Carrier vs carrier: American sailors’ perspectives of the Pacific War

Abstract

This work is an operational military history of the five carrier battles between the United States and Japan from 1942-1944, during World War Two. The battles include the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, the Battle the Eastern Solomon Islands, the Battle of Santa Cruz, and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Traditionally the Pacific War carrier battles are viewed from the perspectives of the admirals and focus on the strategic and tactical outcomes. However, this thesis analyzes the battles from the perspectives of the enlisted level crews of the United States aircraft carriers. A “bottom up” perspective of the carrier battles reveals how sailor’s and pilot’s experiences changed as the war in the Pacific progressed. Veterans’ memories of a particular battle are essential to our understanding of military history because they provide a multilevel, human perspective that the official records often lack. Whether by random designation or a sailor trying to choose his own carrier, his ship assignment was a story of fate. Each sailor's assignment tied him to the legacy of one of the United States’ carriers, which changed how a sailor would come to view and depict the war in the Pacific. Each carrier participated in different events and battles throughout the war, which in turn created different carrier experiences for each crew. This thesis argues that comparing and contrasting the experiences of the sailors and pilots from each of the United States aircraft carriers during World War Two, reveals the human side of carrier warfare, demonstrating not only how the sailors and pilots viewed the battles, but also their larger part in the war. The five carrier battles are analyzed in three chapters. The first chapter covers the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway from the perspectives of the crews of the USS Lexington (CV-2) and the USS Yorktown (CV-5). The second chapter covers the carrier battles during the Untied States offensive in the Solomons from the perspective of the crews of the USS Enterprise (CV-6) and the USS Hornet (CV-8). Lastly the battle of the Philippine Sea is analyzed from the perspectives of the navy carrier pilots from Task Force 58, under the command of Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. This work adds not only a human component to carrier warfare, but it also highlights that viewing carrier battles from the strategic and tactical viewpoints of the admirals, the conflicted emotions of the ship’s crew and its effects on their views of the war are overlooked. The Battle of the Coral Sea although a Japanese tactical victory, was a strategic one for the United States leading to an American victory at Midway. But how the loss of the Lexington and Yorktown lead to negative and conflicted views of the war is not discussed and historians overlook how an entire group of seaman and pilots had negative assumptions about the war to come. Early in the war, the Enterprise and Hornet entered the Solomons offensive with confidence, not because of Midway, but because they had not yet been attacked. Despite later hardships, including damage to Enterprise and the loss of Hornet, sailors felt pride and duty in continuing the American offensive in the Pacific. Although historians see the Battle of the Philippine Sea as the final blow to the Japanese Fleet, the United States dominance was not clear to the pilots in Task Force 58. Unlike many sailors, they still faced intense combat, making victory feel far less certain from their perspective.