The campaign began with an exchange of preemptive strikes that
gave notice the war at sea had become decidedly more dangerous
the closer the U.S. fleet approached Japan. Vice Admiral Marc A.
Mitscher assembled the fast carriers of his vaunted Task Force
58 in Ulithi Atoll the second week of March to commence final
preparations for Operation Iceberg, the campaign to seize
Okinawa. On 10 March, Mitscher convened a conference with his
principal subordinates on board his flagship, the Essex
(CV-9)-class fleet carrier Bunker Hill (CV-17). Mitscher and his
superiors, Admiral Spruance and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz,
commanding the Central Pacific Theater, shared a concern about
the increasing lethality of the Pacific War. Peleliu, Luzon, and
Iwo Jima had been unexpectedly costly, exacerbated by the
enemy's increasing resort to suicide attacks. The initiation of
Japanese kamikaze attacks against U.S. ships, first in the
Philippines, then at Iwo Jima, posed an undeniable threat to
fleet operations in support of a