Battle of the Philippine Sea

I am in need and would appreciate assistance in obtaining a listing of the U.S. vessels and pilots involved in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

 

One addendum, the battleships and most of the modern cruisers carried two OS2U/OS2N Kingfisher floatplanes; -N was the same plane built by the Naval Aircraft Factory. There were a total of 34 embarked, a few cruisers had only one and one carried an older SOC biplane.

The five olders CAs each had four SOCs making 21 of those.

The allocation is a bit curious since the Baltimore and Cleveland cruisers had enclosed hangars for four aircraft. The old CAs only had hangar space for two, the other two had to sit on deck or on the catapults. This was feasible since their cats were located amidships, away from the arc of fire and blast of the main armament. Still as I say the newer ships could have carried four a/c in complete security.

BBs had no hangars, their planes just sat out on deck or on the cats and occasionally were blown overboard if the aft turrets needed to fire, apparently they were considered more expendable.

Each of the carrier groups included one Atlanta class 5" gunned CL which served as flagship for the screen destroyers; these had no aircraft.

 

Good deal. Thanks for the intel!

 

How about a listing of participating aviators and aircraft?

 

"Carrier Battle in the Philippine Sea" by Barrett Tillman, will have some of what you are looking for. He lists the The CAGs, squadron commanders and aircraft of the US side, and for the Japanese he lists the same except by Carrier Division, not individual carriers. Also he list Aig Group commanders and aircraft for Japanese land-based air units. He also lists US pilots who claimed kills during the battle, although not what planes they were flying, as there were 10 VB/VT pilots credited with a total of 4.5 kills and 6 FM pilots credited with a total of 4 kills.

As for a complete list of aviators who participated in the battle, Good luck! You will probably have to dig through official US records for those, and they probably don't exist for the Japanese.

 

here's some excerpts from Tillman's books to give some idea of the sort of info he provides;

A Table of U.S. Navy Fighting Squadrons in WW2

and this article, while not having any listings, does detail many individual pilots activities;

Battle of the Philippine Sea: Operation A-Go » HistoryNet

here are a few missing aviator reports for the area/period which may be of interest;

Keyword: philippines sea, Within: Missing Air Crew Reports, WWII - Footnote Search

here is a fairly detailed listing of the Japanese air commanders and numbers etc., from Tillman;

Battle of the Marianas - IJN Air Units

Hope this helps

 

Yes, and his more recent title "Clash of the Carriers" is more readily available
Amazon.com: Clash of The Carriers: The True Story of the Marianas Turkey Shoot of World War II (9780451219565): Barrett Tillman, Stephen Coonts: Books

and provides mostly the same info on the air units. IIRC, it does not have the list of US pilot claimed kills.

 

Goodness, ALL the pilots?

You mean like, just from the fast carriers 7 CVGs and 8 CVLGs?

Or from the fast carriers PLUS the 3 CVEGs and 2 VCs with the Guam invasion force?

Or the fast carriers, the Guam invasion force, PLUS the 7 VC squadrons with the Saipan invasion force?

Not to mention a couple-three patrol plane squadrons; and then there’s all those pesky VO and VCS types roosting aboard various battleships and cruisers.

That’s a lot of pilots.

Jezz, I could probably pretty quick generate a list of, say, 400 to 500 of whom I know for sure were there, perhaps half of the total. That’s without going to pre- and post- campaign names list for those who were probably there, but, on the other hand, might not, for one reason or another, have been there (truly a great winnowing effort I’m not really interested in making for that is not the way my lists are organized). Before going to the small trouble of producing even the former listing, though, is there some particular compelling reason you need names, that is, to what end, other than curiosity?

Frankly, in the absence of a compelling reason for acquiring the names of individual pilots, I'd suggest you start reading, like everyone else. My listing of USN WW2 aviators has some 22,000 entries and grows weekly; over 15,000 are individuals and the balance are duplicates of those individuals as their status changes (for example, Max Leslie, best known as CO of VB-3 at Midway, has 15 entries, from LCDR and XO of VB-3 on 7 Dec 41 through CAPT and CO of Air Support Control 8 in ComPhibForPac on 5 Aug 45). All from reading a lot and taking notes and cross checking those notes.

 

Thanks for the information and reference information. I agree it is "a lot of pilots." I need to break down my interest in my review.