On This Day in Aviation History: The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot

For the uninformed, a turkey shoot is a term for a fund-raising contest where shooters vie for a fresh or frozen turkey by shooting at targets.  In the past (and perhaps in some places still in more remote and country settings), a live turkey would be the prize…if you could shoot the nervous but intelligent bird who only momentarily would show its head.  A great scene in the 1941 movie Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper shows a young York gobbling a turkey call that caused the prize turkey to raise its head thereby allowing York to shoot the bird and permitting his poor family to have a Thanksgiving feast that year. 

That’s a great movie, by the way, and well worth the watch.

Our local fire department when I lived in Hubert, NC would hold a turkey shoot prior to Thanksgiving in years past.  Given the changes in our societal acceptance of such activities and the availability of cheap, frozen, and easy to prepare and cook turkeys, turkey shoots may be a thing of the past.

The term can also mean an extremely one-sided battle or contest.  The use of the term in this context originates, according to Wikipedia, “from a method of hunting wild turkeys in which the hunter, coming upon a flock, intentionally scatters them.  Once the flock is scattered, the hunter sets up and waits, as the scattered flock will return to that point individually, making them easy targets.”

The Battle of the Philippine Sea, also known as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” was, fortunately for the US and unfortunately for the Empire of Japan, a battle of “easy targets” for US naval aviators.

According to History.com, “On June 19, 1944, the U.S. began a two-day attack that decimated Japan’s aircraft carrier force—and shifted the balance of naval air power in World War II’s Pacific theater. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, an epic carrier duel that came to be known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” would incur only a minimum of losses for the Americans.

“The security of the Marianas Islands, in the western Pacific, were vital to Japan, which had air bases on Saipan, Tinian and Guam. U.S. troops were already battling the Japanese on Saipan, having landed there on the 15th. Any further intrusion would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable to U.S. attack. The U.S. Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, was on its way west from the Marshall Islands as backup for the invasion of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas.

“But Japanese Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo decided to challenge the American fleet, ordering 430 of his planes, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack. In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war, the United States, having already picked up the Japanese craft on radar, proceeded on June 19 alone to shoot down some 300 aircraft and sink two Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only 29 of their own planes in the process. It was described in the aftermath as a ‘turkey shoot.’

“Admiral Ozawa, believing his missing planes had landed at their Guam air base, maintained his position in the Philippine Sea, allowing for a second attack of U.S. carrier-based fighter planes, this time commanded by Admiral Mitscher, to shoot down an additional 65 Japanese planes and sink another carrier. Over two days, the Japanese lost nearly 600 aircraft (200 land-based, 400 carrier-based), not to mention most of its crews. American domination of the Marianas was now a foregone conclusion.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Alexander Vraciu, USNR, Fighting Squadron 16 “ace”, holds up six fingers to signify his “kills” during the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” on 19 June 1944. Taken on the flight deck of the USS Lexington (CV-16).  Courtesy US Navy 80-G-236841.

“Not long after this battle at sea, U.S. Marine divisions penetrated farther into the island of Saipan. Two Japanese commanders on the island, Admiral Nagumo and General Saito, both committed suicide in an attempt to rally the remaining Japanese forces. It succeeded: Those forces also committed a virtual suicide as they attacked the Americans’ lines, losing 26,000 men compared with 3,500 lost by the United States. Within another month, the islands of Tinian and Guam were also captured by the United States.

“The Japanese government of Premier Hideki Tojo resigned in disgrace at this stunning defeat, in what many have described as the turning point of the war in the Pacific.”