Among the most important figures during the Second World War for the Japanese Empire (and not only) was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Yamamoto, born in 1884, was a native of Nagaoka, part of Niigata Prefecture in northern Japan. In 1901 he entered the Naval Academy at Eta Jima, leaving in 1904 and taking part in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
With the rank of midshipman he was on board the cruiser Nisshin – cruiser built in Italy, in the Ansaldo shipyards of Sestri Ponente1 – during the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905 (see article "The battle of Tsushima (1905) and the geopolitical importance of the Kuril islands")
Yamamoto, between 1919 and 1921, was naval attaché in Washington and during that period he also attended the prestigious Harvard University. During his stay in the United States, the young Yamamoto matured the conviction that future naval battles would be fought with airplanes. In fact, one of his thesis was: The most important warship in the next conflict will be a ship capable of carrying airplanes. This prediction was later confirmed…
Back home in 1921, Yamamoto held important command positions and at the same time deepened his knowledge of aeronautical disciplines. In fact, he insisted a lot that the navy should have its own air force. In the end, it happened that in 1924 the brilliant officer was appointed chief of staff of the naval air corps.
A couple of years later, in 1926, he returned to the United States this time as a military attaché at the Japanese embassy in Washington and remained there for two years until 1928 when he returned to Japan again. His military career continued successfully.
In September 1934 Yamamoto was chosen as head of the Japanese delegation to attend the London Naval Conference (a month later he was promoted to Admiral).
At the London Naval Conference (photo) the admiral was critical of the limitations imposed by the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference of 1921. It essentially called for a five-five-three ratio of warships from the United States, Great Britain and Japan. The Japanese Empire walked out of the conference and no treaty was signed on the naval question.
Admiral Yamamoto, having now reached the peak of his military career, began to devote himself, between 1935 and 1940, to the construction of a large war fleet in which aircraft carriers had a decisive role.
1940 was a crucial year for the admiral; he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Naval Forces, and in “this dress faced the Second World War”2.
Among his greatest successes was, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. From this great undertaking he obtained such popularity, fame and prestige in his homeland that his position was never in question even after the disaster of Midway and the defeat of Guadalcanal.
By the spring of 1943, the Japanese Empire no longer had the “wind in its sails” as it had at the beginning of the conflict, and the military-strategic picture was changing to their disadvantage. Despite all this, in April 1943, Admiral Yamamoto began to conceive a new defensive plan for the central Solomons with the participation of the navy, with the aim of “form a series of impregnable positions”3.
Yamamoto was convinced of his plan and so he decided to complete an inspection tour of the most important bases in the central Solomons. The admiral wanted to see for himself the local defensive measures in order to devise a new strategic plan to stop the inexorable American advance.
The program of the visit was carefully prepared and immediately broadcast to the commands involved in the inspection. The text was as follows: The inspection tour of the Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Fleets at Ballale, Shortland and Buin will take place on April 18 with this program: 06.00, departure from Rabaul on a medium bomber escorted by six fighters; 08.00, arrival at Ballale; immediate departure for Shortland on board a submarine chaser prepared by the first squadron; 08,40 expected arrival at Shortland; 09,45 departure from Shortland on board a submarine chaser; 10,30 arrival at Ballale; 11.00, departure from Ballale on board a medium bomber arriving at Buin at 11.10; breakfast at the command of the first squadron with the presence of the commander of the 26th air flotilla; 14.00 pm, departure from Buin with a medium bomber and arrival in Rabaul at 15.40 pm. In case of bad weather, the trip will be postponed by 24 hours4.
The Japanese message was intercepted on the evening of April 13 at Wahiawa, Hawaii, by the U.S. radio station Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (Pacific Fleet radio unit - next photo). The message was then immediately forwarded to Admiral Nimitz's intelligence service at Pearl Harbor.
During the night between April 13 and 14, the coded message was deciphered. Once its contents were discovered, Nimitz – Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet – decided to seize the opportunity: Yamamoto had to be eliminated.
Admiral William Halsey, known as “Bull”, was given the arduous task of trying to “take out” Yamamoto. Meanwhile, Washington had also become aware of Yamamoto: the message, in fact, was intercepted in those days also in Dutch Harbor (in the Aleutian Islands) by a listening station and later deciphered by the Washington decryption services. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox was immediately informed of the incident and, like Nimitz, considered it essential to shoot down the plane on which the Japanese admiral would be traveling. In fact, Knox knew very well that Yamamoto enjoyed an enormous reputation and prestige and that, “For a large number of Japanese, he embodied the virtues and power of the Japanese navy; he also knew that his person alone was enough to inspire a devotion, an adoration bordering on myth, on fanaticism”5. Eliminating him, therefore, would have meant disrupting the Japanese empire.
The Secretary of the Navy decided to consult General Henry H. Arnold, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Charles Lindbergh, the long-distance aviator, and Frank Meyer, Chief Test Engineer of the U.S. company Lockheed.
At that meeting it was decided that the interception of Admiral Yamamoto's vehicle would be carried out with Lockheed aircraft: the P-38s. lightning (photo) available at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal. The aircraft were equipped with droppable supplementary fuel tanks, so as to have the autonomy necessary to complete the raid.
President Roosevelt was informed of the plan and on April 16 gave the green light to the operation. The operation was named Vengeance (revenge) and the code name chosen for Yamamoto was the peacock.
As previously reported, the mission was assigned to William Halsey, who in turn gave the task of planning and guiding it in every detail to Admiral Marc Mitscher, commander of the air forces in the Solomon Islands. On April 16, a message was sent from Halsey to Mitscher that concluded with this sentence: It looks like the peacock will be right on time. Grab him by the tail.
The physical execution of the operation was entrusted to 18 Lockheed P-38 twin-engine fighter pilots. lightning of the 347th Fighter Group of the United States Army Air Forces based on Guadalcanal. The important mission would be commanded by Major John Mitchell, commander of the 339th Fighter Squadron. The objective was to intercept Admiral Yamamoto before the beginning of “the landing phase of his first transfer to Ballale”6.
At dawn on April 18, 1943, around 2:XNUMX AM, XNUMX twin-engine Mitsubishi bombers took off from Rabaul. One carried the Peacock while the other carried Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, Yamamoto's chief of staff. They were escorted by six Zero fighters.
Around 07.25 the American P-38s took off from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. At 09.30 the American pilots spotted the Japanese planes near the southern part of Bouganville Island (about 15 minutes from Ballale). In a short time the Japanese noticed the P-38s. Once discovered the American pilots released the extra tanks and, putting the engines at full power, swooped down on the Japanese. The battle began…
The six Zero fighters did everything they could to protect the two Mitsubishis they were escorting, but they were unable to block the American attack. In fact, the battle did not last long: the two Japanese bombers hit several times by pilots Tom Lanphier and Rex Barber crashed.
Admiral Yamamoto's plane crashed in the jungle, while Matome Ugaki's plane ended up in the sea not far from Buin base. Vice Admiral Ugaki managed to save himself from the crash and was later recovered from the sea. But with the elimination of the Peacock, the United States had their revenge (subsequent examinations revealed that Admiral Yamamoto had been hit by multiple bullets and was therefore already dead before the plane crashed). In all this, the American team returned to Guadalcanal base with only one loss.
Two days after the attack, Admiral Yamamoto's body was recovered and cremated. The admiral's ashes were returned to Japan on May 21, 1943. Until that time, Japanese authorities had kept the public in the dark about the admiral's death.
That same day, a statement was broadcast on the radio and in newspapers that Yamamoto had fallen at the hands of the enemy. He had a double funeral: one on June 5, 1943 in Tokyo and the other on June 7 in his homeland of Nagaoka, attended by hundreds of thousands of people.
It should be emphasized that the aim of Operation Vengeance was not only to eliminate Yamamoto but also, as previously mentioned, to cause consternation and confusion in the Japanese camp. In fact, in this regard, to conclude, we can quote Bernard Millot who writes: There is no doubt that a major psychological blow had been inflicted on Japan.
It was the end of a myth, the end of the symbol of victory and invincibility of the Japanese armed forces.
1 F. Riggi, The great leaders of the Second World War, Newton Compton, Rome, 2020, p. 1451
2 B. Palmiro Boschesi, The great secret battles of the Second World War, Mondadori, Milan, 1973, p. 122
3 B. Millot, The Pacific War 1941-1945. The Greatest Naval Air Conflict in History, BUR, Milan, 2018, p. 478-79
4 B. Palmiro Boschesi, op. cit., p. 123-24
5 B. Millot, op. cit., p. 480
6 F. Riggi, op. cit., p. 1491
Photo: web / Naval History and Heritage Command
