Combat Loaded: Across the Pacific on the USS Tate
by Thomas E. Crew
Texas A&M University Press, 2007, 232 pages
An AKA was the designation for an attack cargo ship, which played key roles
in the Pacific War in landing amphibious assault troops with the ship's boats and in
supplying these men with combat cargo. USS Tate (AKA-70), one of 108 AKA
class ships commissioned in WWII, fought in the invasions of Kerama Rettō in
late March 1945 and Ie Shima in the middle of April 1945. On April 2, 1945,
Tate helped fight and shoot down multiple kamikaze aircraft that attacked
her transport squadron, but four squadron ships suffered heavy casualties when
hit by Japanese planes. Combat Loaded, the first comprehensive history
ever written about an AKA, succeeds in detailing the experiences of Tate
and her crew and in providing valuable background on the specific roles that
this class of amphibious ship played in the Pacific War.
Thomas E. Crew, who has worked almost 20 years at the Naval Oceanographic
Office, became interested in Tate's history from his father's stories
about his service aboard the ship. He sought to find his father's shipmates, and
21 crewmembers met together for Tate's first reunion in 2003 at which he
gained many insights as each of them told about his most memorable wartime
experience. Crew interviewed about 50 veterans for this book, and he also did an
immense amount of meticulous research as evidenced by the eight pages of
published and unpublished material in the bibliography and by the 20 pages of
notes providing sources at the end of the book.
Despite the author's numerous interviews with Tate veterans, the book
lacks a central character for readers to follow. The personal episodes generally
tend to be short, many just one paragraph, and do not have the veterans' actual
words but rather the author's summaries of the interviews in which the
information was obtained. Although the personal incidents individually are
interesting, the stories jump between many different characters. Of course, this can be expected on an
attack cargo ship with 62 officers and 333 enlisted men in addition to the
soldiers carried into battle. Captain Rupert Estey
Lyon, somewhat unconventional at times, turns out to be the ship's most memorable
character. For example, after the end of the war, the powerful captain took on
all comers in a wrestling tournament aboard ship and won.
The 12 chapters cover Tate's history chronologically from her
commissioning in November 1944 to her decommissioning in July 1946. One chapter
each covers the invasion of Kerama Rettō from March 26 to 29, 1945, and the
kamikaze attacks on April 2. Two chapters describe Tate's roles in the
invasion of Ie Shima from April 16 to 21, 1945. The book describes in great
detail and provides an understanding of the military importance of the invasions
of Kerama Rettō and Ie Shima, often skipped over quickly in other histories.
Maps and diagrams greatly help in understanding the overall battles and Tate's
responsibilities.
In the early evening of April 2, 1945, about 15 kamikaze aircraft attacked
the 16 ships of Transport Squadron 17, which were fully laden with troops, and the
three escorting ships. Tate's gunners officially shared in the credit for
shooting down two of the attacking enemy planes, although it was difficult to
determine who exactly fired the shots that brought down the enemy aircraft with
so many ships' guns shooting at once. All of Tate's 21 gun mounts fired,
and the ship narrowly averted disaster with three attacking planes. The first
plane splashed just off the port side and showered men with seawater. The second
plane passed just over the ship from the port side after a five-inch shell hit
the plane's wing root and did not explode but seemed to cause the bomb-carrying
plane to climb involuntarily. The plane exploded in the water on the starboard
side less than 100 feet away. The third plane passed directly overhead from the
stern, and one of the 40-mm gun mounts pointed its guns vertically, shot only
four rounds, hit the Japanese plane twice in the fuselage, and lit it up like a
torch. The aircraft crashed into the water just 35 yards astern of Rixey
(APH-3), the ship directly in front of Tate in the squadron's formation.
Other ships did not have the same luck, as the following four ships were hit by
kamikaze aircraft: Henrico (APA-45) (51 killed including Army troops on
board), Dickerson (APD-21) (54 killed and 23 wounded), Goodhue
(APA-107) (24 killed and 119 wounded), and Telfair (APA-210) (1 killed
and 16 wounded). Two diagrams, one at the beginning of the attack at 1840 and
one at the end of the attack at 1903, show clearly what happened to each of the
15 Japanese aircraft.
The majority of the kamikaze aircraft that attacked Transport Squadron 17
were twin-engine planes carrying bombs, but Crew incorrectly concludes that
these were Betty bombers (Type 1 Attack Bombers) from Kanoya Naval Air Base in
southern Kyūshū (pp. 53, 70). He states, but provides no source, that 45 Betty
bombers took off from Kanoya on April 2, 1945, and only 31 returned, so he
concludes that these twin-engine bombers must have been the ones to attack
Transport Squadron 17. The Japanese Navy did not use the slow-moving Betty
bombers for kamikaze attacks except for carrying ōka glider bombs into
battle, and Japanese records indicate that the only kamikaze special attack
planes that took off from Kanoya on that date and did not return were four Zero
bomb-carrying fighters [1]. Eight twin-engine Ki-45
Army Type 2 Toryū Fighters (Nicks) took off from the airfield at Miyako
Island in the late afternoon of April 2 [2], so these
were almost certainly the twin-engine aircraft that attacked Transport Squadron
17.
Tate suffered no casualties in four weeks of nearly continuous battle
action. The ship's newspaper published several months later playfully described
the ship's battles with kamikaze (pp. 128-9):
She's seen action off the Philippines, Okinawa, Ie Shima, and Kerama
Retto, where the kamikaze has not been taught to show respect to the female
sex, gender of which belongs to all our ships of the Navy. The men in her
life and who live within her are bound with decency and respect for this
maiden of the amphibious fleet. They fight with fury to protect her from the
lustful raping kamikazes.
Decades later, when the author gathered material for this book, the veterans
still vividly remembered the kamikaze (p. 170):
Accounts of the April 2, 1945, kamikaze battle, Tate's most dramatic
action, contain a common visual theme: the face of the enemy. When aircraft
pressed close during their attacks, the veterans consistently recalled the
same details: "I could see the pilot's face, his white scarf, and his flying
helmet." It was the face of an enemy who was resolved to die in battle and
take his enemy with him. The Japanese believed their highest destiny lay in
dying for their emperor. The Americans they were trying to kill received no
such conditioning. While their enemies were undergoing their morbid
indoctrination, the Americans had spent their youths on the playing fields
of the United States, learning to hit, catch, and throw. Judging the speed
and distance of a baseball or a football became their childhood training for
estimating the speed, range, and altitude of plunging aircraft. For William
Polikowski, the memory of the Japanese pilot's face as his plane crashed
into the sea lingered throughout the years.
Cargo Loaded, Thomas E. Crew's first book, is as a finely written
objective history. The numerous personal accounts from veterans, the
thoroughness of research and documentation, and even the added humor such as a
four-page article written by the ship's pet monkey Josephine make this a great
book to read for anyone interested in the Pacific War.
USS Tate (AKA-70)
Notes
1. Refer to Hara 2004, 187-8 and Osuo 2005a, 194. Vice Admiral
Matome Ugaki (1990,
570), Commander of the 5th Air Fleet, mentions in his diary that "the special
attack carried out in the evening with fighter bombers seemed to be mostly
successful." This reference would include the four Zero bomb-carrying fighters
from Kanoya.
2. Fukutani 1994; Hara 2004, 187-8; Osuo 2005b,
212.
Sources Cited
Fukutani, Muneo. 1994. Fuun tsuzuki no shutsugeki ni gōkyū su:
Makoto dai 114 tokkōtai ki (Weeping bitterly over sorties that had run of
misfortunes: Makoto 114th Special Attack Squadron record). Tokkō
(Special Attacks). 21 (November): 8-11.
Hara, Katsuhiro. 2004. Shinsō kamikaze tokkō: Hisshi
hitchū no 300 nichi (Kamikaze special attack facts: 300 days of certain-death, sure-hit
attacks). Tōkyō: KK Bestsellers.
Osuo, Kazuhiko. 2005a. Tokubetsu kōgekitai no kiroku (kaigun
hen) (Record of special attack corps (Navy)). Tōkyō: Kōjinsha.
________. 2005b. Tokubetsu kōgekitai no kiroku (rikugun hen)
(Record of special attack corps (Army)). Tōkyō: Kōjinsha.
Ugaki, Matome. 1991. Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome
Ugaki, 1941-1945. Translated by Masataka Chihaya. Edited by Donald M. Goldstein
and Katherine V. Dillon. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
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