ONLY TWO HOURS HAD passed since Wade McClusky left with the Enterprise’s dive bombers, yet it seemed an eternity to Commander Leonard Dow. As Spruance’s communications officer, “Ham” Dow would know the results of the strike as soon as anyone, yet he knew nothing—except that McClusky was long overdue. He should have reached the Japanese at 9:20; now it was 10:00, and still no word from him.
To make matters worse, radio reception was bad—lots of static and fading—and some fool in the Aleutians kept sending inconsequential messages, which CINCPAC dutifully relayed for the Enterprise’s information. Dow finally asked Pearl to stop. If he couldn’t hear McClusky, at least he could be spared this useless stuff.
The tension seeped over the whole ship—in fact, the whole task force—affecting all ranks. Lieutenant Commander Bromfield Nichol, Spruance’s operations officer, felt the “terrific anxiety” of a man who had been deeply involved in the planning. Lieutenant (j.g.) Wilmer Rawie, a young pilot not assigned to the strike, had the empty feeling that comes from not being with friends in trouble.
On the screening destroyer Monaghan a very green ensign named Robert Gillette stood nervous and fidgeting like the rest. Then he noticed the skipper, Lieutenant Commander Bill Burford, deeply engrossed in a book. Burford had a knack of being in the thick of things (he had rammed a midget sub at Pearl Harbor), and Gillette assumed he must now be doing some last-minute brushing up on tactics. Closer inspection revealed that the Commander, imperturbable as ever, was poring over a “girlie” joke book.
At 10:05 the long wait ended. Through the static-filled air came a message from McClusky indicating that he was at last in contact with the enemy. But beyond that, it was anybody’s guess. More long minutes of static. At 10:08 a frantic Miles Browning shouted over the radio, “Attack immediately!” More static.
On the screening destroyer Balch Captain Edward P. Sauer was listening too. Reception varied so much from ship to ship that he never caught McClusky’s contact report at all. His first clue that the Commander had found the enemy was an unmistakably American voice that suddenly burst over the circuit, “Wow! Look at that bastard burn!”
In the radio room of the cruiser Astoria a similar group was tuned in on Max Leslie and the dive bombers from the Yorktown. If Leslie sent a contact report, they never caught it, but they too got occasional hints that a lot was going on. Once through the static they heard an especially jubilant voice cry, “How we doin’, Doc?”
More long minutes of waiting. Then, around 11:00, some specks in the western sky. But they turned out to be Jim Gray’s Fighting 6—deeply disappointed men who never linked up with the SBDs and could shed no light on the attack.
Finally around 11:50 the Enterprise’s dive bombers began coming in. Not in proud formations, the way they went out, but in twos and threes … and sometimes alone. Wade McClusky led this straggling parade, and it had been a rough trip back for the air group’s skipper. First, he was shot up by the Japs … next the ship was 60 miles from Point Option, where he was meant to find her … then he almost landed on the Yorktown by mistake. But now at last he was dropping down—with only five gallons of gas left.
At this point he was waved off by the landing signal officer Lieutenant (j.g.) Robin Lindsey. It seemed another plane was still in the landing area. But McClusky wasn’t about to stay up any longer. He playfully thumbed his nose at Lindsey and came in anyhow.
Rushing to Flag Plot, he reported to Admiral Spruance: three carriers hit and burning; a fourth one hadn’t been touched. He was still giving his account when the Enterprise’s executive officer Commander W. F. Boone suddenly broke in: “My God, Mac, you’ve been shot!” McClusky had forgotten to mention it, but blood was indeed trickling from his jacket sleeve to the deck. He was hustled off to sick bay with five different wounds in his left arm and shoulder.
In the confusion, his news of the fourth carrier was apparently overlooked. So was a similar report by Dick Best when he landed a few minutes later and checked in with Miles Browning.
On deck, anxious eyes carefully counted the planes from each squadron as they sputtered in. The task was anything but cheerful. Apart from the frightful losses of Torpedo 6, so many of the dive bombers were gone too—18 out of 32 altogether.
Most of them ran out of gas on the way back. Partly it was that long, relentless search for the enemy; partly the Enterprise’s miscalculation in estimating where she could be found again. At that, some of the pilots almost made it—Lieutenant Dickinson was picked up only ten miles from the ship. But others were gone for good. Lieutenant Charles Ware brilliantly guided his division through the attack and two melees with the Zeros … then vanished, choosing a course home that could lead only into the empty sea.
The Hornet’s fliers had an even rougher time. Stan Ring led Scouting 8 safely back after their wild-goose chase south; a plane from Bombing 8 came with them; then nothing. When Clayton Fisher, the returnee from Bombing 8, went down to the squadron ready room, the unassigned pilots crowded around him in anguish: “Fisher, you’re the only pilot in our squadron to get back; and nobody has come in from Fighting 8 and Torpedo 8!”
Ultimately three more SBDs from Bombing 8 did turn up, but that was it. The minutes dragged by with no sign of the rest. Thirty-nine planes had vanished. The only other arrival was a fighter from the Yorktown, badly mauled by Zeros. Returning from the strike, its wounded pilot picked the Hornet as the first U.S. carrier he saw. Thumping down heavily on the flight deck, his guns went off and raked the island structure, killing several men. A shaken crew went back to their vigil.
The shipboard members of Torpedo 8 refused to give up hope. The personnel officer, Lieutenant George Flinn, knew the planes could keep flying five hours and 20 minutes at the most, but long after that deadline he still searched the skies. Some miracle just might bring them home. Even when everyone else had given up, he kept chicken dinners ready for them all.
At least the wait was shorter on the Yorktown. Her planes had been launched an hour later, and except for the fighter that crash-landed on the Hornet, they had no trouble finding their way back. The ship was just where Commander Arnold said she would be. By 11:15 Max Leslie’s dive bombers were overhead, but at the last minute it was decided not to land them until Fighting 3 returned—Jimmy Thach’s men would be lower on gas.
So the bombers orbited, but their good news wouldn’t keep any longer. One of them signaled by Aldis lamp that they had sunk an enemy carrier. Cheers rippled through Task Force 17, and scuttlebutt quickly took over. It was said that the Japanese fliers, having lost their ship, were landing at Midway and surrendering to the Navy.
Admiral Fletcher wasn’t yet ready to celebrate. There were supposed to be four carriers out there, and he still knew of only two. He had heard nothing from the PBYs for five hours, and so far it was impossible to get a clear picture from his own planes now circling above. Were there really two other carriers? If so, where were they?
He decided to have another look to the northwest. At 11:20 he sent off Lieutenant Wally Short with 10 of the 17 dive bombers he had been holding in reserve all morning.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Thach had returned, and after another interruption while the Combat Air Patrol was relieved and strengthened, the fighters began landing about 11:45. Once again the crew went through the agonizing business of counting. It was better than it might have been: four out of six came home.
Thach hurried to Flag Plot, reported to Admiral Fletcher: three carriers definitely out of action, the battle seemed to be “going our way.” Well, that cleared up part of the mystery. Fletcher now knew there was at least a third carrier out there. What about a fourth? Thach couldn’t say. He saw only the three that were burning. He didn’t know whether there was still another one or not.
At this moment the Yorktown’s air-raid alarm began sounding: bogeys, lots of them, coming in from the west. Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher now knew definitely—beyond any doubt whatsoever—that there was indeed a fourth Japanese carrier around.
“Bogeys, 32 miles, closing,” the Yorktown’s radar officer, Radio Electrician V. M. Bennett, reported at 11:52. They were also climbing, which ruled out friendly planes and the possibility of a torpedo attack. It all added up to enemy dive bombers, and since the Yorktown was first in their line of approach, she would clearly be the target.
The screening destroyers moved in close, the cruisers Astoria and Portland stood off to starboard, putting themselves between the carrier and the coming storm. The Yorktown herself turned southwest, showing her stern to the attackers. She cranked up her speed from 25 to 30.5 knots.
She was all buttoned up. Fuel lines were drained and filled with carbon dioxide. A portable gasoline tank on the flight deck was pitched overboard. Repair parties were at their posts, doctors and medics at every dressing station. Her guns were manned, all pointing west.
And no carrier boasted more fire power. The Yorktown’s gunnery officer Lieutenant Commander Ernest J. Davis had a simple theory that if you put enough bullets in the direction of attacking aircraft, eventually some plane would run into one. Carrying out this idea, he even borrowed all the spare machine guns from the planes in the hangar and lashed them to the catwalk rails.
But the Yorktown’s first line of defense lay in her Combat Air Patrol—12 fighters orbiting restlessly above the ship. As soon as the alarm sounded, Lieutenant Commander Pederson moved into action, vectoring them out toward the approaching bogeys. Now they were converging on a point 10,000 feet up, some 15-20 miles to the west. Flying his F4F, Lieutenant (j.g.) Scott McCuskey peered ahead. There coming straight toward him was a group of 18 planes. He felt butterflies deep inside—like playing football, just before, the opening whistle… .
LIEUTENANT Yasuhiro Shigematsu couldn’t resist the temptation. His six Zeros were meant to escort the Hiryu’s dive bombers now winging toward the American fleet. But there, right below, was a group of U.S. planes heading home for their carriers. They looked like torpedo planes (actually they were SBDs), but whatever the type, they were perfect targets. He decided he could pick these off and get back on station before Lieutenant Kobayashi’s bombers ever reached the enemy force.
The Zeros roared down on the SBDs, but they proved far more battle-wise than expected. Shigematsu got none of them, and they shot up two of his planes so badly they limped back home. Thoroughly mauled, he broke off and rejoined Kobayashi. The fighters were back in plenty of time, but there were now only four of them to protect the bombers.
The formation flew on. The Chikuma’s No. 4 and No. 5 search planes had been ordered to point the way, but Kobayashi now had some far better guides. The planes Shigematsu attacked were not the only Americans going home. The air was full of them, all heading back from the Japanese carriers. Kobayashi slipped behind one group and tagged along.
Just before noon, 30 miles ahead, he saw what he wanted. There, beyond a bank of clouds and surrounded by bristling cruisers and destroyers, steamed a great carrier. He opened up on his radio and ordered the rest of his 18 dive bombers, “Form up for attack.”
Then it happened. From somewhere above—and with no warning whatsoever—a dozen U.S. fighters hurtled down on Kobayashi’s little formation, ripping it apart, and dropping six planes almost simultaneously into the sea.
THE burning planes reminded Lieutenant John Greenbacker of falling leaves as he watched from the Yorktown on the horizon. The fighter-director radio crackled with the excited voices of pilots swarming in for the kill: “1202: all Scarlet planes, bandits 8 miles, 255° … 1204: planes still on course … 1204: OK, break ‘em up, Scarlet 19; going to attack about 3 enemy bombers about 5 miles … 1205: TALLY-HO! Join up on me … Scarlet 19, get those bombers on my right wing. Let’s go!”
Lieutenant Greenbacker felt sure that none of the Japanese would escape, but eight somehow broke through. On they came toward the Yorktown, fanned out in a wide arc, one behind the other. They were still out of antiaircraft range, and the wait seemed interminable as the men of Task Force 17 braced themselves for the blow.
“What the hell am I doing out here?” wondered Donat Houle, a young seaman on the destroyer Hughes, and it was indeed a long way from home in New Hampshire. On the Yorktown herself Machinist’s Mate Worth Hare waited silently in Repair 5, down on the third deck. It was dark, and he was deep inside the ship. A feeling of fear burned in his stomach. At the battle dressing stations, the medics lay down in their flashproof clothing, covered their faces with their arms. Out on deck the British observer, Commander Michael B. Laing produced a small black notebook and began jotting down impressions to send back to London.
Captain Buckmaster moved out on the navigation bridge. He was supposed to stay in the forward conning tower when the ship was in action, but he couldn’t maneuver from there. So he kept his exec under cover instead, ready to take over if anything happened. Buckmaster himself stood out in the open, yelling instructions through the narrow slits in the side of the tower.
On the flag bridge Admiral Fletcher still worked at his charts. A staff officer entered and politely reported, “The attack is coming in, sir.”
“Well,” said Fletcher cheerfully, “I’ve got on my tin hat. I can’t do anything else now.”
In these last, suspenseful moments there were, oddly enough, a few men present who didn’t have the faintest idea that the enemy was about to strike. Circling above the Yorktown, Max Leslie and his squadron of dive bombers had waited while the fighters landed; now they were about to come in themselves. Intent on their instruments, watching the carrier’s movements, none of them noticed the air battle erupting to the northwest. Nor could they hope to know the tension and turmoil on the ships below.
Leslie led the way into the landing pattern. Lieutenant Lefty Holmberg followed close behind, concentrating on the job of getting his wheels and flaps down, his propeller in high rpm. He noticed that the skipper was in a nice position to get aboard; he was pleased to see that his own plane was just the right distance behind. Suddenly the landing signal officer gave Leslie a “wave-off.” Strange—Leslie always made it the first try. Holmberg turned to land himself. He too was waved off. Puzzled, he passed close along the port side of the flight deck, trying to see why they didn’t let him land.
He was just opposite the after gun gallery when the four 5-inchers opened up. Smoke, fire, blast scared him half out of the cockpit. Thoroughly frightened, he darted away from the ship and joined up with Leslie. The Yorktown’s radio crackled a belated warning: “Get clear—we are being attacked.”
Gun bursts peppered the sky, but the Japanese planes kept coming. Soon they were easy to see, even without binoculars. A burst caught one; it flared up and fell; the other seven flew on. Now they were almost over the Yorktown.
Signalman William Martin watched them all the way. He was assigned to a searchlight mounted on the Yorktown’s smokestack: his job was to challenge approaching aircraft. He knew perfectly well who these were, but as a good signalman he flashed the challenge anyhow. He got his answer soon enough: the lead plane flipped over and began to dive. Unfazed, Martin opened the searchlight shutters wide, hoping to blind the pilot and spoil his aim.
No one would ever know whether it worked. At the same moment Commander Davis’s whole arsenal of automatic guns opened up with a roar. No less than 28 different guns were firing from the starboard side alone. A rain of bullets and shells chopped the bomber in two. But even as it disintegrated, its bomb tumbled free and down toward the Yorktown. Captain Buckmaster caught a brief but vivid impression—it looked oddly like a small keg of nails coming down.
It exploded with a brilliant red-yellow flash, 60 feet high, as it landed on the flight deck aft of the island. Shrapnel swept the area, mowing down the men at the nearest 1.1 guns: 19 out of 20 at mount No. 3, 16 more at No. 4. Ripping through the deck, the blast also set fire to three planes in the hangar below—one of them armed with a 1,000-pound bomb. The hangar deck officer, Lieutenant A. C. Emerson, yanked open the sprinkler system; a curtain of water smothered the flames.
At the 1.1 mounts, a dazed Ensign John d’Arc Lorenz scrambled to his feet, miraculously unhurt. Rallying three other survivors, he somehow managed to get one of the guns going again. Their firing was a little uneven, but four men— two of them wounded—were doing the work of twenty.
Whatever they could do, it would help. The rest of the Japanese were diving now, and it was easy to see (as one man put it) that this was their “varsity.” They were a far cry from the rather sloppy bunch the Yorktown met at Coral Sea—certainly sharper than most American pilots. While the Navy fliers normally released at 2,000 feet, these planes plunged below 1,000, then pulled out barely at mast top. Leading Seaman George Weise watched one come right at him. Manning a machine gun on the side of the smokestack near Signalman Martin’s searchlight, he fired at it all the way down. But it came on anyhow, dropping a bomb that slanted through the flight deck … through the hangar deck … through the second deck … finally exploding in the uptakes of the stack deep inside the ship.
Down in Emergency Boiler Control, Lieutenant (j.g.) Charles Cundiff never understood what premonition made him shout at this instant, “Hit the deck!” But he did, and as his men went flat, white-hot shrapnel ripped across his station from somewhere forward, passing on through the bulkhead aft. None of the men was even scratched.
But this bomb really hurt. Flames and smoke were everywhere—the boiler rooms … the exec’s office … the photo lab … the personnel files … the laundry … the oil and water test laboratories … the officers’ galley … the wardroom annex … the radar room … a whole cross-section of all the things that go into a modern warship. A roaring blast of heat swept up the smokestack, setting the paint on fire and jarring everything loose.
Signalman Martin was hurled from his searchlight platform. He had an odd feeling of floating lazily through the air, high enough to see the whole task force. He was sure he was dead and decided that dying wasn’t so hard after all. He came to seconds later, hanging halfway over the rail two levels below his light. Incredibly, he was unhurt.
Seaman Weise wasn’t as lucky. Legend says he was hurled so high he brushed the wing of the plunging Jap plane. Wherever he went, he ended up on the flight deck unconscious and with a fractured skull.
Heavy black smoke poured from the Yorktown; her speed fell off to barely six knots. Then another Japanese plane dived, this time from the starboard side forward. It was the first to come in that way, and almost made it unnoticed. There was a startled burst of antiaircraft fire, but the bomb was already on the way. It plunged through the forward elevator, exploding 50 feet down in the rag stowage space. The whole area flared up in a tough, persistent fire; but what really worried damage control was not the rag locker, but all the gasoline and 5-inch shells stored next to it
As the bombers pulled out, skimming across the water, the destroyers and cruisers blazed away with everything they had. There was something intoxicating about seeing the enemy right there. Men noticed the most minute details—a yellow stripe on some rudder, two red bands around somebody’s fuselage—and they fired away with abandon. On the destroyer Hughes Ensign John Chase’s 20 mm. battery followed one plane right over the ship; only the gun stop kept them from shooting up their own bridge. Even so, the skipper, Lieutenant Commander Donald Ramsey, was startled enough to rush to the rail and shake his fist at them all.
The Astoria gunners were yelling like wild men, slamming in shells as fast as they could—they fired 204 5-inchers in ten minutes. Chaplain Matthew Bouterse found himself passing cans of 1.1 ammunition to the ready room aft. It was perhaps an odd thing for a chaplain to be doing, but he thought of Pearl Harbor and Chaplain Forgy’s famous words, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
Pulling out of its dive, one Japanese plane turned right toward the Astoria, flying not much more than bridge height. The machine guns went to work, began chopping the plane to pieces … but still it kept coming. As it passed along the starboard side, the pilot turned—waved—and slanted down into the sea just astern. His mission completed, he apparently wanted a look at his enemy before he died.
Some 15-20 miles to the southeast the men on the Enterprise, Hornet and the rest of Task Force 16 strained to see how the battle was going. There were few clues—just the black puffs of antiaircraft fire in the distance, an occasional plane streaking into the sea. Then a heavy smudge of smoke appeared. It didn’t drift away like gun bursts; it clung to the horizon, steady and black. Admiral Spruance judged right away that the Yorktown had been hit.
He detached cruisers Pensacola and Vincennes, the destroyers Benham and Balch, to go over and help. But for most of Task Force 16 there was only frustration. The Yorktown was getting it—just 15 or 20 miles away—and there was nothing they could do.
It was especially frustrating for the men flying air cover over the Enterprise and Hornet. Unlike the rest of the force, they could do something—and right away. When the dive bombers broke through the Yorktown’s fighter defenses, Lieutenant Roger Mehle requested permission to lead his 12 fighters to the rescue. He was told to stay where he was— his job was to protect the Enterprise. But he stretched his orbit (and his orders) anyhow, circling over closer toward the Yorktown.
He finally got a go-ahead and raced over—just too late to intercept. The enemy planes were already in their dives. Adding agony to agony, his guns jammed as he led his flight down on the end of the Japanese column. He disengaged and pulled away, turning the attack over to the next section leader.
In the end they never accomplished much, and the Hornet fighters even less. Still, there were some satisfactions. Ensigns Provost and Halford ganged up on one dive bomber just as he pulled out and started for home. Making a high side attack, they quickly sent him spinning into the sea.
Suddenly it was over. Men blinked, shook their heads, unable to believe the silence. The firing seemed to have gone on forever, yet it was just 12:16—11 minutes since the first ships opened up.
On the Yorktown Admiral Fletcher and his staff stood around on the flight deck, driven from Flag Plot by the fire in the island structure. For the moment Radio Electrician Bennett was about the only person working up there in all the fire and smoke. Normally a dapper little man, he now sat rumpled and grimy, wearing a gas mask, desperately trying to get his radar going again. Down in the galley an old chief spotted another chief—his good friend—lying dead on the deck. He broke down and cried like a child.
Commander Laing stood quietly on deck, as imperturbable as a Royal Naval officer should be. Later he missed his little black notebook—and it was never found. He finally decided it was blown out of his hands when one of the bombs landed. He shrugged off the loss, observing with a delicacy that was entirely unnecessary in the U.S. Navy: “Those Jap baskets came rather a long way to ruin my month’s work.”
The hard statistics, at least, required no notebook to be remembered. Only 7 of the 18 Japanese bombers managed to dive, but 3 of the 7 had scored clean hits—a remarkable performance for so few planes. And even the near-misses took their toll. One landed just astern, killing and wounding many men on the fantail. Another came in so close that it sent Admiral Fletcher diving for cover. He cut his head on something, went back to work, dripping blood on his charts. He finally got a medic to slap on a bandage, and the next time he thought about it was long afterward when, to his astonishment, he got a Purple Heart.
So much for the losses they took. They gave plenty too. The men in Task Force 17 would long argue over who shot down what, but on one thing most were agreed: none of the Japanese escaped. Of the seven that dived, the men said there was not one who lived to tell the tale.
“ENEMY carrier is burning,” radioed one of the Hiryu pilots at 12:45. His plane was now back at the rendezvous area, waiting to join up with any other dive bombers leaving the scene.
Spirits soared on the Hiryu. Lieutenant Hashimoto felt there was only one thing wrong with the message. It didn’t come from Lieutenant Kobayashi … it didn’t even come from a section leader like Lieutenant Kondo. It came, in fact, from a lowly petty officer (even now no one can remember his name) who flew the No. 3 plane in the second group. That meant all the senior pilots were killed; the toll must be very high.
He was right—but more escaped than any of the Americans believed. In the end five dive bombers and one fighter managed to scoot away from the blazing guns of Task Force 17. They escaped singly, in no particular order—just as their wits and luck happened to take them—but by 12:45 all six were heading back to the Hiryu.
Meanwhile preparations raced ahead for the torpedo strike. Commander Kawaguchi had been working on this ever since the dive bombers left. Now he was almost ready. It would be a patchwork affair: nine torpedo planes from the Hiryu, plus an orphan from the Akagi; four fighter escorts from the Hiryu, and one transferred from the burning Kaga.
Anything more would take longer, and Admiral Yamaguchi couldn’t afford the time. Intelligence still said there was only one U.S. carrier, but he now doubted it. No single ship could have done all that to the Akagi, Kaga and Soryu. There must be a second one out there somewhere. Even so, that left it one to one; and the Hiryu would fight on these terms any day. One of the U.S. carriers, anyhow, was now burning—it would be out of action for a long, long time.
COMMANDER Clarence Aldrich seemed everywhere at once. As the Yorktown’s damage control officer he had his work cut out for him—three separate hits, four serious fires belowdecks. Somehow he managed to tackle them all.
There was not a moment to lose—especially with the burning rag locker up forward, next to all that gasoline and ammunition. Aldrich had the magazine flooded with sea water, the gas tank filled with C02. Other fire fighters smothered the flames in the island structure, while repair parties went to work on the holes in the flight deck. The big one aft—12 feet wide—called for extra ingenuity. Wooden beams were laid across … a quarter-inch steel plate put over them … then more steel plates tacked down on top of that. In 20 minutes the Yorktown’s flight deck was again open for business.
And all the time the work went on of clearing the dead, caring for the wounded. They were all kinds. There was George Weise, still unconscious from his fall, carried below to the main sick bay. There was the young boy, physically untouched but scared literally speechless. There was Boatswain’s Mate Plyburn, raked across the stomach by a strafing machine gun. He had $500 in his pockets—saved for the day he planned to marry. Now he was dying and he knew it. He begged his friends to take the money and have a good time with it.
Far below, the engineers struggled to get the Yorktown going again. The bomb that exploded in the stack had wrecked two boilers and blown out the fires in the others. Heavy black smoke poured into the firerooms, choking the men at their posts.
Water Tender Charles Kliensmith, the short rough-tough sailor in charge of boiler No. 1, hung on anyhow. The hit had knocked down most of his boiler’s interior brickwork, but otherwise did little perceptible damage. He and his men relit the fires.
None of the other boilers would relight at all. More smoke poured through the forced-draft intakes, smothering the fires. Kliensmith’s gang kept working, although the place was now stifling, and the bare casing glowed red-hot. They knew they were the only source of power for the pumps and auxiliaries needed to keep the Yorktown alive.
But their boiler was not enough to run the ship, and the engine room was clamoring for steam to get the uninjured turbines running again. The boiler division officer Lieutenant Cundiff had been painfully burned, but something had to be done right away. Bandages and all, he crawled into the uptake-intake space, full of the pipes that normally draw the smoke up the stack and bring new air back down again.
A quick look around, and it was all too clear what had happened. The bomb had ruptured the uptake on Kliensmith’s boiler, the intake on the others that could still give steam. Instead of continuing up the stack, Kleinsmith’s smoke was being drawn back down and into the other boiler rooms. Kliensmith was ordered to reduce his fires to the bare minimum necessary to keep the auxiliaries running, while repairs were made and the other boilers relit. In time they’d again build up enough steam to get the Yorktown moving.
Admiral Fletcher couldn’t wait. He had a fleet to run, and a ship dead in the water was no place to do it. Besides, his radio was out, and smoke still billowed up, making flag hoists and the blinkers impractical. About 12:30 he decided to transfer to the Astoria and signaled her for one of her boats.
By 1:00 the Astoria’s No. 2 whaleboat was alongside. Knotted lines were dropped down from the Yorktown’s flight deck, and several staff officers lowered themselves hand over hand. Fletcher was about to go the same way, then thought better of it. After all, he was 56 years old. “Hell,” he said to himself, “I can’t do that sort of thing any more.” So they rigged a line with a bowline in it and lowered the Admiral in style.
They shoved off at 1:13—Fletcher, part of his staff, several enlisted men, including the Admiral’s yeoman Frank Boo. The trip took only 11 minutes, but that seemed plenty to Boo. The sea was calm—no enemy in sight—but he felt sure they’d be strafed if a new Japanese attack caught them there. A whaleboat just didn’t go from one ship to another in mid-Pacific, unless it was important.
To make matters worse, countless 5-inch shell cases bobbed up and down in the water—all looking like submarine periscopes. The Astoria’s crew were especially sensitive about these, for they too felt like sitting ducks while they waited for their Admiral. When he finally climbed aboard at 1:24, everyone breathed more easily.
The Yorktown’s planes also had to transfer. Even with the flight deck repaired, they couldn’t use it while the ship was standing still. Max Leslie’s 17 dive bombers had been ordered to stay clear during the Japanese attack. Now they were told to land and refuel on the Hornet or Enterprise. They’d fly from there until the Yorktown got going again.
It was a relief to have someplace to go. For most of the SBDs it had been a nerve-racking noon hour—part of it spent in dodging bullets from both sides. As one Japanese pilot pulled out of his dive on the Yorktown, he made right for them with all guns blazing. A U.S. fighter appeared from nowhere and shot him down. But next minute it was a “friendly” pilot that attacked them. He veered away at the last second as somebody yelled over the radio, “You silly bastard! Can’t you see these white stars?”
His confusion was understandable. Apart from the problem of split-second identification, everything was getting more and more mixed up: planes from one carrier plopping down on another … combat air patrols overlapping each other’s sector … relays of fighters called in and taking off.
Radio traffic filled the air—a jumble of orders, questions and remarks tossed back and forth in airman’s jargon. Tuned in on the Enterprise’s fighter-director circuit, an enemy eavesdropper heard “Ham” Dow call in a three-plane section for refueling. This gave the Japanese an inspiration: why not clear the sky of every American fighter? Breaking in, he called in English, “All planes return to base, all planes return to base.”
“That was a Jap!” Dow yelled. “Disregard that order to return to base—that was a Jap!”
The Japanese repeated his order.
“The bastards are using our frequency,” Dow cried, and that was the mildest thing he said. This was the first time during the Pacific War that anybody had used radio deception. Later it would be an old story on both sides, but right now it fitted perfectly the standard Western conception of the crafty Oriental. It was also fitting that Americans should see through the trick, and as Dow cursed away, the pilots listened with enjoyment and ever-increasing respect for the wide range of his vocabulary.
Max Leslie had a different kind of problem. Like the rest of his Yorktown dive bombers, he was about to shift over to the Enterprise or Hornet, when Bill Gallagher in the rear seat spotted something in the water maybe eight or ten miles away. They flew over to investigate, with Lefty Holmberg tagging along. It turned out to be a swamped U.S. torpedo plane; its crew were nearby in a rubber raft. Leslie alerted the destroyer Hammann, went back to the carrier to get a new bearing on Task Force 16. By the time he was squared away, he was nearly out of gas, and Holmberg was even lower. They’d probably never make the Enterprise; far better to play it safe and splash beside the Astoria directly below.
The men in Bombing 3 always considered Max Leslie the most methodical pilot in the world, and according to squadron legend, he landed so close to the Astoria he simply walked the wing to the ship’s ladder. It was almost that good. He came down about 50 yards off the cruiser, but as Bill Gallagher launched the rubber boat, he noticed that Leslie was still in the cockpit, apparently slumped over his instruments. Thinking the skipper was stunned by the landing, Gallagher scrambled alongside to lift him out. But there was nothing wrong. The methodical Leslie was just flicking every button on the instrument panel to an “off” position before abandoning his sinking SBD.
It wasn’t as easy for CAP Esders, pilot of the swamped torpedo plane Leslie had spotted. Flying one of the two TBDs in Torpedo 3 to escape the Japanese, Esders started home with a leaking gas tank and his rear-seat man Mike Brazier desperately wounded. Then Machinist Corl joined up with the squadron’s other surviving plane, and for a while the two flew together in the general direction of the U.S. fleet.
Esders asked Brazier if he could possibly change the coils on the radio so he could pick up the Yorktown’s homing device. Brazier answered weakly that he was in very bad shape and didn’t think he could.
“Very well,” Esders replied, writing that hope off. But ten minutes later Brazier called and said he had managed to change the coils after all. By now Corl had drifted off (he later splashed safely near the Enterprise), but thanks to Brazier’s supreme effort, Esders eventually caught the Yorktown’s signal and came on in. Ten miles short of the carrier, he finally ran out of gas and glided down to a water landing.
It was only then that he saw how badly off Brazier really was. Both legs were terribly wounded, and he had been shot seven times in the back. Helped into their rubber raft, Brazier knew very well this was the end. Still, he conversed intelligently, saying he was sorry that he couldn’t do more, He also said he was sorry that he would never see his family again. He finally drifted into a coma, as Wilhelm Esders did the only thing left to do: “I said a prayer to the Almighty, requesting that He receive such brave and gallant men into the Kingdom, and that He bless those that he left behind.”
LIEUTENANT Raita Ogawa aimlessly circled the blazing Akagi. Flying air cover, he was running out of gas with no place to land. The three carriers below were wrecks, and the Hiryu was now too far north to reach.
He looked at his gas gauge. He was down to five gallons. A few minutes more, and he’d be in the ocean. He headed for the cruiser Chikuma, hurrying north after the Hiryu. The other two planes in his section followed along; they were in the same fix.
Circling low, he signaled the Chikuma that he was about to come down by waggling his wings. It turned out that her business was too urgent; she semaphored back, “Can’t pick you up.” But she did hoist her wind-sock and turned briefly into the wind to make a smooth wake to land on.
At 11:50 Raita Ogawa splashed down, sustained by the thought that he was originally trained as a seaplane pilot. He made it easily, and so did the two pilots with him. They scrambled out of their sinking planes—three more swimmers in the ever-growing number that dotted the ocean.
Dozens of men struggled in the water alongside the burning Soryu. Some had been blown there by internal explosions; others jumped when trapped by the fire. Far above them Captain Yanagimoto suddenly appeared, limping onto the semaphore platform off the starboard side of the bridge. He yelled encouragement to the men below, and cried “Long live the Emperor!” About 30 men, swimming directly beneath the bridge, took up the cheer as Yanagimoto disappeared in the flames and smoke.
A crowd of survivors jammed the anchor deck forward, still free of the fire. Some were tossing lines to the men in the water, hauling them back on board to this small corner of safety. Among those brought back was Executive Officer Ohara, faint from his burns. Now he lay on deck, little caring what happened. Dimly he heard the gunnery officer order a signalman to wigwag the Akagi: say the captain was dead, the exec unconscious, what should they do?
The Akagi never answered. She had too many troubles of her own. After Nagumo left, Captain Aoki and several of his officers stuck it out on the bridge as long as they could, but by 11:20 the heat was too much. They lowered themselves to the flight deck and went all the way forward on the windward side. Here they stood in a little group, uncertain what to do next.
They longed to smoke, but had only two cigarettes between them. In the end, they passed these back and forth, and it reminded Commander Miura of the popular song “Senyu” (“War Comrades”), which had a mawkish line about “sharing a cigarette in harmony.” He quoted it, and it was good for a brief, grim laugh.
About 11:35 the torpedo and bomb storage rooms went up, and the fire surged forward. It soon forced Captain Aoki’s group to retreat to the anchor deck, where they found a crowd of survivors already gathered. They were standing around together, when at 12:03 the engines unexpectedly started up and the Akagi began turning to starboard. It was hard to imagine what made this happen, and Ensign Akiyama was sent to try and find out. But no one would ever know what did it. The remaining engineers had all suffocated and were dead at their posts.
Captain Aoki still hoped to save his ship—he sent Nagumo an optimistic message around noon—but certainly the fire was spreading. By 1:38 the situation was bad enough to take a very grave step. He had the Emperor’s portrait transferred to the destroyer Nowaki.
The same step had just been taken on the Kaga, where it had been a losing fight against the fires all morning. For a while the assistant damage control officer, Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Kunisada, felt he was making some progress on the hangar deck; but then the paint began to burn, spreading a thick, oily smoke that nearly suffocated his men. He had the portholes opened, but that was no answer. The draft only fanned the flames. The ports were slammed shut again, but soon Kunisada was back where he started—his men in more danger than ever.
There was nothing to do but leave. The exits were all blocked, so once again the portholes were opened, and about seven of the men, including Kunisada, squeezed through. They found themselves on a narrow bulge that ran along the side of the ship, perhaps 20 feet above the water. It had been built into the Kaga as a stabilizing device when she was originally laid down as a battleship; now it served as a ledge that just might spell safety. It was only a foot and a half wide and slanted down slightly, but they could stand up on it, bracing their backs against the side of the ship.
Still, they felt anything but safe. It was easy to slip off into the water, and stray shots were flying about as the antiaircraft guns on the destroyer screen occasionally opened up on some imaginary target. Soon there were about 20 men out there, all thoroughly frightened. On the way out Kunisada had grabbed a carton of cigarettes from the chief warrant officers’ room, and now he handed the packs around, hoping to cheer the group up. He suggested a smoke might calm their nerves, and he made a great show of his own composure by lighting up in the most casual manner. Hardly anybody followed suit.
“Torpedo, right quarter!” somebody suddenly yelled, and there sure enough, was a white torpedo wake streaking toward the Kaga about 1,000 yards away. It passed just forward of the ship. A brief interval, then another white wake; this one passed just astern. Another interval, then a third wake … and Kunisada saw right away that this one would hit.
BILL BROCKMAN ordered Lieutenant Hogan to take her down. It was 2:05 P.M., and the U.S. submarine Nautilus had just fired her third torpedo at the shattered Japanese carrier 2,700 yards away. For Brockman and the 92 men on the Nautilus it was the climax of six hours and 55 minutes of infinitely careful stalking.
The hunt really began much earlier, on May 28, when the Nautilus took her place in the fan-shaped screen of submarines west of Midway. She was there, of course, in plenty of time; so she just loafed the first few days, while her crew got the feel of things. It was the first war cruise for them all, and for Brockman it was his first command. He was more than up to it. A big burly man, he had a great zest for combat.
On the morning of the 4th the Nautilus submerged at her station just before dawn. She was tuned in on the PBY circuit, and at 5:44, Lieutenant Chase’s plain-English flash came through loud and clear: “Many planes heading Midway.” The position was on the edge of the Nautilus’s sector; she started there right away.
At 7:10 Brockman—glued to the periscope—saw smoke and antiaircraft bursts beyond the horizon. He adjusted his course, and the Nautilus went to battle stations. At 7:55 he saw the tops of masts dead ahead. Soon he was in the enemy screen—strafed by Zeros, depth-bombed by a cruiser. He lay low for five minutes, then popped back to periscope depth for another look around.
He was right in the middle of the Japanese fleet. Ships were on all sides, moving by at high speed, circling violently to avoid him. Flag hoists were up; a battleship was firing her whole starboard broadside battery at him.
At 8:25 he fired two torpedoes at the battleship. Or rather, he thought he did, but almost immediately he discovered his No. 1 tube hadn’t fired. The battleship dodged the other torpedo, a cruiser came racing over, and the Nautilus plopped down to 150 feet.
Now the depth bombing began in earnest. The charges this morning were the first anyone in the Nautilus had ever heard from inside a submarine, and the experience was anything but soothing. Mixed with the hammer blows and thunderclaps were occasional shrill whistles and an odd sound that reminded Radioman I. E. Wetmore of a boy dragging a stick along a picket fence.
To make matters worse, one of the Nautilus’s deck tube torpedoes was leaking air. A thin trail of bubbles rose to the surface, neatly marking the sub’s position. More thunderclaps, then the explosions gradually died away. Brockman began sneaking looks again. Around 9:00 he saw a carrier for the first time. She was dodging and firing her antiaircraft guns, but he had only a glimpse, for his old friend the cruiser saw the periscope and came charging back.
Down again. More depth bombing. Closer than ever before. The sonarman tracking the cruiser’s movements kept up a running patter, like Graham McNamee calling a horse race. A mess attendant promised Brockman that if the Nautilus ever got out of this, he’d write a sermon every day. Then this attack, too, slowly died away.
At 10:29 Brockman was up again, poking around with his periscope. The ships had now vanished, except for some distant masts, but clouds of gray smoke poured up from the horizon. He headed for the scene, and by 11:45 could clearly make out a burning carrier about eight miles away.
The approach was a long, slow business. Even cranked up to two-thirds speed (the most Brockman dared with his batteries running down), the Nautilus only moved at four knots—about as fast as a man might walk. And it was a hot eight-mile “walk” too. To cut noise, all ventilating machinery was off. The sweat dripped into Lieutenant Dick Lynch’s shoes, and his feet “sort of scrunched” as he moved about.
By 12:53 they were near enough to make out some details. Two “cruisers” were hovering near the carrier; her fires seemed to have died down; men could be seen working on the foredeck; it looked as if they might be planning to pass a towing hawser. On the Nautilus Brockman and his exec, Lieutenant Roy Benson, thumbed through their recognition books trying to identify her. There was always the dread of torpedoing a friendly carrier by mistake. No, this one was Japanese, all right; they believed it was the Soryu.
Brockman now faced a classic command decision: try for the undamaged escorts first, or go all-out for the damaged but “high-priority” carrier. He decided to make sure of the carrier.
At 1:59, he fired his first torpedo … then a second … then at 2:05 a third. Brockman—in fact all five officers in the conning tower—felt sure of hits. Fires were again breaking out all over the ship. Satisfied, he dived to 300 feet to sit out the new round of depth bombs that was sure to come.
“JUMP in the water!” Lieutenant Commander Kunisada shouted, as that third torpedo streaked toward the Kaga. But the men standing with him on the bulge wouldn’t move. So he jumped himself, and called the others to join him. They finally did, and all frantically swam to get clear of the ship. Somebody called out that the torpedo was a hit, and Kunisada steeled himself for the concussion—but nothing happened.
Miraculously, it was a dud. Slamming into the Kaga at an oblique angle, the warhead broke off and sank. The buoyant air flask bobbed to the surface not far from Kunisada. Some of the Kaga’s crew paddled over. One or two tried using it as a raft, but most were wild with rage. It was at least a symbol of their troubles, and they rained blows upon it with their fists. “Konchkusho!” they cursed, “Konchkusho! Konchkusho!”
Their best hope of revenge lay some miles to the north. The Hiryu was still very much in the fight. Her dive bombers had struck at noon; by 12:45 her ten torpedo planes were ready too. They would go in two five-plane sections—the first led by Lieutenant Tomonaga, the second by Lieutenant Hashimoto. Normally they flew together—Hashimoto as observer—but they were the only two Academy men left. They might get more mileage if each led a section.
The stocky, taciturn Tomonaga would lead the attack. Hashimoto, still flying observer, would go with Petty Officer Toshio Takahashi. All this settled, they headed for the flight deck.
It was then they discovered Lieutenant Tomonaga’s plane wasn’t ready. The mechanics hadn’t yet repaired the left-wing gas tank, damaged while they were bombing Midway. Tomonaga shrugged it off: “All right, don’t worry. Leave the left tank as it is and fill up the other.”
Hashimoto urged him to take a different plane. No, said Tomonaga, at this stage of the game they needed everything that would fly. To leave even one plane behind would seriously weaken the attack. As for swapping with someone else, he wouldn’t think of it. Everything would work out; the enemy was near; he could get by on one tank.
This didn’t fool anyone. One tank could never get him home again. But it was useless to argue; he had made up his mind. Tomonaga now went to the bridge with Hashimoto and Lieutenant Shigeru Mori, who would lead the fighters. Here they had a final briefing from Admiral Yamaguchi.
The Admiral had some astounding news. A special reconnaissance plane, sent out by the Soryu earlier in the morning, had just returned to report there were not one, or even two, but three U.S. carriers. In addition to the one just bombed, two others were lurking nearby. The Soryu’s pilot discovered them at 11:30, but his radio was out. Hurrying back, he found his own ship in flames and reached the Hiryu at 12:50. He had just made a message drop.
If any confirmation was needed, it came at 1:00. The captured Yorktown pilot was talking. Captain Ariga, commanding Destroyer Division 4, radioed the gist: the carriers involved were the Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet … they had six cruisers and about ten destroyers with them … the Yorktown was operating independently with two cruisers and three destroyers.
This changed everything. Until now Admiral Yamaguchi assumed that, with one American carrier knocked out, the Hiryu was at least fighting on even terms. But it was two to one against her. Worse, the Hiryu was down to her last planes. Go for the carriers that hadn’t been hit, he stressed, go for the ones that hadn’t been hit.
Again the pilots were assembled on the flight deck right under the bridge. Again Yamaguchi addressed them. They were the very last hope, he said, they must do their utmost for Japan. Then he noticed Tomonaga among the crowd and came down for a last good-bye. Like everyone else, he knew the Lieutenant was flying a plane that could never come back. Shaking Tomonaga’s hand, he thanked him for all he’d done and said, “I’ll gladly follow you.”
The pilots were in their cockpits—the engines warming up—when fresh excitement rippled through the ship. The first planes were coming back from the dive-bombing attack on the U.S. carrier. They couldn’t land until the torpedo strike took off, but Petty Officer Satsuo Tange swooped low over the flight deck, dropping a message in a weighted tube.
It was a new position for the U.S. force—more to the south than given at the briefing. Knowing that Hashimoto was usually Tomonaga’s navigator—and forgetting they were in separate planes this time—Lieutenant Commander Kawaguchi rushed the information to Hashimoto. Before the mix-up could be straightened out, the planes began thundering off the Hiryu’s flight deck.
They left at 1:31—Tomonaga leading the way, Hashimoto trailing with the latest U.S. position in his pocket. As they turned and headed east, a silent Admiral Yamaguchi—alone with his thoughts—stood motionless, watching them go.