Then came another piece of stunning news. Shortly before 0800, word reached Nagumo on the bridge that one of his search plane pilots had located an American task force of ten warships to the northeast of Midway.
There was no confirmation that the task force included aircraft carriers, but his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Kusaka, pointed out that it was highly unlikely there would be a task force in that area without at least one of them.
To Kusaka, it appeared to be another cruel twist of fate. The search plane pilot who had sighted the American task force had been delayed thirty minutes before taking off with the other search aircraft earlier that morning. If he had left on schedule, this new information would have arrived while Nagumo still had his reserve force of torpedo planes and bombers spotted on his flight decks and armed with ship-killing ordnance. Instead, they had been ordered below to be rearmed with contact explosives for the second Midway strike.
Nagumo acted immediately. Remembering Admiral Yamamoto’s stern warning about keeping half of his air fleet in reserve for just such a development, he ordered his carrier crews to remove the bombs they had just attached to his planes, and rearm them with torpedoes.
While the new work went on, more attacks arrived from the American air garrison at Midway. After the 0700 attack by the torpedo planes, a group of American dive-bombers had arrived from Midway, followed by a flight of B-17s that harassed his carriers with bombs dropped from very high altitude. Although the dive-bombers had been driven off by his Zero fighters, and no hits were scored by any of the other American bombers, the attack had kept his fleet from landing their own planes right away after their first strike against Midway.
At 0820, the same search plane pilot who had found the American task force of ten ships reported sighting a carrier. Sinking the American carrier now became Nagumo’s first priority.
All of these delays had been excruciating. None of his ships had been damaged, much less sunk, but it seemed as if fate was conspiring against him. If he hadn’t decided to rearm the planes after receiving the attack by the six torpedo planes, he would have been able to launch his whole reserve force of one hundred aircraft against the American carrier.
Instead, he had had to stand on his bridge and wait. Now the process of rearming the reserve force with torpedoes was finally completed. He was prepared to launch his counterstrike against the American carrier as soon as his own planes from the Midway attack could be landed.
All but the last few were back aboard the four carriers by 0915. He only needed to order his fully loaded attack planes brought up to the flight decks, and then turn into the wind to launch them. If the striking force received no more threats in the meantime, his planes would quickly be airborne toward the American carrier.
Japanese Striking Force
Torpedo Squadron Eight
0917
Staring into the distance, Waldron suddenly saw the wispy smoke columns dead ahead of them. The enemy ships began to take shape as dark silhouettes on the crystalline sea.
To Tex Gay, it looked like they almost covered the ocean. As the squadron closed in on the enemy task force, he could see three carriers in the first group, and a fourth following behind. There were battleships and cruisers and destroyers all over the place. Maybe all that guff about the Skipper’s Sioux intuition had been right after all. He had gone straight to the enemy fleet like they had been on the end of a plumb line.
Waldron was on the radio again. He was attempting to contact Commander Stanhope Ring to let him know that they had located the Japanese carriers.
“Stanhope from Johnny One,” Gay heard him say. “Enemy sighted.”
There was no response.
“Stanhope from Johnny One . . . answer,” he called again. “Enemy sighted.”
Flying behind Commander Ring in the Hornet air group formation, Leroy Quillen, the radioman-gunner in the dive-bomber piloted by Ensign K. B. White, heard Waldron loud and clear.
“Stanhope from Johnny One,” he repeated once more.
As Waldron continued leading Torpedo Eight toward the vanguard of the enemy striking force, Tex Gay observed that one of the four Japanese carriers was in the process of landing a plane. Remembering that the original attack plan called for hitting the carriers while their aircraft were off bombing Midway, his first reaction was, “Oh Christ, we’re late.”
Waldron was back again on the radio, this time talking to his men.
“We will go in,” he said, sounding very calm. “We won’t turn back. We will attack. Good luck.”
The Skipper put his nose down before leveling off at about five hundred feet as he headed in. The rest of the squadron followed him in perfect precision, almost like synchronized swimmers. He had told them that they might have to go in alone, and now the worst had come.
His words gave Tex confidence that they had a fighting chance to get in and drop their torpedoes, then light out for home. A moment later, the sky around them was filled with Zeroes. The enemy fighters swung around in half loops and wingovers to gain better firing positions.
“Johnny One under attack,” Waldron radioed.
From the bridge of the carrier Akagi, Commander Minoru Genda, Admiral Nagumo’s operations officer, watched with almost detached fascination as the fifteen torpedo planes came on. The slow-moving Devastators reminded him of a flock of waterfowl crossing a lake. To Genda, it was sheer idiocy for them to attack without fighter protection, and a total violation of the first rule of war, which was to concentrate one’s forces.
At last they have come, Genda thought to himself, having wondered when they would arrive ever since the American carrier force had been sighted. It puzzled him that they were coming in so low.
As the Zeroes swirled madly around the Devastators, it seemed to Tex Gay that he was flying in slow motion. The enemy fighters appeared to have three times his speed, and were darting in and out of their tight formation like backcountry prairie falcons.
Up ahead to the right, he saw one of the Devastators drop like a hurtling stone into the sea, its two-man crew gone in almost an instant. It happened so fast that Tex had no idea whose plane it was. A few seconds later, another Devastator went down on his left.
“Is that a Zero or one of our planes?” came Waldron’s voice on the radio.
Tex radioed back that it was a Devastator.
The Zeroes were concentrating on the lead planes in the formation as Torpedo Eight continued boring in toward the nearest Japanese carriers. Tex tried to keep his Devastator steady and straight so that his crewman, Bob Huntington, had a clear and stable field of fire. That also made them easier prey.
He watched as another one of the Devastators blew up in a shower of flame and debris. They were past the airborne wreckage of men and plane a moment later. The dwindling formation was still miles from the carriers when yet another Devastator did a slow half roll and crashed into the sea on its back, disintegrating when it hit the water.
Bob Huntington came on the intercom.
“Let’s go back and help, sir,” he said.
There was nothing they could do to help. Tex could only press on with the attack, even if they were the last ones left. Those were the Skipper’s orders. There would be time for mourning their losses later.
Two Zeroes moved in to attack him, one from behind and the other from the port side. He could feel machine gun bullets thudding into the armor plate behind his bucket seat. A second pattern raked his instrument panel and blasted several holes in the windshield.
He heard Bob Huntington cry out on the intercom. Turning his head for a quick look, he saw him slumped down in his seat, motionless. When he turned forward again, the Devastator that had been flying alongside him had disappeared.
In the distance, Tex saw that the carriers had all swung to the west, heading away from them to reduce their target profile. Shoving the throttle forward, he watched the air speed indicator slowly begin to climb. Waldron’s voice was still coming through his earphones, fast and furious.
“There’s two fighters in the water,” the Skipper had radioed at one point. “See that splash . . . I’d give a million to know who done that.”
In the tail compartment of his Dauntless dive-bomber far to the north, Leroy Quillen was listening to Waldron’s excited words as they came through the radio. He wondered why no one in the group was responding to Waldron’s calls.
“My two wingmen are going in,” came Waldron’s voice for the last time.
Then it was his turn.
The Skipper’s plane was out in front of the remaining Devastators, all alone except for the attacking Zeroes. As Tex watched, Waldron’s plane suddenly burst into flames. Fire quickly enveloped the fuselage, and the aircraft began gliding down toward the sea, trailing a thick cloud of smoke and fire.
The Skipper suddenly stood up in the blazing cockpit as if he was riding a fiery chariot. In the plane’s final moments, he thrust his leg out onto the right wing. Then the plane hit the water and he was gone.
Bill Evans never knew which Japanese pilot had killed him. He probably would have wanted the chance to write down what those last seconds were like, the sounds of the screaming engine, the flashing images, the colors of the tracer bullets hammering into his fuselage. But he would never have the opportunity. At twenty-three, he had run out of time. A hint of smoke temporarily marked the place where he went into the sea. A few moments later, it disappeared.
Northwest of Japanese Striking Force
Hornet Dive-Bombing Squadron
Ruff Johnson
0927
Leroy Quillen wasn’t the only one listening to Waldron’s urgent radio calls. Lieutenant Commander Ruff Johnson, leading the Hornet dive-bomber squadron on the left wing of Ring’s formation, was given word of the transmissions and realized that on their present course, they were on a flight to nowhere.
Using his plotting board, he quickly drew a southeasterly interception course based on a rough calculation of where he thought the Japanese fleet had to be. Swinging out of the formation, he led his seventeen-plane squadron in a turn to the southeast.
Ensign Roy Gee, a young pilot from Salt Lake City, was flying in the second section behind Lieutenant Commander Johnson. The resourceful Gee had monitored the group’s course throughout the flight. Until his squadron began its turn to the southeast, the Hornet air group hadn’t deviated from the course it had started out on almost two hours earlier. Gee hoped they might still find the Japanese fleet before it was too late.
Stanhope Ring watched them go. His fighters had already left. Of the fifty-nine planes that had originally made up the group, only the dive-bombers in Walt Rodee’s squadron remained with him. He signaled one of his wingmen to fly over to Rodee and signal him to stay in formation.
Japanese Striking Force
Tex Gay
0934
They were all gone. Fourteen pilots, fourteen crewmen.
The indestructible Grant Teats, who would no longer have to worry about Diana’s emotional distress. Rusty Kenyon, who would never have the chance to hold his unborn child. Whitey Moore, who would never have his mountain farm in West Virginia. Abbie Abercrombie, who would never return to his beloved Kansas City. And Bill Evans, who would never write his book on the meaning of their sacrifice.
All of their dreams were dead. Along with those of Moose Moore, Jimmy Owens, Bob Miles, Bill Creamer, George Campbell, Jeff Woodson, Hal Ellison, Jack Gray, and the Skipper. And Horace Dobbs, Tom Pettry, Amelio Maffei, Otway Creasy, Ronald Fisher, Bernie Phelps, Bill Sawhill, Frank Polston, Max Calkins, George Field, Darwin Clark, Ross Bibb Jr., Hollis Martin, and “Pic” Picou.
Tex Gay was the last one left.
With Bob Huntington dead or unconscious in the rear seat, there was no longer any need for Tex to fly straight and level in order to provide his gunner a stable field of fire. He began jinking the plane, side-slipping between the Zeroes’ machine gun bursts, drawing ever closer to the nearest carrier. The words of the Skipper kept replaying in his mind. If there is only one man left, I want him to go in and get a hit.
Tex had just opened fire with his nose gun at one of the Japanese fighters when a machine gun bullet from the Zero attacking him from behind grazed his left arm. The hand immediately went numb.
Up ahead, the Japanese cruisers and destroyers screening the carriers opened fire with their antiaircraft batteries. As soon as the barrage began, the swarming Zeroes darted away out of the line of fire.
Black bursts began mushrooming on both sides of his wings as the tracers sought him out. By some miracle, none of the shells hit him. The plane was bucking like a wild horse in the turbulent air as he passed over the screening ships and bored in toward the nearest carrier.
Using his right hand, he reached over and pulled back on the throttle, slowing the plane to eighty knots, which Waldron had always said was the ideal launching speed. Since this was the first torpedo he had ever launched, he wanted to make sure he got it right.
As he closed to within a thousand yards of the nearest carrier, it began swinging to the right to avoid his torpedo. Remembering his plotting exercises, Tex swung to the ship’s port side for a higher percentage shot. Cutting across the bow, he headed back around in a tight turn and took aim slightly forward of the carrier’s port bow.
When he punched the torpedo release button, nothing happened.
The electronic controls had been shot out. With his left hand numb, he jammed his knees together to hold the control stick in place, and reached over to pull out the emergency cable release lever with his right hand. He ripped it out by the roots.
Tex hoped the torpedo had gone because the carrier was now dead ahead of him, filling the screen of his windshield. He saw Japanese sailors running in all directions as the Devastator came screaming in toward the port side, just clearing the flight deck with a few feet to spare. Glancing up toward the bridge, he saw a Japanese officer wildly waving his arms in the air.
He knew that the antiaircraft batteries on the starboard side of the ship were waiting for him to cross so they could knock him out of the air. If he went that way, the Devastator would be an easy target.
Banking to the right, he flew down the carrier flight deck toward the stern of the ship. The flight deck was dotted with planes, gas hoses, and bomb trolleys. For a split second, he thought about crashing into them and setting the whole carrier ablaze. A moment later he was past the fantail and banking left to make his escape.
Flying low above the water, he passed between two Japanese cruisers and out beyond the task force destroyer screen. Another flock of Zeroes was waiting for him as soon as he came through the ships’ last barrage of antiaircraft fire.
The plane was staggering along when a twenty-millimeter cannon shell blew apart his left rudder pedal and passed through into the engine compartment, setting it on fire. He felt a jolt of searing pain in his left leg as flames came surging back through the torn firewall.
There was no hope for the plane now. He was going in. Using the elevators, he kept the nose up as the Devastator dropped toward the sea. Using his right hand, he reached over to the left to cut the power switches.
The tip of his right wing hit water first, and the plane cartwheeled forward, slamming the cockpit hood shut above him. Black water was already flushing around his waist by the time he had unbuckled his shoulder straps.
The plane was going fast. As the nose dropped beneath the surface, Tex fought to release the jammed cockpit hood. It wouldn’t move. Sitting on the bullet-shattered instrument panel, he tried to shove the hood along its track with his one good hand, but it wouldn’t come free. He was trapped.
Northwest of Japanese Striking Force
Hornet Dive-Bombing Squadron
Walt Rodee
0940
Lieutenant Commander Walt Rodee had finally seen enough.
His squadron’s dive-bombers were now running dangerously short of fuel. He decided it was time to go home. He signaled to the planes in his squadron to
follow him as he turned out of formation. Coming around 180 degrees, he began leading them back on a reciprocal course toward the Hornet. Ring’s wingman departed with them.
Stanhope Cotton Ring continued flying west at 265 degrees, all alone.
Tex Gay
Crashed in the Sea
0942
The seawater was up to his chin. In panic, he stood on the instrument panel and drove his upper body up against the jammed cockpit hood. It slowly moved back two feet, just enough for him to slip through the opening and reach the surface as the plane started to disappear.
The Plexiglas hoods over the middle and rear compartments were still wide open. As the fuselage slid beneath the surface, he reached into the rear compartment to see if Bob Huntington might be still alive. He began trying to unbuckle Bob’s flight harness while watching the seawater around his young gunner’s chest turn dull red. Still strapped to his seat, Bob slipped from his grasp and went down with the plane.
West of Midway Atoll
The Last Avenger
0944
Whatever intuition Bert Earnest still possessed had told him it was time to turn east toward the sun. The moment had occurred almost an hour earlier. It had just felt right to change course to the east. Without a compass or any other instruments, all he had to go on was instinct.
The consequences of being wrong were obvious. If he overshot the tiny atoll of Midway, the next mass of land ahead of them would be Pearl Harbor, more than twelve hundred miles away. He wasn’t sure he had enough gas to even reach Midway.
Having turned east, he and Harry saw nothing but ocean for miles in every direction. On and on they flew, searching vainly for the wake of an American ship or the hint of a landmass on the far horizon. As time passed, he began to consider the increasing likelihood that they would have to put the plane down in the sea. Although the water looked calm, there was very little chance that search planes would come looking for them to the west of Midway.
A Dawn Like Thunder Page 14