USS Saratoga
1420
Waiting to take off, Bert Earnest felt the same nervous tension he had experienced before every combat mission he had flown. He was almost ready to greet the thing as an old friend.
Something struck him as comical when the crews came out to board their aircraft. Maybe it was because the air group had just been on Guadalcanal and had seen Marines walking around with Bowie knives strapped to their belts, but a lot of the pilots and crewmen were suddenly armed to the teeth.
Bert wondered what good a Bowie knife or a Colt forty-five would be if he went into the sea. Just more weight dragging him down. After his Midway and Guadalcanal missions, all he usually wore were khakis, his leather helmet, comfortable shoes, and a Mae West life vest. When he could remember, he carried a canteen of water.
The launch went off without a hitch. When the thirty-six-plane group had formed up, Commander Felt led them north, following the compass bearing given to him by the Saratoga’s air plotting staff to take them to the enemy carrier. The afternoon was brilliantly sunny and clear. That would help them spot the task force if they got close.
Thirty minutes into the flight, the engine in Bill Dye’s plane began to stutter. Quickly losing oil pressure, he fell behind the others. The problem only got worse, and he radioed Bruce Harwood for permission to turn back. Harwood gave his approval, urging Dye to jettison his torpedo if he had problems maintaining altitude.
As they continued north, Smiley Morgan felt a sense of pure exhilaration. Part of it was the guttural roar of thirty-six combat planes flying in formation above the glittering sea. But there was something else, too. For the first time in his life he felt he was part of something really important.
Commander Felt radioed the group that they were approaching the area where he expected to find the carrier and told them all to keep a sharp lookout. They continued on the same course for another twenty minutes but the sea below them remained empty.
Felt changed course and led them west.
USS Saratoga
1602
The radar screens aboard the Saratoga suddenly registered a large formation of aircraft coming straight toward them from the north at a distance of about one hundred miles. They could only be Japanese.
The mutual game of hide-and-seek was over, and the Japanese had won.
The planes were from the Japanese carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, and they had found the Americans due to the heroic sacrifice of a single Japanese scout plane pilot. Earlier in the afternoon, the pilot had managed to penetrate to within thirty-five miles of the American carrier force.
Although attacked by six Wildcats, the Japanese pilot kept going. With his aircraft on fire and going down, he radioed that he had spotted a large enemy force and was being pursued by enemy fighters.
When the message was delivered to Admiral Nagumo, who commanded the Japanese striking force, he correctly surmised that the pursuing American fighters had to be part of a combat air patrol protecting an enemy carrier. Based on the compass heading that the reconnaissance plane had been following, as well as its elapsed flight time, Nagumo’s staff made a guess at the approximate location of the American carrier.
Nagumo was not going to wait and be surprised as he had been at Midway. This time, he would hit the Americans first. Gambling that all of the American carriers were in the same area, he ordered an attack by every plane he had.
Nagumo’s gamble had been sound, although on the previous night Admiral Fletcher had released the carrier Wasp to head south for refueling. Now Enterprise and Saratoga could only send up their Wildcats in a defense screen and hope for the best.
Over the Pacific
Torpedo Squadron Eight
Smiley Morgan
1605
Smiley had looked down at the dazzling blue sea and it was empty. A few moments later, he looked down and saw the wakes of ships in the distance. As they drew closer, he could see it was a Japanese task force, its still tiny ships heading southwest at flank speed. In the center of the formation was an enemy carrier.
It was the Ryujo, the Galloping Dragon.
It didn’t have a ten-story-high island like American carriers, but it was just as lethal, with eight five-inch cannons and dozens of heavy machine guns emplaced around the perimeter of its deck. The carrier was a couple of football fields long, and Smiley could see a great red circle painted on its flight deck.
Steaming in formation with the carrier were a cruiser and two destroyers. The destroyers were racing through the sea on the carrier’s flanks to keep pace with it while providing fire support from its antiaircraft batteries.
This was what they had come for.
Black bursts of antiaircraft shells began appearing above and below them as the Ryujo’s gunners attempted to bracket the group’s formation. Commander Felt gave instructions to divide the group into columns. He ordered seven of his dive-bombers to go after the big cruiser escorting the carrier, and told Harwood to assign two Avengers to it, as well.
Smiley Morgan was section leader and Harwood ordered him to launch the torpedo attack on the cruiser, taking Andy Divine along as his wingman. Smiley was disappointed that he wouldn’t have a chance at the carrier, but acknowledged the order.
The heavy cruiser he was about to attack was the storied Tone, which had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack. At Midway, it was Tone’s scout planes that had found Admiral Spruance’s carrier force, and had then reported the position of Waldron’s squadron as it approached the Japanese fleet on the morning of June 4.
While Felt was making his dispositions, a flight of Zeroes took off from the Ryujo’s flight deck, after which the ship accelerated again to flank speed and heeled over in a tight turn, its wake carving a broad white circle on the dark blue sea. Gun flashes erupted along its entire length as it sent up a solid screen of antiaircraft fire.
Bruce Harwood radioed the four remaining Avenger pilots that they would attack low in a “hammer and anvil” maneuver, launching torpedoes at the carrier from both the port and starboard sides at the same time. Whichever way the carrier turned, they would hopefully hit it with a spread of at least two torpedoes. Harwood would lead the starboard attack on the Ryujo with Earnest and Grady. He ordered Gene Hanson to lead the port attack with Aaron Katz on his wing.
Smiley peeled off from the rest of the formation and headed for the cruiser. As he circled above it, his first impression was that it was even faster than the carrier and braced one hell of a lot of antiaircraft guns.
Commander Felt ordered his dive-bombers to begin their runs on Ryujo. One by one, they nosed over from three miles above the carrier, screaming down in near vertical dives. The first five bombs missed badly, splashing far off to port and starboard. The Ryujo might have been nine years old, but her captain was skillfully putting her through a combination of tight skidding turns as the Dauntlesses made their runs.
The next five dive-bomber pilots found it equally impossible to get a hit. One of them mistakenly dropped his landing wheels and dove at slower speed. He was the only one who came close to hitting the carrier, sending a great plume of water up alongside it.
Eleven more dive-bombers dropped their payloads as the Ryujo’s captain continued to demonstrate his remarkable dexterity in ship handling. None of the bombs struck home.
Twenty-one misses in a row. It seemed the carrier had a charmed life. Still circling above the Ryujo, Commander Felt radioed the seven Dauntlesses and two Avengers that were preparing to go after Tone to come back and attack Ryujo.
Lieutenant Syd Bottomley, the flight leader of the seven dive-bombers, acknowledged Felt’s instructions and broke off to return to the carrier. Smiley never heard the recall order. He assumed that he was still part of the nine-plane formation as he maneuvered into position to launch his torpedo attack.
He and Divine were alone.
Felt didn’t wait for the arrival of his last seven Dauntlesses. He pushed over in his own run on the carrier, having taken note
of its speed and turning power, and focusing his aim on the red rising sun painted on the flight deck. Going down, he maintained a good angle, almost 75 degrees, and was careful not to overshoot before releasing his bomb at two thousand feet.
The explosion briefly engulfed the ship in a tall plume of spray. It might have been a hit, but it hadn’t caused any immediate damage. Ryujo continued its skidding turns at flank speed.
It remained for the last seven Dauntlesses and Bruce Harwood’s five Avengers to try to bring the charmed carrier to bay. In his dive, Syd Bottomley waited to release his bomb until he was less than fifteen hundred feet above the flight deck. He was a veteran of the Midway battle, and had made a direct hit on Admiral Nagumo’s flagship, the Akagi.
His bomb hit the carrier amidships, setting off a column of orange fire. Following him down, the next six Dauntlesses dropped their bombs toward the soaring pyre of flames and smoke. From Gene Hanson’s vantage point, it looked like they had scored at least one more hit as the carrier continued wildly circling.
It was the Avengers’ turn.
Hanson headed down to set up the port side attack. Aaron Katz followed on his left wing. The Zeroes were waiting for them at two thousand feet. The first one came directly at Hanson with its machine guns blazing.
If he turned away, Hanson was sure it would make him an easy victim. Instead, he pulled up the nose of his Avenger and aimed it at the oncoming Zero, firing his thirty-caliber nose gun as the two planes raced toward one another. For a few terrifying moments, he was sure they were going to collide. Then the Zero veered off to the right and passed under the Avenger’s tail. He could hear his gunners Shorty Aube and Frank Balsely firing away at him as the next Zero appeared in front of him.
He heard Aaron Katz’s excited voice on the radio. The Zeroes were aiming high, Aaron told him. He had seen the tracers. As the next fighter cut loose with his machine guns, Hanson once more aimed his plane directly at him, and the Zero sheered off.
When Hanson’s Avenger began drawing antiaircraft fire from the Ryujo, the Zeroes disappeared. He led Katz down to two hundred feet and headed toward the carrier’s port bow.
The carrier was turning away from him, which made launching from a good firing angle even more difficult. He and Katz had to swing farther left before turning to head in for the attack. Closing, Hanson could see the Japanese firefighting teams trying to extinguish the fires from the bomb hits.
Opening his bomb bay doors, he pressed the switch to release his torpedo. He felt it drop, but didn’t wait around to see the results. After shutting the bomb bay doors, he made a quick turn to port, temporarily exposing the underbelly and wings of the plane to the carrier’s gunners. He felt the plane shudder as a hit from one of the Ryujo’s shells tore loose the vertical fin in the tail, and took a big chunk out of the rudder.
Aaron Katz was right behind him. He had attacked at an altitude of less than fifty feet in the hope that the Ryujo’s guns couldn’t be depressed that low. The theory didn’t seem to be holding water. The tracers followed him wherever he went. Turning away from the ship, he glanced back to see if his torpedo was running true. It was. He didn’t see how it was possible for the thing to miss.
Bert Earnest had come under attack from a Zero as Harwood brought them into position to make their run from the starboard side of the Ryujo. As he remembered from Midway, the fighters were amazingly fast, darting in and out of range in a few heartbeats. In an incredibly difficult maneuver, the pilot of one Zero rolled on his back and pulled through to get on Bert’s tail.
Here we go again was the only thought that ran through Bert’s mind as he dove to their attacking altitude of two hundred feet. The Zero pulled away when the antiaircraft gunners on the Ryujo opened fire on him.
Black smoke now surrounded the wounded carrier. It was billowing in their direction, and Harwood was forced to abort two attacks because it completely obscured the ship. On the third try, he was presented with a perfect broadside opportunity when the ship turned toward him.
The smoke hadn’t suppressed the Ryujo’s ability to deliver an intense barrage of antiaircraft fire. The destroyer steaming beside her on the starboard side was pouring it at them, too.
Harwood was the first to launch his torpedo. Grady’s went next. Heading in last, Bert tried to jink and weave away from Japanese tracers as they danced toward him. He couldn’t see an enemy ship in the port direction after launching his torpedo. Dropping to fifty feet, he swerved to port.
Circling far above them, one of the dive-bomber pilots observed a single torpedo drive into the starboard side of the ship. For a moment, the force of the explosion seemed to lift the bow out of the water, after which the ship quickly lost speed and came to a stop.
The attack on the Ryujo was over.
While it was still under way, Smiley Morgan had proceeded to attack the Tone, still having no idea that the seven dive-bombers had left and that he and Andy Divine would be going in unsupported.
He had assumed the dive-bombers were preparing to make their runs from a higher altitude, so he decided to go in first, hoping to draw some of the carrier’s fire away from the Dauntlesses.
The Zeroes came after him and Andy Divine as soon as they descended below five thousand feet, spraying them with disciplined torrents of machine gun fire. Divine’s plane was hit several times as Smiley moved into position for his run.
One Zero pilot stayed on Smiley, giving him repeated bursts of machine gun fire even after the cruiser let loose a salvo from its antiaircraft guns. The Zero finally swerved away when all the starboard batteries on the ship seemed to open up at once.
To Smiley, it looked like a solid wall of blazing fire. How was he going to get through it? He had been taught by Commander Waldron to avoid attacking in a predictable head-on rush that would allow them to draw a bead on him. He had been taught to essentially feint like a halfback, quickly jinking the Avenger back and forth, while corkscrewing it in a spiral motion.
The gunfire tracked him left and right as he flew toward it at two hundred miles an hour. In the intensity of the moment, time itself seemed to come to a standstill. When a shell exploded close enough to make the plane leap, he actually closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he was still heading for the massive ship. Cutting the throttle to launch speed, he held the control stick in his right hand, and reached for the torpedo release switch with the left.
The cruiser filled his line of vision when he released the torpedo and veered off to the right. It had been a perfect run, and he was sure he had made a good hit if the damn Mark 13 torpedo exploded on contact as it was supposed to do. The antiaircraft fire continued to chase him as he made his escape.
When he was clear of the guns, Smiley looked around for Andy Divine, but didn’t see him. He looked for the Dauntlesses, too, but the sky was empty. A few miles away, the carrier was dead in the water. Behind him, the Tone had definitely slowed down.
Then he heard Commander Felt’s voice on the radio, calling the group to rendezvous southeast of the enemy task force. By the time he arrived, most of the others were already there. Smiley had shoved the throttle all the way open, and came up so fast that he saw one of the fifty-caliber machine guns swing around to aim at him. He quickly slowed down.
Amazingly, they were all there, even Andy Divine. As they began heading back to the Saratoga, Gene Hanson glanced back at the Japanese task force. A pyre of smoke rose almost twenty thousand feet in the sky above the stricken carrier.
USS Enterprise
1638
The first wave of thirty-seven Japanese attack planes from Shokaku and Zuikaku found the Enterprise first. She was hurtling southeast through the deep Pacific swells at almost thirty knots to present the smallest possible target to her attackers. Every gun battery on the ship was brought to bear in the direction of the approaching planes.
Ten minutes prior to the enemy’s arrival, the Enterprise had managed to launch its full fighter defense screen, followe
d by a counterstrike group of nineteen Dauntlesses and Avengers, which had been ordered to go after the Japanese heavy carriers.
The Saratoga, which was ten miles to the south of the Enterprise and also fleeing southeast, had sent up its own fighter screen to meet the Japanese attack. In addition, five of Swede’s Avengers and two Dauntlesses were ordered to join the counterstrike group from Enterprise that was going after the enemy carriers.
Swede had been reviewing the latest sighting reports when the launch order came down. He suddenly remembered that he had left his plotting board belowdecks. It would be getting dark soon, and he didn’t want to be caught in the middle of the Pacific without the chart board to find his way home. He ran to get his navigational gear.
The Saratoga’s takeoff control officers were under strict orders to clear the flight deck before the Japanese arrived, with or without Swede Larsen. They waved the Avengers forward for an immediate launch.
John Taurman took off in the plane carrying Swede’s flight crew. Frenchy Fayle went off with a different crew, too. Jack Barnum and Bob Ries didn’t have their flight or navigational gear.
Running along the carrier’s dimly lit passageways, Swede fought through a crush of sailors rushing to their battle stations. By the time he made it to the flight deck, the Saratoga’s defense screen of Wildcats was already dueling with the first wave of Japanese attackers.
Swede was shocked to see that four of his five Avengers were already gone. Red Doggett’s plane was the only one left. Red was at the starting line, and the takeoff control officer was winding up his black-and-white checkered flag to send him off.
Sprinting across the deck with his plotting board, he leaped up onto Doggett’s wing. Red couldn’t hear him over the noise of the thundering engine, so Swede just thumbed him out of the cockpit. The enlisted pilot unstrapped himself and got out.
Red wasn’t happy about it. Swede would deal with that later. He revved the engine and took off into the crowded sky. The other Avengers, along with the two Dauntlesses, were waiting for him. They headed north to join the Enterprise counterstrike group.
A Dawn Like Thunder Page 26