The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  In the confusion Yamamoto forgot that he had also ordered the submarine I-168 to shell Midway. Commander Tanabe had been poking around the atoll for several days now, in perfect position to help out. Under the plan, he was to open the show and keep firing until Kurita took over at 2:00. All very well, but when the cruisers were called off, nothing went out to Tanabe. Now he lay on the surface, antenna up, listening in vain for any further instructions. Around 1:20 he quietly glided into firing position.

  A FLASH to the south—a sharp crack in the night— punctured the uneasy silence on Midway. A shell screamed overhead and landed in the lagoon. Then another. At Jim Muri’s B-26, the crew jumped up with a start, grabbed their BARs and dived for a slit trench. It was the same everywhere—men racing for rifles and shelter. Most of the aviators had done plenty of bombing, but they had never heard a shell before. The sound was anything but pleasant.

  At 1:23 Battery C began firing star shells … 1:24, searchlight No. 102 picked up the sub,’ bearing 110° … 1:25, Batteries B, D and E thundered into action.

  For three minutes the duel continued. The Marine guns belted out 42 rounds; the sub rather casually lobbed eight shells into the lagoon. Then at 1:28 it submerged as unexpectedly as it had opened fire. On Sand Island a sailor sighed with relief and swore he’d take back everything he had ever said about the Marines.

  ADMIRAL Kurita’s four big cruisers were less than 80 miles from Midway when he got the message to cancel the bombardment and rendezvous with Yamamoto instead. In many ways it was a relief. The whole business looked more and more like suicide. Yet some were still eager; a squad of volunteers stood ready to sneak ashore and blow up installations.

  But now they were heading back, steaming northwest at 28 knots in the dim moonlight. The flagship Kumano led, then the Suzuya, the Mikuma, and finally the Mogami. A pair of destroyers—the Arashio and Asashio—panted along in the rear.

  It was 2:15 when the Kumano spotted a surfaced submarine just off her starboard bow. Using her low-powered directional signal lamp, she flashed “Red! Red!”—meaning a 45° emergency turn to port. On the bridge of the Mogami the navigator, Lieutenant Commander Masaki Yamauchi, elbowed the officer on duty aside, took over this tricky maneuver himself. As he turned, he thought he saw too much distance between himself and the Mikuma, next up the line. He adjusted course a little to starboard. Suddenly, to his horror, he saw he wasn’t looking at the Mikuma at all, but at the Suzuya, two ships up the line. The Mikuma lay in between, directly ahead.

  “Port the helm … hard a-port … Full astern!” The commands came in quick succession, but it was all too late. With a shower of sparks the Mogami’s bow ground into the Mikuma’s port quarter. The two ships shuddered, then drifted apart. The Mikuma got off lightly—only a ruptured fuel tank —but the Mogami lost 40 feet of her bow. Everything back to the first turret was bent to port at right angles. Painfully she inched up to 12 knots again.

  That wasn’t enough for Admiral Kurita. He had an appointment with Yamamoto. He detached the Mikuma and both destroyers to provide escort, then hurried on northwest with the Kurnano and Suzuya.

  To Admiral Yamamoto, steaming east toward the rendezvous point, the collision must have seemed a relatively minor matter. Nothing could compare with the step he took at 2:55 A.M. For it was then that he finally faced the inevitable and radioed all commands, “Occupation of AF is canceled.” He had reached the end of the line as far as invading Midway was concerned. When Commander Watanabe sought to query him, he simply answered, “Sashi sugi”—roughly meaning, “The price is too high.”

  Before sunrise he made another decision almost as hard. At 4:50 he again faced the facts and ordered the hulk of his beloved Akagi scuttled. After this night he was ready for anything—even the fiasco of having two of his finest cruisers lumber together in this clumsy fashion.

  LIEUTENANT COMMANDER John W. Murphy, skipper of the submarine Tambor, adjusted his periscope and carefully studied the two cruisers he had been shadowing. It was 5:00 A.M. now, and he could see them much better. One of them had lost about 40 feet of her bow.

  Murphy had been playing hide-and-seek with these ships, along with several others, for nearly three hours. He was part of Admiral English’s submarine screen, and he was patrolling on the surface when he first saw them at 2:15A.M. They were 89 miles from Midway and heading away from the base.

  But that was all he could tell. They might be Japs—or U.S. ships chasing Nagumo. He ordered right rudder and began following a parallel course. The minutes ticked by, and still he couldn’t figure them out. At 3:00 he finally sent a contact report anyhow, calling them simply “many unidentified ships.”

  Daylight solved his problem. He could see only two of them now, but at 4:12 he definitely made out the truncated stacks of Japanese warships. Next moment he thought he was spotted and made an emergency dive. He lay low for 25 minutes, then popped up for a look with his periscope. By now he could see they were Mogami-type cruisers, and he radioed this news too. It was at this point he noticed that one had a damaged bow. And that was about all he saw, for they were steaming west, moving faster than he could follow.

  MIDWAY was ready to believe the worst. The Tambor’s contact report didn’t say which way the “many unidentified ships” were going, but “89 miles” was mighty close. It seemed all too likely that the invasion was still on. At 4:30 A.M. Brooke Allen led eight B-17s to counter the threat. But the early morning weather was so thick they saw nothing. By 6:00 they were aimlessly circling Kure.

  It was a PBY that produced the first hot information. At 6:30 it reported “two battleships streaming oil,” heading west about 125 miles west of Midway. Clearly they were retiring; a surge of relief swept the base.

  The first Marine dive bombers roared off in pursuit at 7:00. VMSB-241 was now down to 12 planes; Captain Marshall Tyler was the squadron’s third skipper in two days; but the men were as aggressive as ever.

  Forty-five minutes out they picked up the oil slick—a broad inviting avenue leading straight west. Twenty minutes later they were there. Dead ahead, already tossing up antiaircraft shells, were two big warships—one of them trailing the oil, the other with a smashed bow. A couple of destroyers hovered nearby.

  The Marines began attacking at 8:08. First Tyler dived with the six remaining SBDs, but no hits were scored. Then Captain Fleming arrived with the Vindicators, slanting down in a glide-bombing run. No hits here either, but on the way in, Fleming’s plane began to burn. Somehow he kept his lead, made his run, dropped his bomb. Then—a blazing comet—he plunged into the after turret of his target.

  “VERY brave,” thought Captain Akira Soji of the Mogami, watching the U.S. bomber crash into the Mikuma’s turret. His own ship took a handful of near-misses, one about 10 yards away. Splinters riddled the bridge and stack, but no serious damage.

  The Mikuma fared worse. The crash dive started a fire that soon spread to the intake of the starboard engine room. Flames were sucked down, and the fumes suffocated the engineers.

  The two cruisers continued plodding westward at 12 knots. But the Mikuma was no longer just keeping the Mogami company. Thanks to that American flier, she now couldn’t do any better herself.

  ADMIRAL Spruance, too, had his eye on these Japanese cruisers. The Tambor’s first report reached him a little after 4:00, relayed from CINCPAC. Like nearly everyone else, he felt the invasion might be still on. At 4:20 he turned southwest and raced toward Midway at 25 knots.

  By 9:30 it was clear his fears were groundless. Spruance now eased off to the west, in good position either to attack these damaged ships or go after what was left of Nagumo. Important information was coming from that direction too. At 8:00 a PBY had reported a burning carrier trailing two battleships, three cruisers and four destroyers. For some reason the message didn’t reach Task Force 16 till late in the morning, but once Spruance had it he made his choice. The carrier was 275 miles away, the contact was cold, but it was still the “prime target.” At 11:15 he t
urned northwest and began a long stern chase. If a carrier was up there at 8:00 A.M., he’d take a chance on it now.

  COMMANDER Aiso decided it was high time to leave the Hiryu’s engine room. He felt it was about 8:00 A.M.—hours since his last contact with the bridge. Meanwhile the fires had died down, a torpedo had slammed into the ship, and now Ensign Mandai—up on the next deck battling a blaze in some rice sacks—was yelling down to get out: the Hiryu was beginning to sink.

  Aiso led some 50 men up through a hatch, where they joined Mandai and his fire-fighting party. They found themselves on the port side of the ship, in a long steel corridor that led nowhere. The one exit was sealed, and the only other opening was a tiny pinhole in the inboard wall of the corridor—apparently a flaw in the weld. Here they could peek out onto the hangar deck, empty and strangely flooded with sunshine.

  Aiso decided that their only hope was to break through the wall by the peephole. Here the steel was very thin, and the daylight spelled escape. They found a hammer and chisel and went to work. Gradually they punched through a hole about a yard wide—just big enough for one man at a time.

  Squeezing through, they emerged on the deserted hangar deck. The forward end was wide open—the result of the hit that blasted the forward elevator—hence the sunlight streaming through. The men now worked their way up to the flight deck and found that deserted too. Looking up at the mast, they saw even the flag was gone. The halyard flapped loosely in the morning breeze. To Ensign Mandai it said more eloquently than words that the ship had been abandoned.

  Mandai idly looked into the hole where the forward elevator had been. Sea water was swirling onto the hangar deck—covering the spot they just left. He alerted Commander Aiso, who called the men together. Aiso told them the situation looked hopeless and he simply wanted to thank them for doing their duty so well.

  Most of the men slumped down on the flight deck—that was as good a place as any to await the end. Mandai dozed off—then was awakened by a kick in the ribs. To his amazement several other survivors had now appeared from the quarterdeck—an aircraft mechanic, four or five firemen. They had escaped from below a good deal earlier, and they brought exciting news.

  It seemed that when they first reached deck a destroyer was just leaving. They frantically signaled her, and she blinkered back. Nobody understood code, but it might mean help later. Even more exciting: around 6:30 a Japanese plane flew over—a plane with wheels. It could only have come from the carrier Hosho … which must mean Yamamoto was near. Suddenly it was worth trying to stay alive.

  Aiso led all hands aft and down to the boat deck. Here he found two launches, plus a 30-foot cutter already, lying in the water just astern. Perhaps they could float around in these until help came. But the Hiryu was now sinking fast by the bow, and he soon realized they could never get the launches off before she went down. He hastily divided the men into two groups, told them to jump from the stern and make for the cutter.

  Ensign Mandai leaped as far out as he could, grabbed at a dangling line. It was attached to nothing, and he plummeted into the sea. Popping up, he turned and looked back at the Hiryu. There, high above him, were the carrier’s great bronze propellers, dripping and gleaming in the sun. He swam for dear life … heard a great detonation … turned again and saw only the empty sea.

  When the men looked at their watches afterward (one of them a Mickey Mouse watch), they found that all had stopped between 9:07 and 9:15—thus fixing the time when the Hiryu finally sank. But right now their only concern was to get to the cutter still floating nearby. Thirty-nine of them made it, including Commander Aiso and Ensign Mandai. Aiso took charge, announced that they would wait right here till help came. The plane with the wheels would alert the fleet; Admiral Yamamoto himself was on the way.

  Actually, Yamamoto had no intention of coming. He was, in fact, shocked by the report from the plane with the wheels. It looked as though somebody had botched the job of scuttling the Hiryu, and what could be worse than to have her fall into American hands? He radioed Admiral Nagumo to make sure she was sunk.

  Meanwhile another derelict was occupying Yamamoto’s attention. At 6:52—just a few minutes before the report on the Hiryu—an intriguing message came in from the Chikuma’s No. 4 plane, off to the east scouting the U.S. fleet: “Sight an enemy Yorktown class carrier listing to starboard [sic] and drifting in position bearing 111° distance 240 miles from my take-off point. One destroyer is in the vicinity.”

  The I-168, still patrolling off Midway, was immediately ordered to leave station and destroy this target. Commander Tanabe pulled out his charts and began his calculations. He figured that the carrier was only 150 miles away—no trouble reaching her. The real trick was the approach. He wanted to come in from the west at dawn. Then the carrier would be nicely silhouetted while he remained hidden in the dark. He carefully plotted the course and speed that would do just that, then turned the I-168 away from Midway and headed north-northeast.

  No ONE on the destroyer Hughes actually saw the Japanese search plane. It was just a blip on the radar, picked up at 6:26 A.M. as the ship continued her lonely job of guarding the Yorktown. Commander Ramsey ordered the crew to stand by to repel air attack, but no one ever came. The blip just hovered there, 20 miles to the west, for about ten minutes. Then it gradually faded away.

  The incident made the men all the more nervous when at 7:41 machine-gun bullets began cutting the water off the port side of the Yorktown. At first Signalman Peter Karetka was sure some Jap had sneaked in for a strafing run, but when no plane appeared, he knew it couldn’t be that. Commander Ramsey thought it might be a gun going off, overheated by a smoldering fire somewhere.

  More splashes, and the men suddenly realized it could only be somebody still alive on the Yorktown, trying to attract attention. The Hughes stood in close. There, sure enough, was a man waving from the port side of the hangar deck. Ramsey lowered his motor whaleboat, and the boarding party soon found Seaman Norman Pichette, now slumped unconscious beside his gun. He had a bad stomach wound and was wrapped in a sheet. They were all back on the Hughes by 8:35, and moments later the ship’s doctor was cutting away the sheet. This seemed to rouse Pichette, who came to long enough to mumble there was still another man alive, lying in the Yorktown’s sick bay.

  Again the whaleboat chugged over. This time it returned with Seaman George Weise, who had fractured his skull when blown off the smokestack. Weise never knew how he got to sick bay; he just remembered dimly hearing the alarm and the call to abandon ship. It was dark; the Yorktown was listing heavily; the ladder topside hung loose at a crazy angle. In the blur of shapes and shadows trying to get the wounded out, he recalled someone coming over to help him. Then he heard, or thought he heard, a voice say, “Leave him and let’s go—he’s done for anyway.”

  The last thing he remembered was sitting up in his bunk and swearing a blue streak … but by then everyone was gone. For hours he lay helpless in the dark, semiconscious and never able to move. Finally he became vaguely aware that Pichette was in the room too, also left behind in some fashion. Pichette was very badly off, but at least he could move. In the end it was he who found the strength to get up, wrap himself in his sheet, and stagger up three decks for help.

  Were there any others? The men in the motor whaleboat thought so. They reported strange tapping sounds from deep inside the carrier, suggesting men trapped below. Ramsey sent the boat back again—this time with orders to explore everywhere. They found important code materials but no human beings. The tapping, it turned out, was just the sound of creaking steel as the Yorktown wallowed in the swell. No one else was alive on the ship.

  But someone was very much alive in the water. While the whaleboat was off exploring the Yorktown, the men on the Hughes were amazed to see a man in a yellow rubber raft paddling furiously toward them. He turned out to be Ensign Harry Gibbs of Fighting 3. Gibbs had been shot down defending the Yorktown the day before. He spent a long night in his raft, then sighted the carrier
at sunrise. He paddled six miles to get back to his ship.

  Around 10:00 the mine sweeper Vireo turned up, and Ramsey arranged for a tow. A line was rigged, and by early afternoon they were under way, heading east at about two knots. The Yorktown yawed dreadfully. She seemed unwilling to leave the scene of battle. At times, in fact, she appeared to be pulling the Vireo backward.

  Other destroyers began turning up—the Gwin, the Monaghan. With more muscle on hand, a jettisoning party went over to the Yorktown, began dropping loose gear overboard to help straighten her up. During the afternoon Ramsey also sent a message to CINCPAC, urging the organization of a salvage party. The carrier was holding her own; he was sure she could be saved.

  Admiral Fletcher and Captain Buckmaster needed no prodding from CINCPAC. They were working hard on their own to save the Yorktown. But it wasn’t a simple matter. By the morning of the 5th, Task Force 17 was 150 miles east of the carrier, and over 2,000 survivors were scattered among six different destroyers. It would take time to cull out the specialists needed for a proper salvage party and then get them back to the scene.

  One by one the destroyers came alongside the Astoria, and the men needed were transferred by breeches buoy to the cruiser. Here they were organized, briefed, and transferred again to the destroyer Hammann, which would take them back. They were mostly engineers and technicians, but there was no lack of volunteers among the cooks and yeomen. Everybody wanted to go. Finally guards had to be placed at the highlines to keep useless personnel from sneaking over in their determination to get back to the “Old Lady.”

  Midafternoon, and the Hammann started off. On board were Captain Buckmaster and a crack salvage team which, with the addition of a few from the Hughes, totaled 29 officers and 141 men. Escorted by the destroyers Balch and Benham, they reached the Yorktown shortly after 2:00 A.M. on the 6th.