Pacific ships

IJN · Captain

Sugimoto, Ushie

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Ushie Sugimoto was born on 12 May 1894 and was educated at the Naval Academy at Etajima. He graduated on 22 November 1916 in the forty-fourth class, seventy-fifth of ninety-five, and began his sea duty in the protected cruiser Yakumo. Over the next year he served in the cruiser Azuma and the battleships Mikasa and Asahi, and he was commissioned ensign on 1 December 1917. After the basic gunnery and torpedo courses he turned to aviation, entering the air course at the Yokosuka Air Group on 1 December 1919, the day he was promoted lieutenant junior grade.

He belonged to the small group of officers who learned carrier flying while the navy was still inventing it. Duty followed at the Sasebo and Kasumigaura air groups and on the staff of a temporary flying-training center. Promoted lieutenant on 1 December 1922, he joined the light carrier Hosho on 1 December 1924, while she was still the fleet's working school for deck landings and her captain was Ryutaro Kaizu. He left her in May 1926 for Kasumigaura and Yokosuka, then went to the fleet carrier Akagi in June 1927. Promoted lieutenant commander on 10 December 1928, he served in Kaga, returned briefly to Yokosuka, and on 1 November 1930 came back to Hosho as her flight officer.

From the end of 1931 his work shifted toward the technical side of naval aviation. He served in the Technical Bureau of the Naval Air Command and on the shipbuilding command, then returned to sea in October 1933 as flight officer of Akagi. In November 1934 he joined the flight-research staff of the air arsenal and was promoted commander. Later that month the navy sent him on an inspection trip to Europe and the United States; he came home in July 1935. After a period at Kure he joined the fitting-out crew of the new carrier Soryu in February 1937 and became her executive officer on 16 August 1937, remaining through her completion and her early operations in the war in China. He left Soryu in January 1939.

Sugimoto was promoted captain on 15 November 1939 and took command of the Iwakuni Air Group on 1 December. On 21 June 1940 he became captain of the light carrier Ryujo. From 20 August 1940 he also held Hosho as an additional command. By then Hosho was a training carrier, used to qualify pilots rather than to lead a striking force, and the appointment lasted only through the autumn. He was relieved of Hosho on 11 November 1940 and stayed in Ryujo.

He was still Ryujo's captain when the Pacific War began. The ship operated with the forces that seized the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies, and in April 1942 she joined the raid into the Bay of Bengal against Allied merchant shipping. On 25 April 1942 he went ashore as chief of the flight-research bureau at the Air Technical Arsenal at Yokosuka, and he remained in that experimental post until March 1943.

Operational command followed in quick succession. He joined the staff of the 26th Air Flotilla, then on 10 March 1943 took command of the 204th Air Group, a fighter unit in the Solomon Islands fighting. On 1 September 1943 he became commander of the 27th Air Flotilla, and on 1 February 1944 of the 62nd Air Flotilla. Promoted rear admiral on 1 May 1944, he was appointed chief of staff of the Second Air Fleet on 15 June. That fleet had been assembled for the defense of the Philippines, and he held the post through the October air battles off Taiwan and the opening of the campaign for Leyte.

On 27 October 1944 he returned to the 26th Air Flotilla as its commander. The flotilla's aircraft were soon expended, and its ground echelon was committed to the Kembu Group in the Clark Field sector on Luzon. In late April 1945, with the position giving way under American attack, he ordered the remaining men to break up the organized defense and carry on in the mountains around Mount Pinatubo. Sugimoto died there on 12 June 1945, at the age of fifty-one. Accounts from survivors say that he took his own life. The navy treated the death as killed in action and promoted him to vice admiral as of that day.