Phoney War (September 3, 1939–April 9, 1940) The result was that 243 out of 373 attacking Japanese planes were shot down en route to attack 5th Fleet Japanese 1st Air Fleet lost 50 more planes Several dozen Japanese aircraft were shot down over Guam Meanwhile, Spruance’s submarines found Ozawa and sank two of his precious fleet carriers Ozawa transferred his flag to the IJN destroyer “Wakatsuki” after his flagship carrier, IJN Taiho, went down Ozawa disengaged from the action and limped off, allowed to so by Spruance’s decision to send TF 58 to cover the landings on Saipan against a possible Japanese night bombardment The next day, Spruance’s scouts located the crippled 1st Mobile Fleet at extreme range, and gave chase Mitscher launched his planes late in the day, sending over 200 into the attack They reached the Japanese fleet, sank another carrier, and damaged two more Ozawa had lost two-thirds of his carrier strike force and was reduced to just 35 aircraft That was not enough to defend his remaining ships, which included carriers and fast battleships The Americans had lost just over 40 planes to enemy action However, as the last wave of U.S aircraft returned in the dark and looked for their home carriers, 80 ran out of fuel and were forced to ditch or make desperate, exhausted crash landings in the water Others were saved when Mitscher order the fl ight decks of the carriers illuminated, despite great potential danger from lurking Japanese submarines While American pilots were well satisfied with the result of the battle, ground fighting on Saipan was ferocious and pitiless Invasions of Guam and Tinian still lay ahead PHILIPPINE SEA, SECOND BATTLE OF (OCTOBER 23–26, 1944) See Leyte Gulf, Battle of PHONEY WAR (SEPTEMBER 3, 1939–APRIL 9, 1940) Known to the French as the “drôle de guerre” and to Germans as the Sitzkrieg, this period of military inactivity along the Western Front followed expiration of British and French ultimata to Berlin on September 3, 1939, issued over the German invasion of Poland The usual image of the period in Britain is that the Royal Navy began the hard fight at sea while the bulk of the French Army sat in deep bunkers and fortifications along the Maginot Line, a picture of magnificent ineffectiveness in sky-blue tunics It is true that such inactivity frittered away morale and cost parts of the French Army their fighting edge It is additionally true that the dour mood infected the British Expeditionary Force, which was keeping powerful French mobile forces company on the northern flank, as the Allies awaited a Belgian invitation to move to the Dyle Line It is also correct that Western air forces were under orders not to bomb, but instead dropped propaganda leaflets over the Ruhr in a nonbelligerent activity that did not prevent Germans shooting down Allied planes and killing crews Still, to focus on inaction on the Western Front obscures what was really underway as the Wehrmacht finished its brutal occupation, pacification, and partition of Poland in partnership with the Red Army, then transferred its Panzer divisions to the west in readiness for FALL GELB, the campaign to conquer France and the Low Countries 851