At 03:30 on the morning of June 17th, 1944, Lieutenant Colonel William Jones crouched in his command post on Saipan’s western shore, watching 44 Japanese tanks rumble toward his marines through fields of burning sugarcane. For 6 months, every Allied tank manual had carried the same warning from Terawa.
Tanks operating without infantry support are virtually blind and vulnerable. Jones had read those reports. He had studied how American Shermans stumbling ahead of their riflemen became sitting ducks for Japanese gunners who could see what the tank crews could not. But Colonel Tekashi Gooto, commander of the 9inth tank regiment, had never seen those warnings.
His 44 tanks, 36 Type 97 Chiha mediums and eight type 95 Hgo lights charged through the darkness toward Charnua airfield with their hatches open. commanders riding exposed, infantry clinging to engine decks, trusting speed and shock to break the marine perimeter before dawn. Goto’s tanks carried 15 to 25 mm of armor on their fronts, 6 to 12 mm on their sides.
The Marines waiting in their foxholes carried 2.3 6-in bazookas that could punch through 60 mm of steel at 100 yards. As star shells burst overhead, turning night into artificial day, Private First Class Charles Merritt raised his rocket launcher and took aim at the lead tank’s thin side armor. Seven rockets, seven tanks.
Private First Class Herbert Hodgeges did the same. Seven more rockets, seven more burning hulks. By dawn, 31 Japanese tanks lay twisted and smoking across a thousand-y stretch of beach. Their crews dead or dying inside steel coffins that had become their tombs. But this wasn’t just about one night’s slaughter.
This was about the moment Japan learned that tanks without eyes are just expensive targets. Dawn light filtered through smoke and scattered debris as Marine patrols from First Battalion, Six Marines, picked their way across the coastal plane west of Chan, Canoa. The air still carried the acurid smell of burned fuel and metal mixed with the sweeter stench of charred sugarcane that had been set ablaze by tracer rounds and star shells throughout the night.
Staff Sergeant Mike Kowalsski stepped carefully around a twisted piece of steel that had once been a tank turret now blown 15 yards from its hull and lying upside down like a discarded helmet. The metal was still warm enough to feel through his boot leather. Major James Donovan walked among the wreckage with a field notebook, methodically counting and cataloging what remained of Colonel Gooto’s 9inth Tank Regiment.
31 hulks lay scattered across roughly 1,000 yards of beachfront, some still smoldering, others already cooling into monuments of twisted steel and shattered ambition. Most were type 97 Chiha medium tanks identifiable by their distinctive sloped fronts and the scattered remains of their 47mm guns.
A few smaller type 95 Hgo light tanks sat among them, their thin armor peeled back like opened cans where bazooka rockets had punched through. The human cost lay everywhere. Japanese bodies clustered around each destroyed vehicle. Tank crews who had tried to escape burning holes. infantry who had ridden the engine decks into the killing zone.
Officers who had dismounted to guide their blind machines through the darkness. Donovan estimated nearly 1,000 Japanese dead in this sector alone, though the exact count would take days to complete. Many bodies were burned beyond recognition, others buried under collapsed tank armor or scattered by exploding ammunition.
Lieutenant Colonel William Jones surveyed the field with the detached professionalism of a Terawa veteran who had learned to read battlefields like tactical maps. Each destroyed tank told a story of mechanical failure meeting tactical doctrine. Here a Chiha sat with its turret hatch still open. The commander’s body slumped over the rim, caught exposed while trying to see through the artificial dawn of star shells.
There, another tank had driven in perfect circles until a bazooka round found its engine compartment, the track still showing the spiral pattern where the blinded crew had lost all sense of direction. The mathematics of destruction were brutally clear. Goto had brought approximately 44 tanks to the attack, representing roughly 70% of all operational Japanese armor remaining on Saipan.
In exchange for 31 destroyed vehicles and nearly 1,000 casualties, the Japanese had inflicted 97 marine casualties. 78 in First Battalion, six marines, and 19 in an attached platoon from second battalion, second marines. The exchange rate spoke to something more fundamental than courage or equipment quality. It revealed the collision between two completely different theories of armored warfare.
Japanese tank doctrine forged in the wide spaces of Manuria and China treated armor as a psychological weapon, a tool of shock and spiritual momentum that could break enemy lines through sheer audacity. The type 97 Chiha had been designed in 1937 for infantry support with enough armor to stop rifle bullets and enough firepower to suppress machine gun nests.
Its 15 to 25 mm of frontal steel and 6 to 12 mm of side protection had proven adequate against Chinese forces armed with boltaction rifles and limited anti-tank weapons. Speed and surprise, Japanese commanders believed, would carry their tanks through any defensive line before the enemy could organize effective resistance.
American doctrine had evolved differently, shaped by industrial capacity and bitter lessons learned in places like Casarine Pass and Terawa. Marine officers like Jones understood tanks as mechanical systems with specific vulnerabilities. Limited vision, thin armor, and dependence on infantry support for survival. The afteraction reports from Terawa had been explicit.
Tanks operating ahead of infantry support were virtually blind and vulnerable. easy targets for defenders who could see what tank crews could not. This understanding had driven changes in equipment and tactics throughout 1943 and 1944, creating integrated defensive systems designed to exploit those vulnerabilities. The weapons scattered around the battlefield told the story of that doctrinal evolution.
Spent bazooka tubes lay beside foxholes where Marines had waited for Japanese tanks to pass overhead before emerging to fire into their thin side armor. The 2.36 in rocket launcher introduced to Marine units in mid 1943 could penetrate roughly 60 mm of armor at effective range, more than twice the protection carried by any Japanese tank on Saipan.
Alongside the bazookas, 37mm M3 anti-tank guns had carved precise holes through tank fronts at ranges exceeding 500 yd. Their armor-piercing shells carrying enough energy to punch completely through a chiha and exit the rear plate. Artillery had played the decisive role in transforming individual tank kills into systematic destruction.
10th Marines 75mm pack howitzers and 105 mm guns had pre-registered fires across every likely tank approach, turning the coastal plane into a grid of interlocking kill zones. When Captain Roland’s Company B first reported tank engines in the darkness, those guns had responded within minutes, walking high explosive shells through assembly areas and approach routes with devastating precision.
Battery M alone had fired all of its 105mm ammunition between 0300 and dawn over 800 rounds that turned the night into a continuous thunderstorm of steel and fire. Naval gunfire had provided the illumination that made precision killing possible. Destroyers offshore had maintained almost continuous star shell fires throughout the engagement.
each 5-in shell bursting at several thousand feet altitude to bathe the battlefield in harsh white light. For Japanese tank commanders riding with open hatches to improve their vision, those star shells had created a deadly paradox. The light they needed to navigate had also silhouetted them perfectly against the burning cane fields, making them ideal targets for marine riflemen and machine gunners.
General Thomas Watson walked among the hulks with the satisfaction of a division commander who had seen theory translate into practice. His second marine division had landed on Saipan with clear understanding of how to fight Japanese armor based on lessons learned at terrible cost on previous islands. The knight’s results validated months of training and doctrinal development.
proof that American industrial capacity properly applied through intelligent tactics could neutralize Japanese spiritual momentum and technological desperation. The surviving Japanese tank limped away from the killing field just after dawn. Its crew probably unaware that they commanded the last mobile armor remaining to Colonel Gooto’s regiment.
Marine forward observers tracked its movement through field glasses, calling corrections to offshore destroyers until 5-in naval gunfire found the vehicle and added one final hole to the morning’s count. With that destruction, organized Japanese armored resistance on Saipan effectively ended, though the island’s conquest would require another 3 weeks of grinding infantry combat through caves and prepared positions.
The tactical lesson was clear, but its strategic implications would resonate far beyond Saipan’s coral beaches. Japan had committed one of its few remaining tank regiments to a single night’s gamble and lost nearly everything in exchange for negligible damage to American forces. The Imperial Japanese Army had built roughly 1,000 Chiha tanks and 2,300 HGO lights during the entire war.
Losing 31 in a single engagement represented a hemorrhage that could not be replaced. For American forces, the destroyed equipment could be replaced within weeks from factories that were producing thousands of tanks monthly and tens of thousands of anti-tank weapons. At 0542, on the morning of June 15th, 1944, Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner’s voice crackled across radio frequencies throughout Task Force 58.
Land the landing force. Within minutes, the first waves of amphibious tractors churned toward Saipan’s western beaches, carrying Marines of the second and fourth divisions toward a shoreline that had endured three days of naval bombardment. The pre-assault fires had turned the coastal towns of Chiran Kenoa and Gapon into rubble, but they had barely scratched the elaborate defensive system that Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Seido had spent months preparing in the island’s interior hills and cave systems. The initial landings proceeded
with surprising ease across most sectors. Japanese resistance seemed lighter than expected, confined mainly to scattered mortar and artillery fire from concealed positions in land. By noon, nearly 20,000 Marines had established footholds on red and green beaches, pushing inland against what appeared to be token resistance.
The deception was deliberate. Seido had pulled most of his forces back from the beaches, planning to destroy the American invasion through carefully timed counterattacks once the Marines had committed their full strength ashore. The first test of that strategy came just after midday when four Japanese light tanks emerged from concealed positions near the boundary between first battalion, sixth marines and second battalion, sixth marines.
The type 95 Hgo tanks moved boldly across open ground, their 37mm guns firing at Marine positions while their commanders rode exposed in open turrets. Lieutenant Colonel Jones watched through field glasses as the small formation attempted to punch through his lines. Their crews apparently confident that speed and shock would carry them past American defensive fires.
The Marine response demonstrated how much Pacific warfare had evolved since the early disasters at Wake Island and the Philippines. Instead of individual riflemen taking panicked shots at moving armor, Jones’s men responded with coordinated fires from multiple weapon systems. LVTA amphibious tractors, each mounting a 37 millimeter gun in a turret similar to the Steuart light tank, immediately engaged the HOS from holdown positions behind coral ridges.
Their armor-piercing shells capable of penetrating roughly 60 mm of steel at 500 yd, found their targets within minutes. The engagement was brutally one-sided. HGO tanks carried only 6 to 12 mm of armor protection, adequate against rifle bullets and shell fragments, but utterly inadequate against purpose-built anti-tank weapons.
The first Japanese tank exploded when a 37 mm shell penetrated its thin frontal plate and detonated the ammunition stored beside the driver. The second tank lost its main gun to a direct hit on the turret, then burned when follow-up shots ignited its fuel tanks. The third managed several more yards before a bazooka team emerged from a concealed position and fired a shape charge warhead into its engine compartment at pointblank range.
Only one HGO escaped the killing zone, its crew abandoning the vehicle after reaching the relative safety of a coral outcropping. Marine patrols found it later that afternoon, intact but deserted, its crew having fled on foot toward Japanese lines. The engagement had lasted less than 10 minutes and cost the Japanese three precious tanks in exchange for two marine casualties.
Both men wounded by shell fragments, neither seriously injured. For Jones and his officers, the brief action provided valuable intelligence about Japanese armor capabilities and tactics that would prove crucial in the larger battle to come. The lessons were immediately apparent to anyone who understood armor warfare.
Japanese tanks were operating without adequate infantry support, relying on their psychological effect rather than tactical coordination with other arms. Their commanders seem to believe that aggressive movement and spiritual determination could overcome material disadvantages, a doctrine that might have succeeded against Chinese forces equipped with boltaction rifles and limited anti-tank weapons, but which proved suicidal against Marines armed with modern anti-tank rockets and guns.
That night brought a more serious test of Japanese offensive doctrine. Elements of the Special Naval Landing Force attempted an amphibious counterattack against the left flank of Second Marine Division using small landing craft and amphibious tanks to exploit what they perceived as a gap in American defenses.
The attack began around midnight with Japanese troops attempting to land in the surf zone while their amphibious tanks provided fire support from the W’s edge. Marine defenders responded with the same coordinated approach that had destroyed the afternoon tank attack. Artillery observers called for immediate illumination from destroyers offshore, and within minutes, the entire landing zone was bathed in the harsh white light of 5-in star shells.
The artificial daylight revealed Japanese landing craft struggling through the surf while amphibious tanks wallowed in shallow water. their crews attempting to suppress Marine positions with machine gun and light cannon fire. The Marines had prepared for exactly this type of night attack. 75 mm guns mounted on M3 halftracks rolled forward to direct fire positions, their crews having pre-registered targets along the W’s edge during daylight hours.
Each halftrack carried 40 rounds of high explosive ammunition, more than enough to destroy thin-kinned amphibious vehicles at ranges under 1,000 yards. The guns opened fire simultaneously, walking their shots along the surf line, where Japanese craft were most vulnerable. Bazooka teams moved forward to engage targets that survived the artillery barrage.
The 2.36 in rocket launcher had proven its worth in Italy and Normandy against German armor, but this was its first large-scale test against Japanese tanks in the Pacific. Marine crews found that the weapon’s 60 mm penetration capability was more than adequate against amphibious tanks carrying even less protection than standard HGO lights.
Most Japanese vehicles died with single hits, their crews having no chance to escape from burning holes that had become floating coffins. By dawn on June 16th, over 700 Japanese bodies littered the beaches in Second Marine Division sector, with hundreds more floating in the lagoon or scattered along Fourth Marine Division’s front to the south.
The Special Naval Landing Force had ceased to exist as an effective fighting unit. Its amphibious tanks destroyed and its infantry decimated by coordinated fires that had turned their night attack into a systematic slaughter. Marine casualties numbered fewer than 50 killed and wounded, most from random mortar and artillery fire rather than direct engagement with Japanese armor or infantry.
The Knights fighting revealed fundamental differences in how the two sides understood modern warfare. Japanese commanders continued to rely on tactics developed during the China incident where massed infantry attacks and aggressive tank movements had succeeded against poorly equipped opponents. They seem to believe that spiritual determination and traditional military virtues could overcome American material advantages, particularly if attacks came at night when visibility favored the attacking force.
Marine doctrine had evolved in precisely the opposite direction, emphasizing coordinated fires and technological solutions to tactical problems. Officers like Jones understood that modern anti-tank weapons had fundamentally altered the relationship between armor and infantry, making unsupported tank attacks suicidal, regardless of the courage displayed by their crews.
The key was not individual heroism, but systematic application of firepower through multiple weapon systems working in coordination. The tactical success created dangerous overconfidence among some Japanese commanders who interpreted the heavy casualties as evidence that American forces had exhausted their defensive capabilities.
Radio intercepts suggested that enemy officers believed the Marines had shot most of their ammunition during the night fighting, leaving them vulnerable to a larger, more carefully coordinated attack. This misreading of American logistics and resupply capabilities would prove fatal when Colonel Gooto received his orders to commit the ninth tank regiment to one massive decisive blow against the beach head.
For the Marines, the Knights fighting provided confidence that their anti-tank doctrine would work against larger Japanese formations. The combination of bazookas, 37 mm guns, artillery, and naval gunfire had created overlapping kill zones that no armored vehicle could survive once illuminated and ranged.
The question was whether Japanese commanders had learned the same lesson or whether they would escalate their commitment in hopes of achieving through mass what individual tanks had failed to accomplish through shock action. Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Sido stood in his command bunker carved deep into Mount Toocha’s volcanic rock, studying reports from the previous night’s failed counterattack with the stoic acceptance of a career officer who had witnessed Japan’s military fortunes declined steadily since midway.
The special naval landing forces amphibious assault had cost him over 700 irreplaceable men in exchange for negligible damage to American forces. But Seidto refused to interpret the disaster as evidence that his strategic concept was fundamentally flawed. Instead, he saw it as proof that peacemeal attacks could not succeed against American firepower.
Only a massive coordinated blow could shatter the beach head before the Marines could consolidate their position and bring their full industrial might to bear. The afternoon of June 16th found Saito dictating his most ambitious operation order since taking command of Saipan’s defense.
His staff officers transcribed the plan in precise military language that masked its desperate nature. The 136th Infantry Regiment and 9inth Tank Regiment will attack the enemy in the direction of Oral with its full force. The reference to Oriel, the Japanese name for Chan Canoa airfield, revealed Seido’s strategic thinking. If Colonel Yukimatsu Agawa’s infantry and Colonel Tekashi Goto’s tanks could reach the airfield and destroy the American aviation facilities under construction there, they might disrupt the enemy’s ability to provide close air support for
ground operations. The written order continued with specific instructions for Gooto’s armor. The tank unit will advance southwest of Hill 164.6. After the attack unit has commenced the attack, the tank unit will charge the transmitting station and throw the enemy into disorder before the penetration of the attack unit into this sector.
Seto’s language reflected traditional Japanese military thinking, treating tanks as psychological weapons capable of breaking enemy morale through shock action rather than as mechanical systems requiring careful coordination with infantry and artillery support. Colonel Gooto received his orders with the enthusiasm of a cavalry officer finally given permission to charge.
His ninth tank regiment represented the largest concentration of Japanese armor remaining in the central Pacific. 36 Type 97 Chiha medium tanks most equipped with the improved Shinhoto turret mounting a 47 mm gun along with eight Type 95 Hoggo light tanks mounting 37 mm weapons. The regiment’s total strength of 44 vehicles constituted roughly 70% of all operational Japanese tanks on Saipan, making the coming attack an all or nothing gamble with Japan’s remaining armored reserves.
The tanks themselves embody Japan’s industrial limitations and tactical assumptions. Chiha mediums carried 15 to 25 mm of frontal armor and 12 to 25 mm on their sides. Protection adequate against small arms and shell fragments but vulnerable to any purpose-built anti-tank weapon. Their 47 mm guns could penetrate roughly 40 mm of armor at 500 yd.
Sufficient to damage American light tanks but inadequate against the frontal plates of Sherman mediums. Most critically, fewer than half of Goto’s tanks carried radio equipment, forcing crews to rely on flag signals and shouted commands for coordination, methods that would prove useless in darkness and under fire. Colonel Ogawa’s 136th Infantry Regiment faced similar limitations despite its impressive paper strength of 3600 men.
His battalions had trained extensively in night attack tactics during the China incident where aggressive movement and close combat had succeeded against poorly equipped Chinese forces. However, they lacked the heavy weapons and communications equipment necessary to coordinate effectively with armored units, particularly under the artificial illumination and concentrated fires that American forces could bring to bear.
Most of Ogawa’s men carried bolt-action rifles and limited supplies of grenades and demolition charges, weapons suited for close quarters fighting, but inadequate for suppressing the machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank guns that defended marine positions. The movement phase began around 1,800 hours as both regiments advanced from their concealed positions in the interior hills toward assembly areas near Hill 164.
6 six and the ephetna transmitting station. The approach required careful timing and coordination as tank engines and the movement of thousands of infantry could not be completely concealed from American observation posts. Gooto’s crews attempted to minimize detection by moving slowly with engines at idle, but the distinctive clatter of steel tracks on coral and volcanic rock carried clearly across the coastal plane to marine listening posts.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones first received reports of enemy movement around 2100 hours when his forward observers reported hearing tank engines and shouted commands in Japanese from positions roughly 2,000 yards inland. The sounds grew steadily louder throughout the evening, suggesting a major concentration of armor moving toward his sector.
Jones immediately alerted his supporting arms, artillery batteries, attached Sherman tanks, and 75mm guns on halftracks while requesting naval gunfire support from destroyers offshore. His experience at Terawa had taught him that Japanese night attacks usually came in overwhelming strength, designed to achieve rapid penetration before American firepower could respond effectively.
The coordination problems that would doom the attack were already becoming apparent during the movement phase. Sido’s original plan called for the assault to begin at 1700 hours, taking advantage of remaining daylight to improve visibility for tank crews and infantry commanders. However, the complexity of moving two full regiments across difficult terrain in coordination caused inevitable delays.
Radio communications between Gooto and Ogawa remained sporadic as few Japanese units possessed the frequency modulated sets necessary for reliable battlefield coordination. By midnight, the attack was already running 4 hours behind schedule, forcing both commanders to choose between calling off the operation or proceeding in complete darkness.
Goto chose to proceed, confident that his tank crews night fighting experience for Manuria would prove decisive against Marines who had never faced large-scale armored attacks in darkness. His decision reflected the fundamental misunderstanding of American capabilities that would characterize the entire operation.
Japanese intelligence estimates suggested that marine anti-tank defenses consisted primarily of 37 mm guns and bazookas, weapons that required visual contact to engage effectively. Goto believed that rapid movement in darkness would allow his tanks to close within machine gun range before American crews could respond, at which point his superior numbers and the psychological effect of massed armor would break enemy resistance.
The reality was precisely the opposite. Marine defensive preparations had anticipated exactly this type of night attack based on lessons learned during previous amphibious operations. Artillery observers had spent the daylight hours of June 15th and 16th registering fires on every likely avenue of approach, creating a grid of predetermined target points that could be engaged within minutes of receiving fire commands.
Destroyer crews offshore had prepared continuous illumination missions using 5-in star shells capable of turning night into artificial day across the entire battlefield. Most critically, Marine anti-tank teams had positioned themselves in carefully prepared positions with overlapping fields of fire supported by Sherman tanks and 75 mm guns in direct fire roles.
As midnight passed and the attack time slipped further behind schedule, both Gooto and Ogawa faced increasing pressure to begin the assault before dawn eliminated any chance of achieving surprise. Japanese military culture placed enormous emphasis on maintaining attack schedules regardless of circumstances, viewing delays as evidence of insufficient spiritual preparation rather than legitimate tactical concerns.
The combination of time pressure, coordination difficulties, and overconfidence in traditional shock tactics would drive both commanders toward a catastrophic decision that would effectively end Japanese armored resistance on Saipan. By 0200 hours on June 17th, Gooto’s tanks had reached their final assembly positions in the sugarcane fields west of the marine perimeter.
His crews could hear American voices and see the glow of cigarettes in foxholes less than 1,000 yards away. The moment of decision had arrived. Either call off the attack and acknowledge the impossibility of coordinating two regiments in darkness or commit everything to one desperate charge toward the airfield. Goto chose the charge, believing that 44 tanks moving in mass formation could overwhelm any defensive position through pure momentum and firepower.
Within 90 minutes, that decision would reduce his regiment to smoking wreckage scattered across the coral sand of Saipan’s western shore. At precisely 0330 hours on June 17th, Captain CG Roland lifted his field telephone in the command post of Company B, First Battalion, Six Marines, and spoke the words that would trigger the largest tank battle in Pacific War history.
We’ve got armor moving toward us, lots of it. The rumble of diesel engines had been building for 20 minutes, accompanied by the distinctive clatter of steel tracks on coral and the shouted commands of Japanese tank commanders trying to maintain formation in complete darkness. Roland could smell exhaust fumes drifting across his positions and occasionally glimpsed the blue flames of engine manifolds through gaps in the sugarcane that separated his marines from Colonel Gooto’s approaching armor.
Lieutenant Colonel Jones received Roland’s report and immediately activated the defensive plan that had been rehearsed repeatedly since the morning landings. Within 3 minutes, every supporting weapon within range was responding to predetermined fire missions. Battery A of the 10th Marines began firing 75 mm pack howitzer rounds into the approaches where tank engines were loudest, while battery M’s 105mm guns opened fire on assembly areas identified by soundranging equipment.
The USS Birmingham and USS Indianapolis, positioned offshore for exactly this mission, began firing 5-in star shells that burst at 4,000 ft altitude and bathed the entire battlefield in harsh white light. The illumination revealed a sight that none of the Marine defenders would ever forget.
44 Japanese tanks were advancing in a rough wedge formation across the coastal plane with Type 97 Chihaw mediums leading and lighter. HGO tanks following in trail. Infantry rode on the engine decks of most vehicles, some manning light machine guns or grenade launchers mounted directly on the tank hulls. Tank commanders stood exposed in open turrets, trying to maintain visual contact with neighboring vehicles while directing their drivers through the maze of coral outcroppings and shell craters that covered the approach routes. The
star shells created a deadly paradox for Gooto’s crews. The artificial daylight they needed to navigate effectively also silhouetted them perfectly against the burning sugar cane, making them ideal targets for every anti-tank weapon in the marine arsenal. Commanders who remained buttoned up inside their turrets lost visual contact with supporting infantry and neighboring tanks, causing the formation to lose cohesion and direction.
Those who exposed themselves to maintain command control immediately drew rifle and machine gun fire from marine positions that could see clearly while remaining concealed in the shadows between shell bursts. Private first class Charles Merritt crouched in his foxhole with a 2.36 in bazooka across his knees, waiting as the lead chiha approached to within 50 yards of his position.
The tank’s commander was riding with his head and shoulders exposed, shouting directions to his driver while firing a pistol at muzzle flashes from marine positions. Merritt could see infantry clinging to the vehicle’s rear deck, their rifles ready to engage any defenders who might emerge from concealment. He waited until the tank passed directly in front of his position, then stood and fired his shape charge warhead into the vehicle’s thin side armor at pointblank range.
The rocket penetrated the chihaw’s 12 mm side plate and detonated inside the crew compartment, killing the driver and gunner instantly while setting fire to ammunition stored beside the main gun. The tank lurched to a halt and began burning fiercely, the flames illuminating other Japanese vehicles that were still advancing through the killing zone.
Merritt immediately reloaded and moved to a new firing position where another tank was approaching with its turret traversed toward his previous location. His second shot struck the vehicle’s engine compartment, stopping it permanently and forcing the crew to abandon their burning machine. Private First Class Herbert Hodgeges was working methodically through his own sector, engaging Japanese tanks with the calm precision of a hunter shooting targets at a rifle range.
Each shot required careful timing and positioning as the bazooka’s maximum effective range of 150 yard meant that he had to let enemy vehicles close almost a hand grenade distance before firing. His technique was to remain concealed until a tank passed his position, then emerge and fire into its side or rear armor where penetration was most certain.
Seven tanks passed through his area of responsibility and seven tanks died with single rocket hits that penetrated their inadequate armor and detonated their fuel or ammunition. The artillery barrage was systematically dismantling Gooto’s formation even as individual marines engaged with direct fire weapons.
Battery Malone fired over 800 rounds of 105mm high explosive ammunition between 0300 and dawn, walking concentrations back and forth across the approach routes until they had expended their entire basic load. The shells were not designed to penetrate tank armor directly, but their fragmentation and blast effects were devastating to the infantry, riding on tank decks, and to tank commanders exposed in open turrets.
Colonel Gou himself died during this phase of the battle, though the exact circumstances of his death were never clearly recorded by surviving Japanese accounts. His command tank was struck by multiple artillery rounds that killed or wounded most of his crew while leaving the vehicle technically operable. When the tank stopped moving and began burning, Marine observers assumed that all occupants were dead.
But Japanese survivors later reported that some crew members had escaped on foot only to be killed by small arms fire while attempting to reach friendly lines. The Marine Sherman tanks that had been held in reserve now moved forward to engage Japanese armor at longer ranges with their 75 mm guns. Each M4 A2 carried approximately 75 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition, more than adequate to penetrate any Japanese tank at combat ranges.
The Sherman’s advantage was not merely in firepower, but in their ability to engage while remaining concealed, using hold down positions behind coral ridges to expose only their turrets while keeping their main armor protected from return fire. Private Robert Reed demonstrated the lethal effectiveness of individual initiative when he allowed a chihaw to pass completely over his foxhole, then climbed onto its rear deck while the confused crew tried to determine why they were taking fire from behind.
Reed dropped a thermite grenade down the tank’s engine ventilation grill, then jumped clear as the incendiary device ignited the fuel tanks and ammunition storage. The resulting explosion through the turret 15 yd from the hull and created a fireball that burned for 20 minutes, serving as a beacon that guided artillery fire onto other Japanese vehicles in the area.
As dawn approached, the systematic destruction of Gooto’s regiment entered its final phase. Japanese tanks that had survived the initial artillery barrage and direct fire engagements were now isolated from their supporting infantry and running low on fuel and ammunition. Most had lost radio contact with their commanders and were operating independently, their crews disoriented by the continuous noise in light of the battle.
Some tanks drove in circles, their drivers unable to determine direction or locate enemy positions. Others became bogged down in swampy areas where the coral surface had been churned into mud by artillery fire and tracked vehicle movement. The last organized Japanese resistance came from a small group of tanks that had managed to reach the perimeter wire around marine positions near the airfield.
These vehicles attempted to break through the defensive line by driving directly at foxholes and machine gun positions, hoping that their remaining infantry could exploit any gaps created by the armored assault. Marine defenders responded with coordinated fires from bazookas, 37mm anti-tank guns, and attached Sherman tanks, creating a wall of steel that no Japanese vehicle could penetrate.
By 0700 hours, systematic Japanese resistance had ended. Individual tanks continued to burn across the battlefield, their ammunition cooking off in spectacular explosions that sent turrets and track sections flying through the morning air. The sugarcane fields were littered with the bodies of Japanese infantry who had ridden the tanks into the killing zone, most cut down by machine gun and rifle fire before they could dismount and engage marine positions.
The few Japanese survivors were attempting to escape on foot toward their own lines, but most were intercepted by Marine patrols that had moved forward to secure the battlefield and count the destruction. Major James Donovan walked among the wreckage with his field notebook, methodically cataloging the results of 4 hours of continuous combat.
31 Japanese tanks lay destroyed within a thousandy radius of the marine perimeter, representing 70% of Colonel Gooto’s original strength and the effective end of Japanese armored capability on Saipan. The human cost was equally devastating, nearly 1,000 Japanese dead clustered around the destroyed vehicles compared to 97 marine casualties in the defending units.
The exchange rate demonstrated conclusively that American anti-tank doctrine had evolved far beyond Japanese offensive capabilities, turning what should have been a decisive shock attack into systematic slaughter. Major General Thomas Watson surveyed the wreckage field on the morning of June 17th with the calculating eye of a division commander who understood that tactical victories must translate into strategic advantage.
The 31 destroyed Japanese tanks represented more than mechanical debris. They marked the effective end of organized armored resistance on Saipan and validated months of doctrinal development that had begun with the bitter lessons of Terawa. Watson’s second Marine Division had just demonstrated that American anti-tank capabilities had evolved beyond Japanese offensive doctrine, creating a template for armor engagement that would influence Pacific operations for the remainder of the war.
The immediate aftermath revealed the catastrophic scope of Colonel Gooto’s gamble. Intelligence officers conducting preliminary prisoner interrogations learned that the 9inth tank regiment had committed virtually its entire operational strength to the night attack. 44 vehicles representing roughly 70% of all Japanese tanks remaining on the island.
The loss of 31 machines in a single engagement meant that enemy commanders could no longer threaten American positions with masked armor, forcing them to adopt offensive tactics that played directly into marine strengths in coordinated infantry artillery operations. The surviving Japanese forces faced a logistics nightmare that would their remaining defensive capabilities.
Each destroyed Chiha or Hago tank had carried not only its crew, but also significant quantities of ammunition, spare parts, and maintenance equipment that could not be replaced. Japanese industrial capacity had produced approximately 1,000 Chihaw medium tanks and 2,300 HGO light tanks during the entire war. Losing 31 vehicles on a single island represented a hemorrhage of irreplaceable resources that would affect operations throughout the central Pacific.
Colonel Yukimatsu Ogawa’s 136th Infantry Regiment had suffered equally devastating losses during the failed attack. His battalions had committed nearly 3,000 men to the assault, with most riding on tank decks or advancing on foot behind the armored spearhead. Marine artillery and machine gun fires had systematically dismantled his formation, killing approximately 1,000 infantry in exchange for negligible damage to defending forces.
The regiment’s surviving elements were scattered throughout the interior hills, lacking the cohesion and heavy weapons necessary for future offensive operations. The tactical lessons emerging from the night battle confirmed doctrinal changes that marine officers had been implementing since Guadal Canal.
Tank versus tank engagements were decided not by spiritual determination or crew courage, but by mundane factors like armor thickness, gun penetration, and the ability to coordinate fires with supporting arms. Japanese Type 97 tanks with 15 to 25 mm of frontal protection simply could not survive against American weapons designed to penetrate 60 mm or more at combat ranges.
The mechanical reality of steel thickness and projectile energy had rendered Japanese armored doctrine obsolete. Lieutenant General Sedo received reports of the disaster from his command bunker and immediately began revising his defensive strategy. The loss of the 9inth tank regiment forced him to abandon any hope of destroying the American beach head through offensive action.
Instead, he would have to rely on prepared defensive positions and cave systems that could channel marine attacks into killing zones where his remaining infantry and artillery could inflict maximum casualties. The shift from mobile defense to static resistance represented a fundamental acknowledgement that Japanese forces could no longer match American firepower in open battle.
Marine intelligence officers noted the change in enemy tactics within days of the tank battle’s conclusion. Japanese armor virtually disappeared as an offensive threat, appearing only in small groups or as static pill boxes dug into defensive positions. The largest subsequent armored engagement occurred on June 24th when company C of the second tank battalion destroyed seven Japanese tanks near Garapon, a fraction of the force that Goto had committed to his night assault.
The psychological impact of losing an entire regimen in 4 hours had effectively ended Japanese willingness to risk their remaining armor in mobile operations. The doctrinal implications extended far beyond Saipan’s coral beaches. Marine Corps training centers began incorporating the night battle as a case study in anti-tank defense, emphasizing the coordination between bazookas, 37 mm guns, artillery, and naval gunfire that had made systematic tank killing possible.
The lesson was not that American equipment was superior, though it generally was, but that proper coordination of multiple weapon systems could neutralize enemy armor regardless of the courage displayed by individual crews. Tank infantry cooperation protocols developed on Saipan influenced marine operations through the remainder of the Pacific campaign.
The installation of telephone systems connecting Sherman tanks with infantry units. The pre-registration of artillery fires on likely tank approaches and the integration of naval gunfire with groundbased anti-tank weapons became standard procedures that were refined and improved during subsequent amphibious assaults. Officers who had witnessed the destruction of Gooto’s regiment carried those lessons to Tinian Ewima and Okinawa.
The strategic consequences became apparent as the Saipan campaign continued through July. Without mobile reserves capable of launching effective counterattacks, Japanese defenders could only delay American advances rather than preventing them. Marine and Army units methodically reduced enemy strong points using coordinated fires and deliberate infantry advances, accepting higher casualties in exchange for certain progress toward their objectives.
The absence of armored threats allowed American commanders to concentrate their own tanks in support of infantry attacks rather than holding them in reserve against possible enemy armor. The final Japanese counterattack on July 6th and 7th illustrated the complete collapse of enemy offensive capabilities.
Lieutenant General Seido committed his remaining 4,000 troops to a massive bonsai charge that relied entirely on infantry armed with rifles, grenades, and makeshift weapons. The absence of tank support meant that American machine guns and artillery could engage the attacking formations without fear of armored breakthrough, turning the assault into systematic slaughter that cost the Japanese nearly their entire remaining garrison.
Private First Class Charles Merritt and Herbert Hodgeges received Navy cross decorations for their actions during the tank battle. Recognition that reflected not only their individual courage, but also the effectiveness of American anti-tank training and equipment. Each man had destroyed seven enemy tanks with seven bazooka rounds, demonstrating the lethal potential of properly trained infantry armed with modern shape charge weapons.
Their success validated the decision to equip marine units with bazookas. Despite initial skepticism about the weapon’s effectiveness against armored targets, the preservation of detailed after-a- reports from the Saipan tank battle influenced American anti-tank doctrine for decades beyond World War II. Major James Donovan’s precise reconstruction of the engagement, including time-stamped sequences of tank kills and ammunition expenditure data became required reading at military schools studying armor versus infantry combat. The fundamental
lesson that tanks without infantry support and proper reconnaissance become vulnerable targets rather than decisive weapons remained relevant through conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and beyond. The wreckage field that had once been Colonel Gooto’s ninth tank regiment gradually disappeared as Marine engineers cleared the battlefield and prepared construction sites for the B-29 bases that would carry the war to Japan itself.
Bulldozers pushed the twisted steel hulks into coral quaries where they were buried under tons of crushed stone and concrete, leaving only fading scorch marks to indicate where the largest tank battle in Pacific War history had reached its conclusion. The tactical lesson remained embedded in Marine Corps doctrine. Tanks are blind without eyes and blind machines make easy targets for men who understand their limitations.
By August 1944, B29 Superfortresses were operating from Saipan’s rebuilt airfields, carrying the strategic bombing campaign directly to Japanese industrial targets that had previously been beyond American reach. The connection between Gooto’s failed tank attack and the eventual bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was indirect but real.
The preservation of Cheron Canoa airfield had enabled the strategic air campaign that ultimately forced Japan surrender. 31 destroyed tanks had changed the course of the Pacific War in ways that their crews could never have imagined as they rumbled through the darkness toward their final battle.
