COMMANDER GENDA WASN’T SURPRISED by Tomonaga’s call for another attack. From an earlier message he rather suspected it might be necessary. And as Nagumo’s operations officer, he had no hesitation recommending the step.
The Striking Force had been at sea more than a week, and not a word of warning about any U.S. ships. The morning’s search planes had been out two hours, and they hadn’t found anything either. Even the Tone’s No. 4 plane—the late one—must be on its return leg by now. With no sign of the American fleet, it was folly to hoard the reserve air strength any longer. They should use it to finish off Midway.
Admiral Kusaka hesitated. Nagumo’s chief of staff was always prepared to carry out a second strike—if the U.S. Navy wasn’t around. So far everyone had assumed it wasn’t, but nobody really knew. Until now it hadn’t been crucial. If wrong, they could adjust—but no longer. These were the only reserves. He suddenly felt “a little like a hunter chasing two hares at once.” There was the United States fleet to catch … now there was this call for another go at Midway.
As he talked it over with Genda and Admiral Nagumo, the Striking Force raced on toward a point about 140 miles northwest of Midway. Here it expected to start recovering Tomonaga’s planes a little after 8:00 A.M. The force was steaming in regular battle disposition: the carriers formed a sort of square box—Akagi leading on the right, followed by Kaga; Hiryu leading on the left, followed by Soryu—with the screen of battleships, cruisers and destroyers deployed around in a large, loose circle.
The crew were all at battle stations … had been since 5:32 when the Nagara first sighted that PBY. They never managed to shoot it down—or another that joined it—and plenty of contact reports must have gone back to Midway. Now there was nothing to do but wait and watch. On the Akagi alone, 20 lookouts stood on top of the bridge scanning the sky.
At 7:05 everything seemed to happen at once: a destroyer up forward hoisted a flag signal; the Tone’s main battery opened fire; the Akagi’s bugler began sounding the air-raid alarm… .
ENSIGN Earnest understood that the six TBFs would rendezvous, link up with the Marine bombers and fighters, and all go out together—but it wasn’t that way at all. Once clear of Midway, the dashing Lieutenant Fieberling turned northwest and led his torpedo planes straight for the Japanese position.
About five minutes out there was a moment’s excitement when they met an enemy fighter inbound for Midway. The Japanese made a single pass and continued on. The TBFs didn’t even shoot back; they too had other business. Still, here was the enemy. Feeling they had been “blooded” and passed the test, Earnest and Ensign Charles Brannon, flying alongside, exchanged a salute, playfully spoofing the squadron’s clenched-fist insignia.
They hurried on. For nearly an hour nothing happened—just a quiet trip at 4,000 feet through occasional puffy clouds. Around 7:00 Earnest noted what looked like a nondescript steamer plodding along below. Then another … then no end of them. He never saw anything like it. They were literally spread all over the ocean. In the distance he could make out two carriers steaming side by side and behind them still more ships—too far away to tell what they were. He had little time to drink it all in. Even as he called out the contact, his turret gunner Jay Manning warned that enemy fighters were closing in. At the same moment Lieutenant Fieberling signaled, and they all headed full throttle toward the two carriers. It was a long way down to 150 feet, with the Zeros snapping at them all the way.
At the second enemy pass, Manning’s turret gun stopped firing. Working the tunnel gun, Radioman Harry Ferrier looked back over his shoulder. He was horrified to see Manning’s body slumped at his post. In all his 18 years, Ferrier had never seen death before, and here in a single shattering instant he was staring right at it. All at once, he felt very scared and old.
He turned back to his own gun, only to find it useless. By now the TBF’s hydraulic system was shot away, dropping the tail wheel and blocking his field of fire. Another burst raked the plane, and a bullet tore through the bill of the baseball cap he was wearing. It creased his scalp, and he fell back dazed.
In the cockpit Ensign Earnest was having his own troubles. First the radio went … next the compass … then the controls began to go. He glanced out the canopy—large holes appeared in the wing. A sliver of shrapnel caught his right jaw and there was blood everywhere.
At 200 feet he was still boring in, when another burst got the elevator wires. The stick went limp; nothing responded, and Earnest was sure this was the end. There was no hope left of getting the carrier—no hope of coming out alive—but he still had rudder control, and he would do something with that. He gave it a hard kick and swerved toward the only Japanese ship near him, a three-stack light cruiser. He let the torpedo go.
Now he was down to 30 feet and steeling himself for the crash. At this point some instinct made him put his hand on the wing tab—perhaps to adjust for hitting the water—In a flash he realized he could fly the plane this way, even if the stick was gone. As he later put it, “Suddenly it was a brand new ball game.”
He zipped up and away from the scene. The Zeros, having written him off, were gone. Looking back, Earnest couldn’t see what had happened to his torpedo or to the other TBFs. He was all alone. He had no compass, no radio, and was on the far side of the Japanese fleet. But he hadn’t come this far to give up now. He headed for the morning sun, as Ferrier—the old man at 18—crawled up through the wreckage and nestled down behind him.
CLOSE behind the TBFs—so close he could see them going in for their attack—Captain Collins led his four B-26s. They too had flown out on their own: no rendezvous, no plans to work with the TBFs, B-17s or the Marines. They simply got their target and here they were.
The first thing Lieutenant Muri saw was some smoke on the horizon … then many destroyers … and there went his hopes for an easy morning. Studying the situation, he plucked a Chesterfield from a can he kept at his feet and put it in his mouth.
He was still fumbling for a match when a horde of Zeros appeared from nowhere. Captain Collins held his course, heading for the carriers he could now see at the center of the Japanese formation. Trouble was, the carriers were too well protected on the near side. It was necessary to curl around to their starboard to get a good crack at them. And that meant hedge-hopping a whole line of escorting destroyers.
But it had to be done. Veering to the left, Collins led his group over the escort, through a curtain of antiaircraft fire. Then hard to the right again, and straight for the carriers. As they raced in at 200 feet, an unknown voice yelled out in one plane, “Boy, if mother could see me now!”
There was no formal attack plan—not even time for assignments—the four planes just made a mad rush at the leading carrier. Collins alternately climbed and dropped, throwing the Japanese aim off, and Muri did his best to follow. Now they were in the middle of the formation; as Muri’s co-pilot Lieutenant Pete Moore glanced quickly around, every ship seemed a solid sheet of gunfire. The Japanese gunners would shoot at the water to see where the bullets hit. Using the splashes as tracers they would “walk” their fire right into the B-26s.
But they came on anyhow. Collins finally released at 800 yards and zoomed away to the right. Muri came hard behind, with the Zeros flying right into their own fleet’s line of fire in a desperate effort to stop him. Bullets smashed the Plexiglas turret; a ricochet clipped Sergeant Gogoj’s forehead.
Muri shouted to Moore to release the torpedo. But the improvised switch was something that Rube Goldberg might have invented—a trigger, a cable, a plug with innumerable prongs. Moore frantically squeezed the trigger, twisted the plug, still couldn’t tell whether the torpedo was gone.
“Is it away?” Muri kept shouting.
“How the hell do I know?” Moore answered.
Keeping one hand on the controls, Muri fiddled with the plug and trigger too. They never felt the welcome surge of the plane rising, relieved of the torpedo. Later they learned that at some point they had indeed released it.
Right now, they could only hope, and there wasn’t much time to do that. They were almost on top of the carrier. Banking hard, Muri flew straight down the middle of the flight deck. His bombardier Lieutenant Russ Johnson grabbed the nose gun and strafed in all directions. They had a brief, vivid glimpse of white-clad sailors scattering for cover.
Pulling out, Muri caught a fleeting glimpse of Lieutenant Herbie Mayes’s plane boring in too. It came all the way, almost hit the carrier, careened into the sea alongside. None of the group ever saw what happened to the fourth B-26.
No time to look, either. The Zeros were diving at them again. They riddled the landing gear, the fuel tanks, the propeller blades, the radio, the entire top edge of one wing. They wounded Pfc Ashley in the tail turret and Corporal Mello at the side guns. With an extra surge of effort Mello crawled up to the cockpit, covered with blood, to report the plane was on fire and “everybody’s hit back there.” Lieutenant Moore scrambled back, put out the fires, gave sulfa to Ashley and manned a gun.
At one point Muri thought to himself that the plane was really gone, and he’d rather splash than be shot down in flames. He moved to ditch the ship, but as sometimes happens, an extra ounce of reserve spirit seemed to grasp him and hold hack his hand.
Finally the fighters broke off. Heading for Midway, Muri realized he still hadn’t lit the cigarette he put in his mouth just when the Zeros struck. But it was almost too late now. In his excitement, he had bitten it in two and swallowed half of it.
Thinking back, it was ironic that the only moment he felt safe was when he was directly over the Japanese carrier. Flying down her flight deck, he was simply too close to be shot at. Even so, it was anything but comforting to see that large Japanese battle flag streaming from her mast. After all those newsreels, here it really was. Nothing ever looked bigger.
LIEUTENANT Ogawa couldn’t get over how big the white star looked on those B-26s. So much larger than he expected. Until these American torpedo planes appeared, he had spent an easy morning policing the skies above the Striking Force with two other Zeros in his unit. The PBYs were gone—at least temporarily—and they had little to do but orbit with similar units from the other three carriers.
Then unexpectedly Ogawa’s No. 2 man began firing his machine guns to attract attention. Ogawa looked and saw two separate flights of torpedo planes approaching through a hole in the clouds. The rest of the Combat Air Patrol saw them too, and Zeros began diving from all directions. Most piled into the leading flight of six TBFs; the rest, including Ogawa’s unit, headed for the other four American planes: the B-26s with the big white stars.
The carrier crews watched in excitement as the Zeros methodically picked off the TBFs. On the Akagi a storm of hand-clapping went up with every splash. It was almost like a theater audience watching a superbly skillful performance—which in a sense it was. None of the TBFs got close enough to make an effective drop, and five of the six were shot down well clear of the carriers.
With the B-26s it was another matter. The Zeros got on them, but they had more speed than anyone guessed, and they really knew how to use it. One of them fell, but the others kept coming … right at the Akagi, leading the right side of the box formation. But the Hiryu was in danger too, and on both ships men watched breathlessly as the torpedoes dropped. Happily they were very slow. The Hiryu, especially, dodged them easily—some sailors even picked one off with a machine gun.
The highly exposed Akagi had more trouble. At 7:11 Captain Aoki gave her a hard right rudder, heading into the approaching planes. As the first one dropped, he made a full turn to escape a torpedo to starboard, then another full turn to escape a second torpedo to port. All within two minutes.
More was to come. As the B-26s pulled out, heavy strafing ripped the Akagi’s deck, killed two men, knocked out the No. 3 AA gun, cut the transmitting antenna. And just when it looked as if the danger was over, the last B-26 didn’t pull out at all: instead it hurtled straight for the Akagi’s bridge. No one saw how it could miss. Admiral Kusaka felt sure they were done for. He instinctively ducked as the plane came right at him. But it didn’t hit: it cleared the bridge by inches, cartwheeling into the sea just off the port side. The whole bridge let out a yell of relief that meant the same in any language: “Wow!”
A shaken Kusaka found himself strangely moved. He thought only Japanese pilots did things like that. He had no idea who this steadfast American was, but there on the bridge of the Akagi he silently said a prayer for him.
To the practical eye of Lieutenant Ogawa, it was really not a very professional effort—any of it. There was no coordination between the TBFs and the B-26s … the torpedoes were dropped too far out … the planes all approached from one side. No wonder they didn’t hit anything.
Yet the attack accomplished more than Ogawa knew. It ended all doubts about a second strike on Midway. That was where these planes came from—Nagumo needed no more convincing. At 7:15 the Admiral ordered his second attack wave to rearm: the torpedo planes to shift over to bombs, the dive bombers to switch from armor-piercing to instant-contact missiles. This was relatively easy for the Hiryu and Soryu—they were supplying the dive bombers this time—but on the Akagi and Kaga it meant a back-breaking job. The air crews rushed forward, lowered the torpedo planes to the hangar deck and began making the switch. It was a frantic scene: they hoped to get the second wave rearmed and into the air before Tomonaga got back.
They were hard at it when a startling message arrived from the Tone’s No. 4 plane, now on the dog-leg of its 300-mile search to the east. At 7:28 it reported: “Sight what appears to be 10 enemy surface ships in position bearing 10 degrees distance, 240 miles from Midway. Course 150 degrees, speed over 20 knots.”
Surface ships. So they were out there after all … and well within striking range. If Chuichi Nagumo had been more of a philosopher and less of an admiral, he might have pondered the fate that put the Tone’s plane a half-hour behind schedule. If there had been no catapult trouble—if only it had been on time—he would have known about this American fleet before Tomonaga asked for another strike at Midway. Then there would have been no doubt about his course: go for the ships right away. But as matters stood, it was no longer that easy. His torpedo planes were now belowdecks, being reloaded with bombs.
The Admiral shuffled his plans as best he could. He suspended the second strike on Midway, and at 7:45 signaled new orders to the Striking Force: “Prepare to carry out attacks on enemy fleet units. Leave torpedoes on those attack planes which have not as yet changed to bombs.”
Next step would depend on what the Americans had out there. The Tone’s pilot was exasperatingly vague. “Ten surface ships” certainly didn’t say much. Were there any carriers? If so, they must be hit right away. If not, maybe this enemy force could wait. Over half the torpedo planes were already switched to bombs: if the Americans had only cruisers and destroyers, Admiral Kusaka felt it might be better to go through with the second strike on Midway, then go after the ships. But to decide, they must know what they were up against. At 7:47 Nagumo brusquely radioed the search plane: “ASCERTAIN SHIP TYPES AND MAINTAIN CONTACT.”
Despite their quandary, there was no reason to panic. They had plenty of strength; all they really needed was a little time. Time to switch back to torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs, if there were carriers around. Time to finish changing to land bombs, if they were going to hit Midway again. Time to regroup the ships scattered by the enemy torpedo attacks. Time to replenish and tighten up the air patrol. Time to recover Tomonaga’s planes. And, above all, time to think and plan intelligently, without too many twists and unexpected pressures.
Nagumo was still waiting for more details from the Tone’s plane when, at 7:50, the Soryu’s air cover unit suddenly reported “about 15” single-engine dive bombers coming in from the southeast.
CORPORAL Eugene Card felt as though a bar of ice-coated lead were in his stomach. One consolation: in three hours it would all be over, one way or another. It was also good to have Captain Fleming flying the plane—a man so cool he took a nap during the on-again, off-again confusion at Midway just before VMSB-241 set out on its mission to bomb the Japanese carriers.
Now at last they were on their way, with Captain Fleming serving as navigator for the 16 SBDs led by Major Henderson. The other planes in the squadron—the 11 old Vindicators—would come separately under Major Norris. They were just too slow to operate with the rest.
Henderson’s group had enough problems already. Thirteen of the 16 pilots had never flown an SBD until a few days ago. Ten of them had been in the squadron only a week; they hardly knew each other and had little time to practice together. Like Card, most of the gunners were inexperienced. It was because of their greenness as a group that Major Henderson decided not to dive-bomb the Japanese, but to glide-bomb instead. It required less skill—but no less courage, for the planes would be exposed that much longer.
Heading for the enemy position, they kept in tight formation at 9,000 feet except for Henderson himself. He flew detached, herding them along like an industrious shepherd dog. Craning his neck, Card could see the rest of the planes, stepped down in a giant staircase. Feeling a surge of new confidence, he looked over at Lieutenant Al Tweedy’s plane and gave Tweedy’s gunner, Sergeant Elza Raymond, the old four-oh sign. Raymond grinned and waved back.
Around 7:50 Lieutenant Daniel Iverson swung by and pointed down to the left. Card looked but couldn’t see anything. Fleming broke in on the intercom: “We’ve made contact. There’s a ship at ten o’clock.” Card looked again and sure enough, beneath a large hole in the clouds he saw a long, slender, black ship. It was heading for Midway and making knots.
The SBDs continued on, the clouds rapidly breaking up. Through the holes he could see more and more of these slim black ships, all heading in the same direction. Then a sight he would never forget. Through a large clear space he saw four carriers almost side by side, and near them a battleship with a pagoda-like superstructure. He watched utterly fascinated as the carriers turned in unison and began launching planes.
At 7:55 Henderson’s voice came calmly over the radio: “Attack two enemy CV on port bow… .” The SBDs began circling down.
“Here they come!” Captain Fleming yelled over the intercom. Card caught a glimpse of two streaks of smoke flying past the starboard wing; then a fighter flashed by, climbing almost straight up. Lieutenant Harold Schlendering, flying nearby, had a longer look and wondered at the odd white smoke rings made by the Zeros’ guns. As the first shell fragments slapped into Lieutenant Tom Moore’s plane, Moore thought to himself, “Here comes a hunk of the Sixth Avenue el.”
Major Henderson’s left wing began to burn. He fought it all the way, but he was soon out of control, plunging toward the sea. Off to the right, Corporal Card saw fragments from some other plane tumbling over and floating back like leaves in a breeze. A parachute blossomed out, but there was no time to see who it was.
Captain Elmer Glidden took over the lead, heading for a bank of clouds that might give greater protection during the descent. The Zeros hounded them all the way, while the Marine gunners did their best to fight back. Corporal McFeeley, flying with Captain Blain, grew so excited he fired through the tail of his own plane. Private Charles Huber found his gun hopelessly jammed, but Lieutenant Moore told him to aim it at them anyhow. Huber did, and put on such a pantomime of resolution that the Zeros kept a respectful distance.
Lieutenant Doug Rollow’s rear-seat man Reed Ramsey tried a different sort of guile. He knew that the Japanese liked to capitalize on the Marines’ careless habit of throwing empty ammunition cans overboard. Whenever a Zero saw this, it would quickly close in, since it took about 30 seconds for the Marine to reload. Ramsey decided that two could play this game. With his gun fully loaded, he threw out a beer can. As usual a Zero rushed over—and Ramsey got a hit at point-blank range.
Soon they had other troubles. Corporal Card heard something go “Wuf!” (It sounded, he later stressed, just the way a person would say “Wuf” in a normal voice.) Then he heard it again, and again. Big, black, soft-looking balls of smoke, began to appear. It meant that they were now within antiaircraft range too.
A moment’s relief when they hit the cloud bank—then worse than ever when they broke out on the other side. At 2,000 feet they nosed down and began their final run. Now there was nothing between them and the enemy, twisting and turning below.
Face to face with the Japanese carriers at last, every man had his own most vivid impression. For Lieutenant Moore it was the brilliant Rising Sun insignia on the flight deck. For Lieutenant Rollow it was the scattering crewmen. For Lieutenant Iverson it was the solid ring of fire that encircled the flight deck as every gun blazed away.
Captain Fleming cut loose with a blast of his own, saw a whole gun crew topple over. Facing aft from his rear-seat position, Corporal Card could see very little, but he could hear more than enough. To the “wufs” of the antiaircraft there was now added the steady crackle of small-arms fire. The SBD lurched— “Somebody threw a bucket of bolts in the prop.” Small holes appeared all over the cockpit and a thousand needles pricked his right ankle. Swooping in, the Marines made their drops—Rollow at 400 feet … Schlendering at 500 feet … Fleming at 300 feet. There were ten of them left altogether. Columns of smoke and water billowed up, nearly hiding the carriers from view. It was a conservative pilot indeed who didn’t think he got at least a near-miss.
Then away, skimming the waves to make it harder for the Zeros and the ships’ guns. Nosing down to a few feet above the sea, Lieutenant Rollow suddenly faced huge towers of water shooting up in front of him. He was heading directly for the main battery of a Japanese battleship. He yanked the stick back and the SBD popped to 2,000 feet. As he tried to get his controls set again, a Zero came by. That should have been the end, but nothing happened. Apparently out of ammunition, the Japanese pilot merely gave him a casual wave.
Captain Fleming was running into still more trouble. Pulling out from his drop, another “bucket of nails” hit the prop. Something hard kicked Corporal Card’s left leg to one side, and more holes appeared all over the cockpit. Then as the plane leveled off, Card caught his only good look at the carrier—a “writhing monster” bristling with fast-firing guns, all pointing straight up, a steady jet of flame pouring from each.
The ice in his stomach had melted; hot anger was boiling up. The plane was hit; he was hit; he couldn’t see how they’d ever get out of this alive; the only hope was they’d take a few Japanese with them.
COMMANDER Fuchida couldn’t understand why those American planes came in that way. They were too low for dive bombing, too high for torpedoes. Those long shallow dives gave the Zeros a field day.
But certainly they never wavered. Concentrating on the Hiryu off to port, one after another they swooped in and dropped. Teiichi Makishima, a civilian newsreel photographer on the Akagi, watched with dismay as the Hiryu disappeared in a dense cloud of black smoke. It took forever, but finally she emerged. She was still at full speed, her white bow wave glittering in the sun. The men watching from the Akagi let out a shout of relief.
On the Hiryu it had been a frantic minute as Captain Tomeo Kaku tried to outguess the swooping planes. At 8:08 the ship was completely bracketed by four bombs. At 8:12 another near-miss landed just off to port. Down in the engine room Ensign Hisao Mandai shuddered as the ship took a terrific jolt. Topside they got a dose of strafing too—four men killed, several more wounded.
As Commander Amagai watched from the Kaga, his own ship’s lookout suddenly shouted, “Enemy planes, quarter!” The warning came none too soon. A final three U.S. bombers—either a separate division or planes somehow diverted from the main target—glided in from the port quarter, dropping three bombs just off the stern of the ship.
Then it was over. The Striking Force had done it again: a third American attack smashed with hardly a scratch to themselves. Satisfying, but at the moment Admiral Nagumo had other matters on his mind. He still needed to know what sort of ships the Tone’s No. 4 plane had seen. All during the American glide-bombing attack, he waited for some sort of answer. At 7:58 the search plane finally came on the air again, but it still didn’t identify the enemy ships. It merely reported that they had changed course from 150° to 180°.
The whole staff fumed. What could they do with that, unless they knew what they were up against? At 8:00 an exasperated Nagumo needled the pilot again: “Advise ship types.” At 8:09 he finally got an answer. A new message from the Tone’s plane reported: “Enemy is composed of five cruisers and five destroyers.”
So there were no carriers. Relief swept the flag bridge. The intelligence officer Commander Ono said he knew it all the time. Admiral Kusaka felt it would now be safe to get on with the second strike at Midway.
But this brought up a new complication. The three American attacks did no damage, but they certainly disrupted the fleet. The neat box formation was gone; the carriers were spread all over the place. To cover them adequately, many more fighters were needed. As Lieutenant Shindo, commanding the Combat Air Patrol, used up his reserves, he began drawing on the fighters assigned to the second attack wave. Now there were none left to support any strike it made.
Of course it could be remedied. All they needed was a little time to regroup the fleet—reassemble that compact box formation—then a little more time to refuel the fighters that would be freed from the air umbrella. The staff was still discussing it when at 8:14 the Tone’s port guns opened up—signaling a brand-new danger from the sky… .
“WE SHOULD be sighting them now,” said Lieutenant Bill Adams, the lumber salesman turned navigator, as Lieutenant Colonel Walter Sweeney led his 15 B-17s toward Nagumo’s position. It was 7:32, and more than an hour had passed since they were diverted from another blow at the transports to hitting the carriers instead.
Adams couldn’t have timed it better. Next moment Colonel Sweeney pointed through the broken clouds, and there in the distance were the white waves of many ships. To Captain Don Kundinger, piloting one of the planes, it was an astonishing sight: “a panoramic view of the greatest array of surface vessels any of us had ever seen—they seemed to stretch endlessly from horizon to horizon.”
But which were the carriers? Leading the group in, Sweeney looked hard … saw nothing. It was all so difficult. None of these Army fliers had any experience in ship identification. Broken clouds were everywhere, making it still harder to see. Ships would pop out, then disappear again before anyone could get a decent look.
Most important of all, there was this matter of height. After several close calls attacking the transports at 8,000 feet, Sweeney felt his men would be sitting ducks if they tried to do the same against carriers. So now they were coming in at 20,000 feet—quite a distance for an inexperienced eye to pick out anything.
But they could see the Japanese were busy. Enemy ships were turning in evasion maneuvers. Yet no antiaircraft fire was coming their way. It took some extra squinting, but finally the Army fliers understood. There, far below, Major Henderson’s glide bombers were going in.
The B-17s continued searching. Then suddenly Captain Cecil Faulkner spotted something. Beneath a thin wisp of clouds steamed a ship—not an ordinary ship, but one with an oblong shape, a flat yellow deck, a Rising Sun insignia painted in the middle. Then he saw another like it … then two more. There was no doubt what they were.
No time to lose. Sweeney was far ahead, probing the northwest, so Faulkner signaled the other two bombers in his unit, and they left the formation to attack on their own. By now Captain Carl Wuertele had also found the carriers, and so had Captain Paul Payne in the Yankee Doodle. It was Payne who finally got the word to Sweeney, still searching to the northwest. The Colonel told him to start attacking and hurried to the scene with the rest of the planes.
Officially the strike began at 8:14, but it was a more ragged affair than that might suggest. The three-plane elements bombed pretty much on their own, and in several cases the planes attacked individually. But what they lacked in finesse they made up in enthusiasm. As the Hel-En-Wings unloaded its bombs, Captain Wuertele’s crew whooped in triumph.
The Japanese gunners replied immediately, and the very first round exploded just to the right of Sweeney’s plane, smashing the co-pilot’s window. To the co-pilot Lieutenant Wessman, it underlined the wisdom of such high-level bombing. “From then on,” he recalled, “all of us were sorry we stopped at 20,000 feet.”
Next some Zeros appeared. Three ganged up on Captain Faulkner, ripped his fuselage, disabled his No. 4 engine. Another dueled with Captain Payne but never really closed for a fight. The Zero pilots always respected the B-17, and today was no exception.
It all added up to a hot ten minutes, but no serious damage. The only casualty was Captain Faulkner’s tail gunner, who suffered a wounded index finger.
The Army fliers were jubilant. The price seemed small indeed. The carriers looked finished. Captain Faulkner thought his group got at least two hits; Captain Wuertele and Lieutenant Colonel Brooke Allen each claimed one. Colonel Sweeney’s own crew were no less optimistic: they felt sure all eight bombs were on target, and the carrier’s stern rose up most convincingly. A shrewd student of human nature, Sweeney cut back on all these claims in his official report, but he felt at least one of the carriers must have been hit.
CAPTAIN Aoki watched with dismay from the Akagi. There were so many columns of water around the Soryu he couldn’t see her at all. He thought she might well be sunk. The Hiryu was in trouble too, also lost in spray and smoke. Everyone was of course firing back, but the B-17s were too high to bring down. The Striking Force would just have to sweat it out.
None found it harder than the fliers returning from the Midway strike. They arrived back, by chance, just at this moment. Waved off their carriers, they orbited uselessly around, praying that the bombs would miss. For Lieutenant Tomonaga there was an extra problem: he was very low on gas, thanks to the hit that holed his wing tank at Midway.
By 8:20 the danger was over. The B-17s flew off; the Soryu and Hiryu emerged untouched; and the orbiting planes waited for the signal to start landing. On the Akagi Admiral Nagumo had good reason to feel satisfied. Four times the Americans had attacked; four times they were beaten off. For over an hour the Striking Force had taken everything the enemy could give—and every ship remained intact.
At this moment a new message arrived for Nagumo from the Tone’s No. 4 plane, still shadowing the U.S. task force: “The enemy is accompanied by what appears to be a carrier bringing up the rear.”
This was a stunning surprise. The last thing, anyone expected. Originally—when the Tone’s plane first reported the American force—Admiral Kusaka had half-suspected there might be a carrier out there. But that was 52 minutes ago. Surely if there was one, the pilot would have seen it almost right away—nobody could miss anything that big for long. Yet the fellow had sent several messages since then, and never a hint of a carrier. Now here he was saying there was one after all.
No more thoughts about a second attack on Midway. They must strike that carrier instead. The only question was when. Should they attack immediately? Or should they wait till they switched the second wave back to torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs? Or until they recovered Tomonaga’s planes? Or until they refueled the fighters that had been flying air cover? Or maybe some combination of these possibilities?
Nagumo’s staff had barely posed these questions when one more unexpected development occurred. Still another group of American planes—the fifth that morning—was sighted flying toward them.
IT ALL seemed remote and unreal to Lieutenant Ringblom, approaching at 13,000 feet with Major Norris’s group of 11 Marine Vindicators. Just out of flight school, fresh from the states, it was hard to believe that here he was, flying against a real enemy. He was too inexperienced to appreciate his predicament either, pitting this ancient plane against the First Carrier Striking Force.
But his education was beginning. At 8:17 he sighted the Japanese ships through the broken clouds, and almost immediately three Zeros turned up. They seemed to be toying with the Vindicators as they nonchalantly did vertical rolls right through the formation.
Getting down to business, one of them poured a few bursts into Lieutenant Daniel Cummings’s plane, last in the Marine group. Cummings heard his gunner stop firing and called to him, but there was no answer. Nor could one have been expected. Private Henry I. Starks of Springfield, Illinois, was really a mechanic, not a gunner. But dining the great buildup Colonel Kimes had run out of gunners, and Starks had volunteered. When he climbed into Cummings’s plane that morning, he had never fired a machine gun in the air, and had only been in the plane three times. He had no chance to learn to be a good shot, or even protect himself, but he died, giving his best.
As more Zeros arrived, Major Norris led his men on a fast shallow dive toward some clouds. On the far side was a line of ships—no one could say what type. Sweeping down into the overcast, he radioed his order to attack and calmly instructed every one that the way home would be 140°; expect to get there around 9:00.
Bursting out of the clouds at 2,000 feet, Norris found a battleship and cruiser directly below. There was also a carrier on the horizon, but the Japs were throwing everything at him, and he figured he could never reach it. Picking the battleship instead, he peeled off into a much steeper dive. Everyone else followed.
Plunging down, Lieutenant Ringblom had a fleeting impression of orange gun flashes all over the ship. Tracers whipped by; balls of black smoke everywhere. To his astonishment, he saw identical round holes, about six inches in diameter, appear in each of his ailerons. Some enemy gunner had fused the shells for the wrong altitude, and they had passed right through without exploding.
One after another the Marines released at 500 feet, then skimmed away, hugging the water for protection. Pulling out, Lieutenant Sumner Whitten found himself between two lines of Japanese ships. All were firing hard, some aiming their main batteries at the sea to make a wall of water that might slap down low-flying planes. To his gunner, Sergeant Frank Zelnis, Whitten was staying around much too long—he seemed to be almost sight-seeing. Zelnis finally called out, “You dropped your bombs; let’s get the hell out of here before we get hit.”
Still sticking close to the water, the Marines headed for home. For 20 minutes Lieutenant Ringblom was never higher than 50 feet above the sea. A Zero trailed behind, making occasional passes, but Ringblom somehow escaped. Certainly it must have been luck, for he tried no tactics at all. He flew a straight steady line all the way. He was now much better educated in war, but still too scared and ignorant as a pilot to even look back.
CAPTAIN Tamotsu Takama handled the Haruna beautifully. The Americans pressed home their attack, yet the old battleship managed to dodge everything. Two near-misses were logged at 8:29, but the damage control officer Lieutenant Commander Yoshino reported they were nothing to worry about.
On the Akagi’s bridge, Admiral Kusaka once again felt a surge of relief. For the fifth time they had come safely through an American attack. And what a variety! Torpedo planes, B-26s. B-17s, those curious glide bombers. And as if these weren’t enough, a submarine was reported to be poking around too. It all made Kusaka think of Hiruko-Daikokuten, the legendary Japanese demon with three heads and six arms.
It was hard to concentrate on other matters, but a new message from the Tone’s No. 4 plane made it more imperative than ever to do something about that American carrier lurking to the east. At 8:30 the search pilot reported two more cruisers a little to the west of the ships sighted earlier, and trailing them by perhaps 20 miles. It suggested the possibility of an additional enemy task force. Yet most of the second wave were still equipped with land bombs; the torpedo planes were still belowdecks; Tomonaga’s force was still waiting to come in; the fighters were still low on fuel. What was best to do?
“Consider it advisable to launch attack force immediately,” signaled Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi from the Hiryu shortly after 8:30. Yamaguchi was leading the Second Carrier Division (Hiryu and Soryu), and he found it incredible that Nagumo had done nothing yet. He knew what he would do: strike immediately with everything that would fly. Whether they carried the right kind of bombs, whether they had torpedoes or not, whether they had fighters or no fighters—nothing meant as much as getting in that first blow.
His reaction was predictable. Yamaguchi was one of those aggressive young leaders who embodied the new spirit of the Imperial Navy. Hand-picked from the start, he had been carefully brought along every inch of his career—including duty in Washington and graduate courses at an American university (in his case, Princeton). Now gossip had him someday succeeding the great Yamamoto as Chief of the Combined Fleet. Even so, in the strait-laced Japanese Navy it took a rare degree of independence—and exasperation—to indicate so openly his impatience with his chief.
He was willing to take that risk too. Flashed by the Hiryu’s blinker, his message was quickly picked up by the destroyer Nowaki … relayed to the Akagi … and delivered to the Chief of Staff Admiral Kusaka.
No, thought Kusaka, it would just be throwing away planes to follow Yamaguchi’s advice. Launching an attack immediately meant sending the bombers alone, for the fighters had all been used up protecting the carriers, and to send bombers without fighter support was really inviting disaster. Look what had happened to the unescorted American planes during the past hour and a half.
Instead of going off half-cocked, it would be far wiser, he felt, to delay a little and do the job right. First, recover both Tomonaga’s planes and the second-attack-wave fighters that had been diverted to combat air patrol … next, rearm and refuel them all. And while that was going on, they could also be switching the second wave back to torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs. With proper coordination, they could then launch everything at once for an all-out assault on the U.S. task force. This was his recommendation to Admiral Nagumo.
In the end, as always, Nagumo turned to Commander Genda. What did he think? Genda was most concerned about the planes just back from Midway, now orbiting above the carriers. They had been in the air four hours—all were nearly out of gas. They should be recovered before anything else was done—and that included launching this new attack.
If Tomonaga’s planes splashed with empty tanks, scores of top pilots would be lost, affecting not only Midway but the whole schedule of operations planned for the months ahead. On the other hand, it would delay matters only 30 minutes to recover this force. Then they could go ahead with the second attack, supported by such fighters as might be ready at that time. So he too was against Yamaguchi’s recommendation.
As usual when Genda spoke, there was no dissent.
“Here we go again,” laughed Commander Shogo Masuda, air officer on the Akagi, as orders came to clear the flight deck and rearm once more. On all four carriers the hangar deck crews, in T-shirts and shorts, swarmed over the planes, unloading the bombs they had just put on. Dollies rolled up with the torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs again, and the job began of shackling them back in place. There was no time for routine procedures—or even precautions. As the land bombs were taken off, nobody took them back to the magazines. They were simply rolled out of the way and left lying on the deck.
With the flight decks cleared, the four carriers turned into the wind. At 8:37 signal flags flew from every mast, telling Tomanaga’s planes to start coming in. On the Hiryu a bomber wobbled down to a one-wheeled landing, the pilot passing out as it rolled to a stop. Though shot in the leg by an American fighter, Lieutenant Hiroharu Kadano had somehow managed to keep formation, make his run and get back anyhow.
Another bomber circled the Kaga, its landing gear still up. The crew waved red flags, everything, at the pilot, but he seemed so slow to understand. Finally he did get the point, lowered his wheels and came on in. When the plane stopped, they found Air Petty Officer Tanaka half-conscious and shot in the head. Spirit alone must have carried him back.
And, of course, there were those who didn’t get back at all—11 altogether.
Climbing down from his bomber on the Soryu, CPO Juzo Mori joined the other pilots on the flight deck just below the bridge. They stood around swapping experiences, while the division commander Lieutenant Abe went up to report to Captain Yanagimoto.
Nobody had time to listen. All the officers were busy preparing to attack the American carrier. The Midway report could wait. On the Soryu the air officer simply told CWO Tatsuya Otawa that he’d better get something to eat right away … he’d be needed again soon enough. Even Lieutenant Tomonaga, commanding the whole attack, found it hard to make his report. Going to the Hiryu’s bridge with Lieutenant Hashimoto, he found both Captain Kaku and Admiral Yamaguchi absorbed in plans for the new strike. Shrugging off Nagumo’s blunt rejection of his advice, Yamaguchi was now trying to get the Hiryu’s and Soryu’s horizontal bombers (just back from Midway) reloaded with torpedoes. They could then serve as still another attack wave against the U.S. task force.
It was no time to listen to a battle report. He quickly drafted Tomonaga and Hashimoto into the new project, and they rushed off to set the wheels in motion. Hopefully they could have the planes rearmed, refueled and ready to go again by 11:00.
On the Akagi, Admiral Nagumo breathed more easily. The box formation was tightening up again, gradually releasing the extra fighters from air cover duty. They were now being refueled and resupplied with ammunition. The shift back to torpedoes was well under way. The Midway strike planes were coming in smoothly. The Chikuma was going to send out four search planes to replace the Tone’s No. 4 plane, and thus keep a firm eye on the enemy.
Meanwhile the Tone’s pilot was still on the job. At 8:55 he radioed, “Ten enemy torpedo planes heading toward you,” but this made little impression. Nagumo was too busy planning his own next step. At the same moment the Akagi’s blinker was flashing a confident message from the Admiral to the rest of the Striking Force; “After completing homing operations, proceed northward. We plan to contact and destroy the enemy task force.”
Nagumo also radioed his intentions to Admiral Yamamoto, coming on with the Main Force about 450 miles to the rear. Telescoping his exchanges with the Tone’s plane into one over-simplified paragraph, Nagumo reported: “Enemy composed of 1 carrier, 5 cruisers, and 5 destroyers sighted at 8 A.M. in position bearing 10 degrees; distance 240 miles from AF. We are heading for it.”
Everything was falling into place. Shortly after 9:00 the last of Tomonaga’s planes were recovered, and at 9:17 the Striking Force made a 70° change in course to the northeast. To save time the ships did not turn in formation, but swung left in their tracks—thus the “box” of carriers now found the Hiryu leading the Akagi on the right side, the Soryu leading the Kaga on the left.
Admiral Nagumo was nearly ready. All ships had reported; everything was set. The second wave would conform to Organization No. 4: 18 torpedo planes from the Akagi, 27 from the Kaga; 36 dive bombers from the Hiryu and Soryu; 12 fighters from all four ships—3 from each. He would have preferred a few more Zeros, but overall this promised the “grand scale air attack” he wanted. He would launch promptly at 10:30. Yamaguchi might fret, but it was so much better to take a little longer and do the job right.
Suddenly at 9:18 a destroyer near the Tone began laying a smoke screen. Then the Tone herself did the same. Plane-sighting signals fluttered from one ship after another. Engine room telegraph bells rang for maximum battle speed. Along the eastern horizon, about 20 miles away, the Chikuma’s lookout counted 16 torpedo planes. He was one off—there were 15—but his confusion was understandable: there wasn’t much time to count. These planes were coming straight in—without splitting or swerving—hurtling themselves directly at the First Carrier Striking Force.