Japanese naval officer who commanded the Southern Expeditionary Fleet in the early months of the war and played a major role in Japanese naval aviation. In 1944 he participated in two major naval engagements, the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. He served as the last commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet. Ozawa graduated from the Japan Naval Academy in 1909. During World War I he served aboard a destroyer on convoy duty in the Mediterranean. He became a specialist in torpedo warfare, eventually serving as president of the Naval Torpedo College. He also was an enthusiastic supporter of naval aviation. In November 1939, Ozawa was appointed commander of Carrier Division 1, serving in that capacity for a year. In that post he became an outspoken advocate of consolidating all aircraft carriers into one striking force. In April 1940 he submitted his idea to the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who approved the concept and organized the First Air Fleet on April 10, 1941, thereby joining the carriers and air groups of Carrier Divisions 1, 2, and 4. On October 18, 1941, Ozawa was appointed commander in chief of the Southern Expeditionary Fleet and was given the responsibility of supporting the Japanese landings in Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. During this operation he initiated the first overt, belligerent act of the war when he ordered the destruction of a British reconnaissance aircraft that was shadowing the Japanese invasion forces sailing toward Malaya. Following the successful conquest of Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies, Ozawa’s fleet conducted operations in the Bay of Bengal in support of the Japanese offensive in Burma.

On November 2, 1942, Ozawa was appointed commander in chief of the Third Fleet, which comprised the Japanese navy’s carrier striking force. Japan’s carrier forces had been considerably weakened, however, following the Coral Sea and Midway carrier battles and operations in support of the Guadalcanal campaign. Ozawa had few aircraft carriers available to him, and carrier air groups had experienced heavy losses of irreplaceable experienced personnel.

Ozawa was given little time to rebuild the Third Fleet. In an effort to halt or delay the Allied offensive in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, he was repeatedly called upon to transfer his air groups to Rabaul, New Britain, in support of large-scale air operations. The first such operation was A-Go Plan, which began in April 1943. The actions took a steady and heavy toll on Ozawa’s air groups. In support of Operation Ro-Go, an air operation directed at the Allied landings on Bougainville, Ozawa lost 70 percent of Carrier Division 1’s 173 planes and 44 percent of their air crews.

In anticipation of a new Allied offensive, Ozawa was appointed commander in chief of the Mobile Fleet (which constituted about 90 percent of the Combined Fleet) on March 1, 1944, and was directed to prepare for a decisive battle against the U.S. Navy. In June 1944, Ozawa led the Mobile Fleet as it bore down on the U.S. Navy task forces involved in the invasion of the Mariana Islands. He engaged the U.S. Navy’s carrier task forces, commanded by Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, on June 19 and 20, launching four air strikes against the U.S. fleet. The engagement, designated the Battle of the Philippine Sea, was a disaster for Ozawa. His air groups were virtually annihilated, and three of his carriers, including flagship Taiho, were sunk. Although Ozawa was badly defeated, the eminent historian Samuel E. Morison described him as

…one of the ablest admirals in the Imperial Navy; a man with a scientific brain and a flair for trying new expedients, as well as a seaman’s innate sense of what can be accomplished with ships. Although himself not an aviator, he was a strategist, and it was he who had initiated the offensive use of aircraft carriers…. Altogether, Ozawa was a worthy antagonist to Mitscher.

The following October, Ozawa commanded a carrier task force in Plan Sho-Go, an operation intended to prevent or disrupt the U.S. amphibious landings in the southern Philippines. Ozawa’s purpose was to draw Admiral William F. Halsey’s Seventh Fleet away from the landings, thereby giving other elements of the Japanese Combined Fleet an opportunity to attack the U.S. landing forces. He succeeded in his mission, but in the ensuing attacks directed against his task force (the Northern Force), designated as the Battle off Cape Engaño, all of his carriers were sunk.

On November 11, 1944, Ozawa was appointed vice chief of the Naval General Staff. In that capacity he played an instrumental role in the naval defense of Okinawa. He later said that he was responsible for the suicide mission of superbattleship Yamato in March 1945. On May 29, 1945, Ozawa was appointed commander in chief of the Combined Fleet and supreme commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, positions he held until the close of the war.

FURTHER READINGS

Howarth, Stephen (ed.). Men of War: Great Naval Captains of World War II (1993).

Morison, Samuel Eliot. New Guinea and the Marinas. (1953).