Major John W. Mitchell

Air Power History

Summer 2003

by Daniel L. Haulmam

In terms of lightning rod animosity, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the Osama Bin Laden of World War II. Americans in 1943 hated the commander of the Combined Japanese Imperial Fleet as much as their descendants hated the al Qaeda terrorist leader. Yamamoto had planned the December 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, that killed more than 2,400 Americans. (1) Yamamoto also had planned a bold attack on Midway in mid-1942, the success of which would have resulted in flying Japanese flags over the Hawaiian Islands. Fortunately, United States intelligence had already broken the Japanese code and learned of the operation in advance. (2) The information allowed the U.S. Navy to destroy four of Japan's aircraft carriers, and put Japan on the defensive for the first time in the war. (3)

United States intelligence units continued to intercept and decode Japanese naval messages. On April 13, USMC Major Alva B. Lasswell, one of the intelligence analysts at Pearl Harbor's Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific, received and decoded a message from the commander of the Japanese Southeastern Air Fleet. (4) The message noted that on April 18, Admiral Yamamoto would be flying from the Japanese-held island of Rabaul to the island of Bougainville, the closest he had ever come to the U.S. front lines. It mentioned that Yamamoto would be in a medium attack bomber, escorted by six fighters, and even specified his times of arrival at each base. The Japanese admiral had a reputation for punctuality. If Yamamoto was scheduled to be at a certain place at a certain time, one could count on his being there. (5)

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, pondered the wisdom of shooting down Yamamoto. On the negative side, a raid to kill him might reveal to the Japanese that the Americans had broken their code. It would also remove a leader whose behavior patterns had become familiar to intelligence analysts. On the other hand, here was a golden opportunity to deprive the Japanese of their leading admiral and demoralize them. A chance to avenge Pearl Harbor might have also been in the back of his mind. (6)

Historians have debated whether or not Nimitz consulted his superiors in Washington, which would have included Admiral Ernest King, the Chief of Naval Operations; Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. (7) Nimitz could have made the decision on his own. By the rules of war, a military commander in uniform in the field was fair game. Killing a soldier or sailor in combat could not be construed as a political assassination. However, most other military leaders who died in warfare were killed with their troops in battle, and not singled out for elimination behind their own lines. (8) An attempt to kill Yamamoto was more akin to special operations.

In any case, on April 15, Nimitz authorized Adm. William F. Halsey, commander in the South Pacific, to initiate preliminary planning. (9) Halsey passed on the project to RAdm. Marc A. Mitscher, commander of joint air operations in the Solomons. At Guadalcanal, Mitscher had jurisdiction over the only aircraft within range of the Yamamoto flight. The date was tempting. April 18, 1943 would be the first anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. Admiral Mitscher had been the commander of the U.S.S. Hornet, the carrier from which the Doolittle raiders launched. (10)

The question by this time was not so much whether or not to attack Yamamoto, but how. Planners of the Yamamoto mission on Guadalcanal included Admiral Mitscher, his chief of staff Brig. Gen. Field Harris; Cmndr. Stanhope C. Ring, deputy chief of staff for operations, Col. Edwin L. Pugh and Maj. John P. Condon, the latter U.S. Marines in Fighter Command, Solomons, and Lt. Col. Aaron W Tyer, commander of an Army Air Forces base on Guadalcanal called Fighter Two. The planners decided the flight would have to avoid Japanese detection at all costs by flying around the islands between Guadalcanal and Bougainville, by keeping radio silence, and by flying low. They began plotting courses, and realized that the only type of aircraft on Guadalcanal that had the range to reach more than 400 miles to Bougainville and return was the drop tankequipped, twin-engine P-38 Lightning. (11)

The P-38s on Guadalcanal belonged not to the Marines but to the Army Air Forces. The Thirteenth Air Force's 347th Fighter Group rotated squadron detachments to the island. In mid-April 1943, the 70th Fighter Squadron was leaving Guadalcanal, being replaced by the 339th Fighter Squadron under Maj. John W. Mitchell. Condon and Pugh assigned the Yamamoto mission to Mitchell, but kept two of the former 70th Fighter Squadron pilots for their mission experience. (12) Among them was Capt. Thomas G. Lanphier, Jr., who had already flown from Guadalcanal to the Bougainville area, and who already had shot down four Japanese airplanes. (13) Mitchell agreed to appoint Lanphier as leader of a four-airplane attack flight. Mitchell would to lead fourteen other P-38s in a cover flight to intercept large numbers of Japanese fighters he expected to rise up from Kahili, a Japanese airfield on Bougainvlle. (14) He wanted to be ready to pounce on them from above and increase his total of aerial victories, which already stood at ei ght. (15)

Major Mitchell, accompanied by Lanphier and Lt. Col. Henry Vicellio, from Thirteenth Air Force headquarters, met with mission planners on the afternoon of April 17. They debated whether to strike Yamamoto in the air or after he landed and transferred to a boat. Mitchell chose to attack Yamamoto in the air, because the Japanese admiral would have less chance of survival that way. (16)

The mission leader faced a busy evening on April 17. He had to convert the flight navigation plan from Major Condon into instructions for his pilots. The eighteen P-38s were to change course several times in radio silence, and they would have to know the exact times, speeds, compass settings, and altitudes. These would have to be determined after taking winds into account. If Major Mitchell were off by only a few degrees of direction or a few minutes in time, his flight would miss the crucial interception. (17)

Early on Sunday morning, April 18, 1943, the eighteen P-38s launched from fighter one. One blew a tire on takeoff and dropped out. Another failed to draw fuel from its drop tanks and had to abort as well. Both of these P-38s had belonged to Lanphier's four-plane attack flight. Two from Mitchell's cover flight, flown by First Lieutenants Besby T. Holmes and Raymond K. Hine, filled in. That left Mitchell with twelve and Lanphier with four, for a total of sixteen Lightnings, the same number of aircraft that exactly one year earlier had bombed Tokyo on the Doolittle raid. (18)

The long flight from Guadalcanal to Bougainville covered more than 400 miles and took about two hours. The formation went west for 183 miles, then turned west northwest for another 88 miles, then turned even more northward for another 125 miles. Sixteen miles from Bougainville, the P-38s turned northeastward on a path expected to take them into the right side of the Yamamoto flight, which would be flying southeastward. Mitchell hoped to find a single Japanese medium attack plane or bomber escorted by six Zeroes. (19)

Just as the sixteen P-38s approached the western coast of Bougainville, about 9:35 in the morning, 1st Lt. Douglas Canning broke radio silence to announce "Bogeys, 11 o'clock high". (20) The Yamamoto and the Mitchell flights were both right on schedule. Mitchell's meticulous planning had paid off. The quarry was almost straight ahead.

Major Mitchell immediately led twelve of the Lightnings on a climb to at least 15,000 feet to meet the swarm of Japanese Zeroes he expected to rise from Kahili. (21) That left Lanphier's four-member attack flight to shoot down Yamamoto's bomber. They discovered, however that there were two Japanese bombers instead of one in the enemy formation. (22) The aircraft were identical twin-engine Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" airplanes. (23) The attackers did not know which of the bombers bore Admiral Yamamoto. They would have to get both to be certain. They also would have to contend with six Japanese fighters that were flying behind and above the bombers as escorts. (24) That was four against eight. (25)

Almost immediately, things began to go wrong for the Americans. Lieutenant Holmes, in one of the four P-38s on the attack flight, could not jettison his drop tanks immediately, and turned southeastward to shake them off. His wingman, Lieutenant Hine, followed him, according to procedure. That took them out of the area temporarily, leaving only two Lightning pilots, Lanphier and 1st Lt. Rex T. Barber, to face the two bombers and their six fighter escorts at low altitude. Now there were two against eight. (26) But Barber, like Lanphier, had experience shooting down Japanese airplanes. He had already scored three aerial victories from previous encounters with the enemy. (27)

Some of the Japanese escorts spotted Lanphier and Barber as they approached the bombers. The Zeroes dropped their belly tanks and dived at the Lightnings, while the bombers made a radical descent toward the treetops. Lanphier turned his aircraft left into the Zeroes, while Barber continued pursuing the bombers. Barber remembered shooting at one from the rear until it caught fire, but he lost sight of it as he maneuvered to escape the pursuing Zeroes. Lanphier, having flown quickly past the Zeroes, flipped over and dove back in an attempt to catch the bombers. He found one near the treetops now heading towards the beach, and fired from the side into its flight path. It burst into flames at an altitude too low for the occupants to survive bailing out. Neither Barber nor Lanphier saw what the other had done. After maneuvering to escape their attackers, both Lanphier and Barber spotted smoke from a crashed aircraft on the island. They had originally seen two bombers, and each assumed he had shot down one of them. Neither knew which bomber Yamamoto was on. (28)

Meanwhile, Holmes and Hine spotted and attacked another Betty bomber that had flown out over the sea in their direction. Barber joined in their attack, and the crippled aircraft crashed into the sea off the coast of Bougainville. A battle with the Zeroes continued, and Hine was shot down. Lanphier, Barber, and Holmes, along with the P-38s in Mitchell's flight, returned the hundreds of miles to Guadalcanal. (29)

Participants in the post-mission debriefing that occurred after the long flight included Colonel Pugh, Major Condon, Lieutenant Colonel Vicellio, and two intelligence officers, Capt. William Morrison of the Army, and Lt. Joseph E. McGuigan of the Navy. (30) After interviewing Lanphier, Barber, Holmes, and Mitchell, the debriefers concluded that a total of three Betty bombers had been shot down in the mission, one each by Lanphier and Barber over Bougainville, and one by Holmes, with possible help from Barber and Hine, over the water. (31) They assumed that the two bombers on the Yamamoto flight were both shot down over Bougainville, and that the bomber shot down over the water had strayed into the area from Kahili on a training flight (32) If Yamamoto were on either bomber shot down over the island, he was dead. Admiral Mitscher notified Admiral Halsey that the mission had been accomplished. Halsey sent a message in reply: "Congratulations to you and Major Mitchell and his hunters. Sounds as though one of the ducks in their bag was a peacock." (33)

Neither United States nor Japanese authorities wanted to release the news of Yamamoto's death right away The Americans did not want the Japanese to know that their codes had been broken, and the Japanese did not want to demoralize their forces. On May 21, more than a month after the interception, both Radio Tokyo and the New York Times announced that Yamamoto had been killed in combat. (34) By then, the admiral's remains, which had been recovered on Bouganville and cremated shortly after the crash, had arrived in the Japanese capital aboard a ship. (35)

Previous histories of the mission have focused on who actually fired the shots that destroyed Yamamoto's aircraft. (36) Lanphier and Barber both later claimed sole credit for having taken Yamamoto out of the war, because each of them believed the Japanese admiral was on the bomber he had shot down over Bougainville. Japanese documents, interviews with Japanese personnel aboard some of the aircraft in the Yamamoto flight, and wreckage discovered on the island of Bougainville after the war proved conclusively that of the two Betty bombers on the flight, one crashed on the island, and Yamamoto was aboard it. (37) The other one, which carried some of Yamamoto's associates, crashed at sea after it was attacked. Some of its passengers, including Yamainoto's chief of staff, survived. (38) There was no third stray bomber. If Lanphier and Barber both shot at a bomber that crashed over Bougainville, they were shooting at the same aircraft. (39)

There are more important questions than who fired the shots that brought down the Yamamoto aircraft. Such debates trivialize the mission. Regardless of who got the aerial victory credit, the operation was a spectacular success. Besides the shooters, the real heroes were mission leader Maj. John W. Mitchell, mission planner Maj. John P. Condon, and code breaker Maj. Alva B. Lasswell.

Did the killing of Yamamoto make any difference? Many Americans might have relished the death of the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, but the killing of Yamamoto was more than merely revenge for the past. It had an effect on the future. Like the Doolittle raid of exactly one year earlier, the Yamamoto mission reduced the Japanese spirit and raised American morale. But did the elimination of Yamamoto change the course of the war?

Yamamoto had designated Admiral Mineichi Koga to be his successor." (40) Koga served as new commander of the Combined Fleet for about a year, until he, too, was killed in an airplane crash in the Philippines on March 31, 1944. Admirals Soemu Toyoda and Jisaburo Ozawa succeeded him in turn. Comparing the leadership of Yamamoto with his successors might help to answer the question of what difference the death of Yamamoto made on course of the war." (41)

Admiral Koga was a traditionalist in naval warfare. For him the battleship, not the aircraft carrier, was the most important capital ship. In his mind, carriers would serve primarily to provide air cover for battleships. Before Pearl Harbor, he had resisted attempts by his fellow admirals, such as Ozawa, to place carriers together in their own commands. He preferred to disperse them. Yamamoto favored Ozawa's idea and approved reorganization of the Japanese fleet to form carrier strike forces." (42 At the time of Pearl Harbor, Koga commanded a Japanese fleet off the coast of China. He was familiar with using the fleet in support of the army, and air power in support of the fleet. In short, Koga lacked Yamamoto's driving intellect and was more defensive and conservative." (43)

One can only speculate about what would have happened if Yamamoto had remained in command of the Japanese Combined Fleet. He probably would have been more eager than Koga to use offensive air power from carriers, but the number of Japanese carriers available to the Japanese by the latter part of April 1943 discouraged their use in offensive operations. Yamamoto might not have been any more successful than Koga in stalling the relentless advance of the Allies in the Pacific.

After Admiral Koga's death in March 1944, Admiral Soemu Toyoda took control of the Japanese Combined Fleet. (44) Toyoda took the best ships and put them together into a Mobile Fleet under Admiral Ozawa. . In June 1944, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese faced a larger United States fleet, Task Force 58, which had fifteen carriers and more than twice as many airplanes. The outcome of the battle reflected the odds. The Japanese lost 284 aircraft and three carriers, and with them the last of their offensive power in the Pacific. It is difficult to imagine that Admiral Yamamoto could have done much better given the numerical and qualitative advantages of the American ships and aircraft. (45)

United States superiority in numbers of troops, materiel, production, and intelligence by April 1943 more than offset any leadership advantages Admiral Yamamoto might have enjoyed over his American adversaries or his successors. Even if the death of Yamamoto shortened the war, it did not change its outcome. If Yamamoto had lived, Japan might have won a few more battles, but it still would have lost the war.

How practical is the killing of a military leader in modem warfare? In Yamamoto's case, it hastened the inevitable. If General Robert E. Lee had been killed after the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States Civil War might have ended earlier, but the same victor probably would have emerged. Midway was Yamamoto's Gettysburg. As outstanding as the interception mission was, the admiral's death did not mean the difference between victory and defeat in the world's most terrible war.

The Leader of The Yamamoto Mission

Commanded 339th FS in WW2 and 51st FIW Korea

The Mission - April 18, 1943

Korean War