Japan, suffering piecemeal losses due to island hopping, used the American invasion of Saipan as an opportunity to attempt to strike a knock-out blow against the U.S. Navy.
It achieved the opposite result.
It was the largest aircraft carrier engagement in human history and would be the end of offensive carrier operations for Japan.
Signs that this were coming had been coming for a few days, and the Navy had reacted, drawing off of support for Saipan to go out and meet the Japanese, who were approaching from the Philippines. On this day, the Japanese launched carrier born attacks against the Navy at long range. The U.S., picking the oncoming aircraft on radar, more than met their opponents, devastating the oncoming Japanese at an enormous rate. Japanese planes that flew on to Guam were attack en route. The use of VT fuses by ships caused huge Japanese losses on the plans that managed to evade US fighters.
Japanese aircraft losses are extreme. The event became known as The Marianas Turkey Shoot.
While the Navy's surface fleet was not able to spot the Japanese on the first day, U.S. submarines did and made two successful strikes on aircraft carriers, damaging them both. One, the Japanese Navy's newest carrier, exploded into flames later that day due to errors in damage control efforts, killing over 1,000 sailors and sinking the ship. Both carriers, the Shokaku and Taiho, ultimately sank, with the USS Cavalla and USS Albacore taking the kills.
Japan had better luck on the Chinese mainland, where Changsha fell to them. Not that it would matter.
Historians frequently like to use the word "turning point" or try to examine when something became inevitable. The Battle of the Philippine Sea really was such an event. The Japanese effort made sense and was strategically sound. The Imperial Japanese Navy had correctly assessed that the US island hopping effort was going to bring the U.S. within striking distance of the Philippines and Japan itself in short order, and that if allowed to continue, the Japanese were going to lose the war. Knocking out the US fleet was necessary if Japan had any hope of a positive resolution to the conflict. The invasion of Saipan gave rise to an opportunity to achieve that goal.
There were, of course, real risks, one being that the Japanese effort was obvious. Having said that, however, the US failed to detect the Japanese fleet on the surface and did not do so even during the first day of the battle. But the thing the Japanese could not have appreciated is how advanced US technology had become. VT fuses, using radar in an artillery fuse, meant that ships could defend themselves against aircraft by simply getting a shot near them. Radar allowed the incoming Japanese aircraft to be intercepted before the flak barrages began. U.S. aircraft had dramatically advanced in a short time.
Of course, the interception by US submarines was a lucky development for the US. Had the submarines not taken out two carriers on the first day, the Japanese losses would have been severe, but perhaps not as devastating as they were.
The Japanese defeat on June 19, 1944, meant the Japanese Navy was done as a conventional fighting force. The Japanese would develop, in short order, a new way to retain an offensive capability, but it would prove to be a self-defeating one. From June 19 forward, Japan retained no real way to prevent, or even slow, the US advance.
A massive partisan operation on the Eastern Front, in preparation for Operation Bagration, saw 100,000 Soviet partisans disrupt rear area supplies and detonate 10,000 explosions.
A storm in the English Channel destroyed parts of the Mulberry harbors, disrupting shipping to the Normandy operations and causing Gen. Montgomery to call off an operation designed to penetrate German lines north east of Caen.
The U.S. 4th Infantry Division took Montebourg, but the Germans generally resisted heavily everywhere.
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