December 26, 1942, 04:00 hours - Aboard TNS San Jacinto, 175 NM northeast of Truk Atoll, Caroline Islands
It had taken another two days to work out all the details, then another three days of joint exercises to work out the kinks in the final plan. The circuitous route required to avoid tipping off the Japanese had needed another ten days. Aboard the Texan ships, there had been a somber all-faiths service on the 21st in memory of the Christmas Sunday attacks in 1940, then Christmas celebrations with their American counterparts on the 25th. But now, the time for war had returned.
The combined Texan / American force sailed in three groups, each just visible to the others, to allow room for flight operations. First to launch were San Jacinto’s Hailstorm dive bombers, along with Tampico’s Harpoon torpedo bombers, all loaded with a mix of fragmentation and thermobaric bombs, because their job was to attack the many airfields in the atoll, to suppress the air defenses. They were escorted by roughly half of each carrier’s Hurricane fighters. The attack was timed to hit just at dawn.
About thirty minutes after the first wave headed for Truk, the second wave launched from Enterprise and Saratoga, the TBF Avengers and SBD Dauntlesses loaded with torpedos and armor-piercing bombs, respectively. To them would go the honor of the first strike against the Japanese fleet in the atoll.
After another thirty minutes, a third wave was launched, again from San Jacinto and Tampico, using the other half of their striking forces. They, too, were armed for anti-shipping work, to clean up anything the Americans might have missed. In dividing their striking forces the way they did, the Texans were unknowingly duplicating the Japanese carrier strike doctrine, each carrier in a pair providing half of a combined strike group to minimize launching time.
The two remaining carriers, William B. Travis and James Bowie, would provide the Combat Air Patrol and scouting planes for the fleet. Davy Crockett had been left behind to provide air support for the ground forces on Guadalcanal.
There was one more attack force headed for the Japanese island fortress. Several hours earlier, Willis Lee’s battleships, along with Ignacio de Zavala’s First Cruiser Division, the four Galveston class armored cruisers, had parted company with the carriers and were now running at flank speed toward Truk. If things went to plan, they would arrive between the second and third waves of the air assault, ready to apply their own special brand of pain to the enemy.
Copyright 2025, D.A. Brock
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