A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  In frustration, he decided to climb through the cloud cover to see if something might be visible from a higher altitude. Rolling the trim tab wheel with his fingers, he took the battered plane up to four thousand feet.

  Breaking through the clouds, he and Harry began scanning the sky ahead of them. Bert felt a shiver of excitement as he looked toward the southeast and saw what appeared to be black smoke.

  He headed toward it, dropping down through the clouds as they drew closer. Emerging beneath the clouds, he could see that the smoke was coming from a massive oil or gasoline fire. The island could only be Midway.

  It looked like they were going to make it.

  With his radio shot out, there was no way for him to contact the airfield on Eastern Island to identify himself. As he approached Midway, Bert carefully went through the designated recognition turns that would identify the Avenger as a friendly aircraft. After coming this far, he didn’t want some trigger-happy Marine gunner to shoot them down.

  He changed course to land on the north-south runway, the same one he had taken off from early that morning. A lifetime ago. With no flap controls, he throttled back the engine as the plane slowly descended. Next, he pushed the undercarriage lever to lower the landing gear.

  Nothing happened. The mechanical indicators in the cockpit showed that both wheels were still in their recessed compartments. Reaching down to the emergency release lever at the base of the instrument panel, he yanked hard on it.

  The mechanical indicator for the left wheel now indicated that it had dropped down into its locked landing position. The right wheel had apparently stayed in its compartment.

  His first thought was to try to shake the wheel loose. He used the trim tabs to climb back up to two thousand feet and then put the plane into a dive, waiting for the g-force to build before pulling the nose up.

  The right wheel didn’t come down. He took the plane back up again and tried the maneuver once more. The wheel refused to drop. Worried that the strain of the dives would shake the battered plane apart, he tried to think of something else. There were two options.

  He could ditch the plane in the lagoon, or try to bring it in on one wheel.

  With less than a hundred hours of flying time in an Avenger, he wasn’t thrilled about trying to landing it on one wheel, but after everything they had come through, it didn’t seem right to put it in the lagoon, particularly if there was a chance Jay Manning might still be alive. He decided to land.

  As he came in over the airfield, the landing officer next to the runway began furiously waving him off with his signal flag. Advancing the throttle again, Bert rolled the trim tab to regain altitude.

  He guessed that the landing officer had waved him off after seeing their torpedo hanging out of the bomb bay. After making another circuit around the field, he came in for his next approach. Once more, the landing officer frantically waved him off.

  The hell with this, he said to himself. I’m taking it in.

  The landing officer at the edge of the runway was still waving his flag when Bert’s Avenger roared past him. Dropping to the runway, Bert felt his left wheel connect to the concrete path. He thought it was a beautiful one-point landing until the Avenger began slowing down. Suddenly, the right wing tipped over, hitting the runway and setting off an explosion of fiery sparks.

  The plane spun wildly in a 270-degree arc toward several aircraft parked alongside the runway. As Bert braced himself for a crash, the Avenger finally came to a stop on the coral apron that abutted the runway.

  It was over. He had come through the fire and survived.

  Bert cut the power switches, and the air was quiet again. Unbuckling his safety harness, he saw a crash wagon speeding toward the plane. Climbing out of the cockpit on unsteady legs, he dropped off the wing and knelt down to look inside the open bomb bay. Their torpedo was gone. Only the cables that had held it in place were hanging from the belly. He had worried for hours over nothing.

  Suddenly, there were people surging all around the plane. Harry had managed to get the rear hatch open and crawled outside. He felt faint as he tried to stand up. Two Marines came over to steady him. Seeing that his face and T-shirt were covered with blood, they helped him into a waiting field ambulance. A few moments later, he was on his way to the hospital tent.

  Bert declined treatment of his own wound. Tottering like an old man, he headed back toward the turret to check on Jay Manning. A big Marine came up and blocked his path. Staring at the blood soaking Bert’s flight suit, the Marine said quietly, “You don’t want to go back there, sir.”

  Two other Marines were already draping a big canvas tarpaulin over the shattered turret where Manning had died. Turning away, Bert looked across the apron of the runway where the six Avengers had been parked that morning. It didn’t look like any of the others had come back.

  Another man was calling to him. It was the landing officer who had waved him off with his signal flag. “We were radioing for you to bail out,” said the landing officer. “We thought bailing out would be your best chance.”

  Bert didn’t have the energy to explain that his radio was gone along with the rest of the instruments. He asked the landing officer how many of the Avengers had gotten back.

  “You’re the only one so far,” he said.

  Tex Gay

  Floating in the Central Pacific

  0945

  As Tex floated in the sea, two things suddenly surfaced alongside him, freed from the Devastator as it took its plunge toward the bottom of the Pacific. One of them was providential.

  It was the aircraft’s deflated life raft. He remembered Bob Huntington placing it in the middle seat before they took off. Apparently, it had not been strapped down. The other object floating in the water was a black rubber seat cushion.

  The Skipper had always told them that if they were ever in a tight spot to never throw anything away. Tex decided to hold on to the cushion, too. His burned leg was beginning to hurt when he heard a plane diving and looked up to see a Zero heading straight toward him with its machine guns blazing. The surface of the sea began erupting in tiny geysers of water.

  Pulling off his goggles in case they reflected the sun, he grabbed the black seat cushion and held it over his head. Treading water, he waited for the Zero to finish its run. It didn’t come back.

  Japanese Striking Force

  Flagship Carrier Akagi

  Flag Bridge

  0945

  With the American torpedo squadron completely annihilated, an ebullient Admiral Nagumo was now free to release his counterstrike against the American carrier force.

  Since the attack by the first six torpedo planes at 0700, his Zero fighters and his ships’ antiaircraft batteries had destroyed or driven off every enemy plane. Not one of the torpedoes or bombs launched at his ships had hit a target.

  A few minutes later, a lookout on one of the screening vessels reported that a new formation of enemy aircraft was approaching Nagumo’s striking force from the south. It turned out to be another squadron of the same slow-moving torpedo planes.

  The news came as a minor irritant to Nagumo, who knew that each American carrier had only one torpedo squadron. That meant a second American carrier was probably out there somewhere. All the better. Yamamoto’s Midway plan was based on the notion of luring the American carriers from Pearl Harbor for the final deciding battle. Now they would be destroyed sooner rather than later.

  With the crude frontal assaults the Americans had employed, Nagumo was confident the new element would be dispatched as easily as the others. In the meantime, he suspended the process of bringing up his own attack aircraft to the flight decks of his carriers until the latest American threat was repulsed.

  His Zero fighter patrols headed south to intercept the new intruders, which were the fourteen Devastators of Torpedo Squadron Six from Spruance’s flagship Enterprise, led by Lieutenant Commander Gene Lindsey.

  The Zeroes dropped down to intercept the Americans as they came
skimming in just above the surface of the sea, and the Japanese pilots quickly began shooting them out of the sky. In less than twenty minutes, most of the Devastators had been destroyed. The surviving aircraft retreated without scoring any hits.

  “Launch aircraft when ready,” Nagumo ordered his four carrier commanders.

  The Japanese carriers were turning into the wind for their launch when yet another report came in from one of the screening vessels. They had sighted more planes coming toward them. It was Torpedo Squadron Three, led by Lieutenant Commander Lance Massey. They had come from the Yorktown.

  The newly replenished fighter patrols flying cover above the four carriers immediately went down low again to converge on this latest threat. One by one, the Devastators began to fall.

  Was it possible that there were three American carriers lying in wait for him, wondered Nagumo? In his exultant mood, it was still of little consequence. He had driven off every previous attack without the loss of a single ship. At the same time, it was wise to be prudent.

  It was 1020.

  “Hurry up preparations for the second wave,” he ordered Commander Genda.

  Tex Gay

  Floating in the Central Pacific

  1020

  After being strafed in the water by the Zero, Tex decided not to inflate his rubber life raft. There was no point in drawing attention to himself, not with the Japanese fleet cruising by like it was the Easter parade.

  The wakes of the Japanese warships had roiled up the surface of the ocean, but even from his lowly vantage point, he could see the distant silhouettes of three of the Japanese carriers, including the one he had attacked before being shot down.

  They had now turned into the wind.

  From high above him in the sky, he heard a distinctly familiar whine. It reminded him of the low keening wail that a dive-bomber made right after pushing off on a bomb run from high altitude. He had heard it during training flights plenty of times.

  It suddenly dawned on him that it just might be a dive-bomber. Hell, there had been more than thirty Dauntlesses flying with the Hornet air group alone. As the low moaning wail turned into a full-throttle screaming roar, he knew what the noise had to mean.

  Then he saw one.

  The Dauntless was plummeting down from more than two miles high, completely unopposed by the Japanese Zeroes. A few moments later, it was joined by a second and a third. He realized there must be a whole squadron, if not more.

  The first Dauntless was already pulling up after completing its plunge to less than two thousand feet. Tex heard a terrific thunderclap, and a few moments later, a curtain of fire rocketed up from the deck of one of the carriers like a giant Roman candle. The same ship took another direct hit, followed by a third, each new detonation sending up a thick cloud of smoke and flame.

  Still more Dauntlesses were diving now. Free of any hindrance from the vaunted Zeroes, they plunged down toward the remaining carriers. As he watched, another colossal blast resounded across the water, and a second Japanese carrier erupted into a blazing firestorm. Flames were coming out of both the fore and aft sections of the second carrier like a two-headed blowtorch.

  Kicking his feet, he began yelling a hoarse cheer of soggy defiance, but it was quickly squelched by a surging wave. As he treaded water, a third rumbling blast thundered across the sea, and a billowing spire of smoke belched up from the third Japanese carrier. Submerged up to his chest, Tex could feel the pressure of the detonations.

  He wondered if any of the victorious dive-bombers had come from the Hornet.

  Northeast of Midway Atoll

  Hornet Dive-Bombing Squadron

  Walt Rodee

  1040

  Walt Rodee continued to lead his seventeen-plane squadron east on the reciprocal heading of the course they had flown out on that morning. The whole mission had been a total mess. All of his Dauntlesses were still carrying their full bomb loads. None of the pilots had seen a single Japanese plane or warship the whole way out or back.

  He couldn’t imagine what kind of reception they would receive from Pete Mitscher when they landed. It wouldn’t be long now. Rodee’s radio homing gear was working fine. They were less than an hour from the carrier.

  As they droned along, another aircraft slowly overtook them. It was Commander Ring’s Dauntless. He was flying at open throttle, making no attempt to conserve gas. He passed them by, heading east toward the Hornet.

  Northeast of Midway Atoll

  Hornet Fighter Squadron Eight

  Pat Mitchell

  1045

  Pat Mitchell’s ten Wildcats had now been in the air for almost four hours, and none of the pilots had any idea where they were. After departing from Commander Ring and the rest of the air group, they had headed in an easterly direction back toward the Hornet. Pat Mitchell’s radio homing device wasn’t functioning properly, and he had turned over navigational responsibility to Stan Ruehlow.

  There was nothing but ocean as far as they could see. From what had once been a mission to destroy the Japanese carriers, they were now in a desperate struggle to survive. One by one, they started running out of gas.

  The first to go was Ensign G. R. Hill, who was Stan Ruehlow’s wingman. As some of the others watched, his propeller started windmilling. Seconds later he was gone.

  The Wildcat was a well-designed fighter, but it had the gliding capacity of a concrete block. McInerny was the next to go, and Johnny Magda went with him. They landed a hundred yards from one another on a placid sea.

  Frank Jennings and Hump Tallman went next.

  One of the last to go down was Pat Mitchell. After hitting the water, his Wildcat sank before he could extricate his life raft. When the plane disappeared, he was wearing only his Mae West life vest.

  Mitchell was confident the pilots who survived ditching would be picked up soon. The rest of the Hornet air group had seen them go. Some of those crewmen must have written down the approximate bearings when McInerny had turned the fighter squadron around. Once the battle was over, he knew that Navy search planes from Midway would begin looking for them.

  That is, if the Americans won.

  Northeast of Midway Atoll

  USS Hornet

  1100

  On the bridge of the Hornet, Lieutenant A. H. Hunker was standing the deck watch when he received a report that “a large group of planes bearing 260 true, distant 56 miles” was being tracked by the ship’s radar and heading straight toward them.

  These were the planes of Walt Rodee’s dive-bomber squadron, returning from the west on the reciprocal course to the one the group had flown out on three hours earlier. Preparations began to land the planes as soon as they arrived.

  When the Hornet turned into the wind to bring them aboard, a crowd of excited crewmen rushed to the flight deck to welcome the returning air group from its mission against the Japanese fleet. Hopes were high for news of victory.

  They were puzzled to see only one plane come in to land. When it came to a halt on the flight deck, Commander Stanhope Ring unstrapped himself from the cockpit and climbed down.

  Without acknowledging the cheers of the crew, he disappeared into one of the passageways off the flight deck, and went to his stateroom. Mitscher was forced to wait for the arrival of Rodee’s squadron to learn what had happened. Upon landing, Rodee was ordered to the bridge. When he got there, Mitscher demanded to know what had happened to his group.

  Rodee couldn’t tell him.

  He had flown west on the designated course until reaching the point of no return, and had then turned around to come back on the reciprocal course. None of his pilots had seen a Japanese ship or airplane going out or coming back. Somewhere along the way, Waldron’s squadron had disappeared, followed by Mitchell’s ten fighters. Later on, Ruff Johnson had taken his squadron off. Rodee had no idea what had happened to any of them.

  After being dismissed, Rodee joined the pilots of his squadron in the wardroom, where they were relaxing with coffee and sandwiches.
At some point after the flight, he decided to put an important detail from the previous mission in his official flight log.

  Each page in a pilot’s flight log had space for the date of a flight, the names of the crewmen who flew with him, the duration of the mission, and a brief description of the flight. Rodee decided to write down the course the Hornet air group had flown that morning.

  265 degrees.

  Outside on the flight deck, Lee Marona was standing with the rest of the plane captains from Torpedo Eight. They were still scanning the empty sky for a sign of approaching aircraft.

  According to the scuttlebutt, Midway was supposed to be the biggest battle of the war so far. If it is, Marona thought, we haven’t seen any part of it. Not one of the Hornet’s guns had been fired in anger all day.

  Up on the flag bridge, Mitscher and his senior air staff were increasingly worried. This had been Mitscher’s first chance to demonstrate his experience and acumen in a carrier battle, and as far as he knew, none of the Hornet’s planes had found the Japanese fleet.

  Mitchell’s fighter squadron could no longer be airborne. By now, Johnson’s and Waldron’s squadrons would be running out of gas, too, if they were still in the air. Where the hell were they?

  The stakes were enormous, not only for the battle itself, but for Pete Mitscher’s reputation and career. He had come a long way since Annapolis, where he had been expelled in his second year for a hazing incident. After his father exerted influence, he had started over. It had taken him six years to finish, graduating just three places from the bottom of his class.

  It had not been an auspicious beginning, but Mitscher had gone on to blaze a successful trail in naval aviation and earn the respect of both his peers and superiors. He had served thirty-two years in the Navy. The idea that his career as a combat commander might be over after one day was difficult to bear.

  He and his staff were forced to face the hard truth. They had sent out fifty-nine planes, and their air group commander had come back by himself, followed by a single bomber squadron still carrying all its bombs.