by Herman Wouk
Ulvert M. Moore Bluefield, West Virginia William F. Sawhill Mansfield, Ohio
William W. Creamer Riverside, California Francis S. Polston Nashville, Missouri
John P. Gray Columbia, Missouri Max A. Calkins Wymore, Nebraska
Harold J. Ellison Buffalo, New York George A. Field Buffalo, New York
Henry R. Kenyon, Jr. Mount Vernon, New York Darwin L. Clark Rodney, Iowa
William R. Evans, Jr. Indianapolis, Indiana Ross E. Bibb, Jr. Warrior, Alabama
Grant W. Teats Sheridan, Oregon Hollis Martin Bremerton, Washington
Robert B. Miles San Diego, California Ashwell L. Picou Houma, Louisiana
Robert K. Huntington South Pasadena, California
Survivor
George H. Gay, Jr. Houston, Texas
Warren Henry had, of course, not a glimmer of this tactical miracle.
Shut in his cockpit, isolated by radio silence, locked into the array of blue bombers roaring through the sky over a thickening cloud cover, all he knew was that McClusky at last had — for one blessed reason or another — turned northeast; that radio silence had been broken by one weak garbled aircraft transmission and another, suggesting that somebody must have found the Japs, the next by a ship’s high-powered radio, squawking in the unmistakable high-strung tones of Miles Browning, “Attack! I say again, ATTACK!”
For the first time in over two hours, Warren then heard the baritone voice of McClusky, calm, clear, faintly sarcastic, the young professional cooling the excited old fud, “Wilco, as soon as I find the bastards.“ At once he felt a surge of warm confidence in McClusky. Within minutes the Japanese fleet burst into view, a stunning spread of ships from horizon to horizon, showing through breaks in the layer of clouds.
It looked just like the Pacific Fleet on a major battle exercise. That was Warren’s first thought, and to dive-bomb them seemed like murder. McClusky droned orders to commence the descent to the attack point. The bomber group sank toward the dazzling white clouds, and broke through the upper layer for a panoramic view of the whole enemy force under wisps of low cloud.
The formation was in bad disorder. Long wakes curled and crisscrossed in the sea like a child’s finger painting of white on blue, the screening ships raggedly headed this way and that; black AA puffballs floated all over the scene; and the pale yellow lights of gun muzzles winked everywhere. In his first glimpse Warren had seen only one carrier, but here were three almost in column, all heading into the wind, with black smoke and long, long white wakes streaming straight back; and far to the north was another big ship, possibly a fourth one, in a clump of escorts.
Tiny aircraft in a swarm were flitting and darting at wavetop height among the ships. Warren saw one trail smoke, another burst into flame; some kind of action was going on down there, but where was the combat air patrol? The sky was eerily vacant. McClusky was already issuing attack orders! One squadron to one carrier, Scouting Six for the rear flattop, Bombing Six for the second one; let that third one go for now. It was all happening fast, for there was McClusky starting to push over into his dive, and Warren’s squadron leader was following him.
From here on this was familiar stuff, plain squadron attack drill, the ABC of dive-bombing. The one difference — so he told himself in these last seconds, with his hand on the diving brake lever, when he was beginning to feel better than he had ever felt in his whole life — the one difference now was that the oblong thing which he had to hit fifteen thousand feet down there on the sea wasn’t a target sled but a carrier! That made the shot a hell of a lot easier. The flight deck was a hundred times the size of a sled. He had more than once splintered the edge of a sled with a dummy bomb.
Yet again, where was the combat air patrol? That had been his worry right along, unescorted as they were. This thing so far was an unbelievable cinch. He kept glancing over his shoulders for Zeroes pouncing out of the clouds. There wasn’t a sign of them. McClusky and the first few bombers, already on their steep way down far below, one staggered behind the other, weren’t even catching any AA. Warren had often pictured and dreamed of attacks on carriers, but never of a walkover like this.
He said into the intercom in high spirits, “Well here we go, I guess, Cornett. All set?”
“Yes, Mr. Henry.” Matter-of-fact drawl. “Say, where the heck are the Zeroes, Mr. Henry?”
“Search me. Are you complaining?”
“No sir, Mr. Henry! Just you drop that egg in there, sir.”
“Going to try. We’ll have the sun on our starboard side. That’s where they’re likely to show up.”
“Okay, Mr. Henry. I’ve got my eye peeled. Good luck.”
Warren pulled the lever of his diving flaps. The perforated metal V opened all along his wings. The airplane mushily slowed. The flattop went out of sight beside the fuselage, under the wing. The nose came up, the plane gave its almost living warning shudder; Warren pushed over, dizzily dropped the nose straight toward the water far, far below, and straightened out in a roller-coaster plunge.
And there, by God, was the carrier in his telescopic sight, right over the little wobbling ball. Now if the telescope only wouldn’t fog up as they plunged into the warmer air! Visibility through the oily film of the canopy wouldn’t be very good.
It was an excellent dive. The danger was always overshooting and standing on your head, when the dive was almost impossible to control, but he was dropping toward the flattop at a beautiful angle, maybe sixty-five, seventy degrees, from almost dead astern, a little to port, perfect. He wasn’t sitting on his seat now but hanging facedown in his straps, the pure dive sensation. He always thought it was like jumping off a high dive board. There was the same headfirst feeling, the same queaziness in gut and balls that you never got over. It was a long way down, almost a whole minute, and he had excellent controls to straighten out slips or wobbles, but this dive was going fine. With a pedal jammed in hard to neutralize the SBD’s usual yaw, they were skimming down sweetly, the throttled-back engine purring, the air whiffling noisily on the brakes — and that flight deck was sitting right there in his little lens, not fogging over at all, growing bigger and plainer, with the hardwood decking bright yellow in the sunlight, the big red ball conspicuous in the white oblong forward of the island, the planes crowded aft in a jumble, and minuscule Japs running around them like insects. As his altimeter reeled backward his ears popped and the plane warmed.
All at once he saw the great white splash of a near-miss jump up alongside the island; and then a huge fiery explosion ripped the white paint all around the meatball, with a blast of smoke. So there was one hit! He could see two bombers zooming away. His ears ached like hell. He swallowed, and they popped again. Right now that carrier was in trouble; one more good hit could really cream it. Warren was at five thousand feet. Doctrine called for the bomb drop at about three thousand feet, but he meant to bore down at least to twenty-five hundred. Joyously in control, watching his dials, watching the rapidly expanding deck almost straight below him, he was nerving himself for a split-second decision. He intended to slam the bomb in among those aircraft sitting there in his scope; but if this carrier took yet another hit first, then instead of plastering it again with a precious half-ton bomb, he might still veer over and try to hit the third carrier, for ahead.
But what a target, that mess of airplanes rushing up at him now in the telescopic sight, so clear that he could see white numbers on the fuselages, and the little Japs running and gesticulating as he plunged toward them! No other hits yet; he’d go. Now his heart was racing, his mouth was parched, and his ears seemed about to burst. He yanked the bomb release, felt the jolt of lightness as the missile flew clear, remembered to keep going to make sure he didn’t throw the bomb, and he pulled up.
His body sagged to the seat, his head swam, his stomach seemed to plop against his backbone, the gray mist came and went; he kicked the plane’s tail and glanced backward… Oh, CHRIST!
A sheet of white fire was climbing out of those airplanes, bi
llowing black smoke; and even as he looked, the fire spread and exploded along the deck and arched into the air in beautiful colors, red, yellow, purple, pink, with varicolored smoke towering up into the sky. What a terrific change in a second or two! Debris was flying in every direction, pieces of airplanes, pieces of the deck, whole human bodies tumbling upward like tossed rag dolls; what a horrible unbelievable magnificent sight! The whole wild holocaust of fire and smoke went roaring skyward and streaming astern, for the stricken carrier was still rushing at full speed into the wind.
“Mr. Henry, there’s a Zero at eight o’clock angels about one thousand.” Cornett on the intercom. “He’s making a run on us.”
“Roger.” Warren nosed over and dove for the water, violently jinking and yawing. The waves were breaking in long white crests, and he hurtled along through spume that spattered his canopy like hail, dodging erratically, grateful for the sturdy response of the SBD-3 to the crazy maneuvers. This was doctrine: hug the water, make the Jap miss, lure him to dive into the sea. The plane shook and his teeth jarred as Cornetta gun began a furious rattle. Warren saw bullets splashing a line in the water a few yards forward of his nose, and glancing up he caught sight of the Zero diving at him, squirting yellow flame and white smoke. The fighter that had knocked him down over Pearl Harbor had been a peacetime silver color; this was a dirty mottled greenish-brown, but those big red balls on the wings were just the same. The Zero pulled up smack at the waterline and disappeared into AA smoke; ye gods, those damned things were maneuverable.
Warren flew past a tragic sight, caught in a flash out of the corner of his eye — a blue wing with a white star, sticking out of the water; just the wing. It vanished, and a huge gray ship slid into view before his windshield with forty yellow lights blinking at him, surely a battleship or a heavy cruiser. Antiaircraft began bursting around him in sooty explosions that rocked and hammered the plane. In seconds the vessel stretched out dead ahead, blocking his way, a vast gray steel wall. Warren pulled up for dear life and the Dauntless soared over the forecastle, much lower than the crooked pagoda mast, barely clearing the forward turret of long gray guns.
So he was out of the screen now! If his luck would hold and he could outdistance the AA batteries that from behind were spattering shrapnel on the water all around him —
“Mr. Henry, that sumbitch is back. He been follerin’ us all the way.”
“Roger.”
Warren tried to repeat his wild dodging, flying as close to the water as he dared, but the airplane was now acting sluggish. The red tracers from the Zero came raining down along his port side, kicking up white water spurts. He veered hard right and almost caught a wing in a wave top. The plane was not answering as before.
“Yippee! Mr. Henry, I think maybe I got the sumbitch.” Cornett sounded like a kid at a high school ball game. “I swear he’s headin’ home to mama. Take a look, Mr. Henry, he’s dead astern. He’s smokin’.”
The Dauntless turned and climbed. The attacker was shrinking away toward the enemy task force, trailing a smudge of smoke; and beyond it, beyond the ships of the screen, all three carriers were vomiting flame and black smoke upward into the blue sunny sky. Who had got the third carrier, he wondered? Had some other pilot done what he’d thought of doing? That third flattop was on fire, not a doubt in the world of it. Those three black smoke pillars were rising high over the task force like three black plumes on a hearse.
Now he looked at his watch, at the fuel gauge, and at the flight chart. It was 10:30, and he had winged over for the attack at 10:25; he had lived a lot of his life in five minutes! The fuel was too low to bear thinking about. He was sure the staff’s Point Option position was wrong. Those stupid staff bastards had probably figured that Spruance would advance at full speed — same mistake as with the Japs — when chances were he had turned into the wind to recover the combat air patrol or returning aircraft. Warren headed for the 1000 position bearing, grimly noting that the craft’s response was still sluggish.
“That was some hit, Mr. Henry. Gee, did that baby go up!”
“Say, Cornett, watch the tail assembly, I’m going to waggle the controls. Tell me if there’s any damage to the surfaces.”
“Yes, Mr. Henry. Oh, Judas Priest, you got no rudder, sir. Just a small ragged hunk.”
“Well, okay.” Warren quenched an upwelling of alarm. “We’re heading home to mama ourselves.”
“We gonna make it, Mr. Henry?”
“Dunno why not,” Warren said with more cheer than he felt. “We may have to sling a couple of chocolate bars in the tank.”
“Well, anyway, Mr. Henry,” Cornett said with a most un-Cornett-like merry laugh, “whatever happens, it was worth it, just to get that hit, and watch them sumbitches burning back there.”
“Concur.”
Now the thought came to Warren as a gladsome surprise that radio silence was finished. He gambled the gasoline to climb to two thousand feet, and tuned in on the Enterprise’s Y-E homing signal. Loud and clear, from the 1000 position dead ahead, came the Morse-code letter he expected. He throttled back near stalling speed, and settled down near the tossing white-capped swells. It would be a close thing, but there were always the rescue destroyers. In his exalted mood, a water landing held no terror for him. He could still see the flames billowing, the planes exploding, the bodies flying on that Jap carrier. He had done it; done it, and he was alive and heading back in glory.
Many miles astern, Vice Admiral Nagumo was being dragged off the flaming, listing Akagi by his staff officers. Picking his way among the broken corpses roasting with a kitchen stench on the red-hot deck plates, which still shuddered with explosions, he was fussily insisting that there was no real need yet to abandon ship. He had not authorized his subordinate Yamaguchi in the unhit Hiryu to take command, or even to launch at discretion. Climbing down a rope ladder to a cruiser’s whale boat, the distraught old gentleman remained the commander-in-chief of the ruined Carrier Attack Force. But Yamaguchi was not waiting any longer for orders from Nagumo, who had probably just lost the war for Japan. On seeing the first bombs raise smoke and fire on the Kaga, he had commenced an immediate counterstrike.
* * *
Midman (concluded)
(from World Holocaust by Arm in von Roon)
Second Phase
The opening phase of the battle occupied most of the morning of June 4.
The middle phase lasted five minutes.
The end took four days.
The annals of military conflict, from their dim origins in Chinese and Egyptian accounts to the present era, show no equal to the world-historical second phase, the Five Minutes of Midway.
Between 10:25 A.M. and 10:30 A.M. of that fateful day, in that mere instant of combat time, three Japanese carriers, with their full complements of aircraft, were reduced to smoking flotsam. These giant victims embodied the national strength and treasure of Japan, the culmination of half a century of heroic effort to become a first-class military power. In those five explosive minutes, Japan’s world status, laboriously built up from Tsushima Strait to Singapore, Manila, and Burma, was shattered; though she had yet to suffer three years of defeat and final atomic-blast horror before accepting this fact.
After Midway, as Admiral von Nimitz once put it, “We fought the Pacific war just as we had worked it out for twenty years in the War College” (a remark that sufficiently suggests the long-range aggressive intent of the Anglo-American plutocracies). The rest of that war is tangential to German readers’ interests, but this brilliant classic of sea warfare must be studied.
Chance thrust an unknown junior flag officer into full command of the combined American task forces in mid-battle. Vice Admiral Halsey, a sort of seagoing General Patton full of dash and swagger, had fallen ill just before the fleet sortied, otherwise he would have led the fight. The replacement he suggested was his friend Raymond A. Spruance, a quiet man who commanded his screen. Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commanding Task Force Seventeen, was seni
or to Spruance. Nimitz intended that Fletcher run the battle. Luck dropped it into Spruance’s hands, and Spruance proceeded to show himself one of the great admirals of world history. The United States of America has been a lucky nation, and this luck held remarkably on June 4, 1942. How long it will hold in the future, only the dark gods know who bestowed on this crass mercantile nation of mongrelized blood and cowboy culture a virgin continent with almost infinite natural resources.
Spruance made three historic decisions at Midway. This shy and reticent man, of no remarkable blood or background, unveiled an astounding capacity to think and act in the thick of battle. After Midway he won many victories in command of ever-vaster forces; yet in history, like Nelson of Trafalgar, he will remain Spruance of Midway.
The First Decision
Spruance’s first great decision was to launch all the aircraft of the Hornet and the Enterprise at extreme range at seven o’clock in the morning, risking everything to get in the first surprise blow. The risk proved costly. Several of his squadrons could not even find the enemy. Almost half his planes ran out of gasoline and fell in the water, or returned with their bombs, or flew on to Midway atoll without fighting. Yet enough dive-bombers reached the Nagumo force to execute the blitz that left the Akagi, the Kaga, and the Soryu in flames. Nothing else mattered. Spruance won this world-historical gamble.
Here too he enjoyed American luck, for his wandering squadrons met up over the Japanese fleet for a combined attack by chance. The dive-bombers did all the damage. The torpedo planes were wiped out. By contrast, later that day, Japanese torpedo planes from the Hiryu drove home an attack and wrecked the Yorktown. Technically as well as numerically, the Americans were outclassed at Midway. This only highlights Spruance’s leadership.
Rear Admiral Fletcher cautiously delayed his Yorktown launching for over an hour. He then sent out only half of his aircraft. When the torpedoed Yorktown had to be abandoned, Fletcher moved his flag to a screening cruiser, and passed command of all forces to Spruance. This was the only important act in the military career of Fletcher that this historian has been able to ascertain.