Chapter 8

Peak and Nadir

The attacks on Ceylon

The Nagumo Task Force spend a fortnight recuperating from its mighty endeavours and then, on 26 March, sailed west into the Indian Ocean (less the carrier Kaga, which was still refitting) with five carriers escorted by four battleships, two heavy and one light cruiser and eleven destroyers to carry out Operation C. Additionally Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa with the carrier Ryūjō, still with sixteen A5Ms under Lieutenant Takahide Aioi, as her fighter complement,¹ and escorted by five heavy and one light cruiser and four destroyers, sortied into the Indian Ocean, as related, and subsequently created havoc and mayhem there, being almost totally unopposed by any strong British naval or air forces. Nagumo, however, was challenged. Much speculation has been heard that this was the prelude to the invasion of Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) and even of India, but the Nagumo and Ozawa incursions were never more than just that, raids designed to either cripple or deter the Royal Navy and keep the Japanese western flank clear while they consolidated their vast conquests to the east and stretched out to deal with the remaining Americans unfettered. The Ozawa raid was designed to disrupt the flow of reinforcements to the crumbling Burma front and give the far-from-enthusiastic Indians something to think about.

The British Admiralty had cobbled together a ramshackle fleet in the hope of holding the Indian Ocean. At full stretch against the combined navies and air forces of Germany and Italy in the Atlantic and Mediterranean most ofthe ships and aircraft that could be spared were not the best. All five battleships dated back to World War I and only one, Warspite, had been modernized. There were three aircraft carriers, one the small and ancient Hermes of little fighting value, Admiral Somerville recording, ‘Hermes cannot fly off T/B² unless good breeze’ due to her slow speed, but two others, Formidable and Indomitable were brand-new carriers with armour decks. Unfortunately aircraft carriers are only as good as the aircraft they carry and with regard to fighters Formidable and Indomitable only had thirty-five between them at the outset ofthe operation, fourteen F4Fs Martlets, nine Hawker Sea Hurricanes and twelve Fairey Fulmar two-seaters. Whereas the Kidō Butai’s five big carriers, Akagi, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku and Zuikaku carried about 350 modern aircraft, the complement of the two British carriers was pathetically small and individually outclassed, while the strength of the RAF and Fleet Air Arm ashore on Ceylon was equally dire. Again Somerville bluntly noted in his diary, ‘Decided land-based striking force practically useless as Blenheims no experience and Swordfish have not got the range. So it all depends on the carriers.’ But the carriers were in as poor a state. Indeed by 8 April, with the battle in full swing, Somerville signalled to the Admiralty, ‘State of fighter aircraft in Fleet is: Martlet [The Royal Navy name for the F4F Wildcat] 6, Fulmar 8, Hurricane I – 10 and Hurricane II -1.’ This was a total for both British carriers of twenty-five fighter aircraft, of vastly inferior performance. No wonder the admiral was pleading with London for, ‘More and first class fighters.’ He requested ‘… immediate dispatch more Fulmars as replacements’, asking that they be fitted with extra fuel tanks for them, and also long-range tanks for the Martlets and Hurricanes. He questioned, ‘When will Barracuda replace Albacore and Firefly the Fulmar?’³ Of the aircraft mentioned the Blenheims were light twin-engined bombers, already obsolete and with a top speed of 266mph (428km/h); Hurricanes were Hawker Sea Hurricanes; the Fulmar was the Fairey Fulmar, a two-seater scout fighter make-over (O.8/38) from the original P.4/34 light bomber design with a top speed of 272 mph (437.74 km/h) and the agility of Thames barge – a few later flew with No. 273 Squadron in Ceylon also; the Albacore was the Fairey Albacore TSR (Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance), incredibly at this date yet another biplane supposed to be an improvement of the same company’s Fairey Swordfish, itself a wire-and-strut contraption known to its aircrews as the ‘Stringbag’.⁴ The longed-for Barracuda and Firefly were both Fairey-built aircraft, one a combined dive- and torpedo-bomber, with a maximum speed of 228mph (367 km/h), and which, like all such compromises, was not brilliant at either; the latter was a monoplane fighter with a top speed of just 316mph (508km/h); neither of these aircraft became serviceable until September/October 1943 and then only in penny packets. It is just as well that the Eastern Fleet’s tiny fighter force was never brought to battle by the Kidō Butai with over 130 A6Ms embarked. However, the British fighters ashore were most certainly put to the test as was the A6M.

Although forewarned of the Japanese attacks by Intelligence, when they did not occur as predicted on 1 April, Somerville, who had sortied from his base at Addu Atoll (Port ‘X’) in the Maldive Islands sortied out to offer battle, while the main ports of Ceylon and India, Calcutta, Madras, Trincomalee and Colombo were largely cleared of shipping. He decided that, in his own boastful words, ‘Still no news of the enemy, I fear they have taken fright which is a pity because if I could have given them a good crack now it would have been very timely. Unfortunately I can’t hang about indefinitely waiting for them.’⁵ He duly returned to his secret base, but prematurely split up his already inferior force, sending the Hermes to Trincomalee and two heavy cruisers to Colombo. However, he was very soon forced to eat humble pie. The Japanese were unaware of Addu Atoll but struck hard at the two latter harbours.

Warning was given by a Canadian pilot of a PBY Catalina at 1600 on 4 April, 350 miles south-east of Ceylon. He reported all five carriers and accompanying warships before six A6Ms of the CAP from Akagi and Zuikaku sighted him, being reinforced by six more scrambled from Hiryū. The flying boat managed to get away two detailed sighting reports in the seven minutes remaining to her before she was shot into the sea in the midst of the third transmission. The pilot, Squadron-Leader L. J. Birchall, RCAF (whom the Canadian Press immediately dubbed ‘the Saviour of Ceylon!) and five others were later rescued. Their message initiated a general alert ashore and many ships were again sent away to sea, including the two heavy cruisers who were instructed to rejoin the fleet. However, thirteen Royal Navy ships and twenty-one merchantmen still remained in Colombo harbour when the Japanese struck early next day. The fifty-three B5N attack bombers and thirty-eight D3A dive-bombers, had an escort of thirty-six A6Ms under Lieutenant-Commander Shigeru Itaya (Akagi), Lieutenant Iyozo Fujita (Sōryū), and Lieutenant Sumio Nono (Hiryū) and Lieutenant Masatoshi Makino (Zuikaku).

Almost as soon as the Hiryū fighters arrived over the port at 0732 they found a formation of six Fleet Air Arm Fairey Swordfish from No. 788 Squadron who lumbered slowly into their path en route from China Bay to Ratmalana, who identified these radial-engined aircraft as ‘Hurricanes, with a large red dot painted on the wings and fuselage’. All six were dispatched within minutes with very few survivors. Rather less antiquated serious opposition came in the form of No. 30 Squadron with twenty-one Hurricane IIBs and 258 Squadron with fourteen Hurricane I and IIBs, joined by three Fairey Fulmar from Nos 803 and 806 Squadrons FAA who took off from Racecourse and Ratmalana airfields and clawed their way skyward. The A6Ms were dumping their long-range tanks as they attacked. In the brief swirling fight that followed no fewer than twenty-one Hurricanes were destroyed and others damaged to varying degrees, against a single A6M, piloted by Sachio Higashi from the Sōryū, lost. In addition three more, Hiryū fighters, were damaged but able to land back safely on their carrier. Six D3A dive-bombers were also lost, mainly to AA fire. British naval losses were the Armed Merchant Cruiser Hector and the destroyer Tenedos, while the Submarine Depot Ship Lucia was damaged while lesser vessels and merchant ships were damaged and port facilities wrecked. A Supermarine Walrus amphibian from the light cruiser Glasgow, which was sent to patrol offshore from China Bay, was also lost when it crashed at Clampalmin.

The nine-plane CAP over Nagumo’s ships meanwhile was taking a steady toll of any searching British aircraft; a PBY Catalina was destroyed at 0842 and a Fleet Air Arm Albacore from No. 827 Squadron Fleet Air Arm (FAA)⁶ was forced into the sea by Masato Hino, Noboru Todaka and Kenji Kotani from Hiryū, who drove off a second which, although heavily hit, managed to land back aboard Indomitable. The fleets were very close, Nagumo search planes were watched on the Eastern Fleets radar screens that day but the main fleets (fortunately for Somerville) never became engaged and withdrew to the Maldives once more.⁷ What the Japanese did find were the isolated heavy cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire steaming hard to join Somerville’s force. A strong force of fifty-three unescorted Aichi D3A dive-bombers was dispatched, caught the cruisers by surprise even though one had an operational radar set, and sank them both with a record number of hits and near misses within seven minutes.⁸

On 9 April the Kidō Butai was re-located at 0716 by a PBY from No. 413 Squadron. The Japanese had resumed the attack on Ceylon by steaming into a launching position one hundred miles from the port of Trincomalee and began flying off a strike force from 0600. The British floatplane was quickly intercepted and destroyed by two A6Ms from Hiryū, again piloted by Masato Hino and Kenji Kotani. The five carriers between them sent off ninety-one Nakajima B5N attack bombers, escorted by forty-one A6Ms, the Hiryū and Akagi each contributing six, under Lieutenant Yasuhiro Shigematsu and Lieutenant-Commander Shigeru Itaya, the Zuikaku and Shōkaku ten apiece led by Lieutenant Masatoshi Makino and Lieutenant Tadashi Kaneko respectively and nine more from Sōryū under Lieutenant Masaharu Sugunami. This mass was detected by radar during its approach enabling the British to scramble all available fighters, twelve more Hurricanes, to reinforce three patrolling Hurricanes from No. 261 Squadron.

Almost immediately two A6Ms, piloted by Lieutenant Masatoshi Makino and Naval Airman 1st Class Tatsu Matsumoto, were surprised and shot down. A third A6M, piloted by Fujito Hayashi also failed to return. Two B5Ns were also lost. In return eight Hurricanes were destroyed and three more damaged in the air and another destroyed on the ground as were three Wildebeest torpedo-bombers. The bombers blasted China Bay airfield while A6Ms strafed causing much damage to aircraft and installations. Two Fleet Air F4Fs did not even take off while one Fulmar of No. 814 Squadron was destroyed. There was also a Walrus and three Albacores lost aboard the freighter Sagaing, which was bombed and beached. The 15-inch gunned monitor Erebus was also heavily hit and badly damaged. British naval losses did not end there, however, for among the ships hurried out to sea were the carrier Hermes (with just one Swordfish aboard in her hangars), the Australian destroyer Vampire, corvette Hollyhock, and Royal Fleet Auxiliary Athelstone, and two merchantmen, British Sergeant and Norviken, all of which were destroyed by eight-five unescorted D3A dive-bombers, which deliberately spared the Hospital Ship Vita and indeed directed her to survivors in the water. Eight Fulmars from 803 and 806 FAA Squadrons arrived too late to save the ships, but tangled with retiring D3As, shooting down four but losing two Fulmars in the process.

Meanwhile a counter-strike by eleven Bristol Blenheim bombers of No. 11 Squadron had been mounted, the RAF machines departing Racecourse airstrip at 0820 under Squadron-Leader Kenneth Ault. Two of these medium bombers aborted the search early on and returned to base, the other nine succeeded in penetrating the Kidō Butai’s CAP at 1048. Despite the fact that the Hiryū apparently sighted these aircraft, but, inexplicably failed to pass on any warning, and that a CAP of twenty A6Ms were aloft, eight from Hiryū, six from Sōryū, three from Akagi and three from Zuikaku, the British aircraft achieved complete surprise (none of the Japanese warships had radar at this stage of the war). The medium bombers were able to carry out unopposed bombing runs on the aircraft carrier Akagi and the heavy cruiser Tone, both of which were near-missed but undamaged. Failure to detect the British forces was deemed ‘… a very serious matter …’ by the High Command⁹ as indeed it was, but little practical action could be done with reliable radar.

As usual, the standard RAF level bombing method proved totally useless in hitting speeding warships. The RAF had rejected dive-bombing in the 1930s and stubbornly clung to their false doctrine despite the numerous examples of the accuracy of the dive-bomber set time-and-time again by the Fleet Air Arm and Luftwaffe off Norway, the Low Countries and France and in the Mediterranean and just recently re-emphasized by the D3As. The Blenheims might have achieved a stunning blow otherwise, but it was not to be and the A6Ms, after their initial lapse, did not give them much chance of escape. Four of the nine bombers were shot down immediately, for the loss of one A6M piloted by Lieutenant Sumio Nono from Hiryū. Worse was to come, as the five remaining British bombers made their way back to Ceylon they met the returning Hiryū A6Ms and were quickly destroyed or were so damaged that they crash-landed and were written off. The A6Ms lost one aircraft, piloted by Toshio Makinoda, in the process.

Winston Churchill was to later to boast that the Japanese had suffered a severe setback, claiming that finally, ‘… they had met bone’ … but this can be dismissed as a typical piece of risible, even fatuous, political spin on what really took place.¹⁰ In private he was reduced to pleading with Roosevelt to take the heat off the British to which the American Premier, no lover or supporter of the British Empire, was less than enthusiastic. Politicians of course have little connection with facts and more disappointing, and with far less excuse, the post-war account of events from the Air Intelligence Officer on the scene at the time, refused to accept that the Japanese losses had been grossly exaggerated.¹¹

The really sobering lesson from this raid for the Japanese ought to have been the fragility of the CAP and the force as a whole in detecting incoming enemy aircraft. Never mind that the actual bombing methods employed by the British were flawed and ineffective, the fact that they could approach with impunity should have given the Japanese deep pause for thought.

For a total loss of just eleven (three A6M, six D3As and one B5N)¹² aircraft the Nagumo force had sunk one aircraft carrier, two heavy cruisers, two destroyers, one armed merchant cruiser, one corvette and several merchant vessels, damaging many more. They had also destroyed forty-eight British aircraft in the air and many others on the ground. Satisfied with this result their foray ended and the five carriers and their escorts departed, never to return. Many had claimed this was a defeat but there was never ever any Japanese intention of invading and occupying Ceylon at this time;, there was no troop convoy, or, indeed, available troops at this period of the war.¹³

If it was a crushing British victory as Churchill and others have claimed, the men on the spot did not view it in the same way at the time. Admiral Somerville wrote to Admiral Sir Dudley North on 10 April, that the Japanese aircraft, ‘… certainly are the devil and we’ve got to revise all our ideas. You see we’ve never been up against carrier borne aircraft before … It’s a damned unpleasant lesson we have to learn. My poor Albacores, Swordfish and Fulmars are useless against the Japs unless can catch them at night.’ Still that same old illusion. Later, on 2 May, he wrote to the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, stating, ‘It is no use disguising the fact that for day striking we are outclassed by the Japanese …’. He summed up accurately enough, however, ‘… our FAA, suffering as it does from arrested development for so many years, would not be able to compete on all round terms with an FAA [i. e. the Japanese] which has devoted itself to producing aircraft fit for sailors to fly in.’

Admiral Geoffrey Layton was even more blunt, writing, ‘The FAA aircraft are proving more of an embarrassment than a help … as they cannot operate by day in the presence of Japanese fighters and only tend to congest airfields.’¹⁴

Not for two long years did the Royal Navy even begin to menace, to even the slightest extent, events in the Pacific. Some victory!

A6M3 Model 22

Even at the height of its achievements development work was continuing with the A6M fighter. Planning to increase the fuel capacity had already preceded the Model 32, and this need was reinforced early in 1942. With the obvious failure of the Model 32 in that regard it was decided to revert once more to the folding wing-tips, giving a 39ft 4 in (12m) wingspan. These folding tips were latched down and upon landing were each raised by hand. It retained the more powerful Sakai-21 engine, which gave the heavier aircraft a speed of 335.5mph (540km/h), only slightly less than the earlier model. To compensate for the higher fuel use and restore the essential outstanding reach of this little fighter, two 12-gallon (45.42-litre) fuel tanks were added, one in each wing, commencing with serial number 3344, which was the first Type 22, adding one hundred miles’ range over the Model 21. This ensured that the Model 22 turned out to have the best range of any A6M model at 887.5 miles (1,428km) plus eighty minutes of full power potential. With the ghastly attrition of the Guadalcanal campaign under way, this was the best news of all to their hard-pressed Japanese Navy fighter pilots. Of course, it would have been better, and certainly would have placed much less strain on them, had the Japanese been able to quickly construct a chain of usable airstrips down the Solomons Island chain, thus obviating the need for such wearing journeys to and from the battlefield, but although some such airstrips were hewn out of the virgin jungle on remote islands, the Japanese were never able to match the construction expertise, extent and machinery that the American SEEBEE organization¹⁵ could devote to such tasks. So range was still vital and reliance on the durability and dogged courage of their dwindling numbers of air aces took the place of sheer physical muscle on the ground. The Model 32 had an overall length of 29ft 9in (9.067m), just an inch longer the original Model 11 and powered by the Nakajima ‘Prosperity’ 21 (Ha 35) radial. This aircraft began to be produced in November 1942 and was officially accepted on 29 January 1943.

Also, before too many of this Model had come off the production lines, the trim tab that hitherto had protruded from abaft the lower rudder, was considerably enlarged in size and recessed into the rudder itself. Experiments were also made with this Model to increase the offensive punch of the aircraft. The A6M3 Model 22Koh (22a or 1st sub-type) designation was employed for those Model 22s that had the long-barrel Type 99 Model 2–3 20mm cannon fitted that protruded from the wing. Based on the Swiss Oerlikon FFL, this gun had the higher muzzle velocity of 2,490ft/sec (759m/sec), weighed 80lb (36kg) and had a firing rate of 490rpm. A few later production models A6M3-22Kai were experimentally equipped with the 30mm (1.2in) cannon, which had 90 rounds and weighed 102lb (51kg), had a muzzle velocity of 2,330 ft/sec (710m/sec) and were tested operationally from Rabaul. In total 560 A6M3 Model 22s were built at the Mitsubishi plant in the period 1942/43.

Battle of the Coral Sea

Between 4 and 8 May 1942 a confused action between rival carrier formations took place in the southern Pacific. It was the first-air-to-air naval battle during which the surface ships of both sides never sighted each other. It was a battle noted for the errors that took place and the missed opportunities that frustrated both commanders. Even although the Japanese Navy was planning and assembling forces for a great final show-down with the US Navy in the central Pacific, one-third of the Kidō Butai, the fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku, was allowed to participate in this side-show, which under the terminology Operation MO, saw the dispatch of a Japanese invasion convoy to take Port Moresby, New Guinea. At the same time the plan to severe communications between Australia and the United States by extending their air bases down the Solomon Islands chain and then ultimately on to Fiji and beyond, further embroiled limited Japanese forces and clashed with American holding actions in the same area. A light carrier, Shōhō, was also involved with a mixed range of tasks that ultimately proved beyond her capacity to fulfil. Overall command was vested in Vice-Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue. The same Allied Intelligence sources that had revealed the Indian Ocean sortie and shared it under the COPEK system¹⁶ gave advance warning to the Americans of what was afoot and they sent two of their own carriers, in separate groups, to contest the issue. In overall command of the American forces was Vice-Admiral Frank J Fletcher, who, as H. P. Wilmott pointed out, had the outstanding advantage of knowing his opponents’ ‘… assumed order of battle, timetable and objectives’.¹⁷ Under his command Fletcher, like Nagumo a cruiser man in charge of a carrier battle, had the carriers Lexington and Yorktown, with a total of thirty-eight F4F fighters, seventy SBD dive-bombers and twenty-five TBD torpedo-bombers embarked, with Rear-Admiral Aubrey Fitch exercising Tactical Command. There was also an Australian/American cruiser squadron under Rear-Admiral John Crace, RAN, and a separate fuelling group of two oilers and two destroyers.

The A6M strength aboard the three Japanese carriers comprised twenty-one in Shōkaku and twenty-five aboard Zuikaku, plus nine A6Ms destined to reinforce Rabaul. The little Shōhō, commanded by Captain Izawa Ishinosuke, had only been in commission since January, and after aircraft ferry duties she had sailed from Truk on 30 April along with four heavy cruisers and a destroyer.¹⁸ She was carrying eight A6Ms under Lieutenant Kenjirō Nōtomi. She also had some unassembled A6Ms and four A5Ms. Suggestions that Shōhō should join up with the fleet carriers to form an integrated force made some sense in that her flight deck would serve as a floating reserve but such considerations did not rate highly and were rejected. Her lack of speed would have restricted the fleet carriers and as surprise (and success) was assumed priority was given to her role of covering the invasion convoy, which the Army Command was demanding air cover for.

When the Japanese occupation waded ashore at Tulagi to establish a base in the Solomons on 2 May the Shōhō provided three A6Ms as air cover, but when there was no enemy attack that day she withdrew. The American bombers arrived the next day and Shōhō reversed course, too late to take part in any air combat, although she lost one fighter piloted by Petty Officer 2nd Class Toshikazu Tamura to an accident over Tulagi that day, before the battle proper commenced. She put back into Rabaul leaving the next day to shield the troop convoy and began air operations on 5 May. From dawn on 7 May a two-plane CAP was maintained over the force with four A6Ms and two Type 96s. At 0800 a warning was received from Japanese scouts shadowing the US Task Forces that they were launching heavy formations of aircraft and preparations were made to fly off every available aircraft from Shōhō. Four A6Ms and one B5N were preparing to land to refuel and join this force, having been relieved by three Type 96s, but before this could be implemented at 1100 the US striking force, ninety-three aircraft, which included ten F4F-3s from Lexington under Lieutenant-Commander Paul H. Ramsey and eight F4F-3s from Yorktown commanded by Lieutenant-Commander James H. Flatley, Jr, made a mass assault on the carrier, mistaking her for the main Japanese carrier force. Despite the best efforts of her slender air cover, during which at least three American aircraft were confirmed destroyed, the Shōhō was totally overwhelmed, being hit by seven torpedoes and thirteen bombs and she sank with heavy loss of life in twenty minutes, the American force commander jubilantly radioing ‘Scratch one flat-top!’ As the ancient little Hermes had vanished a few weeks earlier, overwhelmed by aircraft, so departed the brand-new Shōhō, equally swamped from the air. The vulnerability of aircraft carriers was becoming increasingly obvious. Without any, or sufficient, aircraft, they became mere unarmoured targets.

One A6M was lost in the brief aerial skirmish that of Warrant Officer Shigemune Imamura, a China veteran. Also lost were three more pilots, Petty Officers 2nd Class Takeo Inoue, Yukio Hayakawa and Hachirō Kuwabara, all killed aboard when the carrier was hit. The three surviving A6Ms under Nōtomi made for the nearest friendly haven, making forced landings at the temporary Deboyne Atoll seaplane base in the Louisiade Archipelago off New Guinea. Another A6M piloted by Petty Officer 2nd Class Okura Shigeru from the Zuikaku was also forced to ditch in the lagoon during the battle. The fighters had destroyed three Douglas SBD dive-bombers in return.

While the American misdirected strike had hit the little carrier instead of Inoue’s pair of fleet carriers from the 5th Kōkū-sentai, the Japanese had made a similar mistake and devoted their main effort against the oiler Neosho and destroyer Sims, both of which were sunk. It had been a difficult learning curve for both sides.

The final Japanese sorties that day were mounted by land-based aircraft, 4 Kōkūtai dispatching twelve G4M land attack planes from Rabaul, escorted by eleven A6Ms of the Tainan Kōkūtai, which failed to find any enemy ships. A second strike was sent that consisted of twenty Mitsubishi G3Ms land attack bombers of the Genzan Kōkūtai escorted by further A6Ms. They bombed Crace’s cruiser force without scoring any hits, and lost four bombers to the ships AA fire. All this groping around by both sides had achieved very little, but the battle proper was resumed the following day.

On 8 May the carrier forces of both combatants located each other and launched their respective strikes. The Japanese escorting A6Ms, from Shōkaku under their buntaichō, Lieutenant Takumi Hoashi, included Petty Officers Jirō Matsuda, Korenobu Nishide, Masao Sasakibra, Shunji Horiguchi and Ichirō Yamamoto, Warrant Officer Yukuo Hanzawa and Seaman 1st Class Shigeru Kawano. Nine A6Ms from Zuikaku’s 2 Chūtai were led by the buntaichō Lieutenant Yūzō Tsukamoto, with Petty Officers Tomio Kamei, Satoshi Kanō, Ginji Kiyomatsu, Shigeru Makino, Shigenobu Nakata and Shigeru Okura along with Seamen 1st Class Nobutaka Kurata and Toshitsugu Nisugi. The fighters were escorting thirty-three D3A dive-bombers and eighteen B5N torpedo-bombers. The American strike forces totalled fifteen F4Fs, thirty-nine SBDs and twenty-one TBDs. Incredibly the two air striking forces passed each other en route to their respective targets! The two American carriers, as usual, made separate attacks, the Yorktown planes arriving first.

The Japanese CAP was provided by ten A6Ms under Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima from Zuikaku and nine from Shōkaku under Ensign Abe Yasujirō, later relieved by Petty Officer 2nd Class Miyazawa Takeo. Operating in the murky weather conditions they had no radar to pierce the overcast and direct them against the enemy, and, forced to rely totally on eye-contact, they had problems with interceptions. By the time the leading American bombers arrived overhead three of Zuikaku 1st Chūtai A6Ms were aloft, piloted by Petty Officers 1st Class JunjirōItōand TetsuzōIwamoto and Seaman 1st Class Mae Shichijirō, along with seven from Shōkaku’s 2 Chūtai, Petty Officers Hisdashi Ichinose, Sadamu Komachi, Yoshimi Minami, Takeo Miyazawa, Kenji Okabe and YoshizōTanaka and Seaman 1st Class Kōchi Imamura. Six more A6Ms were hastily scrambled once the attack developed, a further four from Zuikaku’s 1 Chūtai under Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima, the buntaichō, with Petty Officers Kenta Komiyama, Saneatsu Kuroki and Gorō Sakkaida, and two from Shōkaku’s 2 Chūtai, Ensign Yasujirō Abe and Petty Officer Jinichirō Kawanishi.

The CAP of nineteen A6Ms suffered the loss of just two fighters: Petty Officer 1st Class Takeo Mayazawa from Shōkaku who, was, erroneously, credited with destroying one TBD Devastator, and deliberately ramming a second to prevent it making a launch at his home carrier, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Hisashi Ichinose from Zuikaku. Two bomb hits were registered on the Shōkakū but she continued to steam at full speed as her engines were untouched. Despite the bomb hits on Shōkaku, and loss of the arrestor gear, Warrant Officer Yukuo Hanzawa managed to land his A6M safely back aboard, while other Shōkaku survivors were diverted and landed aboard the Zuikaku.

Half-an-hour passed before the Lexington aircraft finally arrived and they were met by the thirteen A6Ms in the air at the time, seven from Zuikaku’s 1 Chūtai, led by the buntaichō Lieutenant Kiyokuma Okajima, with Petty Officers JunjirōItō, Tetsuzō Iwamoto, Kenta Komiyama, Saneatsu Kuroki and Gorō Sakkaida with Seaman 1st Class Shichijirō; and six piloted by Ensign YasujirōAbe, Petty Officers Jinichirō Kawanishi, Sadamu Komachi, Kenji Okabe, YoshizōTanaka and Seaman 1st Class Kōichi Imamura.

They destroyed three of the F4Fs but another hit was registered on the Shōkaku in this attack, and 109 of her crew were killed, but she was able to withdraw relatively intact. The Lexington airmen alone claimed to have hit her with two bombs and five torpedoes in this attack, but apart from one bomb strike the rest were total imagination!

The Japanese striking force contacted their target later that morning. Forewarned by radar the Americans had ample time to assemble a force of eight Yorktown and five Lexington F4Fs supplemented by no fewer than eighteen SBDs deployed in a defensive role. Nine more F4Fs were scrambled away from Lexington as the attack developed and yet four more from Yorktown. This massive defence force should have guaranteed immunity but it did not; the Yorktown was hit by one bomb and near-missed by five or six others; the Lexington fared worse, being struck by two torpedoes and two bombs. She later blew up and had to be abandoned and then finally sank, taking with her into the depths all her thirty-six surviving aircraft.

The two Japanese carriers returned home separately, at the end of the month, and their surviving fighter units resumed training exercises. The Shōkakū had to be docked at Kure for damage repairs,¹⁹ while the Zuikaku replenished her vastly depleted air complement.²⁰ The latter vessel was back in commission again, too late to participate in the Midway operation other than to make a sortie from the Inland Sea on 15 June to support the fleet units withdrawing from that battle.

Battle of Midway

The launching of sixteen North American B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft-carrier Hornet on 18 April 1942, to make surprise attacks on various Japanese targets was a humiliating experience for the Japanese Navy who found that, despite their overwhelming conquests and easy victories over one third of the globe, they had been powerless to prevent it. For twenty years the main Japanese naval plan had been to lure the American fleet westward, subject it to debilitating attrition with attacks by submarines and aircraft, whittle down its numbers and then engage and destroy it in one final cataclysmic surface battle. The plan was really little more than an enlarged and modernized version of how Admiral HeihachirōTōgō’s overwhelming victory of the Battle of Tsushima had been achieved over the Russian fleet in May 1905. Although the opinion of Navy High Command was divided on aspects of his concept, Admiral Yamamoto finally got his way, as he had done previously, by threatening to resign, and the operation was put into motion. Briefly, the idea was to attack and occupy Midway Atoll, a western extension of the Hawaii archipelago group, and thus provoke the Americans at Pearl Harbor to dispatch a relief force. The Japanese hoped the US Navy would commit their main remaining strength so that they could destroy it totally and finish the job started by the Pearl Harbor assault. Waiting in ambush for such an American response would be the full power of the IJN, ten battleships with accompanying light forces. The principal agent provocateur was, once more, to be the Kidō Butai, which would beat down the Midway air defences paving the way for the warship bombardments and landing of ground forces. Nagumo’s carriers were subsequently to move into a covering position to eliminate any opposing carriers prior to the main and, it was hoped final, fleet surface action. Once such a happy outcome was achieved, the Japanese thinking went, Americans would see that to go on fighting was hopeless and Japan might be able to negotiate a ceasefire from a position of strength. In hindsight of course, this would never have happened, but there appeared to very few viable options. Although Yamamoto was renowned as a leading exponent of naval air power, it can be seen that, in the final analysis, his plan depended upon the 18- and 16-inch guns of his battleships to achieve the longed-final reckoning with the enemy, just as with his predecessors.

If bringing the US fleet to its destruction was the aim, which it was, the occupation of Midway being always a necessary, but secondary, aim, then the basis of the Yamamoto plan appeared sound enough. However, success always depended upon the enemy reacting exactly as hoped, never a very sound basis for any war operation. It also relied a great deal on secrecy, for the main Japanese fleet was not to be in place until after the atoll had been crushed. Only after that had been done was it expected that the US Navy would sortie looking for revenge, and by which time Yamamoto’s big ships would be ready for them. That secrecy, however was fatefully to be denied them by the exceptional code-breaking of the Allied Intelligence teams in the field, notably that headed up by the brilliant, if unpredictable, Commander Joe Rocheford and the OIC Station Hypo group at Pearl Harbor who had cracked many the crucial Japanese naval code.

Unprecedented intelligence information gave the US Task Force commanders huge amounts of priceless data prior the battle, thus enabling the C-in-C Pacific, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, to plan his own counter-ambush with both submarines and two carrier task groups. His commander at sea, Fletcher once more, knew even more details about the Midway operation than he had done about the Coral Sea scenario – the date of the attack, the direction it was coming from with the wind coming from the east to aid take-off, the intentions of the commanders, the fact that Zuikaku was not included, the fact that after launching their air strike the Nagumo force was to continue to hold their course straight down toward Midway for three-and-a-half hours to aid their subsequent recovery, even down to the names of each of the individual ships making up the composition of the Kidō Butai, all of which would be promulgated verbally to Nimitz’s admirals in the field of course by COMPAC at the pre-battle meetings.²¹ Nimitz also refused to commit his remaining old battleships, keeping them on the West Coast out of harm’s way; they had not been modernized like the Japanese veterans and nor had they the speed to evade adverse action. Instead, Nimitz decided to use his three remaining carriers to lurk on the edge of the Japanese approach and hit the Japanese ships while their aircraft were away attacking Midway. He also set up a large covering submarine ambush of his own (which, incidentally, proved largely ineffective). He warned his commanders, Fletcher and Rear-Admiral Raymond Spruance, to avoid losing their carriers and not take any undue risks. Fletcher certainly interpreted this order to the letter to the extent that the ambush was very nearly compromised because the US carriers found themselves out of place at the crucial opening phase. Nonetheless, the American plan was to prove to be a far more sound operation than the Japanese plan. Why was this?

The Japanese seemed to go out of their way to compromise their own battle preparations. Firstly they detached two of their six big carriers to cover the Port Moresby and Tulagi operations, both of which could have well been delayed for, had Yamamoto’s Midway plan worked, both objectives could have been taken with almost no opposition anyway. This resulted in both Shōkakū and Zuikaku being unavailable for the really vital fight off Midway, as we have seen, with the most disastrous results. Four smaller carriers were allocated to the operation, but these, like most of the Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers, were scattered all over the central and northern Pacific in separate squadrons, far astern of the Kidō Butai and thus totally unable to assist them when the battle reached its climax. This was a total waste of fighting power, which nullified the overwhelming paper superiority that the IJN had on paper. Further dispersing of available power occurred when Yamamoto also agreed to the invasion and occupation of certain bases in the Aleutian Islands, far to the north. Again, this could have easily been achieved once the main battle had been won, as it was it merely drew off Japanese strength for a secondary, and totally, irrelevant purpose. And so, in essence, the Battle of Midway came down to a duel between four Japanese fleet carriers and three American fleet carriers plus Midway itself, which was, in effect, a fourth, and truly ‘unsinkable’, aircraft carrier.²²

For the purposes of this study the battle can be split in three phases, the Japanese attack on Midway itself; the American attacks on the Kidō Butai; and Hiryū’s gallant attempts to fight back against the odds.

The strike on Midway

The A6M strength of twenty-seven fighters for the attack on Midway comprised nine from Akagi under Lieutenant Aya-o Shirane, with Petty Officers Seiji Ishii, Shinaji Iwama, Yōzō Kawada, Tetsuo Kikuchi, Koreo Kimura, Sakae Mori, Shigetaka Ōmori and Seaman 1st Class Masahi Ishida; nine from Kaga led by Lieutenant Masao Iisuka with Petty Officers Hiromi Itō, Tsugo Ogiwara, Kiyonobu Suzuki, Matsutaro Takaoka, Yoshikazu Nagahama and Seamen 1st Class Ei-ichi Takahashi, Matsutaro Takaoka and Yoshio Egawa; nine from Hiryū commanded by Yasuhiro Shigematsu, leading Petty Officers Yutaka Chiyōshima, Toshiaki Harada, Kazuo Muranaka, Haruo Nitta, Takaaki Satō, Michisuke Tokuda, Warrant Officer Yoshijirō Minegishi and Seaman 1st Class Shigeru Hayashi; and nine from Sōryū led by Lieutenant Masaji Suganami, with Ensign Hira Tanaka, Petty Officers Nobutoshi Furukawa, Iwao Mira, Mitsuomi Noda, Kyoichirō Ogino, Takeo Sugiyama, Kaname Yoshimatsu and Seaman 1st Class Yoshio Iwabuchi. They were escorting thirty-six Aichi D3A dive-bombers, half each from Akagi and Kaga, and thirty-six Nakajima B5N bombers in their Attack mode armed with bombs from Shōkakū and Zuikaku. The entire air striking force was under overall command of Lieutenant Jōichi Tomonaga, the hikōtaichō of the Hiryū. This mass commenced lifting off from each of the four carriers at 0426 and by 0445, so efficient was the Japanese launch procedure, they were en route to the south-east and Midway Atoll. Behind them they left the first elements of an eleven A6M CAP preparing for their first stint in what was to prove a very busy and eventful day.

The American defenders meanwhile had also been astir early. Captain Cyril Thomas Simard ordered his heavy aircraft into the air to conduct searches. Twenty-two PBYs and fifteen B-17s were got away; there was certainly to be no repeat of the Philippines fiasco at Midway if he could avoid it. When the PBYs began reporting the incoming Japanese strike from 0530 onward, the remaining Midway aircraft were not ordered into the air twenty minutes later. At 0600 they hustled into the air from the crowded runways and by 0610 all had likewise departed clawing to gain altitude. The intercepting fighters comprising four F4F Wildcats and twenty Brewster F2A Buffaloes of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-221 were thus in the air waiting when the leading Japanese aircraft sighted Midway at a distance of forty miles around 0615 at 310–320 degrees. The squadron was operating in small units, a five-plane division of F2A-3s under Major Floyd B. Parks, a six-plane division of F2A-3s under Captain Daniel J. Hennessy, a seven-plane division of six F2A-3s and a F4F-3 under Captain Kirk Armistead, a two-planed division of F4F-3s under Captain John F. Carey and a two-plane division of F4F-3s under Captain James P. McCarthy. He estimated the enemy strength at eighty bombers, of which fifty were claimed destroyed.²³

However, the original defence plan had already disintegrated. Instead of dividing into two groups, one to tackle the fighter escorts and the other to deal with the bombers, some aircraft were vectored thirty miles out and an altitude of 12,000ft (4,267.2m), rising to 14,000ft (3,657.6m), directly into the path of the oncoming enemy, while others, which included the patrolling F4Fs, were sent out further westward in case the radar plot proved faulty. One fighter, piloted by Lieutenant C. S. Hughes, was forced to turn back after suffering engine problems and force-landed on Eastern Island, but the rest soon became embroiled with the Japanese.

The air battle here commenced at 0621 when a surprise diving attack destroyed three B5Ns right at the outset. Thereafter the A6Ms intervened and summarily dealt with the audacious Americans who did not have long to enjoy their victories. The Commanding Officer of the Marine fighters stated in his report that the A6Ms:

… were flying at approximately the same level, or at lower altitude than the bombers. Fighters worked in sections or division of from three to nine planes. Our initial contact was made at approximately 14,000ft (3,657.6m). All of the divisions of this squadron were broken up after their first attack, and were to operate as single planes.

He concluded: ‘The F2A-3 is sadly out-classed in all respects by the Japanese OO fighters.’

Very few of the Buffalos survived their first and last encounter with the A6M, and twenty-five American fighters were destroyed, just a single F2A and a single F4F were still flyable at the end of the one-sided battle. Ten staggered back to Eastern Island shot to pieces, of which very few ever took to air again. Captain Armistead gave a graphic account of what it was like to be on the receiving end of an A6M attack:

I looked back over my shoulder and about 2,000 feet (609.60m) below and behind me I saw three fighters in column, climbing up towards me, which I assumed to be planes of my division. However, they climbed at a very high rate, and a very steep path. When the nearest plane was about 500 feet (152.40m) below and behind me I realized that it was a Japanese Zero Fighter. I kicked over in a violent ‘split S’ and received three 20mm shells, one in the right wing gun, one in the right wing root tank, and one in the top left side of the engine cowling. I also received about twenty 7.7 rounds in the left aileron, which mangled the tab on the aileron, and sawed off a portion of the aileron. I continued in a vertical dive at full throttle, corkscrewing to the left, due to the effect of the damaged aileron. At about 3,000 feet, I started to pull out, and managed to hold the plane level at an altitude of 500 feet. As the speed decreased, the stick pressure became more manageable, and by giving it full left tab, at a low speed, the pressure was negligible.

He finally got down at 0899. Armistad continued:

The Zero Fighter is exceptionally maneuverable, with an astounding rate of climb. It is capable of closing the range on an F2A-3 in a climb to such an extent that it seems useless to even try to make more than one such pass at any target. It is my belief that they can climb at least 5,000 feet a minute, as these fighters climbing up at me were pointed an angle of 500 in their climb. I do not believe that they were zooming after a dive, because I am morally certain that at the time I attacked the bombers there were no enemy fighters above 14,000 feet. In fact, I believe that they were below the bombers at that time.

He concluded:

The Zero Fighter is faster in level flight than the F2A-3. It is much more maneuverable than the F2A-3. It can out-climb the F2A-3. It has more fire power than the F2A-3.

Were there any weaknesses that he detected? Yes, one at least:

In general, the Japanese airplanes appear to be very vulnerable to 50 cal. gun fire. They burst into flame in nearly all cases upon my receiving any bullets. It is my belief that the use of incendiary bullets greatly increases the effectiveness of attack against Japanese aircraft.

Similar sentiments were expressed by Captain William C. Humberd, who after attacking a D3A dive-bomber and about to attack another, received the surprise of his life.

I came up on other side and started another approach when, about half way through run, I heard a loud noise and turning around I saw a large hole in hood of my plane and also two Type 00 Navy fighters on me about 200 yards astern, then I immediately pushed over in steep dive in which one followed me.

There was naturally much bitterness that men had been sent to their deaths in such inadequate machines. Captain Philip R. White wrote in his report:

The F2A-3 is not a combat aeroplane. It is inferior to the planes we were fighting in every respect. The Japanese Zero Fighter can run circles around the F2A-3. It is my belief that any commander that orders pilots out for combat in a F2A-3 should consider the pilot as lost before leaving the ground.

Second Lieutenant Charles M. Kunz recorded:

In my opinion the 00 fighter has been by far underestimated. I think it is probably one of the finest fighters in the present war. As for as the F2A-3, it should be in Miami as a training plane, rather than be used as a first line fighter.

Lieutenant Hyde Phillips stated unequivocally, ‘Zero Fighters outnumbered our fighters, had greater speed, and vastly great[er] maneuverability. The Japanese planes were flown with skill and daring. Brewsters and Grummans were no match for the Zero Fighters.’²⁴

By contrast, Japanese fighter losses were minimal, two aircraft and three pilots. The Akagi lost one fighter, Petty Officer 1st Class Shinaji Iwama being shot down over Eastern Island by anti-aircraft fire. The Kaga’s losses were Petty Officer 1st Class Hiromi Itōshot down by fighters, while although Petty Officer 1st Class YoshizōTanaka gallantly nursed his A6M back aboard the carrier, he expired due to his wounds in his cockpit after touching down. Bomber losses were far from the fifty claimed by the Marine Corps flyers; just four B5Ns and a single D3A were shot down, while four further B5Ns returned damaged and had to ditch near the fleet, all but one of the crews being rescued safely.²⁵

Surveying their handiwork, Lieutenant Jōichi Tomonaga made a considered judgement. Although Midway’s fighter defences had just about been wiped out and much damage done to installations, he therefore radioed that he considered that a second strike was necessary in order to complete the job. It was to prove a fateful decision, and one that was, ultimately, to doom the Kidō Butai. In truth, Midway’s aerial sting had by this time been drawn and the atoll’s air power could offer little more in the way of resistance. Moreover, much more damage had been done to the land defences than was realized by Tomonaga’s aerial survey. However, a second strike had always been on the cards as a possibility, and Nagumo, no doubt with memories of the criticisms to which he had been subjected for not making a third attack on Pearl Harbor’s oil tanks and dock installation, was not going to open himself up to the same criticism again. He ordered the strike force (which he had been pre-warned by Yamamoto to keep ready in case of any nasty surprises), to be re-armed from ship strike weapons, torpedoes, to bombs for use against land targets. Work commenced in this complex change-over as soon as possible, but meantime other events had occurred.

The British being the only other naval power to operate carriers were naturally very interested in the tactics employed and the various lessons to be learnt from the Midway combats. A very detailed report was circulated by the Admiralty in London to the heads of all the concerned departments for comments and action.²⁶

The British liaison officer’s report was scathing on American fighter tactics at Midway Atoll itself.

The superiority of the Japanese Zero fighter over the American fighters in climb and manoeuvrability is very evident, but this superiority was aided by the faulty tactics ofthe American fighters. The latter apparently made no attempt to hold off the Japanese fighters with a portion of their fighter force while the remainder dealt with the bombers … They appear to have gone ‘bald-headed’ for the Japanese bombers in small un-coordinated detachments, with the result that the escorting Zero fighters, in spite of their inferior (sic) armament and lack of armour, shot them to ribbons. In fact, the Zero fighters were presented with the one form of combat in which their lack of armour did not matter.²⁷

However, on the other side, the same report also noted:

Zero fighters again out-performed and out-manoeuvred F4F-4s but were much more vulnerable and again there are reports of Zeros being reluctant to attack aircraft in formation. Even so few as two would cause them to open fire ineffectually at long range. It is obvious in every report that comes in that the superior courage and skill of US aircraft crews more than made up for deficiency of their equipment.

The defence of the Kidō Butai

The Midway strike aircraft, four Army Martin B-26 Marauder torpedo-bombers, four Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo-bombers, sixteen Marine Corps Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers and eleven Marine Corps Vought SB2U-3 Vindicator dive-bombers, all got away as well, but fragmented and each group made their own individual attacks. As the morning wore on they were followed by successive waves of American carrier planes, each attacking semi-independently as they arrived on the scene, with little co-ordination. The American attacks somewhat resembled waves breaking on a beach in succession and allowed the hard-pressed Japanese CAP time to land, re-arm (the 20mm cannon’s small ammunition capacity being a particular bugbear in this respect, so many were the targets being offered up) and even refuel between each attack. This approach meant that each ripple could be dealt with in turn, and they were, ruthlessly and efficiently; but it also had a cumulative wearing effect on the A6M pilots themselves who no sooner dealt with one group than another appeared. Eventually this was to prove a subtle, but fatal, erosion of their capacity to defend the fleet.

The Japanese CAP consisted of thirty-six A6Ms over the Nagumo Force and another seven were flown off to reinforce them during the combat. The first aircraft to arrive were the four torpedo-equipped B-26s but their commander made the fatal mistake of circling briefly while he selected his targets and in that interval two of the Marauders were shot down and the other so riddled with bullets that they were written off on their return. They announced four torpedo hits, but achieved nothing whatsoever other than the destruction of one A6M piloted by Petty Officer 3rd Class Toichirō Hanyu from Akagi. The four TBF Avengers torpedo-bombers of VT-8’s detachment attacked at about the same time, marking this aircraft’s debut in combat. They went for the Hiryū but her six-plane A6M detachment met them before they could launch and sent three into the sea immediately. The others dropped but scored no hits at all, although the ball gunner of one Avenger accounted for the A6M of Petty Officer 2nd Class IchirōSakai from the Hiryū. Nonetheless only one TBM staggered back to Eastern Island shot to pieces with all her crew dead or wounded.

Next up were the Marine Corps dive-bombers, sixteen SBDs in two divisions. The first group made glide attacks, which were ineffectual, but this approach enabled the A6Ms to get in among them and no fewer than eight dive-bombers were destroyed. In reply Warrant Officer Yoshimi Kodama of Hiryū was shot down and killed by the Marine flyers. The surviving Marine SBDs were all damaged to varying degrees, one aircraft had more than 200 holes in it on landing, and although they claimed three hits on one carrier, they achieved absolutely no hits at all.

There was an interval during which fourteen B-17s pattern bombed the Nagumo force from a high altitude, 25,000ft. They reported that there was ‘… no great difficulty’ in hitting ships at this height. They duly made enormous claims²⁸ to back this up, claiming three direct hits and many near misses and that they left three carriers on fire and blazing. These absurd claims were taken at face value by the American press back at Hawaii, which resulted in headlines from Honolulu to New York that the big bombers had smashed the Japanese fleet and won the battle just about single-handed. The truth was that, as usual, altitude bombing had failed to score a single hit on any Japanese ship. No B-17s were lost, although they, again quite falsely, claimed to have also destroyed two A6Ms.

After this charade, the next group of Marine aircraft finally reached the Kidō Butai. These were the eleven Vought SB2U-3 long-range Vindicator dive-bombers (christened wearily by their despairing aircrews as ‘Wind Indicators’ as their worn fabric tended to peel up and flutter when airborne) led by Major Benjamin W. Norris. The Akagi A6Ms intercepted these as they began to form up for a shallow dive-bombing attack. One Marine pilot, Major Allan H. Ringblom reported later on, ‘The amazing nonchalance of Zero pilots who did vertical rolls right through our formation …’ He considered this an enormously impressive demonstration of superiority.²⁹ Hiding in the clouds for a brief period to escape these attentions the Marines re-emerged and attacked the battleship Haruna, claiming two hits and also that they had destroyed two A6Ms. Again, this was not the case, the battleship was not hit at all and three of the Vindicators were destroyed, the rest being harried for a long while on their return flight and most were badly shot up.

From glide-bombing and altitude bombing the Nagumo Force now faced the ultimate threat, mass torpedo-bombers. For by now the first of the US Navy carrier aircraft belatedly began to arrive on the scene. Also at this time the Japanese had landed back aboard the bulk of the Midway strike, but they had also been made aware that American carriers were in the area and were preparing to attack them in turn. This had to be delayed as further attacks continually washed over the Kidō Butai and required avoiding action. The first to arrive were the Hornet’s fifteen TBD-1s of VT-8 led by Lieutenant-Commander John Waldron, which had broken away from the rest of her attack force some time earlier and now attacked alone and without support. The ten F4F-4 Wildcat fighters of VF-6 under Lieutenant James S. Gray were overhead but at an altitude of 22,000ft could offer no relief. The American fighters stayed up above for an hour and then, with falling fuel gauges, they went home while down below another lesson in butchery was taking place, unaware that three A6Ms had been scrambled from Sōryū to attack them and were hurtling upward intent on battle, but these were soon diverted to easier prey, however. Twenty A6Ms led by Lieutenant-Commander Shigeru Itaya hit the lumbering Devastators while they were still some eight miles distant and began hacking them apart with their usual expertise, well before they could position themselves to launch torpedoes against the Sōryū, the closest carrier of the force. With a quarter of an hour every single torpedo-bomber had been shot into the sea, leaving just one survivor watching events from the sea.

Almost at once yet another force of Devastators appeared on the southern horizon, this being VT-6 from the Enterprise, led by Lieutenant-Commander Eugene Lindsey. Again ignored by the now departing F4Fs way above, they also went stoically to the meet their fate. By this time twenty-seven A6Ms were prowling the skies and, having knocked down the last of Waldron’s aircraft, turned quickly toward the new prey for a repeat performance. The Japanese fighter pilots have often been criticized for concentrating so much on the low-flying torpedo-bombers and ignoring the high altitudes where dive-bombers were to make their approaches. It has to be remembered, once more, that they had no radar to warn them of what was on the way. They had been attacked previously by Navy-type dive-bombers and had no idea that yet more were on the way. It is also a hard fact, that a torpedo hit below the waterline was more likely to sink a ship, any ship, than a bomb hit above it, so the threat from the torpedo squadrons was acknowledged to be the greater and naturally required action when it appeared.

Appealing for assistance according to a pre-arranged plan, from the totally oblivious F4Fs from his home carrier, Lindsey’s VT-6 now followed Waldron’s route to annihilation. As the A6Ms, reinforced by a further nine scrambled away from their flight decks as reinforcements, closed in for the cull the rear gunners did what they could and were rewarded when Seaman 1st Class Shinpei Sano from Akagi was shot down and killed. This was the Americans’ sole consolation, however, for within seconds the slaughter was resumed and one-by-one six TBDs flamed into the water before they could drop their torpedoes, while of those eight that did none scored any hits at all and three more were destroyed. Having dropped their torpedoes, their only exit route was through the flak-ridden sky above the Japanese ships and, in the process, most of the torpedo-bombers met their end, one ditching on the way back to base. Just four TBDs survived the ordeal.

The Yorktown strike force had been delayed by Fletcher’s superfluous 100-mile air search to the north earlier, which required further time for their subsequent recovery. Some distance behind Spruance’s two carriers Yorktown finally launched her force late, and even then, at the very last minute and without informing the strike leader, a portion of the SBDs and some F4Fs were retained with the carrier, which was in variance to the already agreed plan and ran counter to US Navy doctrine to hit the enemy with everything you had as soon as possible. Nonetheless the reduced Yorktown group held together in the air better than the other two carriers’ attackers, until almost the last moments. Then with a co-ordinated attack almost within their grasp, the fighters, the dive-bombers and the torpedo-bombers all went about their business separately. Two of the six VF-3 Wildcats, led by Machinist Tom F. Cheek, dropped down to protect the twelve TBDs at 2,600ft (9,792.48m) altitude, while the remaining four F4Fs under Jimmy Thach, eager to trial his long-practised beam defence fighter tactic against a live enemy at last, stayed up at 5,500ft (1,676.4m).

The Japanese ‘Great CAP’ was at a strength of thirty-five A6Ms at this point, with six more, three from Kaga led by Petty Officer 1st Class Kiyonobu Suzuki and the three from Sōryū that had abandoned the chase after Gray, rapidly joining them. Several A6Ms concentrated on Thach’s formation, and almost immediately shot down the F4F of Ensign Edgar R. Bassett, and damaged that of his wingman, Lieutenant (j.g.) Brainard Macomber, but the latter was able to close and stick with the Thach and Ensign Robert A. Dibb section, which between them destroyed four A6Ms with the new tactic. This brisk self-preservation duelling did not help protect the Yorktown TBDs however, other than by drawing Zeros away from them. Ten miles out from the Nagumo ships the two remaining F4Fs piloted by Cheek and Ensign Daniel C. Sheedy, managed to shoot down the A6M of Sōryū’s Petty Officer 3rd Class Teruo Kawamata, who was later rescued, and the TBDs shot down another. One TBD had already gone as the torpedo-bombers, led by Lieutenant-Commander Lance E. Massey, descended for their final run-in at 150ft (45.72m) above the waves, with A6Ms swarming around them. Nine of the twelve TBDs were destroyed, Lieutenant Iōyzō Fujita alone claiming four, and only four managed to make their torpedo drops, which were, yet again, fruitless. Just seven torpedo-bombers, four of them damaged so badly that they were write-offs, remained from the fifty-one sent out a few hours before and from seventeen dive-bombers, eleven had been destroyed and eight heavily damaged.

At this point in the battle the Japanese were winning hands-down! Then came the crushing turning-point. With most of the A6Ms down at sea-level or duelling with Thach, there were none in reserve when two formations of SBDs, those from the Enterprise led by Lieutenant-Commander Clarence Wade McClusky and those from the Yorktown under Lieutenant-Commander Maxwell Franklin Leslie, suddenly and dramatically appeared above the Kidō Butai and commenced their vertical dives. Due to the delayed launch and the long searches, McClusky’s bombers were at the extreme limits of their fuel, indeed engines were spluttering as they commenced their attacks, but, once committed nothing could have averted them other than direct hits from the heaviest of anti-aircraft guns. (Incredibly, after six months’ war experience with the A6M in the Pacific some US Navy aircrew still filed reports that they had been attacked by German Messerschmitt Me.109 fighters!) Within seconds the carriers Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū had been hit and were covered in flames, fire and smoke. Normally bomb hits might have devastated flight decks and caused havoc with the aircraft and crew, but would not have sunk such ships outright. What turned this attack from a seriously damaging assault to outright carnage was, of course, the fateful change-over of ordnance that left weaponry strewn around the hangar decks and these fuelled the enormous furnace that the carriers immediately became. All three lingered for a long time, but all three were finally lost. Of the thirty A6Ms that remained airborne ten of Kaga’s fighters, seven of Akagi’s fighters and six each from the Hiryū and Sōryū, all save one managed to land safely aboard the Hiryū, while one Akagi Zero ran out of fuel and had to ditch.

In summary, of the total of forty-three A6Ms of the so-termed ‘Great CAP’, thirteen were destroyed – six by F4Fs, three to the SBDs defensive fire, one to the TBM defensive fire, one Lieutenant IyozōFujita from Hiryū was hit by the force’s own flak, and forced to bale out but was rescued by the destroyer Nowaki, and two more were forced to ditch due to lack of deck space after the carriers were hit. Two casualties from the Hiryū were Petty Officers Masato Hino, Genzō Nagasawa, Huruo Nitta and Michisuke Tokuda, while Kaga lost Ensign Hiroyuki Yamaguchi, and Petty Officers Iwao Hirayama, Shigeto Sawano and Kazuyoshi Toyoda along with Seaman 1st Class Ei-ichi Takahashi.

Hiryū versus Yorktown, Enterprise and Yorktown

Although suddenly left alone after the disablement of her three companions, Hiryū’s redoubtable Rear-Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, who had earlier repeatedly urged his senior officer to allow him to launch his fully prepared dive-bombers while there was still time, refused to crumble, or to run.³⁰ Vengeance was what the Japanese wanted at that moment, not just Yamaguchi but all the Japanese, including Nagumo, who proposed a night surface attack, and Yamamoto, who sought the same. After landing aboard as many of the orphans from the CAP as he could manage, he began organizing a counterattack against what he thought to be just two enemy carriers.

Because of congestion aboard Hiryū the small Japanese striking force was eventually flown off in two under-strength segments. The first force was eighteen Aichi D3A dive-bombers under Lieutenant Michio Kobayashi (buntaichō) and these were escorted by just six A6Ms from 1 and 2 chūtai, led by Lieutenant Yasuhiro Shigematsu.

The fighters became embroiled with a brief battle with the outgoing American strike, and two A6Ms, flown by Warrant Officer Yoshijirō Minegishi and Petty Officer 1st Class Hitoshi Sasaki, were damaged and had to return to Hiryū, the latter being forced to ditch. The remaining quartet had to hasten after the dive-bombers but were too late to offer much protection, although the American fighter pilots were overawed enough to report these four as eighteen Zeros! In the ensuing fight against the fifteen F4Fs of the American CAP, three A6Ms were lost, those piloted by Petty Officer 2nd Class Todaka Noburu, Petty Officer 3rd Class Chiyoshima Yutaka and Seaman 1st Class Yoshimoto Suekichi, with only Lieutenant Yasuhiro Shigematsu surviving to return to his fleet. One F4F, piloted by Ensign Stephen W. Groves, was destroyed in return while the dive-bombers scored three bomb hits on the Yorktown, setting her on fire.

The second Hiryū strike force comprised ten B5Ns under Lieutenant Jōichi Tomonaga, hikōtaichō, escorted by six A6Ms under the command of Lieutenant Shigeru Mori, with Petty Officers Makoto Bandō(Kaga), Kenji Kotani, Akira Yamamoto (Kaga), Tōru Yamamoto and Warrant Officer Yoshijirō Minegishi, a mixed force of Hiryū’s 1 and 2 shotai plus Kaga survivors. Yorktown had six F4Fs overhead and eight more were quickly launched once radar warnings were received but four of these totally missed the incoming Japanese and two more F4Fs, piloted by Lieutenant (j.g.) William S. Woollen and Ensign Harry B. Gibbs, were quickly shot down by the A6Ms, both by Minegishi and Kotani. This pair also nailed a third Wildcat, piloted by Ensign George A. Hopper, Jr, just after it had taken off from the flight deck, and they damaged two more, but two A6Ms were lost. Meanwhile the B5Ns had slammed two 18-inch 1,764lb aerial torpedoes deep into the Yorktown’s belly and she took on a heavy list. The Japanese were jubilant, thinking she was the second, previously undamaged, carrier.

Before a third strike could be organized from Hiryū, the Americans got in the final blow, twenty-five SBDs from Enterprise, one of which turned back, and sixteen SBDs from Hornet, but no fighter escort could be spared. There were fourteen A6Ms overhead when the Americans arrived, three Hiryū aircraft, six survivors from Sōryū, four from Kaga and one from Akagi. The A6Ms managed to destroy three of the dive-bombers but could not prevent such a mass of aircraft from scoring four direct hits. She sank later and the fifteen A6Ms were forced to ditch, although most of the pilots were quickly rescued. These included, from Akagi, Lieutenant Masanobu Ibusuki and Lieutenant Ayao Shirane and Petty Officer 1st Class Shigetaka Ōmori rescued by the light cruiser Nagara and Petty Officer 2nd Class Seiji Iishi also saved by an escort along with Petty Officer 1st Class Masao Taniguchi who was rescued by a destroyer; from Kaga, Petty Officer 1st Class Kiyonobu Suzuki and Seaman 1st Class Takahashi Nakaue, both being saved by the destroyer Hagikaze, as well as Lieutenant Masao Iisuka and Petty Officer Yoshikazu Nagahama who were both rescued by the light cruiser Nagara and Seaman 1st Class Yoshio Egawa also plucked from the sea safely by an escort; from Hiryū, Petty Officer 1st Class Kazuo Muranaka who was rescued by the destroyer Nowaki; from Sōryū, Petty Officer 1st Class Kaname Harada, Petty Officer 2nd Class Yoshimatsu Kaname, Petty Officer 1st Class Munesaburō and Petty Officer 1st Class Takeo Sugiyama, again all being safely rescued by destroyers.

In summary, although the Battle of Midway turned out to be a stunning defeat for the Japanese and a severe setback to their expansion plans, it did not halt them. Tulagi in the Solomons was occupied and work commenced on constructing an airfield on neighbouring Guadalcanal across the strait. The occupation of Port Moresby, which had been abandoned as a sea-borne attack, nonetheless was pressed forward as a land campaign, not abandoned. Rabaul continued to be expanded and reinforced as did Buna; the drive to isolate Australia was slowed but the intention remained. Furthermore, as some kind of consolation prize for the Japanese public to conceal the magnitude of their Navy’s first-ever major defeat, their limited Aleutian targets were occupied and held, however futile this fact was other than as a gesture.

One thing that must be stressed is that, despite the loss of their four best carriers, and the death of many of their finest airmen, the Imperial Navy’s air power was not completely destroyed at Midway. The percentage of aircrew casualties was under 25 per cent of their front-line total, high enough when replacements were at such a premium, but totally destroyed they were certainly not as subsequent carrier battles were soon to demonstrate. The persistence of the myth that Midway finished the IJN as an air power continues even to modern times seems unstoppable. For example, a 2012 quotation has it that, ‘… the cream of her seasoned pilots, air crews, ground crews (sic) maintenance, armorers and flight decks crews’, all just, ‘… vanished beneath the waves …’³¹