![]() ![]() ![]() US Navy heavy cruiser USS Canberra, right foreground, and light cruiser Houston, right background, are towed toward Ulithi after being torpedoed, on October 18, 1944. Shigeru Fukudome, commander of the Sixth Base Air Force, said later. "Our fighters were nothing but so many eggs thrown at the stone wall of the indomitable enemy formation," Vice Adm. Japanese attempts to attack the carriers were fruitless, with 42 more Japanese planes shot down trying to conduct attack runs. By the end of the first strike, one-third of the fighters from Japan's Sixth Base Air Force were destroyed while 48 US planes were lost. US planes battled Japanese aircraft from Formosa and their reinforcements from other Japanese-held islands. US carrier aircraft swarmed over airfields on Formosa, destroying runways, hangars, and barracks. On the first day alone, US planes flew 1,378 sorties The crux of the operation began on October 12. The Japanese, understanding that the core of the US Navy's strength in the Pacific was now nearby, initiated the aerial component of Sho-1 and Sho-2. ![]() US NavyĪfter its diversionary strikes on Okinawa on October 10, TF 38 sailed south and struck Luzon to further obscure its true intentions. A US Navy Grumman F6F Hellcat on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington before a raid on Formosa on October 12, 1944. ![]()
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