Disaster and Revenge in the Far East
War with Japan had been seen as a serious possibility for some time. Japan had been a First World War ally but the country’s territorial ambitions were increasingly clear and during the Russian Civil War, Japan’s assistance to its allies was noticeably self-serving. Construction had gone ahead on a major naval base at Singapore, intended to be a Far East Gibraltar, and the dominions of Australia and New Zealand had both been promised that in the event of war with Japan, the United Kingdom would send a ‘strong fleet’ to the Far East. What no one had considered was that the country could be faced with a major war in Europe at the same time.
Japan had been working to create an empire in Asia since the beginning of the twentieth century. The initial objective was Korea, but mainland China was also seen as ripe for Japanese expansion. The territories granted to the European powers had also been eyed enviously by Japan, which ably demonstrated its ability to face a European power in war, and especially war at sea, when it soundly defeated the Imperial Russian Navy in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05.
Conflict with Japan did not depend on a formal declaration of war. Japanese strategy was based on making a surprise first strike, catching their opponent off guard.
There was a major difference in Japan before the First World War and before the Second World War. Before the first, Japan was still an importer of Western technology, but by the second it had become an industrial power. This had not been done without Western help. In the years after the First World War, a British Naval Mission visited Japan and British combat aircraft were sold to the country as well as the rights to manufacture under licence. The mission eventually ended, with many misgivings among those involved about Japan’s future intentions, but it was too late as the damage was already done.
Japan made it clear that she was unhappy with the conditions of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, expecting parity with the United Kingdom and United States, each of which had a total allowance of 525,000 tons of warships against the 315,000 tons allocated to Japan. This issue was raised again at the London Naval Conference of 1930 when Japan demanded parity with the USA and UK.
In many ways, Japan’s ultimate reason for territorial aggression was the same as Germany’s, demanding Lebensraum (‘living space’), as Japan also had a growing population and was unable to grow sufficient food to feed her people.
The League of Nations had allowed Japan to base troops, known as the Kwantung Army, to guard the Southern Manchurian Railway. On 18 September 1931, an explosion on the railway gave Japan the excuse to allow the Kwantung Army to occupy the Chinese province of Mukden, followed by Manchuria. The following year, the Kwantung Army created a new state, Manchukuo, but this was refused recognition by the League of Nations. By this time the Imperial Japanese Navy had become involved as unrest around the major Chinese city and port of Shanghai, known as the Shanghai disturbances, gave Japan an excuse to send troops to the area, ostensibly to protect Japanese interests and its own nationals resident in the city. The aircraft carrier Kaga was sent from Japan, arriving off Shanghai on 30 January 1932 with twenty-four Nakajima A1N Type 3 fighters and thirty-six Mitsubishi B1M Type 13 attack aircraft, sufficient to give Japan air control over the area. Another carrier, the Hosho, arrived shortly afterwards with reinforcements.
China was, at the time, backward and the authority of the central government in Peking was weak. Nevertheless, while Japanese ground forces initially enjoyed overwhelming superiority, Japan soon realized that it had underestimated the capabilities of the Chinese 19th Route Army. Japanese retaliation was severe, with aircraft from the Kaga destroying the Chinese areas of Shanghai but at this stage still avoiding the foreign concessions, those areas held by European powers. The Japanese maintained their overwhelming aerial superiority, even when Chinese aircraft were deployed in the area. The conflict lasted throughout February and until mid-March, by which time Shanghai was firmly under Japanese control and by May the Chinese were forced to accept a demilitarized zone.
Despite this, the Japanese Naval Air Force still seems to have found Japanese aircraft disappointing and continued to prefer those of European production, despite the country’s policies damaging relations with the United Kingdom and France. Many Japanese aircraft were designed and developed but failed to enter production. To meet the need for a dive-bomber for carrier squadrons, the Heinkel He 50 was licence-produced as the Aichi D1A1 Type 94.
The year 1932 was the first in which the Japanese Navy Air Force (JNAF) and Japanese Army Air Force (JAAF) started annual air defence exercises. As the 1930s continued, the quality and performance of the aircraft produced by Japanese industry started to improve; by 1937 the latest designs showed much promise and these were to be the aircraft that would provide the mainstay of the JNAF during the Second World War.
In May 1933, the Imperial Japanese Navy received its first aircraft carrier to have been designed as such rather than converted from a battleship or battle-cruiser. This was the Ryujo, designed to have as low a displacement tonnage as possible but carry the maximum number of aircraft. Her tonnage on commissioning was 10,600 tons, small even for the day; it would have been even lower had not problems with stability and sea-keeping required enlarged torpedo bulges and modifications to her bows. Unlike Western aircraft carriers of the day, Ryujo did not have an island but instead had a bridge below the forward end of the flight deck overlooking the fo’c’sle, while two funnels on the starboard side ducted downwards; this was to be a feature of many Japanese aircraft carriers including some with islands. Originally designed with six twin 5in gun turrets, these had to be removed to improve stability.
Up to forty-eight aircraft could be carried when acting as an aircraft transport, but this dropped to thirty-six for operational flying. Apart from her size, another design deficiency was that of her two aircraft lifts: that forward was too small to handle most JNAF aircraft so that only that aft could be used, making efficient use of the hangar deck difficult. The flight deck was also too short to range an adequate number of aircraft ready to take off on operations.
Such were the shortcomings of the Ryujo that the next aircraft carriers to be supplied to the JNAF were built to a more substantial and practical size, but with three carriers already, two of which were converted capital ships, only one of the new design could be completed without infringing the limits imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty. It could have been worse, as Japan’s first carrier had been granted an exemption under the treaty as an experimental ship.
The first of the new carriers, Soryu, was laid down in 1934 and a second followed a year later. While a more substantial 15,900 tons, as with the Ryujo, adequate armour was not provided. This ship had a conventional island but still had the downward ducted funnels. Unusually, the Soryu had three lifts, and while the flight deck ran the entire length of the ship, the hangar did not and the fo’c’sle and quarterdeck were both open. Despite the problems with Ryujo, Soryu also had a narrow beam but this did at least give her the high speed of 34.5 knots. On entering service in December 1937, she was able to accommodate more than sixty aircraft.
The next carrier was heavier still at 17,300 tons but still with the same aircraft accommodation and turn of speed as Soryu when she entered service in July 1939. Hiryu had a broader beam and an improved range. Her big claim to fame, however, was that she was one of just two aircraft carriers ever to have the island on the port side, although the funnels were still to starboard.
Before this, in 1934, Japan had formally notified the other signatories to the Washington Naval Treaty that she now no longer regarded herself as being bound by the restrictions of the treaty. During the late 1930s, several more aircraft carriers were laid down while others were converted from other naval vessels. The Royal Navy and the French Marine Nationale had both operated aircraft-carrying submarines, although the British submarine, M2, had sunk, and Japan alone took a more thorough interest in this type of submarine. While the British and French submarines carried just one seaplane each, some of the Japanese submarines carried two, and towards the end of the war a new class of large submarines capable of carrying three aircraft each was completed but did not see active service. These were captured and scuttled by the USN to avoid having to share the secrets of these craft with the Soviet Union.
Tensions between China and Japan continued to grow as the decade passed. Full-scale war followed a major clash on 7 July 1937 with heavy fighting near the capital, then known as Peking. The main opposition to the Japanese was led by General Chiang Kai-shek, who was broadly supported by the West although he had also negotiated a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. Before the end of the month, on 28 July, Peking was occupied and the Chinese government moved to Nanking, which lasted until 13 December. There were also amphibious landings near Shanghai, which was completely occupied.
Preparing for War
War with the United States was seen by many Japanese as inevitable. Japanese naval officers had to learn a foreign language during their training and many, including Mitsuo Fuchida who was later to lead the attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, chose English.
The Japanese were jealous of European control over so much of the Far East. They saw France with Indo-China; The Netherlands with the East Indies with its extensive oil production; and worst of all, the United Kingdom with Malaya’s tin and rubber, while the UK also had Singapore and Hong Kong, Burma with its timber output and, of course, India, then a single large country. There was also a strong American influence, with the Philippines run virtually as an American colony. This jealousy was also tainted with contempt for the colonial powers and the United States, with the USN viewed as a golf and bridge club for its officers in the eyes of one Japanese naval officer.
The Europeans and Americans were also suspicious of Japanese intentions. They had seen Japan seize Korea, and even before the intervention in Manchuria, concerns about Japanese intentions had been raised during the Allied operations in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. It was clear that Allied forces in Siberia were hampered by the Japanese, who had their own agenda. Many Americans involved in political life were reluctant to act, advocating a policy of isolationism, but public opinion in the United States began to change as news came through of Japanese atrocities in China, especially after the rape of the former Nationalist Chinese capital of Nanking following its fall to Japanese forces in December 1937. The United States was also unsympathetic to the European colonial powers; there was concern about the extent of the Japanese advance into China, militarily weak and divided. It was also clear that Japan had set its sights on French Indo-China, which would be a convenient source of food for Japan’s large population. Alarm bells rang when Japan and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact.
In December 1940, the United States imposed an embargo on the sale of war materials to Japan, including scrap metal. This was followed in July 1941 by the freezing of Japanese assets in the USA following the Japanese invasion of French Indo-China. Both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands East Indies government followed the American lead, denying Japan the currency with which to buy oil and raw materials as well as banning the sale of these commodities. This left Japan with a strategic reserve of just eighteen months of fuel oil, some 55 million barrels, unless she could find an alternative source by invading the Netherlands East Indies.
Many Japanese realized that their country could not win a war against the United States. Among those opposed to war was the Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who had been sent to Washington in 1926 as Japan’s naval attaché. He had earlier attended Harvard University between 1919 and 1921, and had also spent some time at the US Naval War College. Clearly Japan had derived the maximum advantage from her First World War alliances. Yamamoto was well-disposed towards the United States, although he also seems to have been cynical about the peacetime United States Navy which he viewed more as a club for bridge and golf. Yet, Yamamoto was also as aware as anyone in Japan about his country’s weaknesses, especially compared to the United States. He knew that Japan could not match the USA industrially or militarily and that it lacked the natural resources and manpower of the USA. As war drew closer, he realized that it was a dangerous course and believed that Japan could achieve a major victory in the first year of war but during the second year the United States would be able to recover and move to the offensive. The problem was that while the Imperial Japanese Navy was far stronger than the United States Navy in the Pacific, it could not match the full strength of the combined Pacific and Atlantic fleets.
While war was an objective, especially for the army faction, planning did not begin in earnest until 1940, with Yamamoto and his staff giving priority to neutralizing the United States Navy. It was soon decided that Japan would need to inflict a knockout blow on the US Pacific and Asiatic fleets that would leave Japan with a minimum of six months and ideally even longer in which to establish an empire across the Pacific and South-East Asia, which with conscious irony it named the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The ‘empire’ was necessary to secure adequate supplies of fuel, food and raw materials. Yamamoto, unlike many senior Japanese naval officers, was no fan of the battleship and because of the distances involved, it was clear that the major role would be played by the aircraft carrier. Even so, many senior officers did their best to discourage promising young officers from specializing in naval aviation and often argued that only a battleship could sink a battleship, to which Yamamoto would respond by quoting an old Japanese proverb: ‘The fiercest serpent may be overcome by a swarm of ants.’
It was clear that what was needed was a devastating attack against the US Pacific Fleet at its main base at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, using carrier-borne aircraft and seeking to inflict serious damage, not just on the ships but on the base itself as well. The operation was war-gamed but the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto proved to the Japanese that their strategy was the right one. The Royal Navy had used just one carrier and twenty-one obsolescent aircraft; the Imperial Japanese Navy would use many more ships and even more aircraft. It would take time for the United States Navy to repair or replace the ships and to get the naval base fully operational again.
Planning was delegated to two officers. One was Commander Minoru Genda, who favoured an aerial attack using torpedo-bombers, and his friend, Mitsuo Fuchida, whom Genda selected to lead the attack. Like Yamamoto, Fuchida was a fluent English-speaker. Fuchida did not agree with the plan for a torpedo attack as he expected the Americans to protect their ships with torpedo nets, while the water at Pearl Harbor would only be around 40 feet deep. In addition, if the entire US Pacific Fleet was in port, many ships would be double-berthed with some vessels protecting the one lying alongside. All this was true, but Genda in turn pointed out that bombs would only bounce off armour-plating.
Japanese planning was thorough. Six aircraft carriers were assigned to the attack with a total of 432 aircraft between them, of which 353 were to be used in the attack and to provide fighter cover. The remaining aircraft were a mixture of spares to allow for the inevitable losses, and for the air defence of the carriers. Another contrast with the British attack was that the Imperial Japanese Navy had far superior aircraft. Naturally enough, the aircraft used included the famous Mitsubishi A6M or ‘Zero’, a single-seat fighter. The main strike aircraft was the Nakajima B5N, to which the Allies were later to give the code-name ‘Kate’. The B5N was a single-engined monoplane of all-metal construction with power-folding wings, retractable undercarriage and a top speed of 230 mph, more than twice that of the Swordfish. There would be forty of these carrying torpedoes, with more than 100 carrying bombs. The third aircraft assigned to the operation was the Aichi D3A1, later code-named ‘Val’ by the Allies. The D3A1 was a dive-bomber, the Japanese equivalent of the German Stuka, and like the Stuka it was a low-wing monoplane with a fixed spatted undercarriage.
If the aircraft were advanced enough to hold their own with Western designs, and indeed be ahead of those in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, the ships were a different story. These reflected Japan’s growing isolation from the Western powers and the absence of the latest thinking in aircraft carrier design.
Six aircraft carriers were intended to take part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the fleet named the ‘Combined Striking Force’ and divided into three carrier divisions. The flagship was the First Carrier Division’s Akagi, converted from a battle-cruiser and accompanied by the Kaga, converted from a battleship. The Second Carrier Division had the smaller aircraft carriers Hiryu and Soryu, which could have been described as sisters but for Soryu having a conventional starboard-side island and Hiryu having hers to port. The idea of this unusual arrangement, also used on Akagi, was that the two ships could operate together but their air groups would not get in each other’s way after taking off. Some accounts suggest that ships with a port-side island had a far higher accident rate when aircraft were landing. The two newest ships were in the newly-formed Fifth Carrier Division, which had the large sisters Shokaku and Zuikaku that could be regarded as the Japanese equivalent of the British Illustrious class, but unlike the British ship they had little deck armour. They both had starboard-side islands, but still had the downward-curving funnels. Each had three lifts and could accommodate up to seventy aircraft.
This fleet was escorted by two battleships, Hiei and Kirishima, three cruisers and nine destroyers. This was a light escort for so many carriers that could have been vulnerable to heavy gunfire from the US Pacific Fleet’s battleships or torpedo attack from its submarines.
Admiral Yamamoto, fully aware of the importance of the operation and the strength of the United States Navy, visited Akagi before the attack and addressed the aircrew:
Japan has faced many worthy opponents in her long history. Mongols, Chinese, Russians, but the United States is the most worthy of all. Admiral Kimmel, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, is known to be far-sighted and aggressive. You may have to fight your way to the target.
Yet, as with the British at Taranto, the Japanese were to have the element of surprise. The Americans were to ignore even those warning signs that did appear.
There was no declaration of war. The operation was scheduled for 8 December 1941, but as the two countries were on opposite sides of the International Date Line, for the United States it was 7 December, a Sunday. The Japanese chose this day because they believed, rightly, that they would find the defences at a low ebb with most, if not all, of the commanders away from their posts and their subordinates at rest. This was a shrewd assessment as both the army and navy commanders were spending the morning playing golf together. Yamamoto, with his experience of life in the United States Navy, was obviously aware that this could be the case.
Fate also played a part. The Japanese had to approach their flying-off positions sailing through a tropical storm and on the morning of 7 December, conditions were still so bad that had it been an exercise, it would have been postponed. Yet, over Pearl Harbor the weather was perfect.
Japan Attacks
US intelligence was sufficiently advanced and well-organized that they knew the Japanese fleet was at sea, but they had convinced themselves that the Japanese were headed for somewhere in South-East Asia. The course a future war with Japan might take had been considered at a naval staff conference in March 1941, called as war between the United States and Japan seemed increasingly probable. Few of the senior officers present thought an attack on Pearl Harbor was likely, with the consensus being that ‘the Japs would never sail into us’. The stark truth was that, despite the United States having a large aircraft carrier fleet and high-performance naval aircraft, the strength of Japanese naval aviation being known, and the Royal Navy’s success at Taranto also known, the possibility of an attack by carrier-borne aircraft was discounted. If the Imperial Japanese Navy was to attack Pearl Harbor, the USN still hung on to the notion that it would be by means of a heavy bombardment by a large battle fleet.
Later the chief of naval operations, Admiral Harold Stark, signalled Admiral Husband Kimmel in command of the US Pacific Fleet, and Admiral Thomas Hart in command of the US Asiatic Fleet based on Manila in the Philippines, to expect an enemy attack on 24 November. Yet, Stark had no further intelligence to hand, but only suggested that either the Philippines or Guam could be possibilities. A further warning was sent on 27 November after American Secretary of State Cornell Hull had rejected a plea from the Japanese ambassador in Washington that the US should accept the status quo in Asia the previous day. Hull had told the Japanese that normal economic relations would only be resumed if Japan withdrew from China and French Indo-China. Stark’s message was clear: ‘This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking for stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased. An aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days…Execute appropriate defensive deployment…’
Kimmel was sufficiently concerned to ensure that his aircraft carriers were not in Pearl Harbor, but incredibly he failed to send his main force of battleships to sea or liaise with the US army in Hawaii, produce a defensive plan or even order a state of alert. Clearly, he could not send every ship to sea indefinitely, but he could have reduced the numbers in port at any one time and put his commanders on the alert. No attempt was made to defend Guam or strengthen the US Asiatic Fleet. In what today would be described as a ‘deteriorating international situation’, little action was taken, even though all involved should have known, and indeed should have been reminded, that the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 had started without a declaration of war. Fighters were not on stand-by at their air stations; no ships were on reconnaissance or picket duty at sea. Ships in port did not have torpedo nets deployed, despite the lessons of Taranto and the growing tension between the United States and Japan.
The Philippines were especially vulnerable. The United States had just 19,000 troops garrisoned on the islands, supported by 160,000 locally-raised troops. This was a much larger area to cover than Hawaii – 115,707 square miles against 6,424 square miles – with many good landing areas. The US Asiatic Fleet was much weaker than the US Pacific Fleet and would have been unable to counter a strong Japanese attack on its own as it lacked both aircraft carriers and battleships.
The Japanese fleet was already at sea on 26 November. No doubt someone in Tokyo had anticipated the ambassador’s pleadings in Washington being rejected.
Incredibly, when a radar operator at the northern tip of Oahu reported blips to his duty officer, Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, the latter simply replied: ‘Well, don’t worry about it.’ The only thing that can be stated in Tyler’s defence was that he had been told to expect a flight of Boeing B-17 Fortress bombers, but there was no attempt to check the number of blips or the direction of their approach. Shortly afterwards, the radar station closed for the day.
Just how much could have been done had Tyler sounded the alarm is open to question. As fighters were not on stand-by, few could have been got into the air in time to be effective against the first wave of Japanese bombers. On the other hand, those aboard the ships could have been alerted and gone to battle stations.
Even when a US destroyer discovered and sank a Japanese submarine that morning, no alert was sounded. It was to take until 2002 for the wreck to be discovered and identified, but in wartime that is a luxury and the mere fact that there had been an incident should have set alarm bells ringing across Hawaii.
Further west, a misunderstanding between Japanese commanders had seen the invasion of Malaya and Siam (present-day Thailand) begin at 01.15 hours, but as in Europe, communication between the wartime allies on the eve of war was poor.
Meanwhile, the aircrew for the first wave from Akagi had been awakened at 0500 as their ships ploughed through the tail of a tropical storm. As already mentioned, the raid was to be led by Mitsuo Fuchida, but while he was an experienced naval pilot, on this occasion he was being flown by Lieutenant Mutsuzaki so that he could direct the operation. On the flight deck, as he climbed into his aircraft a senior maintenance crewman approached Fuchida with a white scarf that he handed over, saying: ‘All of the maintenance crew would like to go along to Pearl Harbor. Since we can’t, we would like you to take this hachimaki [‘helmet-scarf’] as a symbol that we are with you in spirit.’ Fuchida tied the hachimaki around his flight helmet in the manner of a samurai.
Airborne at 0615, the 183 aircraft of the first wave flew in the direction of Pearl Harbor, 275 nautical miles away. As they approached the target, Fuchida pushed back the cockpit canopy and let the hachimaki stream out behind him and waved with both arms to the other airmen before closing the canopy again. At this stage he could see clouds below that he feared might obscure the target area, but he was encouraged as the sun rose and he saw its red disc, which reminded him of the Japanese naval ensign and struck him as a good omen. His fears about the weather over Pearl Harbor were soon dispelled as they tuned in to a weather forecast from a radio station in Hawaii, which assured him of a bright and cloudless day. His decision to learn English as a cadet was paying dividends.
At 0730 Fuchida’s formation passed over the northern tip of Oahu at 10,000 feet, and he ordered the aircraft into their attack formations. As they drew closer, at 0749 he then fired a rocket signal to start the attack but saw that the torpedo-bombers were already diving towards the ships in the harbour. He then fired a second rocket to alert the fighters, but this was mistaken for a warning of American fighters by the leader of the dive-bombers, who decided to press ahead with their attack. So many aircraft diving down towards the harbour could have led to collisions and chaos, but in fact they simply produced an attack in overwhelming numbers that added to the surprise and the chaos and confusion in and around the harbour and aboard the ships.
Below, in Pearl Harbor, sailors realized what was happening and the alert was sounded at 0758: ‘Air raid, Pearl Harbor, this is no drill.’ This was too late as no one was at their battle stations, with ships’ companies racing from their accommodation or mess halls to man the guns.
Meanwhile, Fuchida was still at 10,000 feet, watching the action but disappointed to see that there were no aircraft carriers in the harbour. Nevertheless, the US Pacific Fleet’s eight battleships were all present, including the USS Pennsylvania in dry dock, and there was also the target ship Utah, which Japanese naval intelligence wrongly believed to still be active.
Having expected to have to fight their way to the target area, the Japanese airmen were surprised that there was no fighter attack and no anti-aircraft fire from the ships and harbour installations below. The Japanese Zero fighters, with no American fighters to tackle, raced across the dockyards and the airbases at Ewa, Kaneohe Bay, Hickham and Wheeler Fields, strafing in what the Americans called ‘fighter ramrod’ attacks. As American fighters struggled to get into the air, they were shot down before they could gain height or speed. Almost 200 USAAF and USN aircraft were destroyed on the ground.
Another surprise for the Japanese was that the Americans had not deployed torpedo nets, leaving their ships exposed as the torpedo-bombers raced across the harbour so low that many thought they would never clear the towering superstructures of the larger ships. The first anti-aircraft fire did not start until the high-altitude bombers, sometimes known as ‘level bombers’, started their bombing runs, having of necessity to fly a straight and level course before releasing their bombs. Dive-bombers struck at shore installations on Ford Island, starting fires and sending debris into the air. Within minutes the clear blue skies of a fine morning were spoiled by clouds of thick black smoke rising high into the air.
Fuchida’s aircraft was shaken by a direct hit and a near miss, but his pilot assured him that all was well. Fuchida’s aircraft dropped its bombs and Fuchida then made three passes over his target, the battleship USS California. Making even a second pass was later to be discouraged as by that time, the AA gunners would have got a firm fix on the aircraft. On the second pass, his aircraft was rocked by the blast from the battleship Arizona as she blew up.
Fuchida was unknowingly taking on the role later defined by the Royal Air Force as the ‘master bomber’, directing his aircraft and waiting for the second wave of 170 aircraft to arrive. What was more important, however, was that he hung around long enough to be able to provide an accurate assessment of the bombing for the commander of the carrier force, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo.
Despite the brilliance of the Japanese planning, many senior officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy still thought in terms of battleships and the success of the attack would be measured by the USN’s losses of these capital ships. The ‘big gun’ navy was still alive and well in the IJN, as elsewhere. For these there was much to be pleased about. The Arizona was burning fiercely while the Oklahoma and Utah had both capsized, and the California and West Virginia were settling in the water. The light cruiser Helena was crippled.
The second wave consisted entirely of bombers as torpedo-bombers were regarded as vulnerable once the defences had been alerted. Their attack started exactly fifty minutes after the first-wave attack, and by this time the Americans had got a number of fighters into the air so most of the twenty-nine Japanese aircraft shot down were in the second wave.
One target for the second wave was the battleship Nevada, whose commanding officer had decided that his ship would be far safer at sea, moving at high speed rather than moored in harbour like a sitting duck. The aircraft of the second wave concentrated on the ship, realizing that if they could sink her in the harbour mouth, the entire base could be closed for several months. They attacked in overwhelming strength, inflicting serious damage on the ship, but her commanding officer was equal to the challenge, beaching his ship so that she could be saved and also avoid causing an obstruction for other ships. Other aircraft in the second wave attacked the battleship Pennsylvania and two destroyers which were also in dry dock.
Genda was waiting to welcome Fuchida back aboard Akagi, with the news that twenty-nine aircraft had been lost in the attack and a further fifteen so badly damaged on return to their carriers that they had to be pushed over the sides of the flight decks and into the sea rather than delay other aircraft, running low on fuel, from landing. The rest were being hastily struck down into the hangar decks of the ships to be refuelled and re-armed as at least one and possibly two further strikes were planned for the afternoon.
This was a dangerous time, as the six ships were unable to fly off aircraft while others were still landing and the flight deck was congested. Had the US Pacific Fleet’s three carriers been close and known of the position of the Japanese carriers, an effective strike could have been mounted. With six ships, it would have made sense to leave one or even two out of the operation, ready to provide air cover if necessary, but this was overlooked in the desire to send as many aircraft as possible to Pearl Harbor.
Fuchida had almost been shot down. The explosion that he had felt over the target area had damaged the aircraft, punching a large hole in the fuselage and as he stepped down from the aircraft, his attention was drawn to a control wire hanging by a thread and had it snapped, his aircraft would have spun out of control.
However, there was no time for Fuchida to ponder on his near escape; he had to report immediately to Nagumo with details of the damage done in the attack. He first consulted his flight commanders so that he could provide a comprehensive report, but soon Nagumo was impatiently demanding to see him.
When Fuchida reached Nagumo, he found him with Akagi’s commanding officer, Captain Kiichi Hasegawa. He reported that four battleships had been sunk and another three badly damaged. He then went on to report other ships that had been sunk, basing his report on a berthing chart provided by Japanese naval intelligence. Nagumo asked him if he thought that Pearl Harbor would be operational within six months, to which Fuchida replied that while the battleships would not be able to operate for six months, there were many smaller vessels that were still operational as well as the shore installations. He also suspected that there were still many airworthy aircraft, despite so many having been destroyed on the ground. In fact, he felt that an attack by a third wave of aircraft was needed, and that the port might need even a fourth attack.
While the three men conferred, aircraft were being refuelled and re-armed, with torpedoes being fitted to the dive-bombers as these would be more effective against ships at sea. The urgency with which this was done was driven not by the need for a third or fourth attack, but by concerns that the Japanese carriers were vulnerable to attack from the American carriers known to be at sea. There were also fears that land-based aircraft from Hawaii would attack. The meeting then broke up and Fuchida took a hasty lunch of bean paste and rice wafers.
There was no attempt to mount a reconnaissance to find the American carriers and no attempt at a post-attack photographic reconnaissance over Pearl Harbor, as the British had done at Taranto using RAF reconnaissance aircraft based on Malta.
Even before Fuchida had finished his meal, the decision was taken not to mount a further attack. Nagumo signalled to the other ships that they should withdraw north-west. Fuchida dashed to the bridge and did the unthinkable for a Japanese officer, demanding to know why further attacks had not been ordered. Nagumo ignored him and left it to his chief of staff, Kusaka, to tell Fuchida abruptly that the raid’s objectives had been met!
Fuchida’s fears were shared by Yamamoto when he received the signal telling him of the decision. His original scheme, of a year of decisive victories, was in ruins.
No one in the Allied camp was to realize this at the time. On the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had landed in Malaya and Siam, at the start of a long march south that would end with the capture of Singapore and a humiliating defeat for the British. On 10 December the first Japanese forces landed on Luzon, before which the US Asiatic Fleet had been crippled by attacks by aircraft based in Formosa.
Within weeks, Japan had acquired some of the most important items for a wartime economy, including Malaya’s rubber. It was also enhancing its food supplies. Malaya, with its rubber and tin, has in recent years been viewed by economic historians as having been the most worthwhile of Britain’s colonial possessions. However, Japan still needed a source of fuel, without which any chance of remaining in the war, let alone winning it, would be lost.
Fighting for the East Indies
The Netherlands East Indies (present-day Indonesia) were among the most prized of the colonial possessions of any of the European powers. The most significant of the country’s production was oil. This was an important asset for the Dutch as the colonial rulers, but even more so to the Japanese for whom it was vital. Japan could only gain territory by basing troops there, but first the seas had to be controlled and, importantly, the skies above them.
The Royal Navy had tried to stop Japan reinforcing its troops in Siam and Malaya by sending the new battleship Prince of Wales and the elderly battle-cruiser Repulse. These two ships had been meant to operate in conjunction with the new aircraft carrier Indomitable, a sister ship of Illustrious, but she had run aground and was not available, leaving them with just four destroyers for protection. Worse, the commander of this small squadron, Rear Admiral Tom Phillips, still believed that they could attack the invasion fleet and also believed that radio silence should be maintained, making it virtually impossible for the RAF to provide air cover. On 10 December, both ships were sunk by Japanese bombers and torpedo-bombers flying from airfields near Saigon in French Indo-China.
The speed of the Japanese advance and the heavy losses being suffered by the Allies made it difficult to regroup and move to the offensive, or even establish a strong defensive position. Japan had control of the sea and of the skies.
In an attempt to turn the tide, in January 1942 an Allied combat group was hastily assembled including British, Dutch, American and Australian ships under the command of Rear Admiral Karel Doorman. Unwittingly, this assembly was given the title of the ‘Combined Striking Force’, the same name given by the Japanese to their force that attacked Pearl Harbor. A command was assembled for the armed forces of these four countries as they attempted to secure the Netherlands East Indies; this was ABDA (American, British, Dutch and Australian Command), staffed according to the numbers supplied by each country.
This was no grand command possessing a balanced fleet and everything needed to fight and win, but instead a collection of assorted ships left over from the fighting in and around the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the East Indies. It had no aircraft carriers. There was little time to exercise or train together, or to establish any kind of cohesion or communication. The British and Australians had a degree of integration, and the British and Americans had co-operated during the closing stages of the First World War, but the Dutch had not worked with another navy since 1816 when a combined British, Dutch and American naval squadron had been assembled in the Mediterranean to attack the Barbary pirates. Doorman was given command because of his seniority, not because of his experience and certainly not because he had the strongest force or the most powerful ships.
The Japanese were by this time becoming thinly stretched, with their Combined Striking Force having covered landings across the Pacific and it was left to the Second Carrier Division under Rear Admiral Yamaguchi with Soryu and Hiryu to send off the first air strikes against Ambon for the invasion of the Netherlands East Indies.
The USN had started to fight back, with the carriers USS Enterprise and Yorktown, escorted by five cruisers and ten destroyers, attacking Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands on 1 February 1942. The damage was slight, but the Japanese were reminded in no uncertain terms that they had failed to destroy the American carrier force.
On 4 February, the Allies tried to attack a Japanese landing force in the Straits of Macassar, with Doorman taking four cruisers and eight destroyers. This force had to withdraw under heavy aerial attack by Japanese bombers, which severely damaged the USS Marblehead and also caused damage to another American cruiser, the Houston. On 13 February, even while they were taking Singapore, Japanese forces also landed at Palembang on Sumatra with just one carrier, Ryujo, covering the assault. Finally, Japan had its oil supply.
Doorman’s Combined Striking Force bore no real resemblance to its Japanese counterpart and namesake. Instead of six aircraft carriers, it had none. What he did have were two heavy and three light cruisers, as well as nine destroyers. The heavy cruisers were the USS Houston and HMS Exeter, while the light cruisers were Doorman’s flagship De Ruyter, another Dutch cruiser Java and HMAS Perth. He did not have reconnaissance aircraft and communications between his ships was difficult. There had been no exercises together, while the ships needed refitting and the crews resting. They had spent some time trying to intercept Japanese troop convoys but with little success.
At 1427 on 27 February 1942, while his ships were refuelling, Doorman heard that a Japanese invasion force had been detected in the Macassar Straits, escorted by two heavy cruisers, Nachi and Haguro, and two light cruisers, Jintsu and Naka, with fourteen destroyers, under the command of Vice Admiral Takagi.
The Battle of the Java Sea commenced at 1620 with a long-range gunnery duel between the opposing heavy cruisers. In an attempt to use his light cruisers, Doorman started to close the range and at 1630 his light cruisers joined the gunnery duel. Shortly afterwards, the Japanese destroyers raced towards Doorman’s force, led by the Jintsu, ready for a torpedo attack. At 1708, Exeter was torpedoed and badly damaged, dropping out of line, but not realizing what had happened, both Houston and Perth followed her, with the Allied line becoming confused. In the chaos, Doorman attempted to restore order and launch a counter-attack, but he then lost the destroyer Kortenaer and almost immediately afterwards she was followed by another destroyer. Doorman sent Exeter back to Surabaya with the destroyer Witte de With as an escort.
As darkness fell, Japanese aircraft marked the position of the Allied ships with flares, while Doorman tried to get his fleet around the Japanese warships to strike at the invasion force. He had to send the four American destroyers back to Surabaya to refuel and re-arm as they had used all their torpedoes. At 2300 a further attack was mounted by the Japanese against the Allied cruisers, with an attack using twelve torpedoes sinking the Java at 2332, followed within minutes by De Ruyter, with Doorman going down with his ship. Both Perth and Houston managed to escape to Java.
The Japanese troopships reached Java without loss and the landings began on 28 February.
The following day, 1 March, Exeter, by now escorted by two destroyers, was caught by four Japanese cruisers and aircraft from the carrier Ryujo and all three ships were sunk.
Allied forces on Java surrendered on 9 March, marking the end of the brief life of ABDA.
Ceylon
As the Japanese ‘empire’ spread steadily westwards and southwards, the strains began to tell. In a raid on Java, Kaga scraped a reef and had to return to Japan for repairs, but by this time the distances between its major bases and the front line was increasing. Singapore to Japan was a comparable distance to Southampton to New York, so ships had to be rotated out of operations for far longer than was desirable. There was also a tendency to disagree over priorities and a certain amount of what might be regarded as costly and unnecessary diversions, as when an attack was made on Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Japan wanted to include Burma in its empire, seeing it as a route into India, while the country was also a valuable further resource of oil and timber. Before invading Burma, Japan needed to deal with the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet. Yamamoto sent five aircraft carriers – Akagi, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiryu and Soryu – into the Indian Ocean on 26 March 1942. The objective was to attack British bases in Ceylon, off the southern tip of India.
The British Eastern Fleet was a formidable force commanded by Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville, with three aircraft carriers including the two modern ships, Indomitable and Formidable, as well as the elderly and small Hermes, by this time more of a liability than an asset as she was unable to keep up with the fast modern armoured carriers and would have been better used in convoy protection. Somerville also had the battleships Warspite, Resolution, Revenge, Ramillies and Royal Sovereign, all veterans of the First World War, but Warspite at least had been modernized.
The advancing Japanese were first spotted on 4 April by a patrolling RAF Consolidated Catalina flying boat, which managed to transmit a warning before it was shot down by Zero fighters. The following day, Mitsuo Fuchida led a massed attack against Colombo, Ceylon’s major port and capital, striking at 0800. He fully expected a repeat of his success at Pearl Harbor, but the Eastern Fleet was absent; however, the port was very busy with merchant shipping. The RAF put its small force of fighters into the air to fight off the Japanese attack, but their Hawker Hurricanes were no match for the agile, fast Zero and almost all were shot down. The Japanese inflicted serious damage on port installations and among the ships hit were an armed merchant cruiser and a destroyer. Nevertheless, effective anti-aircraft fire meant that the Japanese suffered their first serious losses of the war.
Having been alerted to the approach of the Japanese but not knowing where and when they would strike, Somerville had sensibly decided that his ships would be safer at sea rather than sitting ducks in harbour at Colombo or Trincomalee. The two large carriers had gone to Gan, the southernmost island of Addu Atoll, where a secret refuelling anchorage had been constructed.
On his return from the raid, Fuchida suggested to Nagumo that they send reconnaissance aircraft to locate the British warships, and on this occasion Nagumo agreed. Fuchida remained aboard his ship while a strong force of aircraft was assembled ready for a second attack on Colombo if one was ordered. At noon, a strong force of fifty aircraft from Soryu discovered the two heavy cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire, without air cover, and in just twenty minutes sank both ships.
Hermes had left Trincomalee and headed north, but returned to the port on 6 April. On 8 April, following an intelligence assessment that Trincomalee was likely to be the next target of the Japanese, she returned to sea but this time she headed south. Early on 9 April, Hermes was spotted by Japanese aircraft and ordered to return to Trincomalee where it was felt that the harbour’s AA defences would be able to protect her. Shortly before 0730, Fuchida led a force of 100 aircraft to attack Trincomalee, but again was disappointed to find the British Eastern Fleet missing. The RAF sent eleven Hurricanes into the air, but nine were shot down. Again damage was done to the shore installations, although the first wave of the attack sank only one merchant vessel but more ships were sunk by the second wave.
After landing back aboard Akagi, Fuchida was told that a British aircraft carrier had been spotted. While his aircraft were hastily refuelled and re-armed, Akagi was attacked by nine Bristol Blenheim bombers, which failed to hit her. The Japanese planned to attack Hermes with dive-bombers escorted by Zero fighters in case the carrier put up fighters, while torpedo-bombers were also prepared in case the initial attack failed. They didn’t realize that Hermes was unable to operate fighters because of her poor speed and small size, and that day she was without aircraft of any kind; her only defence was her own AA armament and that of her escort, the Australian destroyer HMAS Vampire. Fuchida was not ready in time to lead the attack, which was led by another officer, Egusa, but he arrived in time to find the carrier sinking and the destroyer dead in the water, crippled by explosions from her own magazines. Donald Farquharson-Roberts, a young officer in the Royal Marines aboard Hermes, recalled:
The planes seemed to have no fear. They came in at masthead height and at least one was reported as being below the fighting top…Marine Youle…told me he was firing downwards…I saw a plane coming straight for my gun. I saw the bomb swing clear and come straight for ME. I was standing about 6 feet behind the gun and it hit the deck in front of me…and went straight through the deck.
I never heard the command to abandon ship, although I was told it was given. I took leave of the old girl by stepping into the water on the port side…There was then only a drop of about 10 feet. I swam clear but the stern was swinging away from me as she had full helm on and the engines were still going full ahead…
Farquharson-Roberts’ own gun had jammed during the attack. The first bomb had hit the carrier at 1055 and she sank in less than twenty minutes. Fortunately, the Japanese had failed to spot an Australian hospital ship, the Vita, that arrived shortly afterwards and rescued most of the survivors, while a few had managed to swim the short distance to the shores of Ceylon.
The Japanese hadn’t had it all their own way, even at this early stage of the war in the Pacific. However, the period from victory to defeat was to be very short in the East, and within six months of Pearl Harbor the Japanese were to be on the defensive.
The USN Strikes Back
By this time, the United States Navy was already proving its resilience and its ability to strike back. The war in the Pacific was the ultimate aircraft carrier war. Without the aircraft carrier the Japanese could not have attacked Pearl Harbor, but without the aircraft carrier the Americans could not have taken the war back to Japan as it was not until Saipan was captured in June 1944 that the United States Army Air Force’s long-range bombers came within striking distance of the Japanese home islands.
As mentioned above, on 1 February 1942 Vice Admiral W.F. ‘Bull’ Halsey had taken the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown, escorted by five cruisers and ten destroyers, to attack Japanese bases on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.
Something more ambitious was needed, however, and the idea came from a USAAF officer, Colonel James ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle. The plan was to fly twin-engined North American B-25 Mitchell bombers from an aircraft carrier to mount a raid on Japan itself. There were objections to the idea because the aircraft would have to remain on deck and that would leave little space for taking off, and also from the leader of the Chinese Nationalists, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who feared reprisals by Japan against the Chinese. Nevertheless, the sheer nerve of the idea and the impact it would have on Japanese morale, forcing them to divert resources to protect their cities, made it too attractive to reject.
Two carriers were assigned to the operation. The Hornet was to carry the bombers, while her sister ship Enterprise would provide fighter and anti-submarine protection. The plan was that the bombers would not return to their ship, which would have been impossible anyway, but would fly on to bases in mainland China, which gave the operation the code-name of SHANGRI-LA, the fictional ‘earthly paradise’.
The plan was so audacious that when Hornet left Pearl Harbor with sixteen B-25s crowded on her flight deck, observers simply assumed that she was being used as an aircraft transport. Even the Japanese were not alarmed when they picked up signals on 10 April as the two ships attempted to rendezvous, as two US carriers could easily be handled by Japanese forces and a network of picket ships had been established 700 miles off the Japanese islands. Once the picket line was crossed, Japanese aircraft could deal with the carriers.
Radio silence was maintained after 10 April. Halsey knew about the picket line and assumed that once it was crossed the Japanese would know his position. On 18 April the B-25 bombers were launched 550 miles from Tokyo, allowing the carriers to withdraw. Halsey had been wise not to hazard his ships, but in fact his crossing of the picket line was not noticed by the Japanese. Even when a patrolling aircraft radioed that it had spotted sixteen twin-engined bombers in the air, the Japanese did nothing as they knew that the USN had no carrier-borne twin-engined bombers.
The Japanese did have fighters patrolling at 10,000 feet but they missed the bombers as they raced across the coast at just 150 feet, heading for Tokyo, Yokosuka and Nagoya. The bombers caused considerable alarm as they dropped their bombs and fired their machine guns before flying on to land in China. This was the weak spot in the planning as the bases chosen were unsuitable for such relatively large aircraft. One which overflew and landed in the Soviet Union had its crew arrested, while another two crash-landed near Japanese-occupied Hankow where they were taken prisoner by the Japanese. Taking prisoners gave the Japanese a propaganda coup, enabling them to claim that nine bombers had been shot down. The prisoners were taken to Tokyo where they were prosecuted for the deaths of two schoolchildren killed in the attack, before being executed. In China, as Chiang Kai-shek had feared, the Japanese brought forward an operation and slaughtered 250,000 men, women and children.
The operation has been dismissed as worthless bravado, but it boosted American morale. The real problem was that the small force was spread across too many targets, and had all sixteen aircraft headed for one target, such as the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, it could have been far more successful. Even so, at this stage of the war the Allies had much to learn about the concentration of force, especially in the air.
Nevertheless, what was to happen over the next two months was to change the entire course of the war. Yamamoto, that most realistic of senior Japanese officers, had hoped to have a year in which the Japanese armed forces could run free, but he was to be proved over-optimistic.
The setbacks were not simply at sea. The Japanese advance had finally been stalled in Burma and New Guinea; two places a considerable distance apart and that showed the limitations imposed on Japanese logistics. The problem was made worse by the Japanese placing far greater emphasis on fighting units at the cost of neglecting the support units, which armed forces elsewhere in the world knew directly affected the efficiency of the fighting units. At sea, convoy protection was poor and seen as a duty to be avoided. The Japanese had what the Royal Navy would have regarded as auxiliary aircraft carriers; however, these were not used as convoy escorts but as aircraft transports for the Japanese Army Air Force.
By today’s standards, aircraft of the day had limited range and airlift capability, so the one vital strategic asset possessed by the Japanese was their carrier force, but it was an asset also enjoyed by the United States Navy, which had the industrial base to renew and expand its carrier force as necessary.
Further landings were planned by the Japanese, both in New Guinea and much further north in the Aleutians. New bases were planned in the Solomons and at Midway Island. The Aleutians and Midway were seen as important points in an outer defensive ring.
Returning from operations over and around Ceylon, Nagumo was ordered to detach the Fifth Carrier Division and send it towards Truk. The Fifth was commanded by Vice Admiral Takagi and had two of Japan’s newest and finest aircraft carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, with a total of 125 aircraft between them. The actual landings at Port Moresby would be covered by aircraft from the smaller Shoho, a converted submarine depot ship of just 13,000 tons. The two large Japanese carriers were supported by two heavy cruisers and six destroyers, while other ships covered Shoho. Meanwhile, Admiral Chester Nimitz, the new commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, sent Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher with Task Force 17, which included the aircraft carriers Yorktown and Lexington with 141 aircraft, to the Coral Sea. Task Force 17 also included five American heavy cruisers and nine destroyers, as well as three British cruisers and two destroyers.
On 3 May Japanese forces landed unopposed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the Eastern Solomon Islands, but on the following day aircraft from Yorktown surprised Japanese warships lying off Tulagi and sank a destroyer and three minesweepers as well as destroying several seaplanes. Both fleets refuelled at sea on 6 May, for some hours not realizing that they were just 70 miles apart in the Coral Sea, despite both fleets mounting aerial reconnaissance. It was not until later in the day when USAAF aircraft located the Japanese Port Moresby assault force and passed this information to Fletcher that the Americans realized how close the Japanese were.
The next day, aircraft from both the American carriers found the Port Moresby invasion force and concentrated their efforts on the Shoho, which despite desperately circling was sunk within three minutes at the cost of three American aircraft. The Japanese immediately recalled the assault force, including the troopships. Next a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft discovered a tanker being escorted by a destroyer, and mistook the tanker for an aircraft carrier and the destroyer for a cruiser, which encouraged Takagi to send no fewer than sixty bombers to attack both ships, which were sunk within minutes.
That night, both fleets were so close that six Japanese aircraft attempted to land on Yorktown in the dark. On 8 May reconnaissance aircraft from both fleets finally found each other almost simultaneously, 200 miles apart. Both admirals hastily arranged air strikes, with the Japanese sending ninety aircraft against the Americans, who sent seventy-eight aircraft against the Japanese. Zuikaku escaped into a rainstorm but Shokaku was not so fortunate, being hit by three bombs which forced her to return to Truk, although she missed the torpedoes dropped by Douglas Devastators from the Lexington, almost certainly due to the problems the Americans were suffering with their torpedoes at this stage of the war.
Anticipating an attack, Fletcher had ordered fighter cover and sent reconnaissance aircraft out to warn him of any approach by the Japanese. They were spotted at 17,000 feet and at a range of 60 miles. The two American carriers each had a cruiser and a destroyer screen, with Lexington steaming some 2 miles ahead and to starboard of Yorktown. The Japanese torpedo bombers attacked in three groups of six aircraft each, with two groups attacking Lexington on both sides and a third group attacking Yorktown. Captain Sherman aboard Lexington took violent evasive action while his AA gunners put up a curtain of fire, blowing up a Nakajima B5N ‘Kate’ on its run towards the ship. It has been claimed that as many as eleven torpedoes were dropped before two finally hit the ship, with the first striking the port bow at 1120 and the second amidships on the port side shortly afterwards.
Stanley Johnson, a war correspondent with the Chicago Tribune, was later to recall:
I arrived on the main deck – two below the flight deck – to find dust and smoke drifting through the passageways coming from further aft. In the passageway amidships, I found four men who were nearly naked…they were horribly burned. A Filipino cook… assisted me to get the men on to the cots in the passageway and take off the remainder of their clothes, give them a drink of water and a morphia injection. A hospital corpsman…treated their burns with tannic acid jelly and took over their care. Men kept coming in from the 5in gun galleries, sometimes alone, others with the help of comrades. We had about twelve men on the cots and during a brief lull I went to the gun galleries to see what had happened. There I saw several bodies, they seemed to have been frozen or charred into grotesque statues.
Elsewhere aboard the crippled carrier, men were fighting to stop her from sinking and at first they seemed to be succeeding. Commander Healey, in charge of damage control, reported to his commanding officer that they had the damage shored up and would soon have the ship on an even keel, suggesting flippantly that any further torpedo strikes should be taken on the starboard side. These were almost certainly his last words, for no sooner had he stopped speaking than a massive blast swept through the ship as an aviation fuel tank blew up close to Healey’s damage-control station. Streams of flame and sparks swept through the ship, killing many men and opening up decks and deckheads, leaving the surviving damage-control parties overwhelmed. Worse was to come when a second aviation fuel tank exploded twenty minutes later, wrecking the water mains and making further fire-fighting impossible. After this, the electricity failed and plunged the ship into darkness, with the only means of communication throughout the ship being by messenger. A chain of men had to be arranged so that instructions from the bridge could be sent 500 feet aft and four decks down to the auxiliary steering position.
Despite this, at first the ship’s plight was not apparent and returning aviators attempted to land on the carrier, but by 1345 the smoke over the flight deck was so dense that all operations were suspended, with Yorktown recovering Lexington’s aircraft. At 1430, all damage-control and fire-fighting parties were withdrawn with the fires left to burn behind watertight doors. At 1445 the engine and boiler rooms had to be abandoned as a further major explosion wrecked the ventilation system. By this time the ship was dead in the water, but it was not until 1500 with all hope lost that other ships were asked to come alongside and provide assistance. At first the destroyer USS Morris attempted to fight the fires, but her capabilities were not up to the task as fuel-fed fires raged out of control and finally the order was given to abandon ship. At 2000, the destroyer Phelps torpedoed the wrecked carrier. Incredibly, more than 2,700 men survived but she took another 216 down with her. Yorktown did not escape unscathed, but the one bomb that did hit her exploded close to the island and operations were not affected.
Having lost one of the world’s two largest aircraft carriers, it would seem that the United States was the loser in the Battle of the Coral Sea, but the USN had sunk the Shoho and so damaged the Shokaku that she would not be available for the planned invasion of Midway Island (in actuality little more than a coral atoll or reef). More importantly, Japanese expansion had come to an end within just five months of the war starting in the Pacific. Having abandoned the assault on Port Moresby, there was no question of Japan isolating Australia from the United States.
The great significance of the Battle of the Coral Sea was that this was the first naval battle in which the opposing fleets did not come within gunnery range. The supremacy of the battleship had ended.
The Tide is Turned
Even if one takes the view that the Battle of the Coral Sea was a draw, what happened next was an overwhelming defeat for Japan from which the Imperial Japanese Navy could never recover.
It did not help that among the Japanese high command there were serious disagreements over the strategy to be adopted. Many wanted to stick to the original strategy and drive a wedge through the Pacific, separating Australia from the United States, but a growing number wanted to adopt a defensive strategy, worried by the Doolittle raid that had done much to undermine Japanese confidence. It was the latter strategy that saw the occupation of Midway as being important. A diversionary raid in the Aleutians, close to Alaska, was also planned to draw American attention away from Midway.
Despite the debate over strategy, no one sought the opinions of Nagumo, with his experience of carrier warfare, or of Minoru Genda, who had largely planned the raid on Pearl Harbor, or Mitsuo Fuchida. These last two officers were concerned that the Japanese Naval Air Force had already lost too many experienced pilots, while those that had survived needed to be rested and time taken to train new arrivals up to combat readiness. Not all the experienced pilots had been casualties, as some had been transferred to other operations after the attacks on Ceylon. The ships themselves also needed to be refitted rather than just refuelled and replenished.
Even the fact that a diversionary raid was being mounted in the Aleutians was a problem as it meant that two aircraft carriers and their aircraft were not available for the Combined Fleet.
Variously known as the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Midway Island or the Battle off Midway, since all three are correct, this was the battle that marked the turning-point in the Pacific War. Yamamoto had serious concerns about Japan’s ability to achieve its objectives in the war, but after Midway few in the Imperial Japanese Navy could have seen any outcome other than defeat.
Unknown to the Japanese, the Americans had broken their codes and knew that the Aleutian raiding force was simply a diversionary tactic. They knew the real target and the date, early June 1942. This meant that unlike the Japanese who had divided their forces, Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, could concentrate his forces to defend Midway Island. Japanese hopes of a major clash between opposing fleets were to be fulfilled, except, of course, that the fleets would once again not come within gunnery range.
On 3 June, aircraft from the carriers Junyo and Ryujo attacked Dutch Harbour in the Aleutians, while the United States Army Air Force sent Boeing B-17 Fortress bombers to attack the Midway invasion force. However, the bombers enjoyed little success as ships at sea were a difficult target for heavy bombers as they could manoeuvre even while the bombs were falling.
Aboard Akagi, Mitsuo Fuchida was recovering from an operation for appendicitis, having refused the offer of a destroyer to take him to a naval hospital as he wished to be around to advise his superiors. At that time a more dangerous and difficult operation than today, on 4 June he was still in the ship’s hospital, below the waterline. Although he had had his stitches removed on the previous day, he was still weak from the operation but anxious to get to the flight deck to see his airmen before they took off. This was no easy task as the ship was closed up for action stations and all the watertight bulkheads were closed. The only way through the ship was to pass through the small manhole on each watertight door, which entailed unlocking the manhole using a small wheel, clambering through and then locking the manhole again. There were ten manholes between the sickbay and Fuchida’s cabin, where he rested briefly before shaving and changing into his uniform. He then had to get from his cabin to the flight deck, which meant passing through several more manholes.
Despite this, and his still frail state, Fuchida arrived at the ship’s operations centre before the aircraft took off. In his absence, Lieutenant Tomonaga was to lead the attack. The bad news was that the reconnaissance sorties had already been put into the air, and when Fuchida was shown their search patterns, he realized that large areas of sea would not be covered. Despite expecting a strong American defence, the Japanese had not thought carefully enough about the likely presence of American aircraft carriers.
At dawn, more than 100 Japanese aircraft left the four carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu, to attack Midway. The carriers were supported by the battleships Haruna and Kirishima, three cruisers and twelve destroyers. A fifth carrier, the Hosho, was with the battle fleet’s 7 battleships, while a sixth, the Zuiho, was with the assault group, which had 2 battleships, 10 cruisers, 21 destroyers and 12 troopships.
While the Japanese were attacking Midway, shore-based aircraft of both the USN and USAAF found the Combined Fleet and attacked, breaking up the fleet’s formation and killing many crewmen on deck in strafing attacks, at the cost of seventeen aircraft lost to intense Japanese AA fire.
The Japanese attack on Midway caused considerable damage to shore installations, but failed to put the airfield or its AA defences out of action. Tomonaga radioed a report to the carriers and Nagumo decided to send a second wave to keep the Americans under pressure. A problem then arose as the second wave was fitted with torpedoes, expecting to be sent to attack American warships. These had to be removed and replaced by bombs, but no sooner than had this been done than a reconnaissance aircraft finally discovered American warships, reporting that there were ten, causing Nagumo to reverse his order and demand that the bombs be removed and the torpedoes put back on the aircraft. It was then decided to delay the second wave until the first-wave aircraft, by now short of fuel, had returned. Down on the hangar decks, the armourers had left the bombs on the deck as they frantically worked to obey first one order and then the counter-order.
The first reconnaissance report had not mentioned an aircraft carrier among the American ships, and it was not until 0900 that a further report mentioned an American aircraft carrier, believed to be the Yorktown.
The first wave finally landed on and the aircraft were struck down into the hangar while the second-wave aircraft were brought up from the hangar deck onto the flight deck and ranged ready for take-off. None of the Japanese ships had radar and there was no time to react when the first American aircraft were spotted. The USS Enterprise and Hornet had sent all of their aircraft, while the Yorktown had sent half of hers, making 156 aircraft in all. Leading the first wave of the attack were forty-one Douglas Devastator torpedo-bombers, seen as the ideal means of attacking ships under way at sea. Even if the Japanese carriers had radar, the low-flying torpedo-bombers might still have escaped attention, but even so, no fewer than thirty-five of the Devastators were shot down, mainly by AA fire, with the crews having little time to escape before their aircraft plunged into the sea. A few Zero fighters managed to get into the air and accounted for some of the American losses.
Radar would have caught the second wave of American aircraft, but the Douglas Dauntless dive-bombers remained undetected as they approached at 19,000 feet and the Japanese remained distracted by the torpedo attack, with their fighters milling around at low altitude. At 1022, the first dive-bomber peeled off and began its dive towards the Kaga. Twelve 1,000lb bombs were aimed at the ship and four hit her. The first bomb to hit the carrier went straight through the amidships lift and into the hangar, while the second went straight through the flight deck, unarmoured in contrast to the British Illustrious-class ships, and straight into the hangar. Both bombs exploded in the hangar among aircraft that had returned from the first strike and still had some fuel in their tanks, and among the bombs, each of 1,750lbs, that had been hastily taken off the aircraft for the second strike and were still lying on the hangar deck. On the flight deck, aircraft ranged, fuelled and armed for the second strike were caught by other bombs, and soon fires were raging across the flight deck and in the hangar deck below.
Wounded airmen from the aircraft and sailors who had been on the two decks could not be taken down to the sick bay as no one could carry them through the flames. Fuchida thought of going to his cabin to rescue some of his belongings, but even this was impossible.
Akagi was not the only carrier to suffer, as exactly the same sequence of events had struck Kaga and Soryu, both of which were huge balls of flame, belching thick smoke into the atmosphere. Only Hiryu, steaming ahead of the other carriers, was unaffected. The three crippled aircraft carriers were abandoned while, at 1100, aircraft took off from Hiryu to attack the Yorktown. Just eight Aichi D3A ‘Val’ bombers managed to penetrate the American carrier’s fighter screen and intense anti-aircraft fire, but they managed to drop three 500lb bombs on the carrier. The first of these exploded among aircraft parked on the flight deck, setting them alight. The second bomb hit the funnel and blew out the fires in five of her six boilers. The third actually penetrated the wooden flight deck and then plunged through three decks to explode on an aviation fuel tank. Prompt damage control saw the fuel fire smothered in foam, while the ship’s magazines were flooded as a precautionary measure. At first it looked as if Yorktown would survive.
That afternoon, a second strike was ordered against Yorktown, which was again operational and had aircraft being refuelled on her flight deck. Ten Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo-bombers were accompanied by six Zero fighters and led by Tomonaga, who had led the first wave against Midway and managed to return safely to land on Hiryu. As soon as the Japanese aircraft were spotted, refuelling stopped and as a further precautionary measure, the carrier’s aviation fuel system was drained. Nevertheless, these prudent precautions meant that just six Grumman F4F Wildcats were left to provide fighter cover and then only with whatever fuel was left in their tanks. This wasn’t easy, as Lieutenant (later Captain) J.P. Adams recalled in a BBC television documentary, Pilots at Sea:
We only had forty gallons of gas apiece, but nonetheless they wanted us off to try to oppose the torpedo attack. Lieutenant [later Admiral] Thatch and myself and four others manned the planes…All the guns in the Fleet were firing. I vividly remember taking off, trying to crank up my wheels and charge the guns, which we had to do manually, and then trying to catch the torpedo planes. I did catch one and possibly another.
In all, the fighters shot down four torpedo planes, but four got within range of the carrier. Yorktown avoided two torpedoes, but two hit her on the port side. Three bombs also found their target. Adams saw the torpedoes strike the ship and realized that there was no way he could land on, but managed to get to the deck of the Enterprise, 40 miles away, with just a few gallons of fuel.
While Yorktown’s commanding officer gave the order to abandon ship, Tomonaga reported the hits on the carrier, and his superiors immediately jumped to the conclusion that a second American carrier had been hit and this meant that there were no American carriers left in the Pacific. Hiryu prepared another strike but before this could be flown off, aircraft from Enterprise and Hornet found her and attacked, with four dive-bombers hitting their target and another four only narrowly missing, leaving her with flames spreading across the flight deck and her hangar a raging inferno.
Later that afternoon Soryu blew up, followed fifteen minutes later by Kaga. Akagi survived the night before being torpedoed by Japanese destroyers at dawn and soon after Hiryu received the same treatment, taking her commanding officer and Rear Admiral Yamaguchi with her as she sank beneath the waves.
With all four carriers lost, Yamamoto ordered that the invasion of Midway be abandoned. Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, in command of the US Task Force 16, then ordered Enterprise and Hornet to give chase, hoping to catch the Japanese battleships at sea. On 6 June two heavy cruisers, Mikuma and Mogami, collided and were badly damaged. Aircraft from Midway attacked but caused little damage; however, Mikuma was later sunk by US carrier-borne aircraft that also badly damaged Mogami and two destroyers.
The following day, the Japanese submarine I-168 found the crippled Yorktown as efforts to save her continued and sank her and an escorting destroyer.
The outcome of the Battle of the Coral Sea was close, but there would be no doubt that the Battle of Midway was a resounding victory for the USN. The USN had lost a carrier, but the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost 4 carriers, 250 aircraft and around 3,500 personnel. The poor training regime meant that those personnel would be hard to replace, and in front-line roles the losses among newly-trained personnel were always higher than among the more experienced.
The Battle of Midway was later succinctly summed up by Admiral Ernest King:
The Battle of Midway was the first decisive defeat suffered by the Japanese Navy in 350 years. Furthermore, it put an end to the long period of Japanese offensive action, and restored the balance of naval power in the Pacific. The threat of Hawaii and the west coast was automatically removed, and except for operations in the Aleutian area, where the Japanese had landed on the islands at Kisku and Attu, enemy operations were confined to the South Pacific. It was to this latter area, therefore, that we gave our greatest attention.