Lastly, the voice of the little-known Admiral Spruance came through:
“An attack on Midway Island is expected. Enemy forces include all combatant types, four or five carriers, plus transport and train vessels. If we remain unknown to the enemy, we should be able to flank attack from a position northeast of Midway. Should our carriers become separated by enemy aircraft, they will attempt to maintain visual contact. The successful conclusion of operations now commencing will be of great value to our country.”
Benny leaned back in his seat in the wardroom and let out a long, low whistle. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Four or five carriers and how many escorts? Against what? About two and a half of us?” He turned to face Captain Randall. “I think I’d better go write my mother,” Benny said with disdain.
But since Enterprise had embarked from Pearl, Admiral Raymond Spruance, a wiry, energetic man whose low-key manner belied a hefty intellect and tremendous self-confidence, had paced several miles on Enterprise’s flight deck. Senior officers took turns walking alongside him, briefing Spruance and answering questions. The tenor of these conversations was always the same. They were laser-focused, intense, to the point. Almost like a relay race, when one ambulatory meeting concluded, another officer took his place by the admiral’s side, Spruance’s gait never slowing.
The admiral would question, listen, question, listen, and question some more. He had inherited Halsey’s capable, battle-hardened staff, and in these walking meetings, Spruance processed every detail and committed to memory every critical aspect of the upcoming mission. A strategy was developing in his head.
By the last day of May, Enterprise and Hornet had assumed striking position northeast of Midway—on the flank of the enemy’s anticipated thrust. Submarine reports confirmed that the Japanese attack force was approaching from the northwest, as expected. A low cloud cover and poor visibility so far favored the Japanese, because that made it all the harder for the Midway defenders to spot and repel their approaching ships and planes.
For the first three days of June, Benny slept fitfully. His sole comfort those lonely and anxious nights was that he was moving closer to Barton. He would remind his mother of this because he knew it would comfort her—assuming he survived the next two days.
During that same seventy-two hours, the American force maneuvered continuously to avoid detection, then reversed course to arrive at “Point Luck”—code name for the rendezvous point northeast of Midway—on June 4. At 0330 that morning, Enterprise reveille sounded, followed by the loud, clangorous general quarters summoning crew to battle stations. Anticipation coursed through the ship like a high-voltage electrical current. From stem to stern, from flight deck to bridge, in all departments and at all levels, the USS Enterprise prepared for action.
Benny made a final gunnery check at each antiaircraft mount. Guns of every caliber and on every level of the ship, port and starboard, were as ready as they would ever be. Planes were also armed and primed for launch. Together with seventeen-year-old Texas sharpshooter Wayne Barnhill (who’d lied about his age to enlist and serve with his older brother), Benny stood in Sky Control, poised for certain action. Wayne was in charge of the sound-operated telephone used to communicate Benny’s rapid-fire orders to the gunners throughout the carrier during battle.
Wayne’s brother, photographer James Barnhill, nicknamed Barney, set up his action camera on the 0-2 level, halfway down the ship, to capture battle scenes for newsreels to be dispatched to Washington. Though Wayne chose not to speak his mind, he wished his brother would move a little farther back from the rail toward the camouflage draped against the ship’s side. When Wayne winced for Barney’s safety, Benny understood in a way he could barely express. He slapped Wayne on the back, momentarily holding his shoulder. In a rare act of informality between an enlisted man and officer, he looked him in the eye and said, “Look at it this way, son: he’ll have a terrific view!”
Word shot through the ship an hour later that Japanese planes had begun their attack on Midway. The enemy flotilla was two hundred miles northwest of the base and the US convoy the same distance to the northeast. Of the forty-three American planes that launched in the first four hours, only six returned. Forty attacking Zeros had shot the others out of the sky like so many skeet clays. Benny barely took his eyes off the flight deck as the hours ticked away, trying to conceal building unease. The sense of impending disaster pervading Sky Control seemed to confirm the worst-case fears leading up to the Halsey-less mission.
But despite the dearth of returning planes, the American Navy’s luck was about to turn. Enterprise’s flight leader, Lieutenant Wade McClusky, had inadvertently flown off course to find nothing but vacant seas. Disheartened and low on fuel, he prepared to turn his squadron back toward Enterprise when, through a peephole in the clouds, he spied a lone Japanese destroyer heading northeast at flank speed. On a hunch, McClusky ordered his air group to pursue the unsuspecting destroyer instead. Within ten minutes, the hunch paid off. Dead ahead was the entire Japanese striking force, replete with four carriers and a dozen support vessels, including battleships, destroyers, and cruisers.
Benny was so startled to hear McClusky’s voice break radio silence over the crackling ship’s radio that he spilled his coffee all over Wayne Barnhill. He quickly turned the knob just in time to hear McClusky’s staccato delivery of stunning news: not only had they sighted the Japanese carriers, but also their first round of attack planes had just returned from Midway for refueling. Eureka!
Fuel hoses crisscrossed the Japanese carrier decks, and stacks of munitions were piled for reloading in plain view as the Enterprise squadron—and, shortly after, Yorktown’s fighters—came hurtling through the clouds. From ten thousand feet, McClusky and his thirty-seven bombers bore down on the Japanese anchorage at a seventy-degree angle. In less than thirty minutes, they had handily sunk two of their four carriers and wiped out half their airpower. By sundown, Yorktown pilots had torpedoed a third carrier. By the time the planes returned to Enterprise, Kaga, Soryu, and Akagi were nosing toward the ocean floor.
The fourth and last Japanese carrier, Hiryu, had not been located, but its pilots, seething with revenge, had discovered the American ships’ position northeast of Midway and were heading straight for them. Although Yorktown and Enterprise were steaming less than six miles apart, Yorktown was closer to the approaching Japanese fighters. Benny watched enemy dive bombers roar toward Yorktown like a swarm of angry bees. Her antiaircraft gunners responded with furious intensity—but their efforts were futile.
With Enterprise beyond gun range, Benny and his megaphone were of no use to Yorktown. He could only watch helplessly from Sky Control as three bombs and two torpedoes all found their deadly marks. Seconds later, Yorktown was belching flames and smoke. Barney Barnhill swept his camera back and forth, back and forth, duty-bound to record the horrific scene. Only a fixed grimace hinted at his internal turmoil while he recorded hundreds of burning sailors jumping into the water. Soon the listing ship’s outline blurred into a fireball after which only an urgent water rescue operation was left to film.
The jubilant return of Enterprise planes to the flight deck was tempered by the grim spectacle. They were soon followed by Yorktown’s fighters—orphaned by the fatal blows to their mother ship. But there was no time for the Yorktown pilots to grieve the certain loss of so many shipmates. Within minutes, they refueled and were again airborne, charging at Hiryu to exact their own revenge. Hiryu soon joined the three other Japanese carriers on the Pacific floor.
FOR BILL MOTT IN the White House Map Room, the suspense—listening moment to moment for the teletype to begin its clicking report of agonizing defeat, failure, and loss—was like waiting for as many pulls on a pistol trigger. The lopsided match between twenty-four American ships and an enemy armada four times that size had him on heart-hammering edge, hour after hour, waiting for Midway’s battle status to come across.
Over the course of the three-day engagement, the crowded Map
Room was efficient but hushed. Frequently the only sound that could be heard was the semicircular protractor scratching around a table map dotted with two- and three-inch ships. When the dispatch arrived about the loss of Yorktown—in advance of any news on the fate of the Japanese carriers—Bill braced for the rash of casualty reports.
When word then came through of the Enterprise squadron’s brilliant air strikes and the enormity of enemy losses—and, best of all, that Japanese firepower was eliminated before it could retaliate against Enterprise—Bill threw a celebratory fist in the air and joined in the party-like atmosphere that had fully erupted in the Map Room. Similar celebrations were breaking out throughout the War Department and on Capitol Hill.
Admiral Spruance was forthwith crowned the navy’s newest wunderkind. As it turned out, his painstaking preparation, tactical brilliance, and calculated risk of launching all task force planes ahead of schedule to ensure the crucial element of surprise—worked. His strategy not only achieved complete surprise and devastated enemy forces, but also prevented the deadly nighttime counterstrikes at which the Japanese excelled. In a rare moment of cheerful self-deprecation, Admiral King was overheard saying, “I see now that I am only the second-smartest man in the United States Navy!”
The reduction in Japanese Fleet strength wrought by the American Navy at Midway seemed almost too good to be true. Japan had lost four carriers, a heavy cruiser, and well over three hundred aircraft, not to mention its most experienced pilots. The Battle of Midway marked a strategic reversal in the Pacific War; America was now the aggressor, and Japan on the defense.
Admiral Nimitz immediately recalled the remainder of the Midway task force to Pearl Harbor. The mood aboard Enterprise was a strange mix of relief, exhilaration, and mourning. They had won and won big, but Enterprise had lost numerous pilots and air crews. There had not even been an opportunity to pay last respects on the fantail at a burial at sea service. The airmen had crashed to their Pacific graves without so much as a final salute.
Admiral Spruance came over the loudspeaker and delivered the following message as Enterprise steamed to port:
“I wish to express my admiration and commendation to every officer and man of the Enterprise and especially to the pilots and gunners for their splendid performance . . . The personnel losses are most regretted, but it is felt that these gallant men contributed materially in striking a decisive blow against the enemy.”
The ship’s radio buzzed with congratulatory messages. They poured in from President Roosevelt and Allied commands and officials from around the globe. There was also an awkwardly translated and wildly inaccurate report from Radio Tokyo, claiming victory for Japan’s navy:
“Japan’s forces carried out fierce attacks on Midway Island, inflicting heavy damage on fleet reinforcements in that area, also damaging naval and air installations . . . Japanese sank carrier Enterprise and Hornet and shot down one hundred twenty enemy aircraft.”
Benny allowed a wide grin as he listened to the message. This was the second time the Japanese had reported sinking the Enterprise: the first was after the Gilbert and Marshall Islands raid in February. When the translation was read gleefully over the ship’s loudspeakers, crew on every level stamped their feet approvingly. It was getting to be a good omen. Admiral Halsey’s sobriquet for his beloved flagship, the Galloping Ghost of the Oahu Coast, had been well earned.
On the afternoon of June 13, 1942, every soldier and sailor in Pearl Harbor lined the docks to welcome Enterprise home. Deafening cheers and waving flags greeted the task force as it approached. The beginning of a forty-eight-hour congratulatory liberty found Benny and hundreds of other boisterous Enterprise celebrants crowding the bar at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. None of them paid for their own drinks that night.
Over the ukuleles, laughing, and back slapping, one comment made the rounds countless times: “That Spruance! Brilliant, by God, brilliant!”
12
UNDER SIEGE: JN-25
WHILE SLIGHTLY HUNG OVER the morning after Enterprise’s victorious return to Pearl from Midway, Benny penned a reply to two letters from Bill that awaited him:
June 14, 1942
Dear Bill,
I haven’t had much time to write, as you might imagine, but many thanks for your welcome words of encouragement. Your letters always give me something to look forward to. I would very much like to talk with you right now—I’m sure we could find many things of mutual interest to discuss without the veil of censorship.
We’ve been lucky so far—the line has been held once again. But there is such a thing as riding a good horse to death. I am bone tired. The situation remains grave however and there will be no respite, as you know.
To be honest, the thing that keeps me going are thoughts of Bart. After four years at sea they say I could stay and work ashore for a month or so, recognizing that one does need some rest to be of any use. But I feel the worse because when he came through here, he knew conditions were bad, and I told him not to worry too much, as we would be out there, ready and waiting if anything broke. I want to make good on that assurance before it’s too late.
As for how badly you want to go to sea, Bill, I want to say again I think you can do more and serve better where you are. I know how you feel about Bart, but I believe if I could see you and have a talk with you I could convince you of that . . .
Well Bill, that’s all for now except I have some good ideas I wish I could talk over with you so you could pass them on to the right people.
Do your best always,
Love,
Benny
BILL READ AND REREAD Benny’s somewhat disjointed response to his letters. He was relieved to finally get direct word from his brother, and for the moment dismissed the usual admonition about his desire to go to sea. Right now he was focused on a different phrase Benny had used: “veil of censorship.” Bill had just learned that an unbelievable tear in that veil had occurred, quashing his jubilant mood over the victory at Midway. The breach could potentially endanger Benny and his crew as much as any incipient Japanese assault.
The Midway task force had just prevailed because of a combination of intelligence work, skill, and luck in breaking the Japanese naval code. Even better, the Japanese were unaware that their code had been cracked; they continued to use JN-25 after Midway to encrypt naval messages. But the work of one Stanley Johnston—World War I veteran, champion sculler, and heady Australian war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune—had potentially reversed Station Hypo’s crucial code breaking gains.
Johnston had distinguished himself while on assignment covering the Coral Sea Battle back in early May. When the Lexington received her fatal bomb blow during that engagement, Johnston, in the heat of battle, heroically rescued burning sailors from “Lady Lex’s” doomed hold. He was one of the last to leave the ship. Then, while the crew members thrashed desperately in the oily water, Johnston, a strong swimmer, was further credited with saving a number of lives by helping them to land into lifeboats.
Both Lexington’s skipper and his executive officer, M. T. “Mort” Seligman, were so impressed by Johnston’s actions that they recommended him for a navy heroism citation. In fact, their experience of surviving the harrowing Lexington disaster forged a bond between Johnston and Seligman, who shared a cabin from the Coral Sea back to the States aboard the navy transport Barnett. During that voyage, a secret dispatch containing the decoded Japanese order of battle for the upcoming Midway engagement was selectively distributed.
As Lexington’s XO, Seligman received a copy of the classified dispatch, its blue lines standing out from the other papers on his desk. Versions vary on what happened next. One is that Johnston, being a good reporter and sleuth, observed the document and took note of its contents. Another holds that Seligman shared the very interesting top secret document with Johnston, whom he now considered a close friend and confidant. Either way, Seligman would soon be in very hot water.
On return to the States, Johnston caught t
he first flight to Chicago, his priority to finish and file his story on the Coral Sea drama in which several men, including Mort Seligman and himself, were cast as heroes. But Johnston was also roughing out another story on his L.C. Smith & Corona Standard—bearing the electrifying draft lede that the US Navy had broken the Japanese naval code.
On June 7, while the Midway battle was still in progress, the Chicago Tribune presses cranked out hundreds of thousands of copies of the day’s broadsheet, with Johnston’s article appearing on page A1, above the fold. The headline: “Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea.” The story also appeared in other newspapers that subscribed to the Tribune’s newswire, including conservative Cissy Patterson’s Washington Times-Herald.
The opening lines of the article, which carried a Washington dateline, soon had jaws dropping all over the capital:
Washington, DC, June 7—
The strength of the Japanese forces which the American Navy is battling somewhere west of Midway Island in what is believed to be the war’s greatest naval battle, was well-known in American naval circles, reliable sources in Naval Intelligence disclosed here tonight.
The story named the four carriers of the Japanese striking force and listed the Japanese order of battle. It further noted that all American outposts in the Pacific had been given the advance warning. The Washington dateline on the story was designed to conceal that Johnston in Chicago was the source of the breach, implying instead that the leak was from Naval Intelligence in Washington.
As news of the catastrophic leak settled in, military and political leaders began vying for first blood. An enraged Roosevelt threatened to send marines to Chicago to shut down Tribune Tower, home of the loathed newspaper, which he viewed as a thinly disguised organ of the Republican Party. Roosevelt already famously despised its publisher, Colonel Robert McCormick, a conservative and vocal anti–New Dealer—and old nemesis of the president’s, going all the way back to their boarding school days at Groton School.
The Jersey Brothers Page 15