While the agonizing brawl on the island of Saipan raged on, a new dimension to this titanic struggle was unfolding over the western horizon. Sailing from Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 1st Mobile Fleet, made up of almost every remaining Japanese warship, was charging headlong through the vast ocean to do battle with the U.S. fleet currently supporting the landings.
The IJN, for all its previous setbacks and attrition suffered from two years of combat with the Americans from Coral Sea and Midway and into the waters off the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Sea, had managed to cobble together a flotilla that, on paper, was a formidable threat to the U.S. Navy.
.png)
.png)
