1944: After a month in anchorage, the ships depart Eniwetok and organize into Task Groups for the commencement of Operation King – a complex plan to liberate the large and heavily fortified Philippine Archipelago from the Japanese invaders. The defensive importance of the Philippines to the Empire of Japan cannot be overstated.

In the final hours of August, Task Force 58 was reorganized and renamed TF38. There were personnel shifts up and down the line; most notably the change of Top Commanders. The Navy’s answer to General George Patton, Admiral William Halsey, relieved Admiral Raymond Spruance as overall fleet commander. Eventually, Slew McCain, grandfather of the Senator from Arizona, became his right hand man, commanding the Task Force groups.

September begins for the men aboard the Boston en-route to raid the enemy defensive fortress (Caroline islands) Palau. This was the opening act of nearly six months of endless, relentless combat duty that did not abate until after the assault on Iwo Jima and Boston’s return to the US for radar and mechanical upgrades prior to the scheduled Invasion of Japan.

1945: The War is over! Unfortunately for the crew of the Boston, it was not time to go home. A Task Force of American ships, with Boston in command, was organized to patrol the waters off the eastern Home Islands and demilitarize and de-weaponize the vanquished enemy.

Great news!  I entered the last enlisted sailor who was onboard on commissioning day (June 30th, 1943) and I am making my way through the rest of the Personnel file for the USS Boston (CA-69).  The Personnel file has the Good (promotions), the Bad (disciplinary actions) and the Ugly (injuries via transfers to the hospital).  Please look up your relative in the crew list and click on the name, this should begin to display the sailors war record as I enter data from the Personnel file.

Of note in July 2943, the chiefs of the sections, Chief Warrent Officer, Chief Machinist, etc. etc. who had “acting assignments” were upgraded to permanent assignments.  Also in July a sailor died of a heart attack.  The beginning of many discipline actions started the day after commissioning.  There were at least three types of ‘courts’ that a sailor could be given a punishment for an infraction: Court Martial, Summary Court Martial, and Deck Court.  Deck Court handled the lowest level infractions, disobeying an order, and some of the Absent without leave (AOL), Summary Court Martial handled more serious offences including longer AOL’s and intoxication while on duty.  Court Martials were the most serious and could result in a sailor being transferred from the ship to a Naval Prison.  During this period we had 1 court martial and about 40 summary court martial and deck court findings.

Wow! are the summary court martial and deck court finding strict!!!! a day late from leave could get a sailor 15 days in solitary confinement with just bread and water!

Other interesting happenings for this period in the personnel file is a person was transferred off ship on July 1st, 1943 giving him exactly 1 day of service on the Boston!

I thought about not including the discipline files in order to not offend anyone, but after long consideration I feel it’s part of the history of the people and the ship.  Please view any entries in the disciplinary record as the navy’s attempt to keep order; Imagine if we were locked up in solitary confinement for a month every time we failed to show up at our job!

Early August was a promotion time!  Many of the Sailor Second Class were upgraded to either Sailor First Class or Fireman third class.  One Sailor was even promoted while we was AOL!

I’ll try to follow up in the next week with some thoughts on the roughly 1500 sailors who were on board for commissioning.

Partially through august 6th personnel files, I have 2,434 sailors who were on the Boston, 140 promotions, 39 summary court martials and deck court findings, and 40 notes in individual sailor files.

Happy reading the individual sailor records!

Bill

So when you click on the link to crew list you can find ‘Frank J Abbatantuono’, when you click his name, you’ll see his record as I’m entering it; next to frank you’ll find ‘ABELL, W.H’ and when you click on this link it will tell you he’s not yet entered into our database, since I only have his name at this time (I hope to be catching up to Seaman Abell, probably transferred at Ulithi).

Currently, since April, I’ve entered over 1/2 of the enlisted sailors on the commissioning day. I’m plugging along slowly. Once the commissioning day is over, I have complete records for discipline, promotions and transfers to and from the Boston as the war proceeded. So right now all you’ll see if the sailor is in the database is that the sailor arrived on June 30, 1943 and is a plank owner. In the future you’ll see disciplinary actions, sick or injury reports, promotions and transfers. I’m hoping to add a picture of the sailor and in the future maybe we could get some biographical info from after they left the navy.

I started with about 1600 names, and currently I have just shy of 1900 names; I expect we’ll have about 2,500 to 3,000 sailor names in our database when we are complete.

Please check out the link to the crew list and let us know what you think.

Bill

Photos courtesy of the family of Augustus Harris, S2c, CA-69

Born: 5/12/25

Enlisted 3/10/43

He was a plank owner of the Boston, serving from 6-30-43 until he separated from the Navy in February 1946.  He died in 1993.

On liberty: Augustus (seated first row left) with some of his pals.

A year later, the crew found themselves at anchorage in the Marshall Islands lagoon in the Eniwetok Atoll. After many months of gruelling combat, including the capture (by naval and amphibious combat forces) of the Marshall Islands and the Mariana Islands, the men finally had some respite  -  a month in anchorage (along with hundreds of other ships and their crews).  Oh, and did I mention the Battle of the Philippine Sea?  To say those guys were worn and frazzled by the time they dropped anchor would be an understatement.

Readers of A Bird’s Eye View will notice that I placed the Boston on a run north to attack Iwo Jima for the first few days of August.  When I wrote the book, I struggled with what seemed to me a possible discrepancy between the terrific diary written by crewmember Frank Studenski, and the information available to me at the time.  In the Notes section at the back of the book, I explain how I reluctantly decided that maybe Frank had just missed this one small detail.

In June, my brother Bill, who is working diligently on making an accurate Crew List (a very large task) for this website (and likely for the next book) travelled to Washington DC to research the crew list first-hand.  I won’t get into the minutia here about his project.  The bonus for me was that Bill spent a great deal of time researching the whereabouts of the ship (and came back with a ton of stuff – including pictures).  I asked him for the Deck Logs from August 1, 1944 to August 4, 1944 because I was unsure I made the “right call” about the ship’s whereabouts . . . .

I am happy to report that Frank Studenski was 100% correct.  The Boston was in fact anchored in Eniwetok on those days.  Another group of Task Force ships had slipped north for the raid on Iwo Jima.  The Boston was not one of them.  My apologies to Frank.

August of 1945 was a happy one for the guys.  On August 9, the Boston formed a bombardment group with the cruisers Quincy, Chicago and St. Paul and shelled industrial targets on Japan (Honshu).  On August 15, the seas off the coast of Japan got a message from Admiral Halsey to Cease Fire.  The war was over.

On the 5^th, the ships returned to the Marianas, and continued to launch air strikes against Guam day in and day out through the 23^rd, two days after the Marines and the Army Infantry invaded Guam.

1945: After spending three weeks in Pearl Harbor, the men lined up on the decks of the Boston on July 2^nd as she maneuvered out of the naval base and headed west toward Japan.  By the 9^th, the Big B made it to the anchorage at Eniwetok. On July 12, they left the lagoon in the company of the new cruiser St. Paul and four other ships.  As they steam west, they meet up with a large service group of tankers and oilers and together they steam toward Japan.  On July 20, they finally meet up with the Task Force again (now Task Force 38 under Halsey’s command)

American search planes finally spotted his fleet at 1615 hours (4:15).  Admiral Mitscher ordered all carriers to unleash their fighters.  The enemy was more than two hundred miles away.

Mitscher knew that it was too late in the day to launch this strike, that the pilots would barely have enough gas to reach the Japanese fleet and return to their carriers. But he also knew that he had a golden opportunity to devastate the enemy fleet – which now had less than 100 planes to protect it.  Not an easy decision – but the right one  -   he knew he would lose planes and pilots in this attack.

The carrier pilots located the enemy fleet just before dark (1845 hrs (6:45)).  They attacked and sank the carrier Hiyo, heavily damaged two other carriers, two cruisers, and several oilers and tankers.

By 2045 hours, the first returning planes were picked up by the picket ships’ radar.  In the pitch darkness of a moonless Pacific night, Admiral Mitscher ordered all ships to turn their spotlights towards the nearest carrier and flip the switches.  Returning planes sputtered out of gas and crashed into the sea.  Others struggled to land on the nearest carrier in the dark  -  only a few of the pilots were trained in night landings  -  and there was chaos as some planes crashed on or near the carriers.  About one hundred planes never made it back that night.

On June 21, the ships continue their pursuit of the Japanese fleet, all the while searching for downed airmen.  By day’s end, about one hundred fifty pilots and crewmen are fished out of the water.

The Battle of the Philippine Sea and the A-GO plan was a complete disaster for the Japanese Navy.  By the time they were able to escape beyond the reach of Task Force 58’s ships on June 21, they had lost one third of their carriers and all but 36 of their aircraft.

The two fleets would tangle again four months later once again in the Philippine Sea.

The Japanese carriers were too far away from the Americans (more than 350 miles) for their pilots to attack and return to refuel, so the plan was for planes to bomb American ships, land on Guam, refuel, and drop more bombs on their return.  Throughout the morning, wave after wave of Japanese Zeroes approached the Americans.  They were met with experienced and organized carrier pilot Combat Patrol groups that engaged them in spectacular dogfights.  All day long, the men aboard the Task Force ships watched planes and pieces of planes drop, twist and burn into the sea around them.  Most Zeroes never got near the ships, but those that did evade the dogfights were met with curtains of steel thrown up by the ships.  The few lucky ones to make it past the ships were out of gas and headed for Guam  -  only to encounter fighter groups sweeping the airfields.

By the time the sun set, the Japanese Navy had lost  265 planes and pilots. The day quickly came to be known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot.  US losses were 27 pilots and crewmembers.  An additional 50 or so land-based planes were destroyed on the ground on Guam.

Other losses for the day: 27 sailors and 4 officers died or were wounded on American ships.  3,000 Japanese sailors and two aircraft carriers perished after being torpedoed by American submarines that had detected the movement of the Japanese Fleet earlier that morning.

On June 14, while the Boston and the ships of task groups 58.1 and 58.4 steamed north to raid the airbases on Iwo and Chichi Jima,  The Japanese Combined Fleet began steaming north and east into the Philippines en route to engage the Americans off the Marianas.

After attacking the Jimas in bad weather on the 15^th and 16^th, the Americans were ordered to meet up with the rest of the fleet east of Saipan and Tinian. On the morning of June 18, all four task groups, and an additional “Battle Line” group of battleships and cruisers, formed up into a large Battle Formation. The Japanese Fleet was headed their way!

On June 19, at first light began the three-day naval battle known as the Battle of the Philippine Sea.  When the sun set on the 21^st, the balance of power in the Pacific had flipped from Japanese Supremacy to American Naval Superiority.

I will spend a little time ASAP talking about the action of June 19-21.  It is an incredible story, and it includes the Marianas Turkey Shoot and the reduction of one third of the Japanese Fleet.

1944: After two weeks anchored in Majuro, the ships of Task Force 58 begin to leave the lagoon at first light on June 6, for the beginning of Operation Forager -  the invasion of strategic islands in the Marianas – and the retaking of Guam from the enemy. The Japanese had strategic airfields on Tinian and Saipan, and had captured the fine airstrip at Orote Field when they invaded Guam on Dec. 8, 1941.

The Boston formed up with Jocko Clark’s Task Group 58.1.  The group consisted of  four aircraft carriers of Carrier Division 5 and the cruisers of Cruiser Division 10 (Boston was the flagship). The four carriers and six cruisers were flanked and screened by fourteen destroyers (DesRon6 and DesRon46).  This impressive flotilla began steaming west towards the Marianas, accompanying three other task groups similarly equipped.

1945: The Boston raises anchor on June 1^st and departs California.  She steams to Hawaii to Pearl Harbor, which she enters on June 7, and remains there until July 2^nd, preparing to re-enter the fray in the lead-up to the planned Invasion of Japan.