Part Six: Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron VD-Three - Second Deployment in World War II

In July 1944, LCDR. Jack Eady, USN was ordered to duty as commanding officer of Fleet ir Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron, then being placed back into operation for the second time during World War II.

Under LCDR. Jack Eady, the reformed Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron was placed into operation at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Miramar, California.

During the months July to Nov. 1944, the Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron went through a training-familiarization period at Miramar, including the assembly and packing of the squadron's basic components that were required for their mission assignment overseas in the Pacific Ocean area as a self supporting aircraft squadron of eight PB4Y-1P (photo Liberator) airplanes.

In Nov. 1944 the ground support personnel of Fleet Air Photographic-Reconnaissance Squadron VD-Three were transported from San Diego to Pearl Harbor on a Dutch cargo ship which, upon arrival in the Hawaiian Islands, moored at the docks on the west side of Pearl Harbor, where the ships were unloaded and the squadrons equipment and supplies were stored in a compound nearby the dock area.

The squadron personnel were transferred from the ship to the U.S. Naval Air Station, Barbers Point where they rejoined the officers and enlisted men who had flown the VD-Three Squadron PB4Y-1P Liberators from NAS Miramar to Barbers Point.

The Fleet Air Photographic-Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron remained at NAS Barbers Point, T.H. from Nov. 1944 to late April 1945 when orders were received for the re-organization of the Fleet Air Photographic-Reconnaissance into Fleet Air Photographic Group one, which included the Fleet Air Photo-Recon VD-Three Squadron, and Photographic Interpretation Squadron One.

LCDR. Jack Eady, USN became the commander of Fleet Air Photo Group One. LT. George Carroll, USN was designated as photo group one operations officer; LCDR. John Hubbard USNR, its ACI officer; LTJG Owen Kane, SC, USNR, its supply officer; and LCDR. Claude Lindsay, MC, USNR as its medical officer.

LT Tom Lloyd, USNR became the commanding officer of the Fleet Air Photographic-Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron with approximately 40 officers and 120 enlisted men.

LCDR. Frank G. Evans, USNR was the commanding officer of the photographic interpretation squadron one, which was composed of some 44 officers and about 220 enlisted men.

On April 26, 1945 the ground officer and enlisted men of Fleet Air Photographic Group One at Pearl Harbor went aboard the S.S. Santa Monica a combination cargo and personnel ship, which departed from Pearl Harbor bound for Okinawa.

Shortly after leaving Pearl Harbor the S.S. Santa Monica joined a fifteen ship convoy which proceeded through the Pacific to the Eniwetok Atoll where the convoy spent a couple of days at anchor in the roadstead, then departing from Eniwetok to the Ulithi Atoll where the fifteen ship convoy rested at anchor for a period of about two weeks awaiting sailing orders to Okinawa.

The fifteen ship convoy departed from the Ulithi roadstead on or about May 20th bound for Okinawa where the convoy arrived early on Sunday morning of May 27, 1945, and after the two leading ships of the convoy had entered the

Nakagusuku Wan Bay, the entire area came under a Kamikaze attack during which thirteen of the ships in the convoy turned around and headed to the Ocean area southeast of Okinawa where they circled around for seven days when they proceeded to enter the Nakagusuku Wan anchorage area where they dropped their anchors and awaited orders to unload their cargo of personnel and equipment.

Several days passed before orders were received to unload the ships, due mainly to the slow progress of our fighting forces on the island of Okinawa, caused by a two week heavy rain period which bogged down everything that crawled or walked on land.

From the decks of the S.S. Santa Monica we could see a continuous line of vehicles, some two to three miles long, stalled in the mud on the road leading from the bay to the top of the hill, west of our anchorage. This line of stalled vehicles were of almost every kind used by land forces in war time: tanks, amtracks, weapons carriers, personnel carriers, jeeps, command cars, artillary gun carriers, ambulances, etc.

So after several days swinging around the anchor in the roadstead, we got orders to disembark, whereupon all officers and enlisted men with their landing packs on their back and weapons carried, went over the side of the ship and down, hand over hand on a cargo net and onto a floating barge consisting of some 16 to 20 four by four steel tanks bolted together, which was pushed through the water by two large size outboard motor units mounted on the rear end of this float barge contraption.

This barge full of standing officers and men was pushed through the bay water to a floating pier where all of the officers and men went ashore and marched about two miles to an open area called Acorn 29 AWASE temporary camp area.

The Acorn 29 organization at Okinawa was a Naval service group which was designed for the purpose of furnishing the necessary support services to the various Naval units that were to be in operation ahsore under the command of Fleet Air Wing One.

Acorn 29 service facilities included: living quarters (tents), food preparation and serving facilities, sanitation, fresh water purification, construction of temporary buildings, construction of an air field, roads, aviation and motor fuel storage and dispensing facilities, maintenance facilities for aircraft and motor vehicles, fire arms-ammunition storage-issue, fire fighting equipment, communication facilities, medical-field hospital facilities, etc.

The Acorn 29 command was a very large operation covering a wide range of services made possible by several ship loads of equipment, material, supplies and several thousand officers and enlisted personnel.

The most prominent was the Seabee construction battalion unit, which had all sort and sizes of equipment that was operated around the clock seven days a week, even refueling many of their motor operated equipment units while the grader-bull dozer-fork lift or whatever was in operation, with the refueling tank truck and its crew moving side by side while still performing their specialized job.

The only time that the seabee construction machines were stopped was at night when an air raid alert was sounded, as they, like all other units, would turn off all lights and await the all clear siren.

Each officer and enlisted man in the units ashore at the Acorn 29 AWASE camp had to unpack his back pack, erect his pup tent, and eat his meals from a parafin coated cardboard box of "K" rations, while the Acorn 29 command was getting its basic camp equipment off of the ship, transported to the camp area, and assembled or erected for service.

After we had been in the Acorn 29 AWASE camp for about one week, tents were delivered and erected, including a large mess tent, with a field kitchen and food service equipment. A portable medical unit also showed up, all combining to make living conditions some what better than the pup tents and boxes of "K" rations alone.

During our first 10 days or so at the AWASE camp, we had several air raid alerts, during which most of the bombing was several miles from our camp, however we could see the Japanese airplanes which usually were one or two planes making a bombing attack at a very high altitude of 15,000 to 20,000 feet, and of course we could hear air antiaircraft guns firing at the Japanese bombers.

Also during this period, we could see the Army and Marine fighting units as they were engaged in battle with small goups of Japanese who were holed up in some caves on a large hill about 1-1/2 miles from our AWASE camp.

In our unit at the Acorn 29 AWASE camp we had several radios by which we monitored the command channel, which were engaged in the battle area on and around the Okinawa Island area.

There were two channels which were interesting to listen to, one which covered the battleships-heavy cruiser salvo shelling of the Japanese positions on the island during which the small observation airplane pilot-observer was directing the firing ships' gunfire on the Japanese targets. Each time that the battleships fired their salvo of twelve 14" shells at a Japanese target, when it hit and exploded, we who were some five to ten miles from the explosion, could hear the aerial observer talking to the firing ship, then hear the exploding shells at the target and feel the island land move as if a small earthquake had hit the area.

One morning about 10am, the pilot-observer was directing the gunfire from three battleships to a Japanese ammunition storage area near the village of Naha, some 10-12 miles from our AWASE camp, when they zeroed in on the Japanese ammo dump. All hell broke loose from a continuation of heavy explosions for a period of about an hour.

The pilot-observer repeated his observation to the battleship, "My God, you hit the jackpot; all hell is blowing up."

Another interesting radio communication channel was the night fighters from the task force aircraft carriers who were operating north of Okinawa where they were in flight on guard of the airways between the Island of Okinawa and the Japanese Island of Kyushu.

One night the carrier command radar reported that there was a flight of 96 Japanese airplanes headed south toward Okinawa. Three carriers launched their night fighters who engaged the Japanese in a night attack during which 92 of the Japanese planes were either shot down or forced to return to the Japanese bases on Kyushu.

After that particular night fighter attack by our aircraft carriers north of Okinawa, we didn't get much Japanese aircraft movement toward Okinawa.

After we had been in the Acorn 29 AWASE camp for about two weeks, one morning around 9:30am the air raid sirens where sounded and shortly thereafter, a great number of the ships at anchor in the northern end of the anchorage at Nakagusuku Wan, started firing their antiaircraft guns--mainly 3" and 1.1 guns, when some of the antiaircraft shells started to explode in the air about 1/2 mile or so north of our camp.

The writer was in a meeting in a tent with some six to eight officers when we heard the air raid sirens and the exploding antiaircraft shells which caused us to get out of that tent in a hurry. We glanced up into the sky just north of our camp where in flight at about 500 feet altitude was a Japanese zero heading directly toward out camp, antiaircraft burst was all around him--in front--behind--below and above him. Several of us officers immediately hollered in as loud a voice as possible "Hit the deck."

The writer hit the ground belly down in a small drainage ditch at the side of the tent, where he looked up into the sky at the time when the Japanese Zero airplane flew directly over our camp with the shells from our ships were bursting above our camp. When I saw dust fly from the ground some 10 to 20 feet away, it caused me to attempt to make that shallow ditch another foot or so deeper with my body.

As the Japanese zero airplane continued its flight south of our camp, the antiaircraft bursts followed him. The Japanese Zero airplanes either were shot down or the pilot crash dived the airplane into the stern end of an LST which was tied up to a float pier about one mile south of our camp.

At the time of the Japanese zero flying over our AWASE camp and all of those antiaircraft shells exploding over us, not a single injury occurred to any of the 2500 people that were in our camp area that morning.

One thing that this incident did was to cause any officer or enlisted man who didn't have a fox hole to get one. You can bet your bottom dollar that by night time that day every one in the camp area had a fox hole of some sort.

Another experience we had at the Acorn 29 AWASE camp was in coping with armed Japanese soldiers' attempt to infiltrate into our camp area.

Shortly after the various military units' arrival at the Acorn 29 AWASE camp, a number of our enlisted men were placed on the outer boundaries as armed patrol under the supervision of the days duty officer and his roving patrol force, because we had been alerted to the fact that there was a war going on, and that there were some small pockets of Japanese soldiers still in the hills just above our camp area.

One morning about 9am one of our perimeter patrolmen spotted something moving in the tall swamp weeds a few hundred yards north of our camp, so he fired three or four rounds from his carbine at the object which disappeared. He then hollered for help, of course his carbine firing and call for help bringing plenty in a hurry. Just in a few minutes there were some 20 to 30 officers and men all armed who got to the guard who sounded the alert, among the officers being one of our Japanese interpreters who spoke Japanese. The interpreter, suspecting that the object which seemed to be in a crouched position in the the weeds, was a Japanese person, ordered the Japanese out of the weeds into the open field some 100 or more feet from the nearest person in the armed group.

The Japanese soldier complied with the order, stood up and moved out of the weeds some 10 to 15 feet in the clear. Our interpreter told him "Halt, stand where you are; take off your kimono."

The Japanese soldier took off his outer gament which was a long coat or a kimono, which he dropped on the ground beside him. Our interpreter observed that this person had some sort of a harness on over his shoulders and attached to the harness were what appeared to be hand grenades. Out interpreter ordered that he loosen his harness and gently drop his load on the ground and then take ten steps toward the interpreter, who, by the way, was using a megaphone or bullhorn.

After the Japanese soldier had gently dropped his harness load with the hand grenades, he was ordered to advance another ten steps with his hands clasped over the top of his head, which he did. At that point two of our roving armed patrol

approached the naked Japanese from the side and took him into our custody. Other armed patrol picked up his kimono which was returned to him and he was ordered to the kimono on. Our ordnance people took charge of disposing of the six hand grenades that the Japanese soldier was carying in his harness under his kimono. Later in the day this Japanese prisoner was taken by the U.S. Army military prisoner patrol force to the Japanese prisoner camp up on the north end of the Island of Okinawa.

After the Fleet Air Photo Interpretation Unit had been at the Acron 29 AWASE camp for about three or four days living on "K" rations, no hot food or drinks, CDR. Evans and some of his officers and enlisted men somehow obtained several pounds of coffee from some of the ships and a couple of coffee pots, but as we had no cooking stove, and there wasn't any firewood available, CDR. Evans and his people went to one of the aircraft dumps where they pilfered a wing tank and a metal impeller housing section, some copper tubing from some of the wrecked Army-Navy-Marine airplane that had been disposed of in the dump.

CDR. Evans and his people installed the wing tank up in a small tree about 10 feet above the ground and filled the tank with diesel fuel oil. From the tank they ran a copper tube down to and under the airplane impeller case which they had supported about a foot above the ground on rocks, the end of the copper tube had been flattened to spray the diesel fuel oil under the impeller case.

CDR. Evans and his people then placed a couple of one gallon coffee pots filled with water and coffee, on the top side of the impeller case and ignited the diesel fuel oil under the impeller case to heat the unit as a hot plate to bring their coffee pots to boiling for their hot coffee.

The units were working fine, their coffee pots starting to boil when after about five minutes of heating, the impeller case, which was cast magnesium metal, which, upon reaching high temperature from the diesel oil fire, exploded with a helluva bang, throwing hot metal in all directions, setting several nearby pup tents on fire, and also a couple of excelsior filled packing boxes with delicate instruments catching fire.

CDR. Evans and his people plus some 50 men nearby, using their back pack hand shovels, attempted to put out the burning magnesium metal fragments, burning pup tents and the excelsior packed instrument boxes.

Needless to say, that was the end of anyone in the Acorn 29 AWASE camp area starting any fire unless they had the approval of the Acorn 29 AWASE camp commander.

A few days after this incident, the Seabee battalion cooks and bakers got a field kitchen into operation where all hands got hot coffee and hot soup, and a few days later we got hot "C" rations, which were enjoyed by all hands out in the open area of our camp.

On or about 1 July 1945 base facilities were under construction by the Acorn 29 seabees at the Yontan Air Field area on the west side of the Island of Okinawa for servicing Fleet Air Photo Group One, which included living quarters and messing facilities and aircraft maintenance facilities not only for our photo group one, but also facilities for the Fleet Air Wing one shore based PB4Y-1 bombing patrol squadrons.

The original plans called for Acorn 29 support group to provide the necessary facilities for the Fleet Air Bomber-Patrol Squadrons, Fleet Air Photo Group One and other Fleet Air Wing Operational Groups at the Yonabaru Air Base that was to be constructed at the south end of the Nakagusuku Wan roadstead.

Due to the heavy rains for almost three weeks night and day from about 10 May to 1 June 1945, which had made the roads on Okinawa surging rivers of mud where our military vehicles were mired down bumper to bumper for several miles, this condition plus frequent antiaircraft barrages at the Japanese aircraft that were making their appearance at frequent intervals, caused several weeks delay for Acorn 29 to get their men and equipment to the Yonabaru site.

Cargo-personnel ships were unloaded as soon as the Port Director, Captain MacKey, USN gave his approval for the units to be temporarily quartered at the AWASE site, therefore over a period of six to eight weeks, there were quite a number of Naval units arriving and departing to and from the Acorn 29 AWASE camp area until the air base at Yonabaree had been completed in late Aug. 1945.

While the fleet air photo group one people were still at the temporary Acorn 29 AWASE camp, a small group of officers from the AWASE camp was sent to an old Okinawan village about two miles from the AWASE camp for the purpose of inspection of the old native village conditions after the village had been sprayed from the air daily for about a week. The writer, LT. George Carroll USN was one of the officers in the inspection party.

The native Okinawans had been removed by our Army-Marine forces early in their advance to the interior of the island in April-May, 1944. The natives were taken to the prisoner camps up on the north end of the island.

This old native Okinawan village was a combination of native living quarters all connected together forming a square composed of about 10 acres with an open court yard in its center. The roofs of the living quarters were long swamp grass and tree foliage that had been piled up on the roof area for many centuries, thus, this roof material was from two to three feet thick and was loaded with rats, mice, ticks bird nests, etc. Also the compound had several open to the air collection basins for the human fertilizer that was dumped daily by the native Okinawans by carrying their human waste in a bucket to their collection basin. There were a number of dogs and pigs running loose in the area, flies by the millions, and an odor of an over ripe "Chick Sales" outhouse.

The inspection party of Naval officers didn't tarry long in that native village. The aerial spraying had only done a partial job, there were piles of dead flies several inches thick and still lots of live ones flying around.

The inspection officers all recommended that the native Okinawan village be burned to the ground, which was done a day or so later by our seabee sanitation group that was ordered to destroy the village by the island commander, General Buckner, USA at that time.

Around the middle of June 1945, one morning about 10am, when a personnel carrier truck arrived at our Acorn 29 AWASE camp and the officer who got out of the truck was a suprise to us, he was my brother LTJG. Arthur J. Carroll, USN who had orders at his request to join Fleet Air Photo Group One at Okinawa as photo officer.

Around the first of July 1945 the Seabee consruction battalion had enough camp areas cleared and tent equipment available at the Yontan Air Base on the west side of the island, so we started moving our Fleet Air-Photo Group One, VD-Three Squadron, and photo-interpretation Squadron One from the Acorn 29 AWASE camp to the temporary Fleet Air Wing One camp area at Yontan.

Just about 1/2 mile east of the Yontan air base we built a temporary photo laboratory, about a 40 X 60 feet square wood structure over a poured concrete base, and along two sides of this photo lab were four of the two wheel photo lab trailers that were used for the development of the aerial roll films and the printing of the aerial roll film negatives.

The center building was used for the washing and drying of the aerial films, identification and marking of the aerial roll film negatives, washing and drying of the photo prints, mixing of the chemical solutions, storage of photo supplies, etc, maintenance of the aerial camera, film magazines, etc.

We had our own fresh water system that furnished all the fresh water that was needed by the photo lab and the group personnel who had their tent quarters close by in the photo lab area.

We had two Chrysler diesel power pumps located about 600 feet from the photo lab, at the base of a hill where we found a fresh water spring that needed only minor treatment for our camp and photo lab requirements.

About one week after we had the two Chrysler pumps in operation, one of our maintenance mechanics went down to check and service the Chrysler pump, and upon arrival at the pumps he found that he had two unwanted visitors: Two fat pit viper snakes near the two pumps, he, being armed with a carbine, promptly shot both snakes.

The sound of his firing of the carbine down below the hill at the Chrysler pump location brought men from the photo lab to his aid, as most of our personnel remembered the Japanese soldier with the hand grenades who we had caught just a few weeks back at our Acorn 29 AWASE camp before we moved to our Yontan site, therefore anyone firing his carbine or pistol in or near the camp area got lots of attention in a hurry, because all of our personnel had been told many times that we were in an active war area and that the surrounding hills were still infected by our enemy.

The Fleet Air Wing one, shore based detachments at the Fleet Air Base at Yontan and Yonabaru on Okinawa in 1945, were directly under Captain Horace Butterfield, USN, a staff officer from Commander Fleet Air Wing One, who had their headquarters on the flagship USS CURTISS.

Fleet air photographic Reconnaissance Group One, with Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron, Photographic Interpretation Squadron One and U.S. Marine Corps Photographic Reconnaissance VMD-254 operated from their temporary Yontan Air Base, July, August and September 1945.

Commander Jack Eady, USN was the Commander of Fleet Air Photo Group One, with a small staff of eight officers. Lieutenant Thomas Lloyd, USNR, was the commanding officer of Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron, with ten PB4Y-1P (photo Liberator) airplanes. Lieutenant Commander Frank Evans, USNR, was the commanding officer of the Photographic Interpretation Squadron One. The U.S. Marine Corps VMD-254 Squadron had six Grumman F6F5P (photo fighter) airplanes, six to eight officers and about 50 enlisted men.

On 5 July 1945, Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron of ten PB4Y-1P (photo Liberator) airplanes landed at the Yontan air field, Okinawa, after their flight from NAS Barbers Point, T.H., with staging stops at Johnson Island, Kwajalein Island and Guam.

Early in July 1945, Commander Jack Eady USN with his small staff set up the operational headquarters of Fleet Air Photo Group One in a tent on the east side of the Yontan air strip.

Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron occupied two tents adjacent to Fleet Air Photo Group One.

Photographic Interpretation Squadron One had four or five tents, plus the photographic laboratory set up, about 1/2 mile east of the Yontan Air Field.

The Marine Corps VMD-254 Squadron was headquarted in tents on the west side of the Yontan Air Field.

By the 7th of July 1945 Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance Group One was in full operation.

Commander Fleet Air Photo-Recon Group One was on the receiving end of coded dispatches designating the photographic-Reconnaissance coverage of Japanese Island areas that was needed by the Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, Intelligence Staff of Admiral Nimitz at their headquarters on Guam.

Upon receipt of the coded dispatches, our Fleet Air Wing One decoding officers would decode them into our english operation order. CDR. Eady and his staff, based on the op order, would study the target area to be covered, and then we would prepare and issue the necessary operation orders to the C. O. of VD-Three Squadron and the C. O. of Photo Interpretation Recon One. We would schedule the operation briefing time for the crews of the photo planes which were scheduled to make the flight to and from the assigned target, at the same time always having a standby PB4Y-1P Liberator crew at the briefing.

The U.S. Army Air Force at Kadena Air Field, five or six miles south of Yontan, had a group of Air Force Bombers and photo planes, their bombing and photographic missions flown from Okinawa to the Japanese targets being co-ordinated by the staff officers of the Air Force Group and the staff officers of the Fleet Air Wing One and Photo Group One.

Most of the target areas that were being covered by the Air Force and the Navy-Marines squadron from Okinawa were certain areas on the Island of Kyushu. Therefore most of the allied forces bombing raids at various locations in the Japanese Islands noth of Okinawa were covered by aerial photographic reconnaissance photo planes from the U.S. Army Air Forces operating from the Army Air Force Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, or by the Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron or the U.S. Marine VMD-254 Squadron operating from the Yontan Air Field on Okinawa.

During the period of early July 1945 to mid-August 1945, there were many photo-recon flights made by the U.S. Army AIr Force, and the U.S. Navy-Marine photo planes.

The Air Force had a photo lab in a large moving van type vehicle at Kadena where their aerial films were processed.

The Navy-Marine aerial photos were processed at the Fleet Air Photo-Recon Group one photo lab under Photo Interpretation Squadron One, LTJG. Arthur Carroll, USN was the photographic officer in charge of this laboratory. Fleet Air Photo Group One had a standard practice of communications between the operations officers of Air Force and the Naval photo squadrons in order to completely cover the allied assault operations without duplicating each others coverage. Further, both aerial photo coverages by the Air Force and the Navy were processed by their laboratory crews, and the first phase interpretation from the aerial photos were made by the trained photo interpreters, maps, sketches, etc. were made along with marked photo prints showing all sorts of military intelligence information.

At 10am the next day following an aerial photographic-reconnaissance coverage of Japanese target areas, two prints of each photograph, maps, data sheets and a dupe negative, were sent from the Yontan Air Field via Naval Air Transport service "NATS," one classified package to the photo-recon section, Intelligence Group, Pacific Ocean Area, at Guam, and one classified package to the photo-recon intelligence group on the staff of General MacArthur in Manila.

During the period of early July to mid-August 1945, Fleet Air Photo-Recon VD-Three Squadron had a large number of photo flights over the Japanese Island of Kyushu, during which time they did not get any action from Japanese fighter aircraft. They did draw a high volume of anti-aircraft gun fire, most of which was way below and behind the altitude of the photo planes.

We unfortunately had one lone Japanese antiaircraft shell which burst near one of our VD-Three squadron photo planes at 20,000 feet when a piece of the shell penetrated the photo plane and hit one of the enlisted men causing a very severe injury from which the poor fellow died a day or so later. His remains were buried in the First Marine Cemetery on Okinawa by military ceremonies conducted by CDR. Eady, LT. Lloyd and a military chaplain with pall bearers from his VD-Three Squadron air mates. The ceremony was attended by a number of the fleet air photo group and VD-Three squadron officers and enlisted men.

The U.S. Marine Photo-Recon Squadron VMD-254 had a very unusual accident at the Yontan Air Field. One morning around 8am, an Air Force B-24 bomber loaded with several 500 lb. bombs, after taking off from the Kadena Air Force field, for some unknown reason, made an emergency landing at the Yontan Air Field, and was parked off to one side of the main landing-take off air strip and about 700 to 1000 feet from the south end of the Yontan Air Strip. A small group of military personnel was engaged in removing the bombs from the Air Force B-24 bomber.

About 9am one of the VMD-254 Squadron F6F-5P photo fighters was in the process of taking off from the Yontan Air Strip, and as it was gaining speed for its take off, one of the tires blew, causing the airplane to suddenly go off the runway where it hit the parked Air Force bomber causing two major bomb explosions, wrecking both the Marine F6F-5P and the B-24. Several of the men who were unloading the B-24 were killed and a number seriously injured.

The U.S. Marine Corps pilot of the F6F-5P somehow got out of his airplane and was reported to be running from the scene of the accident like a jack rabbit.

CDR. Jack Eady, LT. Hubbard and LT. Carroll were in the Fleet Air Photo Group One command tent on the east side of the Yontan Air Strip, about 1000 feet from the scene of the accident, when they were shaken by the two bomb explosions. There were no injuries to the Fleet Air Photo Group One, Fleet Air Photographic-Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron personnel who were in the tents or in the areas of operations on the east side of the Yontan Air Field during the accident, however several tents had some holes from flying metal from the bomb explosions.

During the last week of July and the first week of August 1945, the allied sea and Air Forces were really pounding the southern Japanese Islands of Kyushu, Nagoya and Honshu.

During this period, Admiral Halsey's Task Force Group was hitting the Japanese Kune Naval Base, where, by the 29th of July, the Japanese Navy ceased to exist. One report after Admiral Halsey's forces had torn the Japanese base apart, and sunk most of the immobilized Japanese fleet at Kune, was that the only way the Commander in Chief of the combined Japanese fleet could reach his cabin in his flagship, the light cruiser Oyodo, was in a diving suit.

During the period, late July and early August, 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces, and the U.S. Naval-Marine air squadrons operating from the Yontan Air Base and the Air Force from the Kadena Air Field, were conducting massive air bombing attacks on five target areas on the Japanese Island of Kyushu, during which the Air Force B-29 photographic reconnaissance airplanes and the Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three squadron PB4Y-1P (photo Liberator) airplanes were making daily photo reconnaissance flights over the bombed target areas for damage assessment purposes.

On one particular day, the U.S. Army Air Force and the U.S. Naval air squadrons flew some 500 bombers from the Yontan-Kadena Air Fields to their respective assigned Japanese target areas on Kyushu. The bombing airplanes started taking off from their air fields at 5am, made their flight to their target, dropping their bombs and returning to their Okinawa air fields around noon that day, which was shortly after the last group of Air Force bombers had taken off, so from 5am until late that evening, we had the airways between Okinawa and Kyushu filled with Air Force and Naval air squadron bombers, plus some 16 to 20 high altitude photographic reconnaissance airplanes covering the target areas on Kyushu.

Early in August 1945, Fleet Air Photo Group One received a coded dispatch, which, when decoded, contained instructions from Commander in Chief Pacific Ocean Area in a directive to the effect that no bombing or photographic aircraft were to approach any closer than 500 miles to Hiroshima.

This dispatch seemed very odd to us in Fleet Air Photo Group One, as our target assignments had been on the southern section of the Japanese Island of Kyushu, which was more than 500 miles to the Hiroshima area.

A few days later, we got the answer to that strange dispatch, President Harry S. Truman made the announcement to the world that the United States Air Force had dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which completely destroyed the city, reducing it to rubble.

The day after the atomic bomb explosion over Hiroshima, the U.S. Army Air Force B-29 photographic plane from the Kadena Air Field, Okinawa, made the first aerial photgraphs of the wrecked city of Hiroshima.

About one week later, the U.S. Army Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, which inflicted terrible damage to that city.

The day after the atomic bomb explosion over the city of Nagasaki, aerial photographs of that wrecked city were made by a U.S. Army Air Force B-29 photographic airplane and fleet air photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron PB4Y-1P (photo Liberator) airplane flying from Okinawa.

The photographic laboratory of Photographic Interpretation Squadron One, under LT. Arthur J. Carroll, had the only ice making machine in the Kadena-Yontan area of Okinawa. Just how this ice making machine got included in our equipment component leaving Pearl Harbor, no one seemed to know, however, Arthur Carroll made good use of his ice maker. Besides use of ice for photographic requirements, he had at time surplus quantities of ice not needed for aerial film processing which was used as a trading medium for goods and services from Naval-Marine-Army units in the area. In fact, there were people lined up waiting to get ice from the unit upon the approval of LT. Arthur Carroll, who traded surplus ice for all sorts of building materials and food items such as turkey, chicken, ham, beef, beer, etc.

During the months of July-August-September 1945, the Acorn 29 seabee battalion was very busy building a large Naval Air Base at the south end of Nakagusuku Wan, later named Buckner Bay, in honor of General Buckner U.S. Army, who was lost on Okinawa during the final battle phases with the Japanese forces near the south end of the Okinawa Island.

This Naval Air Base was named Yonabaru, and as this base took shape with a large number of quonset huts, Butler buildings, fenced in equipment-materials storage compounds, mess halls, operations headquarters buildings, wood floor tent covered living quarters, our Fleet Air Photo Group One supply officer LT. Owen Kane, USNR, had a large section of storage facilities at the Yonabaru Air Base from which equipment items and operating supplies were trucked daily from Yonabaru to the Fleet Air Photo Group One units at Yontan.

Our compound at Yonabaru had to be under armed guard 24 hours each day, not only to keep unauthorized military personnel from entering and removing our equipment, etc., but there were armed Japanese soldiers holed up in caves not too far to the south of Yonabaru who would try and penetrate our areas at night.

The Acorn 29 guard system at the Yonabaru Air Base area was most effective, therefore we did not have any loss of major equipment items during that three month period in 1945.

On the night of August 10th, 1945, a false report somehow got to all of our fighting units at Okinawa, that the Japanese had surrendered and that the war was over. This false report caused the greatest display of unauthorized fireworks by just about every Army-Navy-Marine unit on the island, and by the ships at anchor in the roadstead. Several ships were firing their 3" antiaircraft guns and rocket launchers, Army and Marine 3" antiaircraft guns on Okinawa were being fired, officers and men in camp areas on Okinawa were firing pistols and carbines and some of the crews on the bombers at the air strip were firing their top twin 50 caliber machine guns. For about 1/2 hour the air above Okinawa near the Kadena-Yontan Air Fields and the ships' anchorage area nearby was the grand daddy of a huge 4th of July demonstation.

There were a number of military personnel on the Island of Okinawa that night who were injured from the unwarranted fireworks. Fortunately, in the Fleet Air Photo Group One area at Yontan and at Yonabaru, we did not have any injuries.

Shortly after this display of fireworks started, one of the top admirals on one of the ships anchored in the bay, sent out a priority radio dispatch to all military units, Okinawa area, which ordered all commanding officers of all units ashore and afloat at Okinawa to immediately stop the unauthorized, unwarranted display of pyrotechnics, and that each command was to report at 10am the next morning aboard his flagship for their accounting of the unauthorized gunfire, and further they were to report on the quantity of ammo expended in the pyrotechnic display.

Judging from reports from some of the officers who attended the admirals meeting the next morning, the admiral just raised hell.

A few days later, all military units received an official notification that the Japanese had offerred to surrender and that all hostilities were to be ceased as of that date. As I recall, this radio dispatch came from Fleet Admiral Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, Guam.

A day or so later, a twin engine Japanese airplane landed at the Yontan Air Field where it was refueled, and then departed for Manila. The Japanese airplane was carring the Japanese military officers who had been authorized by the Emperor of Japan to meet with Genral MacArthur, U.S. Army at Manila where they would officially offer their unconditional surrender to the General.

Around the latter part of Sept. 1945, we started moving the Fleet Air Photo Group One from the Yontan Air Field to the Fleet Air Wing One Air Base at Yonabaru, which, by that time was almost completed by the Acron 29 Seabee group. By mid-October 1945 we had completed the moving of all Fleet Air Photo Group One units to the Naval Air Base at Yonabaru.

The facilities at Yonabaru were a great improvement over the temporary facilities that we had been using at the Yontan Air Field. As an example, we now had quonset huts with wood floors for our living quarters, we now had large sized quonset huts bolted together and anchored on a concrete slab for our officer and enlisted personnel galley and dining facilities.

We had a number of quonset huts for the Photo Group One Headquarters, Fleet Air VD-Four photo recon offices, and fleet air photo-interpreter squadron offices.

The seabee construction battalion was well along in its construction of a large photo laboratory complex on top of a hill which had been leveled to accommodate four quonset huts 20 feet by 40 feet anchored to a 40 foot square wood structure building which housed the facilities for the photo labs, film washing-drying, negative identification, print washing-drying, sorting and chemical mixing.

The Acorn 29 Seabee construction battalion by the end of September 1945 completed a large Naval Air Base at Yonabaru, with complete facilities to service some eight to ten Naval-Marine bombing squadrons of PB4Y-1 airplanes plus one Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron of PB4Y-1 airplanes, and also service facilities for the airplanes operated by NATS--Naval Air Transport Service.

Late in September or early October 1945, Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron was relieved by Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Four Squadron with LCDR. Hank Blunt, USNR as commanding officer of the photo-recon squadron and commander of fleet air photographic group one, relieving CDR. Jack Eady, USN, who returned to the states with the Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance VD-Three Squadron airplanes.

Early in October 1945, the Yonabaru Naval Air Base was a beehive, with three or four PB4Y-1 Liberator bombing airplanes, squadrons, one PB4Y-1P photo Liberator photo recon airplane squadron, several Douglas four engine transport airplanes operated by Naval Air Transport System and some U.S. Marine Corps Air Units.

One morning late in October 1945, the Fleet Air Wing One and all Naval-Marine Corp Commands at the Yonabaru Air Base were alerted to an approaching typhoon moving northward from the Philippines. Orders were issued for all of the Fleet Air Wing One four engine bombers and four engine photo planes to depart from Yonabaru and fly to the air base on the Island of Tinian in the Marianas, where they would be safely out of the path of the typhoon. We managed to get all of the four engine airplanes out of Yonabaru, except six of the photo-recon planes of VD-Four and one of the bomber squadrons.

By nightfall the Okinawan area became covered with high clouds and by midnight, the winds started with some rain. By 8am the next morning, the winds were really howling with lots of rain, and by 10am, the winds got up to around 125 to 150 miles per hour with very heavy rains.

Between the hours of 10am and 6pm that day, the Okinawa area really got clobbered by the typhoon, every building that wasn't anchored down was rolled over, blown apart, stacks of lumber, sheet metal in our storage compound broke apart and was being carried by the high winds all over the Yonabaru base. The winds were so strong that no one could drive a jeep or a weapons carrier.

All tent units were completely wrecked, our galley and mess hall facilities were in shambles, with only the twisted steel frames of the structures remaining after the typhoon had passed our area.

During the typhoon, the flight crews of the six four engine airplanes on their hard stand parking spaces at the Yonabaru air field had to man their airplanes, and by reving up their engines, they attempted to keep the airplanes headed into the wind, however two of the airplanes skidded off of their hard stand parking area and got mired down in the mud and water.

The winds of the typhoon were so strong that it blew the ocean water over the tops of the coral-sand bar outer reef just east of the south end of Buckner Bay, thus causing the water level in Buckner Bay to rise some four to six feet, which covered the Yonabaru Air Field to verying depths up to six feet in places.

George and Arthur Carroll, along with about 12 other officers were in a 20' X 40' quonset hut which was just sitting on some concrete block foundation piers, when the typhoon wind forces around 10-11am started rocking the quonset hut, and at the same time some of the sheet metal 4' X 8' roof sections were torn off and flew away like tissue paper. When this happened, these officers didn't need a second invitation to leave their quonset hut and crawled up the side of the hill above the Yonabaru Camp area, to an old Japanese infantry trench, where they were joined by other Naval-Marine personnel early in the afternoon.

The 125-150 mile per hour winds were driving the heavy rain in horizontal sheets which contained mud, sticks, pieces of lumber and sheet metal. In fact it was so intense we couldn't see anything by looking into the wind and rain; the force was blinding.

Around 6pm that evening, the eye of the typhoon passed over the island, the winds and rain slackened a bit, then started up again from different directions. However by midnight, the typhoon storm winds were decreasing, but we were still having quite a lot of rain. By the next morning, the typhoon had passed Okinawa on its way north toward the main islands of Japan.

The typhoon really wrecked just about every structure on Okinawa that wasn't anchored down. The day after the typhoon had passed, when the Yonabaru Air Field got back into operation, we sent one of our Fleet Air VD-Four photo Liberators on a flight around the island during which we made aerial oblique photographs of the wreckage caused by the typhoon. We counted over 50 boats and ships that had been blown onto the shore of the island. We had one case where the depth charges on one of the destroyers in Buckner Bay got loose and exploded during the typhoon.

The officers and enlisted mens galley-dining building was a complete wreck. The Seabee battalion, plus help from the officers and men in the various Fleet Air Wing One units at Yonabaru got busy and cleared the bent-broken metal frames of the galley-dining facilities, and finally about two day after the typhoon had passed, they got the cooking stoves in the main enlisted mens galley operating, the service counter section back into operation, cleared the galley concrete floor free of the six inch layer of mud and cleared the mud from the dining area, washing the dining tables and benches, all of which had a layer of mud and sticks, etc. all over.

The galley crew started serving hot food about 30 hours after the typhoon had passed.

The area was alive with some 4 to 5000 military personnel walking in the Okinawan mud, so within a couple of hours, there was a layer of mud some two to three inches deep all over the dining floor area, so the officers and enlisted men ate their food by sitting on a wood bench with their food tray on a wood table, and their feet in sloppy mud, a condition which lasted some three or four days before the winds dried up the mess. Then we started to get the dust from the dried mess.

It was amazing that there were so very few injuries to our personnel during the severe typhoon that wrecked so much of our facilities at the Fleet Air Wing One Air Base at Yonabaru.

The Fleet Air Photo-Recon Group One, photographic laboratory up on the hill just above the Yonabaru Valley, was a mess. The Typhoon blew the lab wood structure and the four photo lab trailers apart and scattered the laboratory equipment down the hillside. With everything being mud laden and water soaked, it was a real mess that looked like a lot of junk.

The Naval photographers of the Fleet Air Photo-Recon VD-Four Squadron, the Fleet Air Photo Interpretation Squadron One and certain units of the Acorn 29 Seabee Battalion went to work just as soon as the area dried up, cleaned everything, rebuilt the photo laboratoy facilities, rebuilt the roads, rebuilt the camp area facilities and in a period of about a month, they had their facilities back into full operation.

In the latter part of October 1945 Fleet Air Photo Group One received an operational order to map a section of the China Coast, so in preparation for this project, LCDR. Hank Blunt, C.O. of VD-Four Photo-Recon Squadron flew one of the PB4Y-1P photo Liberators to Shanghai, China where he and LT. Arthur Carroll worked out the details with Chinese government representatives concerning this coast mapping project.

After spending about three or four days at Shanghai, they returned to Okinawa and started preparing for the China Coast Mapping Project and were almost ready to start the project by flying to Shanghai which they were going to use as their air base of operations, when the U.S. Marine Air Squadron VMD-254 was given the China Coast Mapping Project, thus relieving the Fleet Air Photo Group One and Fleet Air Photo-Recon VD-Four, who at that time received orders back to the Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia.

LCDR. George A. Carroll, USN, Operations Officer, Fleet Air Photo Group One, received orders in early November 1945 which sent him back to duty in the Photographic Division of the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, Washington, D.C.

After the signing of the peace treaty between Japan and the United Nations on board the Battleship USS MISSOURI in Tokyo Harbor, the Commander Fleet Air Wing One, Rear Admiral J. Perry, USN sent the following letter to his officers and men of Fleet Air Wing One.

Quote:

From: The Commander Fleet Air Wing One

To : All Officers and Men

1. With the signing of the peace treaty between Japan and the United Nations the war in the Pacific has been formally concluded. To the official messages of commendation you have already received from President Truman, Secretary Forrestal, Admiral of the Fleet Ernest J. King and Admiral of the Fleet Chester W. Nimitz, I wish to add a personal commendation.

2. This wing ended the war where it first took up the fight: In the front lines. Patrol Wing One, from which Fleet Air Wing One was created, was bombed at Kaneohe on 7 December 1941. There is appropriateness and justice in the fact that when the final victory was won, ships and planes of this wing were within sight of the Imperial Palace of Tokyo.

3. The wing has traveled every mile of the long devious route to Tokyo. It moved into the South Pacific area in the early days of that campaign. Last year it moved forward into the central and western Pacific, taking active part in the assault and past assault phases of the Marianas campaign, the capture of the palaus, and the conquest of Iwo Jima. Finally, it moved boldly into the Okinawa area for the most protracted, bitter struggle of all.

4. Nearly all of you have earned the Asiatic Theatre Campaign Ribbon with one or more operations stars. All of you have richly earned the satisfaction of knowing that your wing--which includes you as a member--has played a major part in achieving victory over an ambitious, ruthless, powerful enemy of the United States.

5. You share the pride of knowing that the assignment given to this wing for the Okinawa operation was unprecedented. Never before had search planes and tenders attempted so much under such difficult combat, weather and field conditions. You performed the assignment brilliantly. You swept the enemy's shipping from the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. You pursued it night and day, in good weather and bad, among countless coves and anchorages of China, Korea, the Nansei Shoto and even the Japanese home islands. You swept ahead of the fast carriers and battleships to help them achieve tactical surprise. You rescued downed aviators in the open sea, and in the shadow of heavily defended enemy shores. Yours were the first allied search and photographic planes to fly over many parts of the Empire.

6. The variety of the missions you undertook, the skill and aggressiveness with which you carried them out, and the tireless tenacity you displayed despite frequent air attacks, unfavorable weather, incomplete facilities and inadequate sleep and recreation, make up the substance of this wing's success. Other ships of the fleet came and went, but you remained. Troops returned to rear areas for rehabilitation, but you stayed on.

7. I warmly commend every man and officer, every civilian technician, every ship and squadron of this wing for this performance of duty, which is in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Signed: J. Perry
Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy

Unquote.

Part Seven: Other Photographic Reconnaissance in the Pacific Area 1942-1945

Up to this point of our History of U.S. Naval Photography during World War II, the writer has put together a fairly comprehensive sequence of the Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance Operations, which may give the impression that these were the only Naval Photographic Reconnaissance operations conducted by the Navy during the years 1942-1945.

While the Fleet air photographic reconnaissance squadrons did a tremendous amount of aerial photography in the Pacific from the Solomons and up through the Pacific Islands to Japan, there were other U.S. Naval-Marine Corps Photographic Reconnaissance operations, some of which were made by Naval photographers flying from the flight decks of fast task forces' aircraft carriers during World War II.

The aerial photographs made by the Naval photographers flying from the carriers were for the most part, the aircrewmen who released their bomb loads over their assigned targets and also took aerial photographs with a Fairchild K-20 aerial camera, mainly for damage assessment purposes.

The photo-recon coverages by the fast carrier task force units were not conducted with any great amount of pre-flight planning for the specific purpose of obtaining aerial photographs of Japanese Island targets.

The aircraft flying from the carriers were first to bomb and strafe the Japanese target, and in some of the SBD bombers, the photographer got photos after they had made their bomb drops, whenever they had the opportunity to get their K-20 into operation.

Most of the aerial photographs made by the carrier based Naval photographers were made with the Fairchild K-20 aerial camera which made 4" X 5" photo using a short focal length lens. Thus these photos were oblique shots and mostly too far away to reveal detail required for the photo interpreters.

However, occasionally there were a few aerial photos made by the carrier based photographers that did provide some useful information, but in comparison with the photo coverage made by the Fleet Air Photographic Reconnaissance squadrons, the carrier based photo coverage left a lot to be desired from the standpoint of providing any great amount of military intelligence information which major fleet task force assault operation planning officers could use for major assaults on various Japanese held islands in the Pacific.

From the information that the writer has assembled over the years, about the first reports recorded in regard to aerial photography operations from our aircraft carriers in the Pacific, were accounts of two Naval photographers flying from the aircraft carrier USS HORNET in separate bombers during a bombing attack on a Japanese cruiser in the southwest Pacific area.

These two Naval photographers were: Elwood L. Trumball P1/C of San Leandro, California and Donald R. Miller P1/C of Lewiston, Florida. Both received citations signed by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, an award of Air Medal to each man in one ceremony which read in part:

Quote: "Coolly and efficiently performing their tasks in the face of extremely heavy anti-aircraft fire, Miller and Trumball, by their skill and gallant devotion to duty, contributed in a large measure to the success of the attack." unquote.

Miller and Trumball were buddies since they started their Naval phtographic training, both displaying the same courage and presence of mind when placed in similar dangerous positions aginst the enemy.

In separate bombers from the aircraft carrier USS HORNET, they alternately fulfilled duties of tail gunners, bombardiers and aerial photographers during an attack on a heavy Japanese cruiser in the southwest Pacific area, strafing, bombing and photographing the enemy as the need warranted. Miller performed the feat of dropping three bombs between the stacks of the ship they were attacking, and during a glide return, photographed the damage.

At this point, the crews of the two bomber planes discovered their supplies of gas were low and their carrier HORNET was now a holocast to which they could not return. Miller's plane, with five minutes of gas, remained aloft to permit him to film unforgettable picture stories of the carriers last moments.

Trumball's plane made a forced landing on the water, but before embarking in a rubber raft, he took care to remove his film and camera from the sinking bomber. Photographer Trumball and his bomber crew were picked up by a destroyer. Photographer Miller and his bomber crew took refuge by landing on a nearby aircraft carrier by "coming in on a wing and a prayer" for their tank was dry.

The first military aerial photographs of the Guadalcanal-Tulagi area in the Solomons were made during an observation flight from Australia on July 17, 1942 by two U.S. Marine Corps officers, Colonel Twining and Major McKean who were flying in one of General Brett's U.S. Army Air Force B-17 bombers, which came under attack by Japanese fighter airplanes from the Japanese seaplane base at Tulagi. Shortly after the B-17 bomber had been under attack by the Japanese fighter planes over Guadalcanal, the Air Force B-17 bomber advanced its engines to full RPM and headed for Port Moresby on New Guinea, where they landed with their fuel tanks almost dry.

At the time of the Japanese fighter plane attack, the air force B-17 bomber was over Guadalcanal where aerial photos had been made of the construcvtion of a Japanese air field on Guadalcanal which was being looked over by Col. Twining and Major McKean. It is believed that information from these aerial photos plus other military intelligence information provided the basis for the allied forces in the Pacific to be deployed to the Solomon Island area for their attack in August of 1942.

During the latter part of 1942 and early 1943, the Fleet Air Marine Air Squadron VMD-254 operating from Espiritu Santo and from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, made a number of photographic-reconnaissance flights over various Japanese held islands in the Solomons for the purpose of obtaining military information in connection with the allied forces assault operations in the south Pacific.

On 2 December 1942, LTCOL. Elliot C. Bard, USMC, flying a PB4Y-1P photo Liberator on a photo-recon mission over Munda discovered that the Japanese were building a new air field in a large coconut grove on the island.

Therefore, our allied bomber forces in the south Pacific area conducted a number of bombing missions on this new Japanese air field then under construction at Munda on the Island of New Georgia.

Aerial photographs made by Naval photographers flying from the aircraft carrier USS ENTERPRISE on 17-18 February 1943 revealed that the Japanese Naval Base at the Island of Truk had been put out of business by Admiral Mitscher's fast carrier strike.

Late in Feb. 1944 Vice Admiral Mitschers Task Force 58, with Rear Admiral Montgomery in the aircraft carrier USS ESSEX, and Rear Admiral Sherman in the aircraft carrier USS BUNKER HILL during their attack on the Marianas obtained important excellent aerial photographs of the various islands showing new Japanese air fields under construction and various beaches where the U.S. Marines landed in June 1944.

In January 1944 Admiral Spruance's fifth fleet, comprising some 375 ships, carrying 53,000 assault troops, (half U.S. Army and half U.S. Marines), about 31,000 garrison personnel, and including Admiral Mitscher's Task Force 58 consisting of six fleet aircraft carriers, six light aircraft carriers, eight fast battleships, six cruisers, 36 destroyers and 700 carrier aircraft (all a very powerful array of force), went into assault action late in Jan 1944. Starting with the Marshall Island group they wiped out the Japanese and secured the various islands for advance allied forces base operations as the World War II effort in the Pacific moved westward and northward toward the main islands of Japan.

During the assault operations of Task Force 58 units on various Japanes held positions in the Marshall Island, Marianas Islands, Volcano-Bonins-Okinawa, and the main Islands of Japan, such a Kyushu-Shikoku and Honshu, aerial photographic-reconnaissance flights were made from the six fleet aircraft carriers of Task Force 58.

The aerial photographs were processed on board the aircraft carriers where the photographs were evaluated by the Naval photo interpreters, who made daily reports to their respective task force unit commanders regarding military intelligence information, which proved to be of great aid to the task force operations-planning officers as they reported directly to the admiral in command of the operations as they were developed and carried out by the various units of Task Force 58.

While the aerial photos made by the Naval photographers flying from the fleet aircraft carriers as aerial photographic-bombadier-machine gunner, their primary mission was bombing-strafing, with the job of getting aerial photos of the target areas whenever possible. Their aerial photographs in most cases were valuable to the immediate operating units of Task Force 58.

The aerial photo coverage made by the Naval photographers flying from the fleet aircraft carrier could not provide the military intelligence information that was being obtained by the Fleet Aircraft Photographic-Reconnaissance Squadrons VD-One, VD-Three, VD-Four and VD-Five who photographed the various Japanese held islands in the Pacific Ocean area with the four engine PB4Y-1P liberator landplanes carrying multiple aerial camera units in their bomb bays, by which aerial overlapping vertical photographs were being made by the camera units which had lens focal lengths ranging from 8-1/4 inch up to 40 inch focal length, recording pictures in black and white, color and infrared. Also in many of the fleet air photographic reconnaissance squadrons photo coverage mission assignments were made by three or more PB4Y-1P airplanes flying in a line formation, with bomber-fighter escorts, making one pass over the target area at 20,000 to 25,000 feet altitude.

The PB4Y-1P (photo Liberators) carried multi-camera installations of four to eight Fairchild aerial cameras that recorded picture sizes of 7 X 7 inches, 7 X 9 inches and 9 X 18 inches with excellent photographic quality that permitted the photographic interpreters to evaluate the military intelligence information of Japanese Islands which was expedited to the Joint Intelligence Group Pacific area at Pearl Harbor, T.H. and later to the Guam headquarters of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Area, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, USN.