the conquest of Pussy during World War II it was reported with much pomp in most of the world’s newspapers. On ABC, the news was reported like this at the end of July 1943: «Surface units and heavy and medium bombers of the Army protected by fighters bombed, shelled and heavily strafed the positions of the enemy coastal batteries and the regions where the installations were located. . Numerous fires were started and large explosions were observed.
However, those spectacular “fires and large explosions” did not cause a single death or injury. How could it be? Who were the Americans shooting at, then? Why so much fury and enthusiasm if they did not cause casualties to the enemy? Why did they attack that remote and strategically unimportant island? Two weeks later, this newspaper echoed another detail of that episode: «Two US naval formations operating in the waters of Kiska got confused because of the fog and opened fire on each other. As a result, the Americans inflicted considerable losses on themselves.
Until many years later, nothing more was told about that battle against a series of ‘ghosts’, which occurred on July 27, 1943, which historians today describe as one of the strangest and most mysterious events of World War II. Also, one of the most ridiculous when it comes to the involvement of the United States in the conflict. It became known as the “battle of the pips»and its antecedents must be sought a year earlier on the tiny island of Kiska and Attu, located at the western end of the volcanic archipelago of the Aleutians, southwest of Alaska.
Attu was inhabited by fifty people and was 32 kilometers long and 56 kilometers wide. Kiska, with 35 and 10, respectively, was only watched by twelve soldiers. Although they had belonged to the United States since 1867, none were of strategic importance, being virtually inaccessible and far removed from major shipping lanes. In addition, its weather was unpredictable, with storms, fog, and strong gusts of wind up to a hundred miles per hour year-round. That is why it was surprising that Japan conquered them on June 2, 1942. Why did they want to control such a territory?
an unexplained invasion
The decision baffled the allies, who found no reasonable explanation for the Japanese outrage. The only thing that seems clear is that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto wanted to cement his naval superiority in the Pacific and buy time to consolidate the other conquests he had underway. To do this, he sent to that area four battle groups that sailed separately, consisting of five aircraft carriers, eight heavy cruisers, eight destroyers and five battleships, including the gigantic and famous Yamato. What nobody expected is that they would send a fifth flotilla to invade the two islands.
At the beginning of June 1942, the Japanese forces landed at Kiska and Attu with 2,600 men and established an airstrip to facilitate their provisioning. In the first, the one that concerns us, only twelve American soldiers and a dog named Explosion, who lived in a weather station. The invaders had nothing to fear: they entered the facility on the 6th, killing two of them and capturing seven others. Of the remaining three, two were not present and the third, Chief Petty Officer William C. House, managed to flee.
The Americans believed that he would not last long, since he could not leave the island on foot. However, he appeared two months later half dead from hunger and cold and weighing 36 kilos. The next day they also conquered Attu without opposition, but in reality it was a failure, since the 2,600 Japanese soldiers who occupied it were completely isolated for a year. They dedicated themselves to digging tunnels, planting gardens, and building an air base and numerous bunkers for machine guns in the face of a predictable attempt at reconquest by the enemy, which began in May 1943 out of a matter of American pride. They couldn’t wait for Japan to abandon them.
Japanese troops raise the Imperial Battle Flag at Kiska after landing on June 6, 1942
radars
In the first place, they launched for Attu on the 11th of that month with a large fleet in which the presence of an aircraft carrier and three battleships stood out. With rain, mud and fog as allies, the Japanese put up a fierce resistance that forced the Americans to land twelve thousand five hundred men. It took them two weeks to get their hands on that piece of land again, and immediately they began to organize the assault on Kiska, in which the mysterious “battle of the Pips” would take place.
In order not to make the same mistakes, they postponed it until mid-August. They wanted to subdue the island through an intense naval bombardment with battleships, cruisers and destroyers that had to destroy the airfield and the Japanese port facilities. On July 27, however, everything was blown up, when all the radars of the American ships in those waters began to make unknown signals and terror spread among their crews.
The alert indicated that a formation of Japanese ships was approaching at full speed and they gave the order to open fire on the supposed imperial fleet. For half an hour, two battleships and four US Navy cruisers launched no less than 518 360-mm projectiles that turned off, one after another, the radar “pips”. The first thing they thought was that the attack had been a resounding success and that they had sunk every single enemy ship.
American troops landing at Kiska in 1943
the ghost fleet
The surprise was great when several American patrol boats went to the place where the radar signals had been located and did not find the slightest remains of the Japanese ships. Not a measly remnant of any of the helmets. Absolutely nothing for two hundred miles around. Decades later, novelist and writer Brian Garfield investigated the event with the help of modern equipment from fishing boats operating in the Aleutian Islands. As he verified, no Japanese ship sailed through those waters on those dates and, to this day, the nature of the ghost fleet has never been clarified.
One of the theories that have been considered over the years defends that the signals came from a school of sooty shearwaters or Tasmanian shearwaters, two migratory species of birds that pass through the Aleutians every year during the month of July. Another assures that the responsibility is due to the inexperience of the crews in handling the then innovative radar, although the truth is that both hypotheses seem unlikely today.
The enigma was further complicated when American troops landed at Kiska and were surprised that the Japanese did not open fire on them despite the fact that they were invading. Fearing that it was a trap, they did not dare to advance. However, in the absence of anti-aircraft fire as the days passed, four P-40 planes had the courage to land at the airfield that Japan had built on the island. When leaving their devices, the aviators verified that, indeed, there was not a soul.
The USS Nashville, in the waters off Kiska, during World War II
A fiasco
At that time they did not find any explanation for what had happened, but later it was learned that, on July 28, the Japanese commanders had ordered that, taking advantage of the fact that the North American fleet had withdrawn for a moment to refuel, several ships arrived to the port and embarked the entire garrison in the thick fog. In just half an hour and without making a sound, they managed to get out the more than five thousand soldiers that remained of the garrison and all their equipment.
The battle of the Aleutians, known as Operation Al, which had apparently been a success, was ending. It can actually be considered a fiasco in which the United States made a tremendous fool of itself. Despite not facing a single enemy, Kiska’s invasion resulted in 313 casualties. Some of them were caused by the explosions of land mines and booby traps that were scattered around, but most were caused by friendly fire from the US fleet’s own guns.