A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  Fred promised Waldron that he would spend every waking hour aboard ship learning what he needed to know. The Skipper finally relented, signing his transfer papers.

  True to his word, Mears had put his Yale-educated mind to work absorbing the tactical lessons in Waldron’s “bible,” spending hour after hour getting up to speed on things that had been drilled into most of the others over the course of six months.

  To Mears, the pilots in Torpedo Eight were like a big boisterous family. It was also clear they did not yet view him as part of it. Occasionally, the Skipper would take a few minutes to test him on one of his tactical exercises. Fixed with Waldron’s intimidating stare, Mears usually gave the right answer.

  With twelve hours to go before the expected arrival of the enemy fleet, Fred was still waiting for Waldron to decide whether he could fly. Even though he had never landed on a carrier, he was sure he could do it. When it came to flying, he was convinced he could do anything.

  At twenty-six, Fred Mears had faithfully pursued two passions in his young life. The first was flying combat aircraft, the faster and more maneuverable the better. He loved taking an airplane right to the edge. Danger was his ultimate high.

  His second passion was women, and he could afford to indulge them both. Fred wasn’t just any fly jockey. Frederick Mears III was born on Christmas Day 1915, to an influential society family in Seattle, Washington. “Old money,” as the social arbiters used to say. His sisters called him Freddy.

  Fred’s father, Colonel Frederick Mears, was a brilliant engineering officer who had been chosen to oversee the construction of the Alaska Railroad across hundreds of miles of tundra and wilderness. He had created the city of Anchorage, Alaska.

  His uncle was Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who had commanded all the American forces in the Philippines after President Roosevelt ordered General Douglas MacArthur to leave Corregidor. Less than a month earlier, Wainwright had been forced to surrender those forces, and had gone into Japanese captivity.

  Fred had enjoyed a privileged childhood, growing up in an imposing home next to Lake Washington. His upbringing was focused on godliness, service, and intellectual attainment. When he went east to study at Yale, he was exposed to less righteous behavior.

  Perhaps in reaction to the chaste piety enforced at home, Fred discovered that he adored the opposite sex. His passion had nothing to do with courting a life partner. He was entranced with the species. He loved their complexity, their perfumed scents, and their myriad moods. Along with his academic pursuits, he became a student of women. It became his metaphorical major at Yale.

  “Anyone who doesn’t appreciate the varied pleasures a woman adds to a man’s existence,” he wrote in his diary, “hasn’t been without one very long or else is a damn fool.” Fred conducted his alternative “studies” with debutantes in Seattle, feather dancers in Tijuana, Mexico, and lovely movie extras desperate for Hollywood stardom.

  As the war drew closer, the love of flying supplanted his passion for women. He drove every plane as fast as possible, even the ones that weren’t designed for speed. Although he exhibited the unrestrained temperament of a fighter pilot, the Navy put him into the slow-crawling Douglas Devastator. His response was to try to make the torpedo plane act like a fighter.

  All in all, he loved the flier’s life, discovering that he bonded just as easily with his fellow pilots as he had with his female friends. He enjoyed the camaraderie, the endless discussions of flying tactics, and their nights on the prowl together.

  “It’s going to be awfully drunk out the next few days,” he wrote after receiving one weekend pass.

  Sitting in a nightclub after the Pearl Harbor attack, he and three of his closest pals, all Navy pilots, had torn a dollar bill into four parts — one for each man. Each vowed to keep his piece as a lucky talisman. Now, less than six months later, two of the three others were already dead.

  Fred was still waiting for Waldron’s decision on whether he would fly, when the Skipper strode into the crowded ready room. He was carrying a stack of mimeographed pages. The banter suddenly ceased when Waldron began to pass out the sheets to the men sitting at the front of each row. Silently, they all read the single page.

  Just a word to let you know how I feel. We are all ready. 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. I actually believe that under these conditions, we are the best in the world. My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don’t and worst comes to worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make the 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.

  “Don’t worry . . . we’ll be back, Skipper,” said Bill “Abbie” Abercrombie. “I’m leaving for Kansas City in the morning.”

  Abercrombie hated flying the slow-moving Devastators, but he had a knack for relieving tension with his irrepressible sense of humor. Once when they were lost on a training flight, he had radioed, “Any idea how far we are from Kansas City?” Kansas City was his hometown and his lodestar.

  As the pilots got up to leave the ready room, Waldron walked over to Fred Mears.

  “You’re not going on the first strike,” said the Skipper. Trying to soften the blow, he added, “Maybe the third or fourth mission.”

  Fred understood. Only if they took a few losses and were really desperate would he have a chance to see action. Maybe the Skipper was right. It was clear there would be plenty more battles to come.

  Eventide

  WEDNESDAY, 3 JUNE 1942

  NORTHEAST OF MIDWAY ATOLL

  USS HORNET

  TORPEDO SQUADRON EIGHT

  2200

  Most of Waldron’s men were asleep in their berths, or at least making the effort. After a spirited poker game in Grant Teats’s room, Abbie Abercrombie and Grant had ended up the big winners, as usual. Jimmy Owens had taken it on the chin. Whitey and the other players just enjoyed the ride. The bantering didn’t seem any different than in the past, although when the game broke up, the players all shook hands.

  In his stateroom, John Waldron removed a page of stationery from the drawer of his desk and began writing a letter to his wife, Adelaide. Most of the pilots hadn’t taken his advice about writing home. Few, if any, thought they were marked for death.

  At the age of forty-two, Waldron knew mortality was all too real. Death could come at any moment in the air, and he had narrowly escaped it at least six times since winning his wings back in 1927. Adelaide understood.

  He had met Adelaide Wentworth at a Navy dance in Pensacola, her hometown. He immediately began courting her. They were married in 1929, the year the stock market crashed. His Navy career eventually took them all over the country. Along the way, they raised two daughters, Nancy and Anne.

  Adelaide had provided a shield of unconditional love and support through the many lean years. She was the ideal Navy wife, uncomplaining about his long absences, and always ready to help the wives of his younger officers by employing a combination of humor and sympathy to support them during the same tough times she had experienced. Waldron knew she would understand everything he was about to write to her.

  Dear Adelaide,

  There is not a bit of news that I can tell you now except that I am well. I have yours and the children’s pictures here with me all the time and I think of you all most of the time.

  I believe that we will be in battle very soon. I wish we were there today. But, as we are up to the very eve of serious business, I wish to record to you that I am feeling fine. My own morale is excellent and from my continued observation of the squadron, their morale is excellent also. You may rest assured that I will go in with the expectation of coming back in good shape. 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 si
nk 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. I could not be happy otherwise. I know you wish me luck and I believe I will have it.

  You know, Adelaide, in this business of the torpedo attack, I acknowledge we must have a break. I believe that I have the experience and enough Sioux in me to profit by and recognize the break when it comes, and it will come.

  I dislike having the censors read a letter from me such as this, however, at this time I felt I must record the thoughts listed in the foregoing.

  God bless you, dear. You are a wonderful wife and mother. Kiss and love the little girls for me and be of good cheer.

  Love to all from Daddy and Johnny

  I acknowledge we must have a break. He had been fighting for one most of that day. For the last three days. It was fighter protection. That would be the biggest break they could possibly have, and he wasn’t through trying to get it.

  Earlier that day, the pilot of a PBY patrol plane had radioed that he had spotted elements of a Japanese naval task force about seven hundred miles west of Midway. That report was quickly followed by a coded dispatch from Admiral Nimitz in Pearl Harbor that indicated he already knew it wasn’t the Japanese striking force.

  FROM CINCPAC URGENT X THAT IS NOT THE ENEMY STRIKING FORCE X THAT IS THE LANDING FORCE X THE STRIKING FORCE WILL HIT FROM THE NORTHWEST AT DAYLIGHT TOMORROW X

  By then, it was clear to Waldron that the intelligence people had broken the Japanese code. Later in the day, there had been another conference in the wardroom. All the squadron commanders were there with Stanhope Ring and the air staff. Waldron made his case again for giving his torpedo squadron fighter protection. He believed the Devastators needed at least one or two Wildcats to keep the Zeroes off them long enough to get rid of their torpedoes.

  Waldron urged Ring to follow the approach used by Admiral Fletcher’s carriers at the Coral Sea a month earlier, when half of the fighters went in low with the torpedo planes, and half stayed up high with the dive-bombers. Pat Mitchell, who commanded the Hornet’s Wildcat fighter squadron, continued to back Waldron all the way.

  Pete Mitscher, who had been promoted from captain of the Hornet to admiral two days earlier, made the final decision. All ten of the Hornet’s Wildcat fighter planes would stay up to protect Ring and the dive-bombers. Waldron’s squadron would stay in tight formation, but twenty thousand feet below the others. The entire air group would attack together when they found the Japanese.

  Mitscher was convinced the Japanese would be keeping their Zero fighters at higher altitude, and would therefore focus their attacks on the dive-bombers. He made another point. At the Coral Sea battle, the Zeroes had proved faster and more maneuverable than the Wildcats. At higher altitude, the Wildcats would have more maneuvering room.

  Waldron couldn’t believe it. If the Wildcats couldn’t duel with the Zeroes at low altitude, what chance would his Devastators have at less than half the Wildcats’ speed, and particularly if they got caught alone?

  The fight was over. Now he could only follow orders. Back in his stateroom, Waldron finished his letter to Adelaide, and began another one to his young daughter Anne.

  In the Torpedo Eight ready room, Tex Gay was wrapping up his last assignment. As the squadron’s navigation officer, one of his jobs was to make sure every pilot had a mimeographed copy of the charts covering the expected area of operations. Completing the chore, he went back to his stateroom.

  Bill Creamer, his roommate, was sacked out in the upper berth. The stateroom desk was covered with their two latest projects. Creamer was carving a bowl out of koa wood. Tex’s unfinished model of the new TBF Avenger sat next to it. Clearing the mess away, he sat down to write an entry in his daily diary.

  June 3: Everybody is standing by ready. I have checked my plane until I know every bolt on it. It’s in the pink. I hope I can get about forty-five inches of mercury out of it. I may need it. Got some spare rounds for Huntington and had Watson put the other 350 rounds in my fixed peashooter. Things are oiled and ready.

  In another squadron stateroom, Rusty Kenyon decided to take the Skipper’s advice and write a letter home. Ever since the Hornet left Pearl Harbor, he had seemed increasingly nervous to some of the other pilots. They didn’t know that his wife, Brownie, was about to give birth to their first child. When he was finished with the letter to her, he sealed it in an envelope.

  Grant Teats had already written one to his parents. Upbeat and sensible, it took a different tone from some of the others. There was no hint of concern about his immediate future, only a quick squaring away of his affairs.

  All my bills, every one, is paid . . . income tax, gas, insurance, O-club, are all paid. My bank account is located at Southern bank of Norfolk. . . . Enclosed you will find a check that will help out with incidentals. I was lucky in poker last night. . . . My civilian clothes are packed in a large box belonging to Whitey Moore. I guess this is about all. If I had a drink now it would be a toast to the Japanese navy. Bottoms up. Write soon.

  Love, Grant.

  At least one other pilot in the squadron was still awake, too.

  Bill Evans had been busy organizing all of the material he had written since starting flight training before Pearl Harbor: copies of his letters, his poems, the whimsical sketches, everything. It made up a thick packet, and he thought some of it was good. Finding a mimeographed copy of an old Hornet Plan of the Day, he scrawled a line on the back and placed it on top of the pile.

  Respectfully dedicated to those of the confused generation who, being born during a world war, were taught that Peace was the only touchstone to man’s happiness; and fought another war to make it so.

  He had finished his latest poem. He usually continued to make changes to his work as he thought of more evocative words and phrases. This time he decided to leave it alone. The essence of it was there in a few of the lines from the longer poem.

  TRANSITION

  To this day have been given in perfect normalcy

  Twenty-four hours, a sunrise, sunset, starlight,

  Waking hours and sleep.

  In all respects men walk quietly, speak as usual,

  Draw breath with the same regularity that for every

  Minute they have always breathed.

  Magazines, poker games, and phonograph records;

  Someone whistles “Stardust” because years ago

  He learned to like a song and now

  Its melody stays with him forever.

  For this is forever.

  In the past twenty-four hours,

  All are facing for the first time,

  Despite statements of a few to the contrary,

  The magnitude of war . . .

  Ahead, just beyond each wave that greets the bow,

  A new life begins, newer than any

  Can by the coldness of intellect imagine.

  A life where nations play at gambling

  For the World,

  And each player antes its life blood.

  Yesterday we were veterans of all the life behind,

  Today some giant hand wipes clean the slate

  And each is born in equal magnificence,

  From which he may build or destroy himself . . .

  WEDNESDAY, 3 JUNE 1942

  EASTERN ISLAND, MIDWAY ATOLL

  TORPEDO EIGHT DETACHMENT

  2200

  Although he craved a few hours of sleep, Langdon Fieberling decided to walk over to the enlisted men’s encampment. Arriving there, he asked the chief to bring together the enlisted crewmen who would be flying in the morning.

  Up to that point, everything that Harry Ferrier had learned about their mission was through the rumor mill. That was enough to make some of the other men pretty apprehensive about their chances.

  If Fieberling shared their assessment, it wasn’t reflected in his words now. Standing tall in the darkness, he sought to put the
m at ease, his voice calm and reassuring.

  Harry thought the lieutenant could almost walk on water. Not only was he a great pilot, but he was one of the few officers Harry had met who treated him as if his opinion had real value. Just a day earlier, Fieberling had confidentially asked Harry whether one of the enlisted men, Howard Pitt, was capable of fulfilling his duties as the radioman–tail gunner in Ozzie Gaynier’s aircraft. Harry assured him Pitt would do a good job. The lieutenant accepted his advice.

  Fieberling now told them that the enemy would arrive after dawn the next morning. As far as he knew, the forces they had on the island were everything there was to stop them. According to the briefing he had received, the American carriers were back protecting Hawaii.

  “I would just ask you to do your jobs, and we ought to come out all right,” he said.

  As he talked, his confident attitude seemed to infuse itself into the little group. Harry could feel it, too. Tomorrow, he would be ready for whatever they came up against.

  Across the encampment, Ozzie Gaynier was finishing a last letter to Rete. If anything did happen to him, he wanted her to know just how much she meant to him. He sealed it and buried the letter with the others he had written in one of the metal ammo boxes near his tent.

  All of the men in the air squadrons had been told to bury their valuables. In the event the Japanese took the island, there was to be no evidence of which American units had been there.

  Sitting nearby, Ensign Vic Lewis tried not to dwell on what might happen to them at dawn. Like Gaynier and the others, he hoped to do his best, no matter what the risk. For most of his life, he had not been a risk-taker.

  In some ways, Vic was like the innocent and determined young Jimmy Stewart in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He was so earnest and polite that his mother would sometimes say, “Gee, I hope he has fun sometimes.”

  To earn the money he needed for college, Vic worked at the Howard Johnson’s near his Randolph, Massachusetts, home, wearing a white shirt and tie, and washing dishes. After his ten-hour shift, he loved to cool off by going for a swim at a local pond.