Battle of The Philippine Sea - Aftermath

Aftermath

That night, Admiral Ozawa received orders from Toyoda to withdraw from the Philippine Sea. U.S. forces gave chase, but the battle was over.

The four Japanese air strikes involved 373 carrier aircraft, of which 130 returned to the carriers, and many more were lost on board when the two carriers were sunk on the first day by submarine attacks. After the second day the losses totaled three carriers, more than 433 carrier aircraft, and around 200 land-based aircraft. Losses on the U.S. side on the first day were only 23, and on the second 100, most of them resulting from the night landings.

The losses to the Japanese were irreplaceable. Of the Japanese naval air arm, only 35 out of Admiral Ozawa's 473 aircraft were left in a condition fit to fly. In the Battle of Leyte Gulf a few months later, their carriers were used solely as a decoy because of the lack of aircraft and aircrews to fly them.

The Japanese Navy, which had not released the true accounts of the naval battles since the Battle of Midway (which they had presented as a victory), had revealed the actual accounts of the simultaneous Battle of Saipan to the public, but the extent of the disaster of the Battle of the Philippine Sea led them to continue the obfuscating of defeats with it.

The F6F had proved decisive in the battle. Its superior speed, firepower, and protection made it a formidable aircraft for the increasingly undertrained Japanese airmen. Losing fewer than two dozen Hellcats, the American pilots were dominant during the battle racking up nearly 500 kills in two days alone.

Spruance was heavily criticized by many officers after the battle (and continues to be to this day) for his decision to initiate battle cautiously rather than exploiting his superior forces and intelligence data with a more aggressive posture; by failing to press the attack earlier and more forcefully, his critics argue, he might well have squandered the opportunity to envelop and destroy the entire Japanese strike force. However, it is instructive to compare Spruance's caution (particularly his suspicion of a diversionary force) with Admiral Halsey's later impetuous pursuit of an actual diversionary force at the Battle of Leyte Gulf that left inferior U.S. forces open to an attack off Samar by a Japanese surface action group composed of battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Furthermore, Spruance's conservative battle plan, while not destroying all of the Japanese aircraft carriers, did effectively drive the final nail into the coffin of the Japanese naval aviation forces by killing most of the remaining trained pilots and destroying their last operational reserves of naval aircraft. Without the time or resources to build sufficient aircraft and train experienced pilots, the surviving Japanese carriers were mere shadows of their former selves, a fact the Japanese recognized by using them as sacrificial decoys at Leyte Gulf. With the effective crippling of her best striking arm, Japan was increasingly forced to rely on land-based kamikaze suicide aircraft in a last-ditch effort to stave off total U.S. naval and air supremacy.