THE HAILSTONE DISASTER (1944): 4,500 Japanese DEAD and a Base ERASED in 2 Days

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:03]At dawn on February 17th, 1944, aviation radioman Firstclass Dave Cley sat in the rear seat of his SBD Dauntless dive bomber aboard the USS Enterprise and prepared for what he later described as the most dangerous mission of his life. His target was Truck Lagoon. For the previous two years of the war, he would recall, the very thought of approaching Truck had seemed fatal. In the first hours of that morning, 57 F6F Hellcat fighters crossed the outer reef and found 250 Japanese aircraft waiting on the ground and in the air. By the end of the second day, the aircraft were gone. The base was gone. 4,500 Japanese were dead. 35 Americans were killed. 48 hours, 50 ships sunk, 250 aircraft destroyed, 75% of Japan's largest Pacific base erased, 35 Americans killed. Japan had spent years building troop into a fortress it called impregnable. When the Americans attacked, the fleet was built to protect had already left. The fortress fell without the fleet, and after 48 hours, the Americans never attacked Trroo again. They sailed past it. 40,000 Japanese soldiers were left on the most powerful fortress in the Pacific with nowhere to go. They stayed there for 18 months until Japan surrendered. I spent 8 hours writing, editing, and researching this story to get every number and every name exactly right.

[00:01:37]Because the 4,500 Japanese who died in Troop Lagoon in February of 1944 and the 35 Americans who died destroying the base that imprisoned those 40,000 men for the remainder of the war deserve a complete and accurate account of what happened and why. If this story matters to you, subscribe to the channel. Just subscribe. That is all. Thank you. Truck Lagoon sits inside a ring of coral reef approximately 200 km in circumference in the Caroline Islands. The name referred to both the lagoon itself and to the atal of islands and reefs surrounding it. The deepest channels through the outer reef were charted and navigable by capital ships. Four main channels gave access to the interior anchorage. Japan had controlled the atal since the end of the first world war when it was assigned as a league of nations mandate territory following Germany's defeat and the dissolution of German colonial possessions in the Pacific. In the years before the second world war, Japan closed the islands to foreign visitors entirely and constructed the naval base under conditions of strict secrecy. When the Pacific War began in December of 1941, American planners had limited reliable intelligence about the lagoon's interior configuration, the defensive installations on each island, or the precise capabilities of the base's repair and supply facilities.

[00:03:03]Approximately 200 km in circumference in the Caroline Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The lagoon enclosed by that reef covers roughly 2,100 km of protected deep water, large enough to anchor every warship in the Japanese combined fleet simultaneously with room for maneuver between anchorages. The reef itself was the natural wall of a fortress that Japan had spent 20 years reinforcing with man-made additions. The islands inside the lagoon held everything a naval base required. Dublon Island held the main naval headquarters, a sea plane base, submarine pens, fuel storage tanks that held millions of gallons of aviation and bunker fuel, and the primary ammunition depot for the entire base. Eaton Island held a military airfield capable of operating heavy bombers. Moan Island held a second airfield and additional fuel storage.

[00:04:01]Param Island held a third airfield. All three airfields were within range of each other and of the main anchorage.

[00:04:07]The lagoon's interior islands taken together constituted the most complete forward naval installation that Japan operated anywhere outside the home islands. More capable in many respects than many secondary bases within Japan itself. It had dry dock and floating repair facilities capable of servicing capital ships, torpedo storage and maintenance facilities, extensive ammunition and fuel depots, and the full administrative infrastructure of a permanent fleet headquarters. American naval planners called it the Gibralar of the Pacific from the first year of the war. The comparison was not casual.

[00:04:44]Gibralta controlled access to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. Truck controlled access to the central Pacific from multiple directions. A fleet using truck as its forward base could sorty against American operations in the Solomon Islands to the southeast, the Marshall Islands to the northeast, New Guinea to the south, or the Philippines to the west in response times that would threaten any American advance in the region. Taking truck by direct amphibious assault would require a concentration of shipping, landing craft, and ground forces that the United States could not assemble for a single operation in 1942 or early 1943.

[00:05:22]Admiral Chester Nimits's island hopping strategy was designed in part around the problem of truck. Islands within operational range of truckbased aircraft required neutralizing the base before they could be safely occupied. islands beyond trucks effective range could be taken without first neutralizing the base. This logic shaped every major American operation in the central Pacific from 1942 onward. The Gilberts were taken in November of 1943 because they sat at the outer edge of effective range for troop based aircraft, far enough away that the base could not concentrate its full air strength against the landings. The marshals captured in early 1944 by the same forces now positioned against Tru had been selected on the same principle. The Mariana's Islands, the next major objective after Hailstone, were where American planners intended to construct the airfields from which B-29 Superfortress bombers could reach mainland Japan. Saipan, Tinian, and Guam were all within B-29 range of Tokyo.

[00:06:27]Trrook blocked the approach to all three. Trrook neutralized meant the Mariana's campaign could proceed without a threat from the bases south. The Mariana's taken meant Tokyo was in range. The logic of each step was conditional on the previous one. Across the central Pacific was built in part around the problem of truck. Nimitz's planners chose which islands to take and which to bypass based on the requirement that each step extend American air cover without entering the range of truckbased aircraft. Truck was not on the list of islands to be taken by direct assault.

[00:07:01]It was on a different list. Islands to be neutralized, isolated, and bypassed.

[00:07:07]That strategy required that truck first be made incapable of projecting offensive power into the areas the Americans needed to operate in.

[00:07:15]Operation Hailstone was the mechanism chosen to accomplish that neutralization before the Mariana's campaign began. The man who directed the operation was Rear Admiral Mark Mitcher, commanding task force 58. Miter had commanded the USS Hornet from the doittle raid against Tokyo in April of 1942 through the Midway operation in June of that year.

[00:07:38]By early 1944, two years of carrier warfare had made him the most experienced carrier task force commander in the American fleet. By early 1944, he commanded the most powerful carrier strike force yet assembled in the Pacific. Nine carriers, five fleet carriers, and four light carriers, six fast battleships, 10 cruisers, and 28 destroyers.

[00:08:03]In aggregate, Task Force 58 represented more offensive carrier aviation capacity than Japan could field from any single base at that point in the war. Admiral Raymon Spruent commanded the broader operation as the senior officer present.

[00:08:18]Task Force 58 reached its launch position northeast of Tr on the night of February 16th, 1944. The plan was straightforward. Before the bomber strikes against ships and installations, a fighter sweep would clear the sky of Japanese aircraft. A cleared sky meant that the bombers could attack installations and shipping without fighter opposition, relying on evasive action and speed to avoid the anti-aircraft fire that would remain from the base's shore defenses. The fighter sweep would go first. The bombers would follow. By the time Task Force 58 reached its launch position northeast of Truck, the operation had a component that added a dimension the original planning had not fully addressed. Admiral Spruent had brought two fast battleships with him. The Iowa and the New Jersey were the two most powerful surface warships in the American fleet, each displacing 45,000 tons and carrying nine 16-in guns capable of engaging surface targets at ranges exceeding 20 mi. They had never fired those guns at enemy warships. At Trroo, Spruent intended to use them.

[00:09:25]While Mitch's aircraft attacked the base from the air, the battleships and their escorts would circle the lagoon outside the reef and intercept any Japanese ships that tried to escape through the channels. The plan was that nothing significant would escape through the outer channels during the two days of strikes. Iowa and New Jersey would enforce that perimeter from outside the reef. Neither ship had yet fired its main batteries against an enemy warship in the Pacific War. Truck was going to be where they finally did. The sailors aboard both battleships had trained for fleet surface engagements against Japanese capital ships that had not materialized in the way the pre-war doctrine anticipated. The major surface engagement that Iowa and New Jersey existed to fight had not occurred. Now they were positioned outside the atole, waiting for any Japanese vessel that attempted to escape through the outer channels.

[00:10:17]What the Americans did not know as Mitch's carriers closed in on truck was how much the base had changed in the preceding two weeks. What they did know was confirmed by the intelligence the reconnaissance photographs provided. The lagoon contained a large number of merchant and auxiliary vessels still at anchor. The fuel depots, the ammunition storage facilities, the repair shops, and the administrative buildings were still intact. The airfields were operational. The anti-aircraft batteries that ringed the islands were fully manned. Whatever warships had or had not remained in the lagoon, there was enough at justify the operation. The night before the attack, February 16th, Mitch's carriers had closed to within launch range without detection. The Japanese had not extended their patrol coverage far enough north to detect the task force on its approach. This failure of reconnaissance coverage would be examined in post-war assessments as a critical tactical error in the truck defense. A single patrol aircraft assigned to cover the northern approaches would have given the garrison several hours of warning before the first Hellcats crossed the reef. The warning would not have saved the base, but it would have allowed more aircraft to be dispersed to secondary landing grounds away from the main airfields and would have given more vessels time to attempt escape through the channels. The patrol aircraft did not fly. The carriers were not detected. The security of the approach was among the key operational achievements of the entire attack. Nine carriers and six battleships had moved within aircraft range of the most fortified Japanese base in the Pacific without being spotted. The element of surprise, which the Americans had lost at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, and had not recovered in a comparable way against a major Japanese installation since, belonged to Task Force 58 on the morning of February 17th, 1944.

[00:12:14]The Japanese did not know Task Force 58 was there. The fighters for the opening sweep were loaded and ready on the flight decks. The strike briefings had been given, and the crews knew their targets. Every ship still at anchor had been assigned to a specific strike element. The fuel depots, the ammunition storage facilities on Dublon Island, and the repair infrastructure had all been designated as priority targets for the follow-on strikes after the airfields were suppressed. The plan had been worked through in detail. It could not account for what had already left. The plan called for the fighter sweep to launch at first light, clear the sky, and hold it while the bombers followed.

[00:12:55]In early February of 1944, Marine Corps PB4Y1 Liberator reconnaissance aircraft flew over Tru Lagoon on a photographic mission. The aircraft was spotted. The report reached the headquarters of Admiral Manichi Koga, commander-in-chief of the combined fleet, who was then using Trrook as his main base of operations. Koga understood immediately what the sighting meant. The Americans had photographs of the lagoon and knew what was inside it. An attack of some kind was coming, and the combined fleet was at risk. He ordered the immediate departure of every major warship in the lagoon, beginning with the battleships and carriers, and continuing through the heavy cruisers. The speed of the evacuation conducted over 10 days in early February demonstrated that the Japanese naval command understood perfectly well that truck's legendary reputation for impregnability had always rested on the assumption that the combined fleet would be there to defend it. Without the fleet, the base was defensible only against a limited surface action or a small air raid.

[00:13:59]Against the full weight of Task Force 58, without major warships to oppose the American carriers and battleships, the base could not be held. He ordered an immediate evacuation of the major warships. The Yamato and the Mousashi, the two largest battleships in history by displacement, departed through the southern channels toward Palao. The carriers left for Singapore or for Japan. The heavy cruisers followed on successive days. Within 10 days, every capital ship and carrier had cleared the lagoon through the available channels and dispersed to anchorages at Palao, Singapore, and the Japanese home islands. The largest concentration of naval power Japan could assemble, had dissolved across the Pacific in under two weeks, driven out by the photographic pass of a single reconnaissance aircraft over the lagoon.

[00:14:49]What remained in the lagoon were the installations, the fuel and ammunition stocks in the depots, the aircraft on the three airfields, approximately 100 merchant and auxiliary vessels that could not leave quickly, and the garrison of 40,000 soldiers and sailors who had nowhere else to go. Koga's decision to evacuate would save the combined fleet from destruction at Tru.

[00:15:12]It would not save truck itself and it would not prevent the damage to Japanese strategic capability that the loss of the base represented. The combined fleet survived February 17th and 18th. It would face destruction less than 4 months later at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944.

[00:15:31]Operating without the forward logistics capability at Truk that had sustained its previous deployments across the central Pacific, the airfields at Eton, Menan and Pam held approximately 270 Japanese aircraft when Operation Hailstone began. They were a mixture of fighter, bomber, and patrol aircraft assigned to the base's defense and to offensive operations in the region. The pilots and crews who flew them were not.

[00:15:59]By February of 1944, the experienced naval aviators who had flown from carriers at Pearl Harbor and Midway, those men were largely dead. The pilots defending truck in February of 1944 were replacement crews trained under compressed schedules of a service that had lost its best instructors in the first two years of war. They would face in the opening minutes of February 17th, pilots who had trained for exactly this encounter. The first fighter sweep launched from Task Force 58's carriers in the darkness before dawn on February 17th. 57 Hellcats crossed the outer reef in the dark and climbed to altitude over the lagoon. The Japanese radar stations on Moen and Dublon detected the incoming aircraft. The alarm went across the base. Launch procedures began on all three airfields simultaneously. Japanese pilots ran to their aircraft and began launching from the three airfields. What followed in the first 30 minutes was not a battle between comparable forces. It was the systematic destruction of an air defense that had never encountered the Hellcat in strength before. Hellcats caught Japanese aircraft at low altitude and low speed, taking off and forming up. The defending fighters were shot down before they could reach the altitude and air speed at which they could have used the Zero's maneuverability against the heavier American fighters. Approximately 30 Japanese aircraft were destroyed in the opening minutes. The surviving defenders were driven down and kept suppressed while the bomber waves formed up behind the Hellcats. By the time the first wave of dive bombers crossed the outer reef, the sky over the lagoon was free of effective Japanese air opposition for the first time in the base's history.

[00:17:41]What remained was the anti-aircraft fire from the shore installations and the ship still at anchor. The F6F Hellcat had been designed with one purpose. The Grumman Corporation had studied captured Zero fighters in detail after test pilots evaluated them at Anacostia Naval Air Station and at other facilities, identified every advantage the Zero possessed over existing American naval fighters and built the Hellcat specifically to eliminate those advantages. The Hellcat was faster above 20,000 ft, climbed faster, carried heavier armament, and protected its pilot with armor plate that the Zero lacked entirely. The Zero could outmaneuver it at low speed, but a Hellcat pilot who kept his speed and altitude advantage never needed to test that limit. The pilots flying from Task Force 58's carriers in February of 1944 had been trained to fight the Hellcat the way it was designed to be flown.

[00:18:38]They had practiced the energy tactics, the diving attacks, the disengagement maneuvers that kept altitude and air speed under American control. Against the replacement pilots defending truck, flying aircraft that had already been outclassed, the opening sweep of Operation Hailstone was going to determine whether the bombers that followed could hit their targets without fighter opposition or had to fight their way in and out of the lagoon. Subscribe to this channel right now because what you are about to hear is how 57 Hellcats cleared the skies over Trrook in the opening minutes of February 17th. What happened when a bomb found the ammunition cargo of a single transport ship and destroyed it in seconds with 400 men inside. Why a lieutenant commander spent months convincing senior Navy leadership to let him attack at night. And what happened when he did?

[00:19:30]the only time in their careers that the battleships Iowa and New Jersey fired their main batteries at enemy warships and what they hit and why 40,000 Japanese soldiers who were never defeated in battle spent 18 months on the most fortified island in the Pacific without being able to fight or leave. Do not miss it. The 57 Hellcats that crossed the Outer Reef before dawn on February 17th found approximately 250 Japanese aircraft waiting on the three airfields and in the air over the lagoon. The Japanese radar stations had detected the incoming strike. Alarms had gone out. Launch procedures had begun.

[00:20:08]The defending pilots were getting airborne from Eaton, Mowen, and Pam when the Hellcats reached them. What followed in the first 30 minutes was not a balanced contest between comparable forces. It was the systematic destruction of an air defense that had never encountered Hellcats in strength before. The defending aircraft were shot down before reaching the altitude and air speed at which the Zero's handling qualities would have provided any advantage against the heavier American fighters. Approximately 30 Japanese aircraft were destroyed in the opening exchange. The survivors were driven to low altitude and kept suppressed while the first waves of dive bombers and torpedo bombers formed up behind the Hellcat screen and began crossing the reef. By the time the first SBD dauntlesses entered the lagoon, the sky was largely clear of effective Japanese air opposition. What remained was anti-aircraft fire from the shore installations and the ships at anchor.

[00:21:05]The gun crews on Dublin Island and aboard the larger vessels had been at their anti-aircraft positions since the alarm sounded before dawn. Some of those crews had been firing continuously for hours by the time the first bomber waves entered the lagoon. The accuracy of the anti-aircraft fire varied significantly across the two days, partly due to the degradation of command and communications as the strikes damaged the installations and partly because the gun crews were operating under conditions they had not trained for at the scale the attack demanded. 17 American aircraft were lost to anti-aircraft fire over TR during the two days and the surviving crews adjusted their approach angles as the day progressed to reduce exposure to the most accurate batteries. The anti-aircraft fire was dense and accurate in places, particularly from the shore batteries on Dublon Island and from the larger vessels. It was the primary threat to American aircraft for the remainder of the two days. 17 American aircraft were lost to anti-aircraft fire over the course of the operation. The aircraft that survived it found targets without fighter interference for the first time over a major Japanese base. The ships in the anchorage were the first priority for the bomber waves that followed the fighter sweep into the lagoon. The strikes were not random. Each strike element had its assigned targets drawn from reconnaissance photography, and the pilots had studied the photographs during the briefings the previous evening aboard their carriers. The tankers were at the top of the target priority list. The fuel they carried was the resource that sustained every activity at the base. from the aircraft on the three airfields to the warships that used the lagoon as a transit and resupply point. A base without fuel could not operate its aircraft could not service its warships and could not sustain any of the activities that made it a forward naval base rather than simply a set of islands. The aircraft assigned to each target worked through their attack runs, dropped their ordinance, and cleared the lagoon for the next wave. Tankers were high priority targets because the fuel they carried fed the aircraft and the machinery of the entire base. Auxiliary cruisers were targeted because they carried weapons and supplies. Transport ships carried the soldiers and equipment that reinforced Japanese positions across the Pacific. Everything in the lagoon that could float and that had not left with Koga's evacuation was a legitimate target. One ship produced a result that no amount of planning had anticipated.

[00:23:37]The Aikokumaru was a large Japanese transport in the anchorage when the attack began. She was armed, carried passengers and cargo, and was large enough to be a priority target for the strike elements assigned to her section of the anchorage. A bomb from one of the dive bomber waves found the ship's ammunition storage compartment. The resulting explosion destroyed the Aikokum Maru in seconds with such force that it was visible from the flight decks of American carriers positioned outside the outer reef more than 20 m from the anchorage. The concussion was felt by pilots flying nearby and was reported in the afteraction reports of multiple squadrons. Approximately 400 Japanese soldiers were below decks in the cargo hold when the ship detonated.

[00:24:22]None of them survived the explosion.

[00:24:25]Several American aircraft operating in the immediate vicinity were damaged by the force of the detonation. The explosion was the single largest event of the two-day operation. The attack continued throughout the daylight hours.

[00:24:38]Fuel depots on Dublon and Moan burned with columns of black smoke visible from the American carriers outside the reef.

[00:24:45]The airfields at Eton and Pum were bombed methodically until the runways were cratered beyond immediate repair.

[00:24:52]The submarine pens and repair facilities were struck. The ammunition storage that had not exploded in the first passes was targeted in subsequent waves. By nightfall of February 17th, the operational capacity of the base had been severely degraded. Most of the fuel reserves, most of the aircraft, and most of the smaller vessels were gone. The installations that had kept the base functioning as a forward fleet support facility were burning or destroyed.

[00:25:19]Night fell over the lagoon. The American aircraft that had survived the day strikes recovered aboard their carriers.

[00:25:25]The night normally would have ended offensive operations until the following dawn. Lieutenant Commander William Martin of Torpedo Squadron 10 had other plans. Martin had spent months before Operation Hailstone pressing the case to senior Navy leadership for a carrier-based night strike using radar guidance. The resistance he encountered was not primarily technical. The Avengers had the radar. the crews could be trained. The objections were primarily doctrinal. Night carrier operations carried an inherent risk of accidents on takeoff and recovery that daylight operations did not, and the Navy had no operational precedent for the concept of a radar guided attack from a carrier deck. Martin argued that the risk of the specific mission was lower than the doctrinal objections suggested and that a target like Tru, a confined lagoon with known positions and no night air defense, was worth the attempt. He lobbied. He briefed. He submitted proposals. A troop he was given his answer. The technology to execute such a mission had existed for some time. The TBF Avenger torpedo bomber could carry air-to-surface radar in its nose and could attack targets it located by radar rather than visual identification. The problem was doctrine. Carrier aviation doctrine was built around visual attacks in daylight.

[00:26:48]Night operations at sea with all the associated risks of aircraft disorientation and deck landing accidents were not standard practice.

[00:26:57]Martin argued that a radarguided night attack against ships in a confined lagoon was a viable mission. He argued this case for months with increasing urgency as the truck operation approached. At Troo, he was given the opportunity he had been requesting for months. 12 TBF Avengers from USS Enterprise catapulted off the deck into the darkness of February 17th. Martin led the formation across the black water toward the lagoon. The aircraft flew by instruments and radar. The crews could not see the ships they were targeting or the water below them. The radar guided them to the anchorage, identified targets, and provided the attack solutions their pilots needed. The Avengers attacked. Several of the ships that had survived the daylight strikes were hit and damaged or sunk in the darkness of the lagoon. No Japanese fighter aircraft rose to intercept the night attack. The anti-aircraft fire that did reach up into the dark was unfocused and poorly aimed without radar fire control. The first radarg guided carrier night strike in the history of naval aviation was completed and the aircraft returned to Enterprise. The second day of Operation Hailstone, February 18th, 1944 opened with a sharply reduced level of Japanese air opposition across the lagoon. The surviving Japanese aircraft from the previous day's fighting were too few and too scattered across the three damaged airfields to mount any coordinated defensive response. The bomber waves entered the lagoon with even less fighter interference than on February 17th. The work of the second day was completing what the first 24 hours had started, destroying whatever remained operational after the first 24 hours of the attack. Outside the reef, Iowa and New Jersey had been waiting. The two battleships had positioned themselves to intercept Japanese vessels, attempting to escape through the outer channels during the operation. Several smaller vessels had attempted the run. Some were caught by aircraft and sunk before clearing the outer reef. Others reached open water and found Iowa and New Jersey waiting. The Japanese destroyer Noaki was the most significant warship that attempted to run the gauntlet outside the reef. She cleared the outer reef at high speed and ran for the open Pacific.

[00:29:15]Iowa and New Jersey opened fire with their main batteries, nine 16-in guns per ship, capable of engaging surface targets at ranges exceeding 20 m in favorable conditions. It was the only time in the entire service careers of Iowa and New Jersey that their main batteries were fired against an enemy warship. The Noaki, a destroyer of roughly 2,000 tons, was running against two battleships each, displacing 45,000 tons and armed with 96in guns. The physics of the engagement should have been straightforward. At the range, the action took place. The outcome was not.

[00:29:52]The noaki was making high speed and was a difficult target at 20 mi in the light and smoke conditions present outside the lagoon.

[00:30:01]The shots from Iowa and New Jersey fell close, but did not hit. The Milwaukee cleared the lagoon's outer channels and reached open water before pursuit could be organized. It was the only time Iowa and New Jersey fired their main batteries at an enemy surface target in the entire Second World War. At a range of more than 20 m, the shots missed. The Noaki escaped into the open Pacific at high speed, beyond the effective range of further pursuit. Iowa and New Jersey had fired their guns in anger for the first time and the only time at a target that got away. The Noaki's escape was the exception. The destroyer Fujicazi was sunk by aircraft before clearing the lagoon. The uy was caught outside the reef and sunk by air attack and gunfire.

[00:30:49]Other vessels that attempted to run through the channels during the two days were intercepted or destroyed. By late afternoon on February 18th, task force 58 had expended its primary ordinance loads and the strike aircraft had no productive targets remaining. Miter ordered the withdrawal. The battle was over. Damage assessment and the accounting of losses took several days to complete. as reconnaissance aircraft photographed the lagoon and the smoke cleared enough to assess what remained.

[00:31:19]The final accounting showed that the Japanese had lost two light cruisers, four destroyers, two submarine chasers, three auxiliary cruisers, 16 naval transport ships, three army transport ships, two submarine tenders, five tankers, and numerous smaller vessels.

[00:31:37]Approximately 50 ships were on the bottom of the lagoon where they remain, forming one of the largest underwater wreck fields in the world. 250 to 275 Japanese aircraft had been destroyed.

[00:31:49]75% of the base's fuel supply had been burned. All three airfields were inoperable. The repair facilities, the submarine pens, the headquarters buildings, and the administrative infrastructure were damaged or destroyed. 4,500 Japanese personnel were killed. 35 Americans were killed. 25 American aircraft were lost. The four factors that determine the outcome of Operation Hailstone require examining the evacuation of the combined fleet, the performance of the Hellcat in the opening sweep, the failure of Japanese night defense, and the strategic context that made Truck's neutralization more valuable than its capture. The first was the evacuation. Admiral Koga's decision to move the combined fleet removed the targets that would have made Hailstone a truly decisive tactical victory. If the Yamato Mousashi and the carrier force had been in the lagoon on February 17th, Task Force 58 would have had the opportunity to destroy them. The evacuation preserved the main Japanese naval force for another engagement. At the same time, the evacuation left behind everything that gave truck its strategic value as a forward base. the fuel, the supplies, the aircraft, the repair facilities, and the support infrastructure. Koga saved his ships, and in doing so accepted the loss of the base they had been using. The base's destruction accomplished most of what American planners needed from the operation. The forward support capacity for Japanese naval operations across the central Pacific was gone. The second was the Hellcat's performance in the opening sweep. Clearing the sky of Japanese air opposition in the first 30 minutes was the prerequisite for everything that followed. A sustained Japanese air defense throughout the two days would have made the bombing campaign far more costly and potentially would have prevented the destruction of some targets entirely. The one-sided nature of the air battle above the lagoon was the force multiplier that allowed the bomber waves to work through their target list without fighter interference. The third was the failure of Japanese night defense. Martin's radar guided night strike succeeded not primarily because of the technology or the training, though both were essential. It succeeded because the Japanese had no doctrine, no training, and no equipment for intercepting carrier aircraft at night. The concept of a carrier-based radar-guided night strike did not exist within the framework of Japanese defensive planning in February of 1944. The gunners on the ships and on the shore installations were not trained for it. The alert procedures were not designed for it.

[00:34:28]There was nothing to intercept aircraft that approached in the dark using sensors rather than sight. The doctrine gap was as important as the capability gap. The fourth was the strategic context. Operation Hailstone was not designed to take truck. It was designed to make truck irrelevant. The distinction matters because the resources required to storm and hold truck by amphibious assault would have been enormous. The time required would have been months and the casualties would have been severe. The carrier strike accomplished the same strategic result at a fraction of the cost. This was the core principle that the island hopping strategy was designed to validate. that some objectives could be strategically defeated without being physically seized. The paradox at the center of operation hailstone is what TR was built to do. Japan built truck into the most powerful forward naval base in the Pacific to prevent the Americans from advancing through the central Pacific without engaging and destroying the combined fleet. The base was the platform from which that destruction would be inflicted. Every defensive fortification, every stored torpedo and bomb and barrel of fuel, every aircraft on the three airfields existed to ensure that when the Americans came, the price they paid would be too high to sustain.

[00:35:49]When the Americans came in February of 1944, the combined fleet was not there.

[00:35:54]It had left. The fortress that existed to defend the fleet had been evacuated by the fleet it was built to protect.

[00:36:02]And after 48 hours, the Americans sailed away from Trou and never came back. They sailed past Truck and kept going, moving toward the Maranas on the timetable the broader Pacific campaign required.

[00:36:16]40,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors who had been assigned to Truck to defend it against an attack that would never be repeated were left behind. There was nothing operational left to defend, and no enemy force ever came to attack it again. They received no resupply by sea after February of 1944 and had no means of evacuation. They stayed for 18 months through two wet seasons and two dry seasons as the war they had been stationed on troop to fight moved further and further from them until Japan's surrender in September of 1945.

[00:36:51]The final number of Americans who died storming truck was zero. Japan had spent 20 years building the fortifications, prepositioning the weapons, and maintaining the garrison that was supposed to make that precise number impossible to achieve. Operation Hailstone made the number irrelevant by making truck itself strategically irrelevant to the American advance.

[00:37:14]Subscribe to this channel right now and turn on notifications because every week we bring you the stories that the histories reduced to a tactical summary without telling you that the Aikoku Maru's explosion was so large that pilots in aircraft throughout the lagoon saw it simultaneously. that Martin had spent months convincing senior Navy leadership that a radar-g guided night carrier strike was possible before being given the opportunity to prove it at Tru. That Iowa and New Jersey fired their main batteries at an enemy warship for the only time in their careers and missed. That the 40,000 Japanese soldiers left on Trou after Operation Hailstone spent 18 months on the most fortified island in the Pacific with no way to fight and no way to leave. or that the number of Americans who died taking truck was zero because the Americans never took it. Hit subscribe now then like so this reaches more people who should understand that the Gibralar of the Pacific was not stormed, not surrendered and not taken. It was bypassed.

[00:38:16]Drop a comment below telling us where you are watching from. We will see you in the next one.