End of the War
Capturing the Marianas, which was allowed by the Battle of the Philippine Sea, let the Americans establish bases for their new B-29 bombers.
"One night in March 1945 some 300 B-29s, loaded with incendiaries, flew up to Japan from the Marianas to burn out the heart of Tokyo. They set fires which leveled 15.8 square miles of the most densely populated area on earth. By the next morning at least 100,000 people were dead and more than 1,000,000 were homeless. It was probably the worst fire in history."
- D-Days of the Pacific by Donald L. Miller
"Although the Shidenkai pilots did their best to bring down the B-29s flying from Okinawa and Saipan, they were unable to prevent the destruction of the factories that produced aircraft and spare parts for their fighters. On March 1945, the 343rd Air Group had eighty planes; in May they were down to fifty planes, and in july that number had been whittled down to fewer than thirty fighters."
- The Last Zero Fighter by Dan King
Submarines based in the Marianas helped attack Japanese merchant ships to stop Japanese shipping of supplies to and from Japan. B-29s also laid mines to help.
"'Japan was perfect for mining' explains John Jennings. 'It had very shallow waters. The navy provided the mines. Some were 1,000 pounds, some 2,000 pounds, and would be dropped from 5,500 to 7,500 feet at night with parachutes.' There were three types of mines: magnetic, pressure, and acoustic, and they were almost impossible 'to sweep,' adds Fiske Hanley. 'They lay on the bottom of these shallow waterways and would listen for nosies, or feel pressure, of for the magnetic influence from a ship. They were set so they might go off on the first ship to go over them or the tenth. They were devilish things.'"
- D-Days of the Pacific by Donald L. Miller
"According to Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, Jr., commander of the Pacific Fleet submarine force, American submarines sank a total of 1,256 Japanese ships, 167 combatant ships, including four carriers, and over 1,000 tankers, transport, and cargo ships. Eight million tons of Japaneses merchant shipping was sunk in the war, over half of it by American submarines, and most of the rest by by bombers and underwater mines."
- D-Days of the Pacific by Donald L. Miller
The Americans were able to liberate the Philippines with its advantages.
"If the prospects of a Japanese victory after the loss of Saipan were hopeless, as many leaders realized, they declined to zero by December 1944, when the great Battle of Leyte Gulf had been lost, Leyte itself overrun, and the Japanese merchant navy reduced to a mere skeleton."
- Leyte by Samuel Eliot Morison
"Much of the logistics for the Okinawa invasion came from Leyte. But MacArthur's self-promoting return to the Philippines did in fact have strategic and political advantages, so I think it was inevitable."
- Barrett Tillman
By dropping the atomic bombs, launched from the Mariana B-29 bases, the Americans were able to convince the Japanese that they would lose, forcing their surrender.
"My god, what have we done?"
- Enola Gay crew member Bob Lewis
"In Japan the air division responsible for Hiroshima reported in part that 'a violent, large, special-type bomb, giving the appearance of magnesium, was dropped over the city center of the city...there was a blinding flash and a violent blast.'"
- Whirlwind by Barrett Tillman