On the evening of 11 March 1945 Japanese kamikaze aircraft attacked the U.S. fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands. One bomber crashed into the stern of the carrier USS Randolph at anchor, setting her on fire and killing some 25 to 27 of her crew. Also on 11 March: the Lend-Lease Act became law, 1941.
The anchorage
Ulithi Atoll, in the western Carolines, was occupied without opposition on 23 September 1944 and gave the U.S. fleet an advanced anchorage in the western Pacific. In early 1945 the fast carriers of Task Force 58 sortied from its lagoon for their strikes, and units of the Pacific Fleet lay there between operations.1
By then, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey wrote after the war, the chief Japanese hope seemed to lie in raids on American advanced bases by special attack (kamikaze) forces. Ulithi was one of the targets: in March 1945 a special attack force of aircraft was sent against it.2
2007 at Ulithi
On the evening of 11 March the carrier USS Randolph lay at anchor in the lagoon. At 2007, by her deck log and action report, a Japanese bomber struck her stern at the level of the flight deck on the starboard side and exploded. Planes on the flight and hangar decks were wrecked, fire broke out aft and ready ammunition began to explode.3
Fire boats and tugs came up astern and poured water into the fire, and fire and rescue parties came over from other ships. The deck log has the fire under control at 2137, the action report at about 2200. The action report counts 25 dead, 3 missing and 106 injured; the Australian War Memorial gives 27 killed and 105 wounded.4
The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, summing up what Japanese officers said in postwar interrogations, wrote that the air raid on Ulithi, like the human-torpedo raids on anchorages earlier that year, was not considered highly successful. For the campaign that followed, see our article on the Battle of Okinawa.5
Also on this day
Operation Tan No. 2
11 March 1945 · 81 years ago
On the evening of 11 March 1945 Japanese kamikaze aircraft attacked the U.S. fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands. One bomber crashed into the stern of the carrier USS Randolph at anchor, setting her on fire and killing some 25 to 27 of her crew.
1941: The Lend-Lease Act became law. The House of Representatives gave it final approval on 11 March, President Franklin Roosevelt signed it the same day, and the act as printed in the Statutes at Large ends “Approved, March 11, 1941”. It let the President provide war supplies to the government of “any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States”.6
