1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls

by Winston Groom

  Because of the foul weather the Japanese attack was delayed for a day, but on June 3 the assault on the Aleutians commenced, in heavy fog, with a Japanese bombing of the U.S. base at Dutch Harbor. This killed a score or more of American soldiers and sailors and did a considerable amount of damage but fooled no one, especially not Admiral Nimitz, who knew the major blow was to fall on Midway, particularly since one of the patrolling PBY flying boats out of Midway had already spotted the Japanese invasion force some seven hundred miles out that same morning. The fog, however, had concealed the main Japanese striking force, though the Americans knew they were out there, somewhere.

  Thus the U.S. carrier fleet was now on station at what was designated Point Luck, waiting for dawn, and for the other shoe to drop. Tension aboard the big ships was pervasive since everyone knew that a big sea battle was brewing. Aboard the Hornet a torpedo bomber squadron leader, Lieutenant Commander John Waldron, wrote a letter to his wife back in South Dakota: “I believe that we will be in battle very soon. If I do not come back—well, you and the little girls can know that this squadron struck for the highest objective in naval warfare—to sink the enemy. ... I love you and the children very dearly and I long to be with you. But I could not be happy ashore at this time. My place is here with the fight.”4

  The Japanese, too, were beginning to sense that something was afoot. They knew that the invasion troop transports had been spotted because they saw the American plane that spotted them,* and their own radio rooms were picking up all sorts of “urgent” signals from U.S. ships directed to Midway. Though they could not decipher these communications they realized that the Americans might be closer than they expected.* Admiral Nagumo, for his part, was getting cold feet about what he should do the following morning. His main objective, as he understood it, was to attack and sink the American fleet when it presumably would rush out from Hawaii to try to defend Midway, but he was also charged with using his carrier’s planes to bomb and neutralize Midway Island itself.

  Yet what if the Americans showed up in the middle of all this? The question Nagumo demanded of his subordinates was reasonable: “But where is the enemy fleet!” Nobody knew the answer—except of course the Americans, and they weren’t saying—but Nagumo’s chief of staff had reassuring words. The Americans, even if they had already figured things out and had sailed from Hawaii, must still be several days away; thus there was plenty of time to bomb Midway and still prepare to annihilate the U.S. fleet.5

  Dawn broke on June 4, 1942, at five A.M. but the first wave of Japanese planes that were to attack Midway had begun taking off in the darkness half an hour earlier, 240 miles northwest of the island, just about where Nimitz had predicted: dive-bombers, level bombers, and their fighter escorts, 108 planes in all from four carriers. Commander Fuchida described the scene aboard Akagi: “Plane engines were started, and livid white flames spurted from exhaust pipes. The flight deck was soon a hell of ear-shattering noise. Flood lights suddenly illuminated the flight deck, making day of the night. Akagi was steaming full into the wind. ‘Commence launching!’ came the order from the bridge. Swinging a green signal lamp, the Air Officer described a big circle in the air. A Zero fighter revved up its engine, gathered speed along the flight deck and rose into the air to the accompaniment of a thunderous cheer from Akagi’s crew. Caps and hands waved wildly in the bright glare of the deck lights.”6

  Things weren’t exactly idle on Midway, either. At 5:35 the radar shack picked up the first flight of Japanese planes ninety-three miles away, headed toward them. When the air-raid siren blew, the frenzied scramble was such that within twenty-five minutes every plane on the island that could fly—from the slow and stubby old Brewster Buffalo fighters to the lumbering B-17s—was in the air. The thirty-three big PBY flying boats and nineteen heavy bombers were ordered to fly out of harm’s way, since they were no good for intercepting the incoming hardware and nobody wanted them sitting on the ground when the Japanese attack came in. But fifty-four Marine Corps fighters and dive-bombers and six navy torpedo bombers rose up into the morning sun to do battle with the enemy.

  It was an unequal contest. The marine fighters tried to attack the incoming Japanese bombers, which they encountered thirty miles out, but they were hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered by the Japanese Zeros pouncing on them from above. Soon the sky was filled with huge orange fireballs, planes trailing smoke splashed into the cold sea, and a flurry of debris rained down: torn-off wings, tails, canopies, engine parts, and, alarmingly enough, the bodies of American airmen themselves. Of the twenty obsolete Buffaloes and seven modern Wildcat fighters, only ten returned and, of those, most were so badly shot up they were useless for the remainder of the Midway operation. One of the surviving Buffalo pilots later declared bitterly, “It is my belief that any commander who orders pilots out for combat in an F2A [Buffalo] should consider the pilot as lost before leaving the ground.”7

  Meantime, the torpedo bombers and dive-bombers from Midway proceeded in the direction of the Japanese fleet, passing along the way their opposite numbers bearing the Rising Sun, which must have created a strange sensation. But the efforts of these bombers also proved a futile enterprise since there was no fighter escort for them, all the fighters having been wrecked in the first encounter with the first Japanese incoming flights.

  The American marine and navy torpedo bombers were shot out of the sky—most before even reaching their launch points—by a murderous combination of Zero interception and the hail of fire from the carriers they were trying to attack as well as their escorting battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Those torpedo bombers that did get close enough to launch were ineffective because the slowness of the U.S. torpedoes allowed the Japanese to dodge them easily. One dive-bomber squadron leader, Marine Major Lofton Henderson, who had decided that his young pilots had so little training in dive-bombing techniques, told them to just go straight in and “skip” or “glide” bomb the Japanese ships. This was a novel and very unorthodox method in which the dive-bomber, hurtling in low, just a little above the deck, releases his bomb in the same way as a torpedo bomber (but from a much closer range) and hopes that it will skip and bounce over the water and hit the enemy ship. It didn’t work, and half the dive-bombers were shot down, including Henderson’s; one pilot who managed to return counted 259 bullet holes in his plane.8 In fact, of all the different types of U.S. attacks on Nagumo’s fleet from Midway, none scored even so much as a near miss.

  Nevertheless, this was a wake-up call for Admiral Nagumo—after all, it didn’t take but one bomb or torpedo to sink a carrier, the more so since his air commander who had led the attack on Midway had just radioed back: “There is need for a second attack wave.” What that meant to Nagumo was that if he didn’t order a second attack wave on the island and put the American force out of commission, his fleet might expect more U.S. aircraft to fly out and keep trying to sink him.

  The problem for Nagumo, however, was that most of his second wave, now sitting on the decks of his four carriers, had been armed with torpedoes against the (to him remote) possibility that the U.S. Navy might turn up at any moment. So far, his search planes had found nothing, but that didn’t mean it was an absolute certainty that the Americans were not out there. For Nagumo it was a wrenching decision because if he sent his planes below now to have their torpedoes removed and rearm them with bombs for a second Midway attack, during that brief period he would be almost naked against a surprise appearance by American carrier aircraft.

  Worse, the determination had to be made quickly since the planes from Nagumo’s first Midway sortie would soon be returning and all decks would have to be cleared to recover them. It was the sudden U.S. aerial attack from the Midway-based planes that made Nagumo’s mind up for him: Midway was the immediate problem and Midway must be shut down. It was 7:15 A.M. when he flashed the fateful message: “Planes in second attack wave stand by to carry out attack today. Re-equip yourselves with bombs.”9 All those American pilots wh
o had bashed themselves to death against the full fury of the Japanese fleet had served a good purpose after all; as at the Coral Sea battle, which had led the Japanese to think that both U.S. carriers had been sunk, their sacrifice was not in vain, as we shall soon see.

  Thirteen minutes after reaching his decision to rearm his second wave of planes, Nagumo received shocking news. One of his search planes, which had gotten off half an hour late because of a faulty catapult on the cruiser Tone, tapped out a message: “Ten enemy ships 240 miles from Midway,” and gave bearings, speed, etc. Nagumo stewed for fifteen minutes, demanding to know what kinds of ships. Presently the search plane reported, “Enemy composed of five cruisers and five destroyers.” No mention of carriers. Nagumo was now in a quandary. He knew the Americans had found him from the earlier attack from Midway. He also knew that the U.S. Navy was in the vicinity, but in what strength? That many cruisers and destroyers often meant a carrier task force, but the search plane had made no mention of one, so Nagumo allowed the rearming to go on.

  Suddenly there were huge explosions and gray geysers of water around the carriers Hiryu and Soryu. These were caused by a flight of fourteen B-17s, which had been milling around in the air during the Midway attack and were now ordered to bomb the Japanese fleet from an altitude of 20,000 feet. From his vantage point aboard Akagi Commander Fuchida noted that of the more than 100,000 pounds of bombs dropped by these planes none scored a hit, and the two big carriers emerged from the towering water geysers into the sunshine. Fuchida noted afterward, “We had by this time undergone every kind of air attack by shore-based planes—torpedo, level bombing and dive bombing—but were still unscathed. Frankly it was my judgment that the enemy fliers were not displaying a very high level of ability, and this evaluation was shared by Admiral Nagumo and his staff. It was our general conclusion that we had little to fear from the enemy’s offensive tactics.”10

  Ironically, for all the death and sacrifice so far that morning, the Americans had actually lured the Japanese into a false sense of security, for already flights of U.S. Navy dive-bombers and torpedo planes were winging their way from the three American carriers, after having picked up the radio traffic from Midway regarding the location of the Japanese fleet.

  This might not have been so were it not for the intervention of Admiral Halsey’s chief of staff on the Enterprise, Captain Miles Browning, described almost universally as a “temperamental but brilliant” air officer. This was because Admiral Spruance had concluded that he wanted to get much closer to the Japanese before launching his attack, so as to make sure his planes had enough fuel to get back to the carrier. But Browning argued that to get within one hundred miles would take until at least nine A.M. and he had calculated from the Midway radio intercepts that if they launched earlier, nearer to seven A.M., they would likely arrive on the scene just in time to catch the Japanese with their pants down: either recovering or refueling their planes on deck from the first-wave Midway attack.

  Now it was Spruance’s turn to be in quandary. If he launched two hours early, as Browning suggested, it was almost certain that some of the planes would run out of fuel and have to ditch in the sea (his torpedo bombers had a combat range of only 175 miles out, allowing time to find the target). It was small consolation that the planes carried an inflatable life raft; ditching at sea is a terrifically dangerous business even under the best of circumstances. But Spruance made the decision anyway because, if he waited and was sighted by the Japanese, then he would become the hunted, instead of the other way around. It was a tough and difficult choice, but a smart one, and at 7:02 A.M. the full complement of torpedo and dive-bombing squadrons began taking off from the Enterprise and the Hornet. Admiral Fletcher, aboard the Yorktown, decided to hold off for a while, in case there were more Japanese carriers lurking out there than so far reported. But at about nine o’clock he began launching a partial strike of his own.

  * * *

  At 8:20, nearly an hour after he had first reported sighting U.S. ships, the pilot of the Tone search plane signaled back to Nagumo: “The enemy is accompanied by what appears to be a carrier.”* Nagumo hardly had time to digest this unpleasant news when the planes† from his first Midway strike appeared on the horizon, eager to land. There was nothing for it but to turn all the carriers into the wind and begin the recovery operation, while the sailors belowdecks feverishly tried to remove all the bombs they had just loaded the torpedo planes with and replace them, yet again, with torpedoes. During the delicate recovery operation Nagumo did not want any more attacks from the Midway planes, so he ordered his fleet to turn away from the island, speeding on a northward course, which would soon have consequences for the American attackers.

  Before leaving the Hornet Lieutenant Commander Waldron, one-quarter Sioux Indian, had not only written to his wife the night before, but also sent a Nelsonian message‡ to his fifteen pilots in Torpedo Squadron 8: “We have had a very short time to train and we have worked under the most severe difficulties. But we have truly done the best humanly possible. My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don’t and the worst comes to the worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make a final run in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with us all. Good luck, happy landings and give ‘em hell.”11 With that they had taken off, without any fighter escort (there were only twenty fighters available aboard both Hornet and Enterprise to protect the ninety-odd dive- and torpedo bombers; the rest were needed to fly air cover for the carriers).

  Before takeoff all pilots had been given a last-minute briefing concerning the location of the Japanese fleet, based on the latest information from Midway-based planes. At about nine-thirty a heavy force of thirty-five dive-bombers from the Hornet arrived at the spot where Nagumo’s carriers should have been, but they weren’t there. Their leader, Commander Stanhope Ring, saw only low clouds to the north and made a judgment that Nagumo had kept heading southeast to get closer to Midway, when in fact Nagumo had done just the opposite. Accordingly, Ring turned his powerful force in that direction, away from the low bank of clouds in which Nagumo was hiding, effectively taking himself and his dive-bombers out of the action. Ultimately, running out of gas, Ring had to land his planes on Midway itself to refuel before finally returning to the Hornet later in the afternoon, empty-handed.

  However, three of the slower torpedo-bomber squadrons—including that of Lieutenant Commander Waldron—soon arrived at the same position where Commander Ring had made his decision to turn the wrong way. Instead of following him southeastward (they had evidently picked up Ring’s radio traffic about making the turn), Waldron continued north, maybe on a hunch, or perhaps on the theory that if Ring were correct, they would have heard his radio traffic if he’d spotted the Japanese ships, and vice versa. In either case, Waldron guessed right, for presently below him he caught a breathtaking sight: four Japanese carriers in box formation with their escort of big-gun ships.

  The Japanese had already begun to zigzag, or circle violently, as if expecting the American planes. In fact, they were expecting them, according to the account of Commander Fuchida aboard Akagi, who had been listening to the frenetic radio chatter of the Japanese destroyer screen to the southwest. “Reports of approaching enemy planes increased until it was quite evident that they were not from a single carrier. When the Admiral [Nagumo] and his staff realized this, their optimism abruptly vanished. The only way to stave off disaster was to launch planes at once.”12

  Waldron and the men of Torpedo Squadron 8 started their run far out to sea off Akagi’s starboard bow. Fuchida remembered that they appeared “as tiny dark specks in the blue sky. The distant wings flashed in the sun. Occasionally one of the specks burst into a spark of flame and trailed black smoke as it fell into the water. Nearly SO Zeros had gone to intercept the unprotected enemy formation.”13

  One by one Waldron’s squadron was shot down; still the bombers came on, now f
acing not only the ubiquitous Zeros but unwithstandable antiaircraft fire from every Japanese ship within range. Waldron’s plane suddenly burst into flames and spun into the sea. Weeks after her notification of his death, his wife would finally receive the letter he had written to her and their two little girls.

  Finally only one plane out of Torpedo 8’s original fifteen was still aloft, piloted by Ensign George Gay who, last in line and with Waldron’s admonition “If there is only one plane left I want that man to go in and get a hit” still ringing in his ears, resolutely bore in toward Akagi, skimming only a few feet above the waves with a swarm of Zeros on his tail. His gunner-radioman had been shot dead and Gay himself was hit in the arm by a bullet from one of the Zeros. As Gay, one of the many rookie fliers that day, recounted later, “It was the first time I had ever carried a torpedo on an aircraft, and the first time I had ever taken a torpedo off a ship. I had never even seen it done. We had no previous combat flying.”14

  About half a mile from the big carrier, Gay hit the electric launch button to release his torpedo and waited for his plane to lurch upward from the lost weight of the twelve-foot-long, 1,200-pound “tin fish.” He was now staring ahead into an orange sheet of flame from every gun on the carrier’s starboard side and flack puffs burst all around him. But no lurch was forthcoming. Gay then frantically grabbed for the emergency release lever. This time he felt the rise of the torpedo launch, but now he was coming right up on the carrier. Somehow he managed to pull up and just skip over the Akagi’s five-story-high flight deck by a mere ten feet. But the Zeros were still on him, soon shooting out his left rudder pedal. Out of control, Gay’s plane pancaked into the water no more than a thousand feet from the huge carrier. The plane rapidly sank but Gay was able to struggle out and pop to the surface holding on to a black rubber seat cushion, which he promptly put over his head and hid under while Japanese cruisers and destroyers roared past him, their crews pointing and laughing. The sole survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8, like his dead comrades, had failed to get a single hit.