NOBODY TOLD ADMIRAL NAGUMO that Operation K had failed. Radio silence seemed too important. So the First Carrier Striking Force plowed on toward Midway, the staff free from worry. They would get the word if “K” turned up anything useful … they heard no results, so there was nothing worth reporting.
Spirits were high on every ship. In the golden weather the first days out, the pilots practiced their bombing and torpedo runs, thrilling the men on deck. Watching them from the guard destroyer Nowaki, Commander Magotaro Koga couldn’t imagine anyone beating them. “Our hearts burn with the conviction of sure victory,” he scribbled that night in his diary.
Even the little things were turning out right. Through one of those happy accidents that can occur in any navy, three months of PX rations had been distributed at once—joyful bargaining filled the air. Only one man was having bad luck: first night out, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, leader of the Akagi’s air group, came down with appendicitis. Now he wouldn’t be able to lead the planes against Midway, duplicating his great feat at Pearl Harbor.
The weather turned sour on the afternoon of June 1—fortunately they had just finished refueling—and for the moment the flyers had little to do. Fighter pilot Raita Ogawa relaxed in the Akagi’s wardroom while a scratchy gramophone ground out the popular song, “Kirameku Seiza”; its lilting strains reminded them all of planes high in the sky. Torpedo pilot Takayoshi Morinaga lay in his bunk on the Kaga reading modern Japanese history. The Hiryu’s assistant air officer, Toshio Hashimoto, could be found deep in a game of contract bridge. On the Soryu bomber pilot Juzo Mori amused himself playing a sort of bamboo flute called a shaku-hachi. Several others aboard liked doing this too, and they’d gather together in a corner of the flight deck, their plaintive music floating incongruously over the deck as the big carrier charged on.
Hundreds of miles to the southeast the Invasion Force lumbered along at a slower pace. On the bridge of the Jintsu Commander Toyama struggled to keep the 13 transports in some sort of order. The formation was quite simple—just two parallel columns of ships—but the convoy had been slapped together so quickly there wasn’t time to learn the signals, and the transports had a way of straying. The troops couldn’t have cared less. They practiced weapons handling and landing-craft procedures when they could, but there wasn’t much room, and most of the time they were just jammed together, squatting on the open decks talking of girls and home.
Far to the rear—600 miles behind Nagumo—steamed Yamamoto’s great Main Force of 34 ships. On the seven big battleships the men whiled away their free hours sunbathing, doing calisthenics and simply puzzling. The Japanese Navy always kept Tokyo time, wherever it was; now many of the new recruits, fresh off the farm, felt they were entering a strange part of the world indeed, where the sun rose at three o’clock in the morning.
On the Yamato Admiral Yamamoto moodily dabbed at a bowl of rice porridge. His huge appetite had finally caught up with him, and he now had a mild case of diarrhea. A more serious problem was the intelligence coming in. Starting May 29, his radio-traffic people had noted a heavy increase in U.S. messages in the Hawaiian and Aleutian areas, much of it from aircraft and submarines. It suggested a U.S. task force might be at sea.
The disturbing signs multiplied. A U.S. submarine just ahead of the Transport Group was sending long coded messages to Pearl. Wake Island reported American patrol planes operating far out of Midway. A fresh radio traffic analysis showed 72 of 180 intercepts were “urgent”—a suspiciously high percentage. On the other hand, a new intelligence estimate from Tokyo on the 31st again placed U.S. carriers off the Solomons. It was all very baffling … enough to make a man wish that Operation K had worked out.
And now it appeared the submarine cordons were fouled up too. Three of the four subs assigned to the line west of Hawaii were involved in the “K” fiasco; they’d be late getting on station. Worse, all seven assigned to the cordon northwest of the Islands would also be late. They were the ones meant to take position across the Hawaii-Midway line on June 1, but fitting out took longer than planned, and now they wouldn’t get there till June 3.
Should any of this information be relayed to Nagumo and the carriers? Admiral Yamamoto was inclined that way, but Captain Kuroshima was strongly opposed. As in the case of reporting on “K,” he felt radio silence was too important. Besides, the Akagi’s own radio must be picking it all up anyhow. Nothing was done.
The question again arose a day or so later. Tokyo’s radio intelligence now definitely suspected a U.S. carrier force somewhere off Midway. Once again Yamamoto was inclined to relay the word on to Nagumo; once again the “God of Operations” preached the gospel of radio silence; once again nothing was done.
Six hundred miles ahead, Nagumo’s carriers steamed on. In the Akagi’s radio room, the operators bent low but heard nothing. The Yamato wasn’t talking and Tokyo was too far away. With its small superstructure, the Akagi had a comparatively weak wireless; it just couldn’t catch those distant signals. And now the weather was failing too. All day June 1 it grew steadily worse—a fine rain mixed with heavy mist. The ships plunged ahead, dim blurs in the gathering gloom.
THE view was sharp and clear at Midway, as Commander Tanabe of the submarine I-168 swung his periscope toward the dazzling coral sands of the atoll. He had been hanging around for three days now, making meticulous observations. These he carefully radioed to Tokyo, to be relayed on to the advancing fleet.
There was much to report. Patrol boats came and went. Some 90-100 planes landed in a day … including a number of bombers. The PBYs took off at dawn, returned in the evening—suggesting patrols at least 600 miles out. Several construction cranes were at work: the garrison must be strengthening its defenses.
Most of the time Tanabe stayed submerged two or three miles offshore, his eyes glued to the periscope. Around him the crew hopefully fingered the good luck charms that Ensign Mochizuki had just given them all from Kameyama Shrine. They hadn’t been seen yet, but it was risky business poking around this way; once they sneaked within 800 yards of the beach.
At night the I-168 surfaced and Tanabe continued his studies with binoculars. Midway was under blackout; still it was possible to see a little. At one point he counted nine work lights burning. Clearly something was up.
THE past month had been a hectic one for the defenders of Midway. They still had a long way to go, but at least they could look with some satisfaction on what they had already done.
Certainly it all began with Nimitz’s visit. Until then the base felt itself pretty well forgotten, except for an occasional shelling by some Japanese submarine. But that May 2 was a revelation. Nimitz was everywhere—and into everything. On Sand Island he rummaged through the underground command posts … he poked around the big seaplane hangar where the PBYs were serviced … he crawled into every gunpit of the Marines’ 6th Defense Battalion. Then over to Eastern Island, twenty minutes across the lagoon. Here he examined the Marine airstrip and shook hands with all the pilots. When he finally flew off, the Marines conferred upon him their highest accolade: he was, they all agreed, a “Goddamned gentleman.”
About two weeks later equipment began pouring in. Commander Simard and Lieutenant Colonel Shannon had filed a list of their needs on May 7, but the first thing to come wasn’t on any list at all. It was a pair of shoulder eagles for Simard—giving him a spot promotion to captain. At the same time Shannon was promoted to full colonel.
Both soon learned they’d be earning those eagles the hard way. About May 20 Admiral Nimitz’s letter arrived, addressed to Simard and Shannon jointly, spelling out the Japanese plan. It was all there, every step, as far as Nimitz then knew it. Most sobering of all, he put the date at May 28—only one week away.
No one felt the pressure more than Shannon. Though under Simard, he was the Marine commander and directly responsible for Midway’s defense. Next evening he called his key men together at the “Castle,” an unpretentious house left over from Midway’s civilian past. Here he told the group that the Japanese were coming, and outlined the steps to be taken to meet them. Adjutant W. P. Spencer then covered various matters in more detail, including instructions on what to do if taken prisoner.
At this point Marine Gunner Dorn E. Arnold, who had been in the Corps forever, closed his notebook. Shannon asked if he wasn’t interested. Arnold replied that he didn’t need this information since he didn’t intend to be taken prisoner. He was damned if he’d end up “pulling some Japanese Pfc around in a rickshaw.”
As finally outlined, Shannon’s plans reflected his past. He was an old-time Marine, up from the ranks, of Belleau Wood vintage. Barbed wire, barrages, dugouts had all left an indelible impression, and sometimes it seemed he wanted to turn Midway into another Hindenburg Line. But he also had the hard-nosed tenacity that went with this kind of warfare, and that more than anything else was what Midway needed right now.
They had a good test of their spirits the very next morning. May 22 began calmly enough—Captain Simard was buried in work at his command post … the 81 mm. mortars were practicing on the south shore … Pharmacist’s Mate Edwin Miller was swiping a snack from the hospital kitchen. Then suddenly it happened. A terrific explosion shook Sand Island; a cloud of dust and smoke billowed into the sky.
The Japs were here—everyone was sure of it. The men grabbed their helmets and raced for their battle stations. But it wasn’t the Japs; it was far more discouraging. Some sailor, testing connections, had crossed the wrong wires and tripped a demolition charge under Midway’s gasoline supply. Half the tanks, about 400,000 gallons, were gone. It damaged the distribution system too; from now on they’d have to fuel the planes by hand from 55-gallon drums.
It was enough to dishearten any one, but Captain Simard didn’t panic. No heads rolled; no scapegoats; no angry recriminations. He calmly cabled the bad news to CINCPAC and asked for any help they could give. As for Colonel Shannon, airplanes were another world anyhow. “Wreck ‘em on the beach,” he growled, and it seemed more comforting than ever to have this tough old leatherneck as a rallying point.
They all caught his spirit. No one ever dug harder at the Marne than the 6th Defense Battalion did on Sand Island—building up emplacements, scooping out shelters, sandbagging new positions for the guns Nimitz promised. And on Eastern Island across the lagoon, the Marine airmen were digging too—bunkers for the planes, holes to store bombs, fuses, gas and water, to say nothing of slit trenches for themselves. They were soon down to three or four hours’ sleep a night.
All the while barbed wire was sprouting along the coral beaches. Major Robert Hommel strung so much his friends called him “Barbed Wire Bob.” Yet there could never be enough for Colonel Shannon. It stopped the Boches; it would stop the Japs. “Barbed wire, barbed wire!” exploded a weary Marine. “Cripes, the Old Man thinks we can stop planes with barbed wire.”
But they worked with little complaint, for Shannon’s sheer guts had captured them all. Captain Robert McGlashan, his young operations officer, trudged 11 hours a day in the blinding sun, checking positions, checking communications, checking camouflage, checking fields of fire. Once he even took to a submarine to see how it all looked from a periscope.
Yet they still had so little, considering the size of the juggernaut hurtling toward them. They needed ingenuity too, and Captain McGlashan knew just where to turn. He went to Marine Gunner Arnold. These old-time gunners were legends in the Corps. They had been everywhere, could do anything. “Deacon” Arnold himself dated back to the Siberian expedition. Now McGlashan asked him to cook up some antiboat mines and booby traps. All it would take was an old-timer’s knowledge of explosives… .
Actually Arnold knew almost nothing about explosives. But that didn’t faze him—he once read a book on the subject. Recruiting a routine headquarters detail, he tackled the job with the kind of relish that could only come from someone not used to playing with dynamite.
He and his men located some blasting gelatin—brown stuff that looked and felt a little like dough. This they kneaded and rammed into lengths of sewer pipe. Sealing the ends with hot tar, they ended up with a sort of mammoth firecracker. Altogether they made 380 of them. These they strung together in bunches of six and planted offshore to discourage any landing attempt. Electrically detonated, they made a highly satisfactory explosion. More primitive was the impressive stockpile of Molotov cocktails they gradually built up from Midway’s rather generous supply of empty whisky bottles.
And so the work went on, never stopping, for in a sense they were already under siege. The guns were always manned—meals served beside them—and the whole garrison now lived underground. Both the Navy and Marine command posts were dugouts near the center of Sand Island—Captain Simard giving orders by a white telephone that looked incongruously fashionable; Colonel Shannon holding forth in a deep dugout covered with beams and 12 feet of sand.
Every night both commanders met with their staffs to review the day and plan for tomorrow. The Marine sessions, at least, were often quite stormy, for the staff was perky and the Colonel not easily moved from his favorite theories. At one point he wanted a smoke screen, and it was quite a fracas before McGlashan and Arnold convinced him it would draw the Japs rather than hide the island. Another time he clashed with Captain Simard over shifting some barbed wire long enough to let the Navy fill a few sandbags. Touching that barbed wire was really inviting trouble, and it finally took a mild display of rank by the Captain before he got his sand.
In the end, of course, they always patched up their quarrels. The staff would go off to their bunks … the Colonel would gulp a last cup of coffee before turning in … and all would be up again at 5:00 A.M., ready to take on another hard day.
May 25, they got some good news. First came Nimitz’s message, giving a new date for the attack. Now it would be June 3-5—a whole extra week to prepare. Then the light cruiser St. Louis tied up at Sand Island, bringing the first reinforcements from Hawaii.
Captain Ronald K. Miller’s fine battery of eight 37 mm. guns was a welcome addition to the antiaircraft defense. Four went to Eastern, and Miller planted the other four in the woods on Sand Island. He was still at it when some trucks roared up, throwing sand in all directions. A gang of men piled out, howling slogans and singing Chinese Communist songs.
Carlson’s Raiders had arrived. This outfit—officially known as the 2nd Raider Battalion—was something of an experiment. Organized by Major Evans F. Carlson, its training reflected many ideas he had picked up during his days as a civilian observer with the Communist forces in North China. It had White House blessing, but its gung-ho philosophy smacked of indiscipline to many old Marines. To say the least, Carlson’s Raiders were controversial.
But there was no doubt about their fighting qualities; and when Midway’s hour came, Nimitz hurried out two companies. Arriving on the St. Louis along with Captain Miller’s guns, “D” Company went off to Eastern; “C” joined Miller in the Sand Island woods. Both were a wild-looking lot. Bandoleers of cartridges hung from bronzed shoulders. Their pockets bulged with grenades. Their belts bristled with knives, which they flung at the trees with casual skill. Even the medics were armed—no stenciled red crosses for this bunch.
Still more help came on the 26th. That evening the big ex-railroad ferry Kittyhawk arrived with the guns, tanks and planes that formed Nimitz’s biggest contribution. Midway could use these new 3-inchers and 20 mm. twin mounts borrowed from the 3rd Defense Battalion; it could use the five tanks too; but most welcome of all were the new planes—18 SBD dive bombers and 7 F4F fighters.
“New” was, of course, a relative term. Actually they were carrier castoffs. But they were infinitely better than the ancient relics already on hand. Until now Midway’s “air force” had consisted of 16 antique Vindicator dive bombers and 21 equally antique Buffalo fighters. The Vindicators (“Wind Indicators,” the Marines called them) had a tendency to ground-loop. When the pilots tried diving them earlier in the year, the wing fabric began peeling off—a hurry call went to the hospital for all available adhesive tape. The Buffalo fighters were just as inadequate. The new planes—whatever their credentials—were a vast improvement on these.
“New” in a different sense were the fliers who arrived too. Seventeen of the 21 pilots were just out of flight school. Some hadn’t even had four hours’ flight time since the end of their training. Nor did they know why they were here. Second Lieutenant Jack Cosley thought they were merely coming to an out-of-the-way island for further practice.
“You’re just in time for the party!” called the old hands cheerfully as the newcomers unloaded their gear on Eastern Island. Second Lieutenant Allan Ringblom, one of the new dive bomber pilots, assumed this was the standard kidding he could expect from a buddy perhaps a few months ahead of him at flight school. At his first squadron briefing on May 28, he learned differently… .
The skipper, Major Lofton Henderson, pulled no punches. The Japs were not only coming; they were overdue. The new SBDs were assigned the experienced pilots; the Vindicators were given the green recruits. None of them had ever flown one before, and there was little time to practice. They ground-looped two the first day. The equipment was wretched too—no charts and only four plotting boards for a dozen flyable planes.
So most of the time they just waited—restless hours of cards, cribbage, and watching Midway’s famous “gooney birds.” A kind of large albatross, the gooneys were a graceful delight in the air, but a clumsy absurdity on the ground. They were utterly tame, fascinated all the fliers, and inadvertently caused the squadron’s first casualty. In a whimsical moment Lieutenant Eke slipped one into Lieutenant Bear’s bunk, and it indignantly nipped Bear’s thumb getting out.
May 29 brought still more help—four Army B-26s rigged to carry torpedoes. Led by Captain James Collins, these were the first Army planes to arrive and caused quite a sensation. Everyone crowded around, but it turned out the pilots knew little more about their mission than the new Marines.
First Lieutenant James Muri had been at Hickam expecting to join the rest of his squadron in Australia. Suddenly all that was canceled and he was told to take a plane over to Pearl Harbor instead. Three other B-26s joined his, and when they arrived there, they found a collection of Navy officers waiting for them with several very large torpedoes—the first Muri had ever seen in his life.
The torpedoes, they learned, would be slung on the planes, and the four crews briefly practiced take-offs and landings. They never tried any drops, and none of their compasses were corrected. When they started out a couple of days later, the four B-26s began by fanning out in four different directions. Fortunately a friendly patrol plane happened along and set them on the right course. No greener torpedo plane pilots ever flew a mission, but at least they got to Midway.
This same day 12 Navy PBYs also arrived—latest in a steady stream that had been building up since May 14. Like the others coming in, these men had little idea what was up, but they brought a skipper who knew a great deal indeed. Commander Logan Ramsey was one of the Navy’s most colorful professionals. Physically a hulking, slow-moving man, mentally he was a genius. A great bridge player, he could do navigational problems while holding a hand of cards. He was completely unorthodox and often the despair of the Old Breed, but the patrol plane boss, Admiral Bellinger, thought the world of him and made him his chief of staff. With the Midway crisis coming to a head, Bellinger could think of no one he’d rather have out there than Logan Ramsey.
As is often the case with such men, Ramsey had a knack of attracting lively junior officers, and there was no lack of volunteers when he recruited a staff to help him. Ensign Edmond Jacoby had little idea why he was going, but with Ramsey it wouldn’t be dull. As they boarded the PBY at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Bellinger came down to see them off. Knowing Jacoby wanted to be a pilot, the Admiral called out, “If you get back, I’ll see you get to flight school.”
“If I get back,” thought Jacoby. “What could he mean by that?”
He found out that night almost as soon as they landed at Midway. Captain Simard called a meeting at the BOQ, explained briefly why they were there. Then Logan Ramsey took over, filling them in on the latest intelligence: the blow at the Aleutians on the 3rd … the transports coming in from the southwest … the carriers striking from the northwest, probably on the 4th. And he told them their job. No more one-day patrolling, then two days off. Starting tomorrow, they would go out every day, 700 miles. This was the moment all their training had been leading to.
Next morning, the 30th, as the first pink trace of dawn streaked the eastern sky, 22 PBYs lumbered into the air. Some were seaplanes, some the new amphibious kind, but all looked ungainly and slow. Briefly they circled the base as they got their bearings, then headed out on the spokes of a massive arc, running from just west of south to just east of north. Midway’s great search for the enemy had begun.
It was shortly after chow that noon when one of the PBYs limped back to Eastern Island, one engine out, and made an emergency landing. Then another cripple fluttered in. It seemed the Japs were also on patrol. They were down toward the southwest, flying out of Wake, snarling and spoiling for a fight. Both PBYs were riddled with bullets; from the first to land, the Marines gently lifted a gunner shot through the back.
Eight more Army planes arrived that same afternoon from Hawaii, and then another nine on May 31—all B-17 long-range bombers. There was some shuttling back and forth, but from now on about 15 were generally on hand. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Walter C. Sweeney, who invariably flew in his stocking feet, they gave a powerful boost to Midway’s striking power.
As with the B-26s, the big bombers were pulled into bunkers and the crews roughed it beside them in tents … but that didn’t stop First Lieutenant Everett Wessman from sleeping in his usual silk pajamas. The Air Force always had a flair about it
Another welcome arrival on the 31st was the freighter Nira Luckenbach with some last-minute equipment and 3,000 drums of high-test gas to help replace the fuel lost when Midway’s tanks blew up. It was Sunday, but nobody thought about that until a dispute erupted over extra pay for the ship’s merchant crew. Word spread that she couldn’t unload until Monday. Summoned to the scene, Captain Simard explained that the Japs were on the way, that the ship couldn’t leave until she was unloaded, and that there’d be quite an explosion with all that gas aboard. The crew bent to it, and the Nira Luckenbach was gone by 7:40 next morning.
There was little more Nimitz could do; it was now up to Midway to use what it had. What steps would be most effective? In the underground Navy command post on Sand Island, Captain Simard probed for new answers every night with his staff. At some point Brigadier General Willis Hale of the B-17s would come in. He’d bring over a bottle of Old Crow bourbon; they’d set it out on the table, and the work would go on. Should the B-17s be held back as a long-range striking force, or should they be used more right now to beef up the search? How to get everything off the ground fast, when the Japs finally did attack?
Far into the night they talked and planned, while the junior officers went about their regular duties—making search assignments for the morning, writing up reports, handling communications with CINCPAC over the cable. To a communications officer this direct cable link with Pearl was a thing of beauty and a priceless asset. It meant that Midway could be in safe, instant contact with Nimitz without using radio. No risk of intercepts, no codes to break, no heavy flow of messages to start some eavesdropper thinking. To the radio-traffic analyst in Tokyo, nothing was happening on Midway at all.
It was part of the old transpacific cable system, and was what gave Midway its chief importance before the war. Now all that was gone, although oddly enough the next link westward to Japanese-held Guam was still intact. Occasionally someone in the dugout would wander over to the key and bat out an obscenity in that direction. Usually there’d be a pause, then some angry-sounding gibberish would come snapping back.
June 1, and Ensign George Fraser, the versatile young communications officer under Logan Ramsey, got a new kind of problem. Word came that a wonderful Navy torpedo plane was being added to Midway’s defenses—the TBF. Six of them would be flying in that day, and since nobody would expect a plane that looked like these, he was to alert the antiaircraft batteries not to shoot them down.
“What’s a TBF?” was the first question he got. There were no silhouettes, no recognition books, no trained observers. The best Fraser could do was take his cue from the familiar F4F fighter. The new plane looked, he explained, “like a pregnant F4F.” The word was passed, and when the six TBFs duly appeared, not a finger touched a trigger.
It was just as well, for these men had come a long way to be in this show. They belonged to the Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8, and had been in Norfolk breaking in these new planes for the carrier. They were still at it May 8, when they got orders to come to Pearl. There were 19 planes in the detachment altogether, and led by Torpedo 8’s executive officer, they flew to the West Coast, then were ferried to Hawaii. They arrived on May 29—just a day too late to join the Hornet.
Next, a call came for volunteers to fly six of the planes to Midway. No problem here, although the men had no idea why they were going. They just set out on the 1st, happy to be led by Lieutenant Langdon K. Fieberling—a stylish, handsome, prematurely gray pilot, who was the idol of all the young fliers. None had been in combat; Ensign A. K. Earnest had never even flown out of sight of land before.
On arrival Fieberling reported to Lt. Colonel Ira E. Kimes, commanding the Marine air group. Then back to his unit with all the grim facts, plus an extra touch: don’t expect any help from the U.S. carriers; they were off trying to save Hawaii.
But nothing could cool the ardor of these young men. They whiled away the time making imaginary wing guns for their TBFs. Noting that the planes with real wing guns usually had masking tape over the holes to keep the dust out, they put tape on their wings too. Then they inked “holes” in the tape where the “guns” had fired through.
Some 560 miles to the southwest, there was again some real shooting. At 9:40 A.M. a big patrol bomber out of Wake pounced on Ensign J. J. Lyons’s PBY, and fifty minutes later the same Jap riddled Ensign R. V. Umphrey’s plane in the next sector. Both Americans scrambled to safety—by now everyone knew the PBY was no match for any Japanese plane whatsoever.
They talked it over in the staff meeting that night at the Navy command post. But the enemy that bothered them most at the moment was not the Japanese, it was the weather. A low front was closing in to the northwest, hiding the ocean below. Under that blanket of gray almost anything could be lurking… .
ON THE bridge of the Akagi, Admiral Nagumo stood with his staff, silently staring into the mist. It was getting worse—changing to heavy fog—and by daybreak June 2 visibility was practically zero. Fine protection from enemy patrol planes, but hell on navigation.
Off to the left of the Admiral, Captain Taijiro Aoki conferred with Commander Gishiro Miura, his navigating officer. Miura, as always, was wearing his carpet slippers. From time to time they leaned through the bridge windows, as though the extra six inches just might help a little.
They were all concerned, for this was the day they had to turn southeast for the final dash on Midway. At the moment they were steaming in single column, able to keep in formation only because each ship trailed a marker buoy for the next in line to follow. But this was too risky when making a major change in course—too easy to lose some ships altogether.
They faced a difficult choice. They could slow down, hoping for better weather before signaling the change, or they could break radio silence and do it that way. If they slowed down, they would upset the whole invasion timetable. If they broke radio silence, they might give away their position and spoil the great ambush planned for the U.S. fleet. In the end Captain Oishi, Nagumo’s senior staff officer, urged they use low-power radio and hope for the best. They just couldn’t afford to alter the schedule—too many other units depended on that—but the ambush was a more flexible matter. The U.S. fleet was probably still in Pearl Harbor—anyhow it was many days away—so a brief radio signal, even if picked up, wouldn’t do much harm.
Nagumo agreed, and at 1:30 P.M. the shortest of all possible radio signals went out: “Course 125.” On 26 ships the helms swung over, the engines paused briefly, then picked up again, as the First Carrier Striking Force turned southeast, now heading straight as a javelin for Midway.
Down below there was hardly an interruption. In the Hiryu’s No. 1 boiler room the firemen made the adjustments chalked on a slate in the glass-enclosed control booth. The plane crews on the Soryu continued playing “Hanafuda” at 100 points a cigarette. On the Kaga Commander Takahisa Amagai ran through a blackboard session on antiaircraft defense. In the wardroom of the Akagi someone wound the gramophone, and the scratchy needle once again ground out the soaring strains of “Kirameku Seiza.”
THE favorites were Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Mary Martin’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” as the U.S. carrier Enterprise steamed northeast of Midway this same 2nd of June. Task Force 16 had been at sea six days now, and life off duty was, on the surface at least, fairly routine: all the usual phonograph records, cribbage games, bull sessions and occasional pranks. On the Hornet Chaplain Eddie Harp playfully swiped a much-prized case of grapefruit from Dr. Sam Osterloh; on the New Orleans Seaman A. M. Bagley resumed his hobby of beating Seaman F. Z. Muzejka at rummy.
On duty, the pattern seemed pretty normal too. The Enterprise “Plan of the Day” mechanically ticked off the chores for the 2nd: 0315 (ship’s time), call the Air Department … 0325, early breakfast … 0350, flight quarters … 0500, launch first patrols … and so on, through a steady sequence of patrols out and in, watches on and off, until finally that inevitable salute to a dying day, “2049, blow tubes.”
It was all very normal—yet not normal at all, for beneath the surface routine Task Force 16 seethed with a tumbling variety of emotions. “Lord! This is the real thing,” Lieutenant Burdick Brittin breathlessly noted in his diary when the destroyer Aylwin’s sealed orders were opened May 29. And on the 30th his mind overflowed with awesome thoughts:
We have history in the palm of our hands during the next week or so. If we are able to keep our presence unknown to the enemy and surprise them with a vicious attack on their carriers, the U.S. Navy should once more be supreme in the Pacific. But if the Japs see us first and attack us with their overwhelming number of planes, knock us out of the picture, and then walk in to take Midway, Pearl will be almost neutralized and in dire danger—I can say no more—there is too much tension within me—the fate of our nation is in our hands.
To Brittin even the men on the tankers seemed to sense that destiny rode with these ships. They all refueled on the 31st, and as the tankers slipped astern and out of the picture, their men lined the rails, showing thumbs up for Task Force 16.
There were other emotions too as the force plowed on. For some of the pilots there was that hollow, empty feeling as they thought of absolute radio silence and all that it meant—even if an engine conked out on patrol, they could no longer ask the ship for help. Others felt a strange tingle that harked back to college and the days of the big game. On the Enterprise dive bomber pilot Bill Roberts was normally scared before battle—but not this time. It was too exciting: the feeling of being in on the secret, of setting a trap, of watching and waiting. Others were just plain mad. Captain Marc Mitscher had a way of getting the Hornet’s men “up,” and this time he pulled all the stops— “They are even bringing the guns they captured from us at Wake.”
For Lieutenant Richard H. Best, commanding the Enterprise’s Bombing Squadron 6, there was a personal worry all his own. He had a wife and child in Honolulu, and he thought of them more than once as he sat in Admiral Spruance’s cabin, listening to a special briefing on the Japanese plan. The Navy, he felt, was certainly banking a lot on all this neat, precise information—what if it was wrong? He finally asked Spruance what would happen if the Japanese bypassed Midway and came straight for Hawaii.
The Admiral looked at him for a full half-minute in silence, then finally said, “We just hope that they will not.”
Best said nothing more—admirals were close to God in those days—but privately he felt this was a pious hope and a rather poor basis for committing all the available strength of the United States Navy.
Actually, of course, Spruance had very good reasons for the move he was making—he just didn’t care to tell them. Far from banking on “pious hopes,” he was a man with a passion for facts, who insisted on every scrap of evidence before making a decision. And far from failing to think things through, he never moved without weighing every possible consequence.
Nor did his long silence before answering Best mean uncertainty; he was just considering all the factors before speaking—another Spruance characteristic. On the one hand, here was a young officer who had asked a legitimate question; on the other, he was a pilot who might fall into enemy hands. It was clear which way the scales finally went.
Dick Best wasn’t the only one who had trouble grasping this new Admiral. The whole staff found it hard to adjust. Halsey had been so outgoing; Spruance preferred channels. Halsey paid little attention to detail; Spruance spent hours poring over charts and plotting the course. Halsey left so much to their discretion; Spruance left so little. Halsey was so free-wheeling; Spruance so precise and methodical.
Morning coffee somehow symbolized the change. In the old days everyone just slopped it down together. But Spruance—a genuine connoisseur—brought his own green coffee beans aboard. Every, morning he carefully ground it himself, made precisely two cups, and then courteously asked if some member of the staff cared to join him. In the end they drew lots, with the loser getting the honor, not because they disliked Spruance but because they couldn’t stand his coffee.
Yet there was much more method to this little ritual than appeared on the surface. Spruance was trying to educate himself. A man with no carrier experience, he had only a week to learn the trade before facing the greatest master of them all, Isoroku Yamamoto. In his quest for knowledge he picked the brains of his staff at coffee or anyplace else.
A great walker, he also collared them one by one and paced the flight deck with them. Searching questions probed what they did, how they did it, how each job fitted into the whole. He walked their legs off, but with his great ability to absorb detail, he was learning all the time.
The walks went on, fair weather or foul … as the staff soon discovered. June 1 was a wretched day, damp and foggy. Flying was out, gunnery practice called off; just the wiry Admiral and his latest victim tirelessly trudging the wet, empty flight deck. Task Force 16 was now 345 miles NNE of Midway—marking time, waiting for Admiral Fletcher and the Yorktown.
June 2 was another dreary day; more clouds and rain. But late in the morning two Yorktown planes suddenly appeared from the south. Swooping low over the Enterprise, they dropped a message. It was from Fletcher: rendezvous time would be 3:30 P.M. At 12:08 searchlights blinked, Task Force 16 swung around and slowly began doubling back east. Then shortly before 4:00, at exactly Latitude 32° 04’ N, Longitude 172° 45’ W, masts were sighted ahead on the horizon. The moment had come—Spruance and Fletcher were joined at Point Luck.
Task Force 17’s trip out had been a smooth one—except for a single harrowing moment. As the Yorktown was taking on her planes from Hawaii the first afternoon out, an F4F jumped the landing barrier and plowed into the next plane ahead, killing Fighting 3’s executive officer, Lieutenant Donald Lovelace.
It was a shaken group of fighter pilots who assembled in the ready room shortly afterward. They were a pickup squadron; they had never worked together; some of them had never operated from a carrier. Lovelace, an old hand, was expected to do so much to pull them together. Now, in an instant, he was gone. It was a savage blow, and none felt it worse than the squadron leader, Commander Thach. He was not only depending on Lovelace; they were also close friends and contemporaries at Annapolis.
This was no time for emotion, Thach quietly told his men, they had to do a job. Then he turned quickly to the battle coming up, and what he expected of them. If it was a matter of saving the ship, he stressed, he expected them even to ram an enemy plane. There were no histrionics—he was utterly calm. But his strength gave them strength, and they felt a new sense of being welded together. By the time he was finished, one of them later recalled, there wasn’t a pilot in the room who wouldn’t do anything “Jimmy” Thach asked. Meanwhile, each of the other squadrons was also briefed, and Captain Buckmaster spoke to the whole crew over the loudspeaker. He explained he knew three days at Pearl weren’t enough to complete repairs, but the Japanese were coming to Midway and the Yorktown was going to be there to surprise them. True to Nimitz’s instructions, he then promised they’d all go to the West Coast after this “little scrap.”
Cheers rocked the ship, although at least two men weren’t that easily convinced. Seamen John Herchey and Bill Norton noticed there was a Royal Navy officer aboard as an observer. Superstitious in the grand manner of all true sailors, they decided that boded no good. “We will have to swim if we want to get back from this one,” they told their friend Seaman Louis Rulli.
Chasing north after Task Force 16, the Yorktown and her escorts moved into the same dirty weather on the 31st, refueled from the same tankers all through the 1st, and now at last were ready for the same great gamble—all linked together at Point Luck.
As senior officer, Admiral Fletcher took command of both forces, and they began their quiet wait—usually closing Midway during the night, then heading off during the day. They steamed separately but within sight of each other, about ten miles apart.
As fleets go, they weren’t very much, but they were nearly everything the United States had left in the Pacific—3 carriers, 8 cruisers, 14 destroyers … 25 fighting ships altogether. Yet a fleet at sea, even a rather modest one, is much more than ships and guns. Here it was Captain Buckmaster of the Yorktown, never allowing a light in his cabin after dark, so he could see at his best if called unexpectedly to the bridge. It was Lieutenant (j.g.) Bill Roberts on the Enterprise trying to wade through Freud, his mind not too much on the text. It was Seaman Stan Kurka on the Hornet, trying to do his work in a shirt three times too big for him. It was Marine Captain Malcolm Donohoo on the cruiser Portland, down at this moment (of all times) with the mumps. It was Lieutenant Brittin of the Aylwin scribbling in his diary, “Waiting, just waiting.”
FIVE hundred miles behind them, toward waters Fletcher had just crossed yesterday, Lieutenant Commander Tamori Yoshimatsu skillfully maneuvered the Japanese submarine I-166. He was late—they all were late—but it should not matter. By tomorrow, the 3rd, the seven I-boats of Squadron 5 would all be on station, directly across the line from Hawaii to Midway. That should be time enough to see and report the U.S. fleet as it sped from Pearl Harbor toward its destruction.
“It is not believed that the enemy has any powerful unit, with carriers as its nucleus, in the vicinity,” ran paragraph (e) of Admiral Nagumo’s intelligence estimate, as the First Carrier Striking Force drove on toward Midway. The Admiral was confident, and he felt with good reason. There was no word from the sub cordon, no word from Operation K, no word from anybody—it could only mean that everything was still going smoothly.
On the bridge of the Akagi Admiral Kusaka studied his chief with satisfaction. It was so much better than that Pearl Harbor trip. Then Nagumo had been nervous and gloomy. Now he was his old self again—fierce, tough, the very embodiment of the samurai spirit.
The darkened ships rushed on, and even the weather was now breaking right. Late on the night of the 2nd the fog began to lift, and through the broken clouds an occasional star was shining.
“Is THERE anything we haven’t done?” Colonel Shannon asked his staff as they relaxed for a moment under the stars this same June night on Midway.
There were no suggestions. By now the defenders had done everything they could imagine to beat off a Japanese landing. And if—as many of them secretly believed—the enemy finally came anyhow, they were also ready for that. Their five tanks were hidden in the Sand Island woods to make it a hot reception. Most of their codes were shipped back to Pearl Harbor; other files were burned. Sledge hammers were stored around the base to smash essential machinery. Drivers were coached to wreck their trucks, leaping out just before impact. Caches of food were buried here and there for last-ditch pockets of resistance.
They were prepared for the very end too. Taking all the left-over steel scrap, Captain McGlashan strung it along the high ground on the north side of Sand Island. When all else was gone, here the defenders would rally for Midway’s, last stand. It was promptly dubbed “The McGlashan Line.”
On the “heights” in the center of this ridge (perhaps 30 feet, but on Midway that was a mountain) even the Navy cooks and typists would dig in. Specifically they were assigned the northeast flank, where there seemed less danger of their shooting the Marines by mistake. Of course, a landing on the north shore might still push the Marines that way, and to strengthen the leathernecks’ resolve, they were warned of armed sailors lying behind them.
This last precaution was almost certainly needless. No group ever looked more ready for a fight than Carlson’s Raiders did now. To the rest of the defenders they were rarely visible—just a pack of men glimpsed now and then in the woods. The naval reservists regarded them with cautious awe. They knew that it was worth a man’s life to go near there after dark without knowing the password.
The Raiders were tough, and better still they worked hard. At first they had indicated that unloading ships was somewhat beneath them, but a blast from Colonel Shannon cured that. Soon they set records. More to their personal tastes, they also turned to manufacturing antitank mines. With advice from several who had been involved in the Spanish Civil War, their demolitions officer Lieutenant Harold Throneson devised a beauty—all it needed was a little dynamite, a flashlight battery and 40 pounds of pressure. Company “C” tore into the job of mass-producing them—1,500 altogether.
One of Throneson’s group offered his services to a kindred soul—Marine Gunner “Deacon” Arnold, still engaged in making his own booby traps. Arnold happily added the Raider to his team, and the boy responded by devising a new antipersonnel mine. This was a sort of cigar box loaded with nails, spikes, glass and rocks with a small charge of TNT. Scattered by the dozen along the beaches, they could be exploded either electrically or by firing a rifle at a bull’s-eye neatly painted on the side of the box.
Yet Midway’s best hope still lay in catching the Japanese first. “Hit before we are hit,” the CINCPAC planners advised, and so the 22 PBYs continued their daily runs. They were flying 15° pie-shaped sectors now—700 miles out, 700 miles back, 15 hours in the air altogether. Then a quick bite, a squadron briefing, a few hours in the sack, and the whole business all over again.
Lieutenant Commander Bob Brixner’s Patrol Squadron 44 was putting in an 80-hour week; Commander Massie Hughes’s Squadron 23 was matching him. Lieutenant Colonel Sweeney’s B17s flew 30 hours in two days, looking for signs of that enemy rendezvous CINCPAC seemed to smell. And when the day’s flying was done, they had to help service their own planes too—refueling them by hand from 55-gallon drums. They were all tired—dead tired—but somehow they carried on.
This June 2 seemed especially frustrating. If the intelligence was sound, the Japanese should be coming into range, yet there was no sign of them at all. To the northwest a curtain of fog still hid the ocean—no chance of finding anything beyond 400 miles. To the west it was clear, but despite CINCPAC’s tip about the rendezvous, there was absolutely nothing to see. A specially equipped B-17 went out 800 miles; still not a ship in sight.
Wednesday, June 3, began as usual for the PBY crews—as, in fact, it did for all of Midway’s fliers. Reveille at 3:00 A.M… . a swallow of toast and coffee that didn’t go down so well … then to the planes by jeep and truck in the damp predawn darkness. By 3:50 motors were roaring, exhausts flaring blue, in the first pale light of another new day. At 4:15 the PBYs took off, fanning out on their assigned patrols. Fifteen minutes later the B-17s followed, not as part of the search, but just to get clear—no one wanted them caught on the ground in case of a surprise raid at dawn. The rest of Midway’s planes just waited—motors idling, pilots and gunners standing by—until they got the daily all-clear. Only when the PBYs had searched 400 miles out and still found nothing did Midway seem safe till another dawn.
This morning, as usual, there was nothing 400 miles out. But at 470 miles Lieutenant (j.g.) J. P. O. Lyle, searching to the southwest, spotted two small gray patrol boats steaming toward Midway. He investigated and got a burst of antiaircraft fire for his pains. At 9:04 A.M. he flashed the first report of contact with enemy ships.
Farther to the west, Ensign Jack Reid piloted another PBY, across an empty ocean. He had started earlier than the rest, was now 700 miles from Midway, nearing the end of his outward leg. So far, nothing worth reporting. With the PBY on automatic pilot, Reid again studied the sea with his binoculars. Still nothing—occasional cloud puffs and a light haze hung over the Pacific, but not enough to bother him. It was shortly before 9:25 A.M., and Ensign Reid was a man with no problems at all.
Suddenly he looked, then looked again. Thirty miles dead ahead he could make out dark objects along the horizon. Ships, lots of them, all heading toward him. Handing the glasses to his co-pilot Ensign Hardeman, he calmly asked, “Do you see what I see?”
Hardeman took one look: “You are damned right I do.”
COMMANDER Yasumi Toyama looked up from his charts on the bridge of the light cruiser Jintsu. For once all the transports were keeping in column, but the destroyer on the port side forward was raising a fuss. She hoisted a signal, then fired a smoke shell. Toyama rushed out on the bridge wing, and there was no need to ask what had happened. Everyone was looking and pointing. There, low and well out of range on the port horizon, hovered a PBY.