SRGNALMAN PETER KARETKA LET out a loud, long cheer. Stationed on the signal bridge of the destroyer Hughes, he was watching the motionless Yorktown when at 2:02 her yellow breakdown flag came down; up instead went a new hoist — “My speed 5.”
On the Yorktown it meant that the battle of the boiler rooms had been won. Lieutenant Cundiff’s diagnosis was correct. By cutting No. 1 down to a bare minimum, Lieutenant Commander Jack Delaney was able to get Nos. 4, 5 and 6 going again by 1:40, and 20 minutes later the ship was under way. With a little time Delaney thought he could work her up to 20 knots—enough to launch planes and get back into action.
Meanwhile there were other welcome developments. The cruisers Peisacola and Vincennes, the destroyers Batch and Benham, had appeared from the southeast—sent over by Spruance to beef up the screen. On the Yorktown, Commander Aldrich had the fires under control; by 1:50 it was safe enough to start refueling the fighters then on deck.
Solid evidence of recovery, but what gave the men their biggest lift was something less tangible. Captain Buckmaster—as good a psychologist as he was a sailor—chose this moment to break out a huge new American flag from the Yorktown’s foremast. No man who saw it will ever forget. To Ensign John d’Arc Lorenz, who had just been through the carnage at the 1.1 guns, it was an incalculable inspiration: “I shall always remember seeing it flutter in the breeze and what it meant to me at this critical time. It was new … bright colors, beautiful in the sunlight. For the first time I realized what the flag meant: all of us—a million faces—all our effort—a whisper of encouragement.”
They needed it at 2:10 when the radar first picked up a new wave of bogeys to the northwest. “Stand by to repel air attack,” the TBS intership radio blared. The screen moved in close, forming “disposition Victor” in a tight, protective circle. The Yorktown strained to build up her speed; by 2:18 she was making eight knots.
Then 10 knots … 12 knots … 15 knots by 2:28. But the Balch radar reported the bogeys were now only 37 miles away. Once again Worth Hare felt fear burning inside, and Signalman Donat Houle wondered what the hell he was doing out here. On the Benham an Ivy League ensign nervously chattered about debutantes he had known in better times.
LIEUTENANT Hashimoto knew they must be getting close. It was 2:28—about an hour since they left the Hiryu—the American ships should be coming into sight. He picked up his seven-power binoculars and scanned the sea to his right. That’s where they would be according to the new position handed him just before they left.
Two minutes later he saw them—tiny white wakes, 80° to starboard, 30 miles away. A tight circle of ships, with a carrier in the middle. And she looked in perfect shape. The last message from the dive bombers said the carrier they hit was “burning furiously”; so this must be a different one. No burning ship could recover that fast.
Speeding up alongside Lieutenant Tomonaga, Hashimoto pointed to the ships, then dropped back to his regular position. Tomonaga swung sharply southeast, and at 2:32 ordered his planes to form up for attack.
They broke into two groups, planning to hit from both sides. They would make their approach together; then Tomonaga would take the port side, Hashimoto the starboard. Like a pair of tongs, they would grab the carrier squarely between them. If she tried to turn from one group, the other would get her.
About ten miles out the U.S. fighters struck. Roaring down from above, they made a pass, got one of Tomonaga’s section. Then Lieutenant Mori’s six Zeros tore into the Americans, and a wild melee developed. But at last the torpedo planes slipped through, and they swept toward the carrier from her port side astern.
At 2:40 all the ships in the screen opened up. It was much worse than Hashimoto expected—machine guns, pompoms, 5-inchers, everything. He hunched low, feeling like a man leaving a warm house in the winter, stepping out into driving sleet. Shrapnel clattered on his wings—the way the hail used to do on a zinc roof back home.
The carrier veered hard to the right, and Hashimoto suddenly found himself on her port side, instead of her starboard as planned. It was even worse for Tomonaga. He was now left well astern. His formation broke up, with the planes trying singly to get into some sort of firing position. The cruisers and destroyers ripped into them.
For Hashimoto it was the wrong side, but he decided to make a run anyhow. He’d never get a better shot than this. He turned and headed for the carrier. The rest of his group moved into position. On they came, flying a loose V formation 150 feet above the water. The carrier’s port side—ablaze with gunfire—lay directly ahead. At 800 yards Hashimoto released… .
CAPTAIN Buckmaster watched the streaks of white foam race toward the Yorktown—and yearned for just a little more steam. At Coral Sea he had dodged other Japanese torpedoes—manipulating his 19,000 tons of steel with a grace that filled the crew with admiration—but then he had 30 knots to work with. Now he had only 19, and that was quite different. Still, he managed to dodge the first two streaks.
As the planes dropped, they veered away close alongside the ship. Watching from his searchlight platform, Signalman Martin wondered about the two flickering orange lights he could see in the rear cockpit. Suddenly he realized this was machine gun fire. He ducked behind a canvas wind screen and felt entirely different about the war. Bombs and torpedoes were impersonal, but this strafing was aimed at him. For the first time he felt really angry with the Japanese.
There were angry Japanese too. After dropping, one plane turned and flew along the Yorktown’s port side not 50 yards from the ship. As it went by, the rear-seat man stood up in his cockpit and shook his fist in defiance. The plane disintegrated in a hail of fire—everybody claimed it. For Gunner’s Mate Jefferson Vick it was “the only time I smiled during the battle.”
At 2:44 another streak of white foam appeared in the water, this time heading directly for the port side, just forward of amidships. Standing on the port catwalk, Yeoman Joseph Adams watched it come right at him. He grabbed a door and braced himself.
The jolt was appalling. Like a cat shaking a rat, like shaking out a rug—the men searched their peacetime memories for something similar … and found nothing to compare. Paint flew off the deck and into their faces; the catwalk rolled up like fencing; fuel oil gushed out; a yellow haze settled over the port side.
For 30 seconds Captain Buckmaster felt they just might pull through. The ship was listing 6° to port, but she still had headway. In damage control, CWT George Vavrek talked over his headphones, telling the men in the forward generator room where to transfer oil to correct the list.
Then a second torpedo hit—killing the man Vavrek was talking to … killing everybody in the generator room … knocking out all power, communications, even emergency lighting. The rudder jammed at 15° to port; a mushroom of gray-white smoke billowed up; the Yorktown stopped, listing 17° to port.
A sickening feeling came over Ensign Walter Beckham as he watched from the cruiser Portland. All antiaircraft guns were firing; 5-inch bursts blackened the sky; tracers crisscrossed in crazy patterns. Even the cruiser’s 8-inch batteries were firing, in hopes that the splash would bring somebody down. The noise and clouds of smoke were bewildering, and there was something terrifying about those planes—the way they hung there in spite of all efforts to blot them out. Nothing worked, and they swept in “looking like some giant birds who were not to be foiled in their search for prey.”
More planes kept coming. The Astoria’s gunners were again yelling like wild men. On the Benham a sailor named Lytells loaded 54 5-inch projectiles in a minute and 45 seconds—and each shell weighed 57 pounds. A 20 mm. crew on the Russell kept firing even after another destroyer fouled the range; skipper Roy Hartwig had to throw his tin hat at the gun to stop it. When the Portland’s 8-inchers let go, Marine Captain Donohoo—still recovering from the mumps—was knocked clear out of his bunk. Mumps or no, he rushed topside to his station. On the Hughes Signalman Houle no longer wondered what the hell he was doing here. He now stood on a corner of the bridge, blazing away with a Thompson .45 submachine gun.
Occasionally they got one. There was the plane that never had a chance to make a run at all. As it broke through the screen, a freak shot (probably from the Pensacola) struck its torpedo. A blinding flash, and it simply vanished. Another made its drop, pulled across the Yorktown’s bow, and headed straight for the Vincennes. Captain F. L. Riefkohl saw it just in time, put his rudder hard right. Riddled from gunfire, the plane crashed 50 yards off the cruiser’s bow, catapulting the pilot out of his cockpit. Still another—crowded out of position during its run—circled wide to the left and tried again. Second time around, it also opened up on the destroyer Batch, which happened to be in its line of sight. The Batch replied with everything it had; the plane disintegrated into the sea.
The U.S. fighters were there too, braving their own fleet’s fire in a desperate effort to ward off the blow. Planes from the Enterprise and Hornet pitched in, but the greatest contribution came from the Yorktown herself. Even as the alarm sounded, she began launching the ten fighters refueling on deck; she was still at it when the Japanese began their final runs. Eighth and last man off was Ensign Milton Tootle, Jr., who had been on carrier duty just six days. Making his first nontraining flight, Tootle took off, turned hard left, tangled with a Japanese plane, shot it down, got hit himself by “friendly” fire, baled out, took a swim and was picked up by the Anderson—all within 15 minutes.
While the battle raged above, the men deep inside the ships waited and listened and sweated it out. In the glow of red battle lights, the members of Repair II on the Pensacola crouched in the darkened mess hall. They could feel the ship lurch heavily as the torpedoes slammed into the Yorktown—but at the time no one knew what had happened. Wondering—and not being able to shoot back—often made it harder to be below decks than above.
In the engine room of the Astoria Lieutenant Commander John Hayes developed a sort of ascending scale, based on the sound of gunfire, that he felt kept him pretty well informed. The dull boom of the 5-inchers meant “Maybe they’re not after us”; the surging rhythm of the 1.1 mounts meant “Here they come”; the steady, angry clatter of the 50-caliber machine guns meant “Hit the floor plates!” Now he heard it all at once.
Then silence. As quickly as the Japanese appeared, they were gone again. At 2:52 the Portland was the last ship to cease fire—just 12 minutes after she was the first to open up. It was incredible that it all happened so quickly—and equally incredible that it all seemed so long. The men slumped by their guns in exhaustion. The elation of battle vanished; now there was utter weariness. Tears, too, as the gunners looked over at the Yorktown. She lay there, listing more than 20° now, wallowing in the gentle swell.
They had only one consolation. They had made the enemy pay a stiff price. Most were sure that none of the Japanese planes escaped.
“HEAD for the bow!” Lieutenant Hashimoto yelled as his torpedo sped on its way. Petty Officer Takahashi dropped even lower and skidded across the sea directly in front of the U.S. carrier. They drew little fire; Hashimoto thought the antiaircraft guns just couldn’t get down that low.
“Did we get a hit?” Takahashi called. Hashimoto turned, but saw no sign of an explosion for a long, long time. Then suddenly a great geyser shot up so high he could see it clearly from the far side of the carrier. Without really meaning to, he let out a yelp of joy.
But his joy was interrupted. Looking around, he caught sight of CPO Nakane’s plane and was horrified to see it still had its torpedo. Nakane was the “orphan” from the Akagi—maybe he was confused—but nothing excused this. “You fool,” Hashimoto said to himself, “what did you come here for anyhow?”
He yanked back his canopy, attracted the attention of Nakane’s rear-seat man, and pointed violently at the torpedo. The rear-seat man waved—yes, he understood—and jettisoned it into the sea. Hashimoto could only curse harder than ever.
Now he was back at the rendezvous point, waiting for Lieutenant Tomonaga’s section to join up, but none of them ever appeared. Perhaps they were thrown off by the carrier’s last-second maneuvering; perhaps Tomonaga took impossible risks. After all, he did know he could never get home on one gas tank. In any case, he and his five planes were gone.
But all five of Hashimoto’s planes came through, and so did three of Lieutenant Mori’s six fighters, and together they limped back toward the Hiryu, three of the torpedo planes too badly riddled ever to fly again. But they had done their job. Hashimoto was absolutely certain he got a different carrier from the one hit by the dive bombers. As he neared home, he radioed ahead the glad tidings: “Two certain torpedo hits on an Enterprise class carrier. Not the same one as reported bombed.”
WATCHING the Enterprise and Hornet untouched on the horizon was too much for Seaman Ed Forbes. “When are those two over there going to get into the fight?” he asked aloud to anyone who would listen. It was small of him and he knew it, but he was scared. As a gunner on the Anderson, desperately trying to protect the Yorktown, all he wanted at the moment was another big target to attract the Japs’ attention.
Certainly the Yorktown had taken her share. Five minutes after the attack the clinometer on the bridge showed she was listing 26°. Captain Buckmaster checked below over the sound-powered phone, but heard only bad news. Lieutenant Commander Delaney reported from the engine room that all fires were out—no hope for any power. The auxiliary generator snapped on, but with all circuits out, it made no difference. Lieutenant Commander Aldrich, down in central station, said that without power there was no way he could pump, counterflood, shift fuel, or do anything else to correct the list. On the bridge, it looked as though the Yorktown might roll over.
Captain Buckmaster paced up and down in agony for several minutes. To no one in particular, he remarked aloud that he hated to give the order to abandon ship. The officers standing around gaped at him mutely. It was one of those moments that give true meaning to the loneliness of command.
Finally he said there was nothing else to do—they must abandon. The Yorktown seemed doomed, and as he later put it, “I didn’t see any sense in drowning 2,000 men just to stick with the ship.”
At 2:55 the order went out—by flag hoist to the screen, by word of mouth and sound-powered phone to the men below. From the engine room, the sick bay, the repair stations, the message center a stream of men stumbled through darkened passageways, up oil-slick ladders, working their way clumsily topside.
The list, the darkness, the oil all made it difficult. No abandon-ship drill was ever like this. In the confusion most of the men ignored or forgot the usual procedures. The rough log was left on the bridge. The code room personnel left the safe open, code books and secret message files lying around. The airmen were just as hurried: some 70 sets of air contact codes lay scattered about the squadron ready rooms.
Down in the sick bay the doctors and corpsmen worked with flashlights, trying to get some 50-60 wounded men to the flight deck. Nothing was tougher than carrying those stretchers up the swinging, ladders, across the oil-smeared deck plates. In the operating room the senior medical officer Captain W. D. Davis and his chief surgeon Lieutenant Commander French continued treating a wounded sailor. No one even told them the ship was being abandoned.
Hundreds of men milled around the flight deck, not knowing, quite what to do. Some waited patiently at their regular stations by the motor launches—forgetting there was no power to lower the boats. Others were throwing life rafts overboard—sometimes still bundled together. Some walked sadly up and down the slanting deck, heart-heavy at the thought of leaving the ship. Others laughed and joked, and if the laughter seemed a little forced—well, everybody understood that.
Not that there weren’t sour notes. One commander—obviously in a state of shock, his face dirty and tear-streaked—found out that Radioman James Patterson was in the last SBD that landed before the attack. “You led them here!” he screamed, trying to hit Patterson.
Now it was after 3:00. The destroyers moved in reassuringly close, and the men finally began to go. Commander Ralph Arnold knew just how to do it; he had talked with survivors from the Lexington. He carried a knife, took some gloves, and he was especially careful to keep on his shoes: when picked up, he’d have something to wear.
Most of the crew were more like Machinist’s Mate George Bateman. He carefully arranged a neat pile on the deck consisting of his shoes, shirt, gloves, hat and flashlight. Gradually, in fact, pairs of shoes lined the whole deck, all meticulously placed with the toes pointing out.
At first a trickle, soon a steady stream of men were pouring down the starboard side. Dozens of knotted ropes hung from the rails, and Lieutenant William Crenshaw felt this would be the perfect time to use the knowledge he gained at the Naval Academy on climbing and descending ropes. One should go down carefully hand over hand, the instructor said, but when Crenshaw tried it, he plummeted straight down into the sea. The difference between this rope and the one at Annapolis was oil—it was everywhere, making a good grip next to impossible.
Others had the same trouble. Worth Hare burned his hands sliding down. Seaman Melvin Frantz was making it all right; then the man above slipped, came down on Frantz’s shoulders, and they both plunged into the sea. Boatswain C. E. Briggs lost his grip too, and felt it took forever to come to the surface. He forgot he had given his life jacket away and was wearing shoes, sweater, pistol, two clips of ammunition, plus all his regular clothing. The wonder was he ever came up at all.
Occasionally a man did it right. Yeoman William Lancaster put on a turtleneck sweater, tightened his life jacket, and carefully lowered himself down one of the lines. When he reached the end, he did not let go. To his own great surprise, he stopped, held on to the line, and instinctively stuck his foot down to test the temperature of the water.
Some added a dash all their own. Commander “Jug” Ray went down clenching his inevitable brier pipe. Chief Radioman Grew gave his famous waxed mustache a farewell twirl. A young fireman asked Radio Electrician Bennett’s permission to dive from the flight deck—he had wanted to do it ever since coming on board. Permission granted.
For the swimmers there was now a new hazard. The oil from the ripped port side had worked around to starboard, making a thick film that gradually spread out from the ship. Men retched and vomited as they struggled toward the clear water farther off. Watching from the flight deck, it reminded Yeoman Adams of a large group of turtles or crawfish swimming in a half-dried pond of mud and muck.
The nonswimmers posed a special problem. The more knowledgeable men gave up their own life jackets to help, but few took as decisive action as Radioman Patterson. As he pushed away from the ship, a sailor grabbed his shoulder, saying he couldn’t swim. Patterson gave the man a 30-second course in dogpaddling—not a word wasted—and the two moved off together.
Another special problem was the sailor trapped when the torpedo struck and curled up the port catwalk. The wire mesh pinned him against the side of the Yorktown in his own private prison. It was on the low side of the ship, “leading to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities if she rolled over. His buddies worked on anyhow, trying to pry him out. They finally succeeded, but all the time he was there he kept begging his friends to leave him and save themselves.
Down in the operating room, Captain Davis and Lieutenant Commander French still worked over their wounded man, oblivious of everything else. Finally finished, Davis went out and called for a corpsman to move the patient. Nobody answered the call. He asked some sailor with a walkie-talkie where the corpsman was.
“Oh,” explained the sailor, “they passed the word some time ago for all hands to abandon ship.” He added he was about to leave himself.
Davis and French carried their man to the flight deck; then Davis went down to check again. He looked around and called, but couldn’t hear anyone. Finally satisfied, he climbed back to the deck.
By now most of the swimmers, boats and rafts were all clear of the Yorktown. Looking around, Davis couldn’t see anyone else still aboard—just a vast, empty stretch of flight deck. He hung his gun on the lifeline and like so many before him, carefully placed his shoes at the edge of the deck. Then he inflated his life jacket and climbed down a rope ladder into the sea, feeling sure he was the last man off.
Captain Buckmaster watched him go, as did his executive officer Dixie Kiefer. Both men were standing on the starboard wing of the bridge—Buckmaster waiting to play out the old tradition that the captain be the last to leave his ship. Now it was Kiefer’s turn to go. He swung over the side and started down a line toward the water. But he had burned his hands earlier and, like so many others, he lost his grip. Falling, he caromed off the ship’s armor belt, breaking his ankle in the process. It took more than that to stop the ebullient Kiefer; he bobbed to the surface and swam for the rescue ships in the distance.
Buckmaster began a final tour of the Yorktown alone. First along the starboard catwalk all the way to the 5-inch gun platforms. Then back to the flight deck by No. 1 crane … down through Dressing Station No. 1 …forward through Flag Country and to the captain’s cabin … across to the port side … down the ladder to the hangar deck.
Now it was really dark. There were a few emergency lamps in the island structure, but absolutely nothing down here—just yards and yards of empty blackness. He didn’t even have a flashlight—someone had swiped that long ago.
He groped through a labyrinth of passageways and compartments, trying to walk with the list, keep his footing on the oil-slick deck. He banged into hatches, stumbled over bodies, slashed his leg on some jagged piece of steel. On he went—always searching for any sign of life, shouting from time to time into the darkness.
No answer, except great belching sounds of air bursting out of compartments as one more bulkhead gave way and the water rushed in. Or sometimes a clanking door or a grating of steel, as the ship rose and fell in the gentle swell. He went as deep as he dared. Finding no one, he felt his way topside again and walked aft to the very stern. A brief pause for a last look at his ship; then Elliott Buckmaster swung over the taffrail, caught a line, and dropped to the sea. “Well, there goes 20 years’ sermon notes,” sighed one of the Yorktown’s chaplains as his raft moved clear of the ship. Captain Buckmaster also found a raft, loaded with wounded, and hung onto the ratlines. A launch came up, tossed over a line and began to pull. As the line jerked taut, a mess attendant lost his grip and drifted astern. He went under twice, yelling for help. A figure darted over and saved him. It was Buckmaster.
Dr. Davis had nothing to cling to. He was still swimming by himself, which perhaps made him all the more apprehensive when he glanced around and thought he saw the snout of a large fish. He turned the other way, but it followed him. Steeling his nerve, he made a grab—and came up with his own wallet.
Lieutenant Commander Hartwig could hardly believe his eyes. His destroyer Russell had been picking up scores of men—they came aboard in every conceivable way—but never anything like this. One of his launches was approaching the ship crowded to the gunwhales with perhaps three times its supposed capacity; it was towing a life raft so loaded with men it was invisible; and the raft in turn was towing a long manila line to which scores of men were clinging like bees; and as if all this wasn’t enough, at the very end of the line was the Yorktown’s supply officer Commander Ralph Arnold, holding aloft his hat. Arnold, it later turned out, had just made commander; his wife had sent him a brand-new scrambled-eggs cap, and he wasn’t about to ruin it in the oily water. At the moment Hartwig simply yelled down to him that no Yorktown sailor would ever have to tip his hat to get aboard the Russell.
Off to port Lieutenant Commander Harold Tiemroth on the Balch was putting into practice all the rescue plans he so carefully made after Coral Sea. His men tossed over the specially prepared cargo nets and were soon hauling in scores of oil-soaked men. His hand-picked rescue swimmers Seaman Lewis and Fireman Prideaux went after those too exhausted to reach the ship. Ensign Weber took the motor whaleboat on trip after trip, sometimes gathering in 50 men at a time.
It was much the same on all seven destroyers. The Benham alone picked up 721. By 4:46, when the Balch completed a final swing around the scene, the little flotilla had rescued a grand total of 2,270 men. But the real meaning of this lay not in statistics, but in the human beings themselves. There was the Yorktown cook who gave up his life jacket, swam a thousand yards to the Benham, then asked as he scrambled aboard, “Where’s the galley? The cooks are going to need all the help they can get tonight.” There was Commander Laing, Royal Navy; now dripping with oil; he reached the deck of the Morris, put on his British cap, saluted the colors and said, “God bless the King; God bless the U.S. Navy.” There was the injured seaman—also on the Morris—who climbed aboard unassisted, saying, “Help some of those other poor guys that are really hurt.” He had lost his own leg at the knee.
ON THE Astoria Admiral Fletcher had watched the Japanese torpedo planes wing in. He never felt more frustrated. They certainly knew how to find the Yorktown—but he was still in the dark about them. Where was that fourth carrier? Three hours had passed since he sent out Scouting 5 to search the northwest, but still no word at all.
Turning to Rear Admiral “Poco” Smith—his host on the Astoria—Fletcher told him to rush two cruiser seaplanes to Midway and tell the CO there, “For God’s sake send a search and find out where this other carrier is.”
If Fletcher sounded anguished, he had a right to be, but actually the answer was already on the way. Even before the first torpedo slammed into the Yorktown’s side, one of the scouting planes solved the riddle.
Lieutenant Sam Adams had gone out with the rest of Scouting 5, leading a two-plane section assigned to the most westerly sector. Like the others in the group, he found nothing but ocean for three long hours. By 2:30 he was heading back—nearly halfway home—when he suddenly saw those revealing white wakes.
He counted carefully. Ten of them down there. The two SBDs edged closer; Adams could now make out four destroyers, three cruisers, two battleships … and yes, there was the carrier. They were all heading north, 20 knots. He worked out the position, reported it by voice, told his rear-seat man Karrol to send it by dot-dash too.
“Just a minute, Mr. Adams. I have a Zero to take care of first.”
Adams had been so absorbed in identifying ships that he missed the fighter completely. Somehow he and the other SBD dodged clear, and at 2:37 they turned for home.
The report reached the Yorktown just as the torpedo attack was breaking. There was a rush to relay it to Task Force 16 by TBS radio, but it didn’t get off before the power failed. It was then blinkered to the Astoria to be relayed on, and Admiral Fletcher knew at last that his search for the fourth carrier was over.
Shortly after 3:00 Admiral Spruance had the message on the Enterprise, and his staff slapped together what strength they could: no torpedo planes, no fighters, bits and pieces from three different dive bombing squadrons. Bombing 6 and Scouting 6 had only 11 planes left between them, but Bombing 3 contributed 14 refugees from the Yorktown, and they made up for a lot. Lieutenant Earl Gallaher of Scouting 6 would lead the attack.
Down in the ready rooms the pilots restlessly waited. By now the excitement of the morning strike had worn off; most of the men were terribly tired, and they couldn’t help looking at the empty chairs of those who failed to come back.
Then about 3:15 the teletype machines began clacking; the talkers moved into action; the rooms stirred to life. Out came the plotting boards; the men once again bent low, working away at their navigation.
“Pilots, man your planes.” At 3:30 the Enterprise turned into the wind, and Gallaher led his mixed group off. One of them had engine trouble, returned almost right away. But the rest continued on, 24 planes heading into the afternoon sum
Even as they left, a miracle was taking place on the Hornet. By 3:00 the crew had given up hope for her missing squadrons. Then, unexpectedly, planes were spotted coming in from the south. Japs? No, these were SBDs. Gloom turned to joy and relief as 11 lost planes from Bombing 8 began landing at 3:27. Lieutenant Commander Ruff Johnson had refueled his squadron at Midway and returned to the ship to get back in the fight.
They were gassed up and on their way out again by 4:03. Adding a few extra planes in shape to fly, the Hornet launched 16 dive bombers altogether. The Enterprise planes had half an hour’s head start, but this didn’t bother the green young ensigns who filled out the Hornet’s group. Led by a reserve lieutenant named Edgar Stebbins, they’d get in on as much of the show as they could.
“TF 16 air groups are now striking the carrier which your search plane reported,” Admiral Spruance radioed Admiral Fletcher as the dive bombers headed out. Then he added, “Have you any instructions for me?”
“None. Will conform to your movements.” To Fletcher this was the only sensible thing to do. He was the over-all commander, but he trusted Spruance and Spruance’s staff. They would do things the way he would himself. They had two carriers; he had none. So he bowed out, and from now on the battle was squarely in the hands of Raymond A. Spruance.
“IT’S still possible to win this battle,” thought Commander Kanoe, the Hiryu’s executive officer. “It’s an even game at worst.” Admiral Yamaguchi thought so too: with one U.S. carrier bombed out, a “second” torpedoed, it was again one-to-one. He quickly put Lieutenant Hashimoto—just back from the torpedo attack—in charge of a third strike at the U.S. force.
Trouble was, he had so little left. At best, only five dive bombers and four torpedo planes were in shape to go. No fighters were available—the six remaining Zeros had to protect the Hiryu. All the officer pilots were gone except Hashimoto and Lieutenant Shigematsu. Everybody was dead tired; Hashimoto, for instance, had been flying since dawn—this would be his third big mission of the day.
Still, it had to be done, and no time to lose. All would be lost if the Americans hit first. Yamaguchi decided the strike must leave right away—at 4:30—and once again the fliers lined up beneath the bridge. This time it was Captain Kaku who spoke. He told them he trusted them completely, but as he walked down the line, patting each man on the shoulder, he could see how exhausted they were.
He finally sent a mechanic running down to sick bay for some stay-awake pills. The man came back in a few minutes with a bottle cryptically marked “Aviation Tablet A.” Commander Kawaguchi suggested they just might be sleeping tablets instead, and the very thought threw Captain Kaku into a rage. He turned on the mechanic, called him a fool and threatened the direst punishment. A quick phone call to sick bay straightened everything out—no mistake, these were indeed the stimulants. The storm blew over, but the incident suggested the pilots weren’t the only ones whose nerves were frayed.
It was so clear, in fact, that everyone was exhausted, Admiral Yamaguchi decided to postpone the strike until 6:00 P.M. They’d lose 90 valuable minutes, but the gains should be worth it. The crew could get something to eat—no one had been given anything since breakfast. The change also meant they’d now hit the enemy at dusk; this gave the small handful of Japanese planes a much better chance against the U.S. defenses.
Down in the engine room the phone rang: send up a couple of men to bring back battle meals for the rest. Ensign Mandai watched them go—he could almost taste the rice balls coming, In the ready room, Lieutenant Hashimoto was too tired even to eat. He lay down on one of the brown leather sofas to catch a few minutes’ rest. On the flight deck most of the mechanics took a break too, but a few kept working, tuning up the Soryu’s Type 13 experimental reconnaissance plane; it would go ahead of the rest to pinpoint the American position. In the air command post Lieutenant Commander Kawaguchi was just popping a rice ball into his mouth… .
It was exactly 5:03 when a startled lookout shouted the words all dreaded the most: “Enemy dive bomber’s directly overhead!”