Following the raid, a member of the Japanese garrison on Saipan, wrote in his diary: “For two hours, enemy planes ran amuck and finally left leisurely amidst the unparalleledly inaccurate antiaircraft fire. All we could do was watch helplessly.”
Over the next two days, bombers hit the islands and shipping in the area with no letup. There was a fatalistic diary entry by one of the Tinian troops: “Now begins our cave life.” Another soldier wrote of the ineffectual antiaircraft fire—“not one hit out of a thousand shots”—and reported that “the Naval Air Group has taken to its heels.” Yet another diarist was indignant, too: “The naval aviators are robbers.... When they ran off to the mountains they stole Army provisions.”
Fast battleships from Task Force 58 joined the bombardment from long range on 13 June. Their fires, analysts later said, were “ineffective” and “misdirected” at soft targets rather than at the concealed gun positions ringing the island. But, as an element in the cumulative psychological and physical toll on soldiers and civilians alike, harassing fires of this nature were not inconsiderable.
Over the next six weeks, the effort to degrade and destroy the defenses and garrison of Tinian escalated. On 18 June, Navy Task Force 52, commanded by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, added its guns to the mission. Air strikes involving carrier planes and Army P-47s were ordered. From 28 June until the Tinian landing on 24 July, massed artillery battalions, firing from Saipan’s southern shore, poured thousands of tons of steel into the island. By mid-July, 13 battalions were engaged in the mission, firing 160 guns—105s and Long Tom 155s—around the clock. The six battalions of the XXIV Corps Artillery alone undertook 1,509 fire missions in that period, firing 24,536 rounds.
The precise effect of the artillery fires from Saipan will never be known, but it is reasonable to assume there were many scenes of the kind retired Brigadier General Frederick Karch described in his oral history memoir. He was a young major, serving as operations officer for an artillery regiment—the 14th Marines—during the Tinian campaign, and he recalled:
I remember going by a [Japanese] machine gun crew. They had been trying to get to a firing position and had been caught by the artillery barrage, apparently, and they were laid out just like a school solution, with each man carrying his particular portion of the gun crew’s equipment. And that was where they had died in a very fine situation, except they were on the wrong side of the barrage.
During the two weeks from 26 June to 9 July, the cruisers Indianapolis, Birmingham, and Montpelier hit the island daily. Their fires were supplemented in the week preceding Jig Day (the D-day designation for Tinian) by the battleships Colorado, Tennessee, and California; the cruisers Louisville, Cleveland, and New Orleans; 16 destroyers; and dozens of supporting vessels firing a variety of ordnance ranging from white phosphorous aimed at wooded areas around the Japanese command post on Mount Lasso to 40mm fire and rocket barrages by LCIs (landing craft, infantry) directed at caves and other close-in targets.
[Sidebar ([page 18])]:
Aerial Reconnaissance and Photography
In the months leading up to the invasion, intensive reconnaissance was undertaken. The first aerial photos of 1944 had been acquired back in February when U.S. carrier planes attacked Saipan. Others were obtained in April and May by photo planes based at Eniwetok. These early photographs were of little use to invasion planners. Their quality was poor and many were taken at angles that distorted the terrain.