or a large piece of engine flew out and ricocheted along the water. The plane hit the water. Chunks of plane sailed past our boat. A stream of flame shot past a hospital ship near by. Then the peril set in. Our own antiaircraft fragments started splashing around. I wished fervently that I had worn my helmet."

500 Up; 361 Down. Some of the Jap flyers managed to get down to their targets; three U.S. destroyers were hit and sunk. But the Japs had sent upward of 500 planes into action; of these, 245 were intercepted and destroyed on their way to Okinawa, and 116 were shot down at Okinawa.

The Japanese Navy Ministry must have known that it could not repeat the air blow in sufficient strength. But that night a small Japanese task force built around the battleship Yamato--a light cruiser, a smaller light cruiser and nine destroyers--was permitted to steam out of the Inland Sea, glide through the dark along Kyushu's coasts and turn into the East China Sea on its mission toward almost certain destruction.

Dawn was not far past when U.S. search planes picked the fleet up southwest of Kyushu and flashed the word to Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's Task Force 58. Task groups under Rear Admirals Frederick C. Sherman, Arthur W. Radford, Joseph James ("Jocko") Clark and Gerald F. Began surged forward, ran for the oncoming Japanese. At noon they launched their planes.

Now the Yamato and its escorts were on the same spot the Prince of Wales and Repulse had been--under heavy air attack without air cover. The fleet fought back hard, zigzagged crazily, poured purple, red, yellow and green antiaircraft puffs into the skies. The Yamato's 16-inch guns roared. But the attack was relentless. The battleship, smashed by eight torpedoes and eight 1,000-lb. armor-piercing bombs, went down in a roaring explosion. The two cruisers and three of the destroyers were sunk, the six remaining destroyers heavily damaged.

Later that day, ignoring the destruction of the fleet they were to have aided, the survivors of Japanese air squadrons tried to strike their second scheduled blow, right on the dot. U.S. airmen smothered the weak attack, upped their score of enemy planes by 56.

Now where stood the Japanese Navy? By last accounting it had five battleships, all too slow to have accompanied the Yamato in her sortie. There was little else--probably fewer than six carriers of any type, perhaps a half-dozen first-line cruisers, fewer than 20 destroyers. Gathered all together, it might add up to one not-so-fast task force--and what Japan needed now was a whole navy.

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