LAST FLIGHT OF YAMAMOTO ISOROKU

Navigating low, close to the ocean’s waves, during the mission against the Shortlands had greater significance than imagined. On 18 April 1943, USAAF Captain John Mitchell used that experience to lead his low-altitude, 435 mile strike. This time Mitchell and 15 other P-38 pilots sought a G4M1 Betty Bomber that carried the commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the attack on Midway Island. Yamamoto planned an inspection tour of the IJN airbase facility on Ballalle island, near Tonolei Harbour, at the southern end of Bougainville in the Solomons.

It was unknown to the Japanese that United States Naval Intelligence code breakers had deciphered his itinerary and that precise details of his flight had therefore been compromised. With top-level permission granted to attempt to down his aircraft, Yamamoto’s fate was sealed.