Operation Vengeance

On April 18th 1943 a group of 18 American fighters, piloted by a hand picked group of airmen was sent to find and shoot down the airplane transporting Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Yamamoto was the Commander of the combined fleet of the Japanese Imperial Navy as well as the man responsible for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Codenamed Operation Vengeance, the attempt to kill Yamamoto is one of the most fascinating stories of World War.

After the final defeat of the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal in 1943, Yamamoto decided to review the Japanese positions in the Solomon Islands. His plans, including details like when and where he would be, as well as the number and types of planes which would be accompanying him, were intercepted and decoded by the Americans on April 14th of 1943.

The itinerary suggested that Yamamoto would be flying in a medium bomber, escorted by six Mitsubishis Zero fighters in the vicinity of the island of Bougainville the morning of April 18th. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was personally notified of this intelligence and asked for permission to kill Yamamoto. Roosevelt gave his approval, and Admiral Nimitz authorized the mission on April 17th.

The mission was going to be a difficult one, requiring the Americans to avoid detection while flying a distance of almost 450 miles. This meant that it constituted the longest fighter intercept mission of the war. Eighteen US Army P-38G’s were selected for the task, and headed by Major John Mitchell, they left at exactly 7:25 in the morning of April 18th. Ironically, April 18th was the one year anniversary of the Doolittle Bombing Raid, as well as Easter Sunday.

Despite urgings by local commanders to cancel the trip for fear of ambush, Yamamoto’s planes took off as scheduled. So skillfully was the plan laid out and executed by Major Mitchell and the American pilots, that the American his force arrived at the intercept point exactly one minute ahead of schedule, just as Yamamoto’s aircraft descended into view.

Though a brief dogfight did occur and one American pilot was killed in the action, the bomber with Yamamoto inside was shot down, crashing into the jungle and killing all inside. Yamamoto’s death was an enormous blow to the Japanese. The moral loss alone was incalculable, as well as a serious loss to the Japanese high command. Not only beloved by the Japanese people, Yamamoto was arguably the most able of all the Japanese commanders.

The success of Operation Vengeance heralded the American success which was to meet the continued Americans offensive in the Pacific Theatre of World War Two. The operation also stands out as an effective and controversial moment in American military history. Was Yamamoto killed in a military action or purposefully assassinated, an action which would be in direct conflict from the American policy of not singling out foreign leaders as targets to be eliminated?