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Operation ''Vengeance'' was the American military operation to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy on April 18, 1943, during the Solomon Islands campaign in the Pacific Theater of World War II and exactly one year following the United States' most direct previous blow to Japan with the Doolittle Raid. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was killed on Bougainville Island when his transport bomber aircraft was shot down by United States Army Air Forces fighter aircraft operating from Kukum Field on Guadalcanal. The mission of the U.S. aircraft was specifically to kill Yamamoto and was based on United States Navy intelligence on Yamamoto's itinerary in the Solomon Islands area. The death of Yamamoto reportedly damaged the morale of Japanese naval personnel (described by Samuel Eliot Morison as being considered the equivalent of a major defeat in battle), raised the morale of the Allied forces, and was intended as revenge by U.S. leaders who blamed Yamamoto for the Pearl Harbor attack which initiated the formal state of war between Imperial Japan and the United States. After the war, acrimonious debate erupted over which of the U.S fighter pilots involved in the raid deserved the official credit for downing Yamamoto; in a manner similar to other internationally famous combatants killed in war (such as Manfred von Richthofen and Michael Wittmann), the debate persisted for years due to conflicting first-hand reports from the participants, and has never been entirely resolved. == Background == Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, scheduled an inspection tour of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He planned to inspect Japanese air units participating in the I-Go operation that had begun April 7, 1943, and to boost Japanese morale following the disastrous evacuation of Guadalcanal. On April 14, the U.S. naval intelligence effort code-named "Magic" intercepted and decrypted orders alerting affected Japanese units of the tour. The original message, NTF131755, addressed to the commanders of Base Unit No. 1, the 11th Air Flotilla, and the 26th Air Flotilla, was encoded in the Japanese Naval Cipher JN-25D (Naval Operations Code Book of the third version of RO), and was picked up by three stations of the "Magic" apparatus, including Fleet Radio Unit Pacific Fleet. The message was then deciphered by Navy cryptographers (among them future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens〔(''What Will the Supreme Court Be Like Without Justice John Paul Stevens'' by Jeffrey Toobin )〕); it contained time and location details of Yamamoto's itinerary, as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and accompany him on the journey. Yamamoto, the decryption revealed, would be flying from Rabaul to Balalae Airfield, on an island near Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, on April 18. He and his staff would be flying in two medium bombers (Mitsubishi G4M Bettys of the 205th Kōkūtai Naval Air Unit), escorted by six navy fighters (Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters of the 204th Kōkūtai NAU), to depart Rabaul at 06:00 and arrive at Ballale at 08:00, Tokyo time. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to "get Yamamoto." Knox instructed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of Roosevelt's wishes. Nimitz first consulted Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander, South Pacific, and then authorized the mission on April 17. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Operation Vengeance」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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