Hancock (CV 19) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 64 text:

Hannah Reels Under Air' Attack ' The record set by Air Group Eighty for the day's operations surpassed the old :one set by the Lexington in l9-43 at the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Six strikes from the Hannah's decks knocked seventy-one confirmed enemy planes out of the sky plus eighteen probables and twenty-seven damaged. On the l7th a total of twelve more confirmed enemy planes were turned in as American planes literally took over Japanese sky lanes. Planes that fell to the flaming guns of Air Group Eighty were not easy kills. They rep- resented everything the Japs could find t-o fight off the carrier's crippling air strikes. Of the seventy-one planes that fell there were seventeen Zekes, four Vals, sixteen Oscars, six Tojos, two Bettys, two Dinohs and five Tonys. Leaving the oirfields impotent on the big home islands, the Hannah swung south once more to hit lwo Jima, 700 miles south of Tokyo. Iwo had provided the Japanese with a vital staging point for raids on the 'huge B-29 fields at Saipan, Guam and Tinian. The small flat island provided the enemy with two airstrips and important air-search radar stations beamed from .Mount Suribachi's 54l foot summit. Superforts raiding the home islands from the Marianas were forced to digress from direct air routes to prevent the prema- ture alerting of Jap air defenses. At 0900 on February l9th, the Fourth and Fifth Divisions of the Fifth Am- phibious Corps, United States Marines, landed :on the east coast of lwo Jima.

Page 63 text:

, ,vfff 4' 2214251 WA-rfW'5 fi! ifffli ,gi xy wfegi ,Q gyyw 7 .V '1f'if'?f? 3,25 Z4 . -, 'f, VW , ,Af '46 ' 6 z wfmfff :ff 2 ,f f Q H pfhfsx , , A , M, 1 2579229 f T 515552 ,A fm M ' .1'5:f4'- 1 L '51 62452 f 'kzfffvi 1

Page 65 text:

Though the Army Air Force had hit lwo Jima for seventy-two days prior to the landings and the Navy strikes had eliminated a large share of reinforce- ments and supplies before they were able to get ashore, the enemy was so tenaciously dug in that the most thorough air support was necessary throughout the operation. Strikes were directed against the two completed airfields and one partially completed fighter strip while other groups hit enemy ground troops in low strafing attacks designed to keep them entrenched until Marines were able to blast them out at close range. Hitting the naval base at Chichi Jima and Haha Jima, Air Group Eighty struck shipping in the nearby bays before making a final sweep over the island at nig-htfall. During the first day's operations, landing craft had ferried 30,000 Marines to the beachhead north and east of Suribachi. The fast carriers launched strikes again on the Zlst and 22nd as 60,000 American troops were committed to action on the vol- canic little island which measured about five miles in length and two and one-half miles at the widest point. Driving northward once again the fast carriers attacked the shores of North- ern Honshu on the 25th, hitting airfields and shipping at Konoike and the Chiba Peninsula across Tokyo Bay and the Sagami Sea from Tokyo. lnclement weather prevented further strikes on the 26th and 27th. Fortunate timing on the fueling rendezvous effected on the '24th had topped off the heavy units of Task Force 58 and allowed for diversionary attacks on the Nansei Shoto Islands on the return to Ulithi. The strikes came off March lst with Evasive Action