A Dawn Like Thunder
Page 27
USS Saratoga
1640
Associated Press correspondent Clark Lee felt an unwelcome tremor of fear as the growing roar of airplane engines signaled the arrival of the Japanese bombers. He tried to reassure himself that this was why he had come out to the Pacific in the first place. To witness a great battle.
Standing with the lookouts and spotters, Lee had put on a Mae West life jacket in case he would be swimming shortly. The bombing attack unfolded above him in a kaleidoscope of brilliant color. He felt the deck shudder beneath his feet as the boom of the carrier’s antiaircraft batteries reverberated in his ears, combined with the thundering salvos from the escort ships.
A few moments later, he saw one of the Japanese bombers falling through the sky trailing a long comet tail of reddish-black smoke. Another blossom of flame erupted far above him, followed by a second enemy plane plummeting down to the sea.
The burning sky turned orange, black, purple, and red, as the ships’ batteries hurled up thousands of exploding projectiles. In some places, tiny shards of shrapnel came down like falling rain. Mingled with the astonishing array of colors came the scream-ing whine of the enemy bombers as they began their dives on the carriers.
Another enemy plane disintegrated in a ball of fire, but there were too many to shoot down. A few minutes later, one of them scored a direct hit on the flight deck of the Enterprise, sending an orange ball of fire high into the air. The explosion was followed by a second hit, and the carrier began trailing a billowing cloud of smoke.
Men were being killed and wounded in every direction Lee looked. As he watched, the already stricken Enterprise took a third direct hit through its already shattered flight deck.
“Dive-bombers overhead . . . coming out of the sun,” the lookout standing alongside Lee on the Saratoga called out.
Over the Pacific
Torpedo Squadron Eight
Swede Larsen
1725
Unable to locate the nineteen-plane Enterprise group in the confused sky, Swede led his seven-plane formation north toward the previously reported position of the enemy carrier.
On the way, he radioed the other Avenger pilots to find out who was flying with him. The crews might have gotten mixed up, but it didn’t matter. Things always went wrong in combat situations. He had spent months training them to do their jobs, regardless of the conditions.
Of more concern was the fact that he was the only pilot who had brought his plotting board to compute their course and direction. The C6B was primitive but effective, a little wheel inside a piece of plastic that a pilot could use to log in each course change as he went along. Swede told them to stick tight with him through the mission. After nightfall, they would be flying virtually blind, and the plotting board might be critical to their survival.
They had been flying north for more than an hour and the sun had dropped to the edge of the horizon when Swede looked down at the darkening sea and saw a warship coming toward them.
It was Japanese. More warships emerged beyond the first one. They were destroyers, eight of them in a forward screen. Behind them came a phalanx of cruisers, three light ones, then four heavy cruisers all abeam, followed by another three light cruisers.
One of the two Dauntless pilots flying above the Avengers radioed that he had sighted a battleship farther back in the column, and they were going after it. Not seeing a carrier in the task force, Swede ordered an attack on the four heavy cruisers.
Off to the northwest he spotted a large cloud formation. It was vivid purple in the glow of the rapidly setting sun. Swede thought it might give the Avengers good cover for a low-level attack. As he led Taurman, Barnum, Ries, and Fayle toward the cloud formation, a flight of Zeroes raced to intercept them.
The purple cloud swallowed the Avengers long enough to escape the Zeroes, and Swede led them back out of the mist close to the surface of the sea. To reach the heavy cruisers, the Avengers had to first penetrate the screen of destroyers and light cruisers, all of which began hurling salvos at them as they came in.
To Bob Ries, it looked like the Christmas lights in a city building all being turned on at once. His plane was buffeted back and forth and up and down as the massed gunfire reached out for him. His only advantage was that the sky was already dark between the ships, making it harder for the gunners to find his plane against the sea.
Each pilot was on his own, selecting his target and lining up the run. As the Avengers closed in, the heavy cruisers broke formation and scattered. After dropping their torpedoes, that’s exactly what the Avengers did, too, scattering into the dusky gloom. If there were any hits, no one saw them explode.
Japanese Carrier Ryujo
1800
As sunset turned to darkness, the crew of the Galloping Dragon was still fighting desperately to keep the carrier afloat. After two hours, the ship’s firefighting teams had finally managed to quell the fires set off by the direct hits from Commander Felt’s dive-bombers.
With the fires out, there was still a chance to save the carrier if they could restore power to the engine room. Once the carrier was moving again, the Ryujo’s air group could be landed on the flight deck after returning from its attack of the airfield at Guadalcanal.
The torpedo launched by Harwood, Grady, or Earnest had struck aft on the starboard side, and set off flooding in the engine room, also immobilizing the ship’s steering control. In spite of every effort to shore up the shattered bulkheads and stem the flood of water with auxiliary pumps, the ship continued to list ever further onto its starboard side.
When the Ryujo’s air group appeared overhead, it was impossible for them to land on the tilting flight deck. By then, the planes also lacked the fuel to reach another Japanese carrier or a Japanese-held land base. The air group had already lost seven planes to Marine fighters over Henderson Field. A number of crewmen had been wounded in the air battle and needed immediate medical attention.
As the sun disappeared over the horizon, the remaining twenty-one fighters and dive-bombers slowly circled above the carrier like exhausted birds until they ran out of fuel and were forced to ditch in the sea.
Unable to stop the flooding, Captain Tadao Kato concluded that the damage from the torpedo hit was mortal, and ordered his crew to abandon ship. Several dozen sailors refused to leave and were still belowdecks fighting to save her when the Galloping Dragon rolled over and sank.
USS Saratoga
Torpedo Squadron Eight
1830
He felt completely drained, but Smiley Morgan was back home and happy to be alive. As he sat in the wardroom and enjoyed his glass of powdered lemonade, he only wished he could celebrate the occasion by spiking it with a splash of whiskey.
On this twenty-fourth day of August, he had finally been to see Bert Earnest’s proverbial elephant. The truth be told, the elephant had almost stomped him, and he hoped he would never have to confront such a concentrated barrage of shell fire again. But for the first time, he felt as if he truly belonged.
At one point, Commander Felt had come over to shake his hand. He told Smiley that his decision to attack the heavy cruiser with just his wingman for support was one of the bravest things Felt had ever seen. Smiley was compelled to tell him that he hadn’t known it was just him and Andy Divine when he made the decision to go in.
It didn’t seem to matter to Commander Felt, who told him that Syd Bottomley said he had seen one of their torpedoes hit the Tone, and that he was recommending Smiley for a Navy Cross.
Smiley was even happier when Doc Lewis gave him one of the small bottles of brandy he occasionally provided to carrier pilots for medicinal purposes after they returned from a hairy mission. The precious bottles were considered a badge of honor. Right then, he preferred it to the Navy Cross.
Over the Pacific
Torpedo Squadron Eight
Swede Larsen
2000
Swede and the other Avenger pilots had scattered in different directions as they escaped the
enemy task force. By the time Swede radioed the others to rendezvous with him ten miles south, night was falling.
In the Pacific, darkness fell with the swiftness of a descending curtain. As they groped through the sky, Jack Barnum and Bob Ries heard Swede’s message and quickly joined him at the rendezvous. The three Avengers began circling above the sea while Swede kept trying to contact Taurman and Fayle. Neither one responded.
Swede knew that leaving them behind without navigational gear was a possible death sentence, but there was no way to know whether they had even survived the attack. With the fuel situation becoming critical, Swede radioed the others it was time to go. Using his chart board, he led them through the black night back to the carrier.
As they approached the Saratoga, Swede relayed his recognition signal and requested permission to land. A landing officer radioed him that the Enterprise had taken several hits and had been unable to land many of her aircraft. They had stacked up on the Saratoga, and the flight deck was now jammed. They would have to wait.
When enough space was cleared, the three Avengers landed. After Jack Barnum’s crew climbed out of their plane, it was discovered that Barnum’s torpedo was still inside the bomb bay.
Swede couldn’t believe it. He was livid. Their job was to sink Japanese warships. That was what he had trained them to do, regardless of the danger. Barnum had obviously punked out and then endangered the carrier by coming in for a dangerous night landing with a live torpedo on board.
In his defense, Barnum said it must have been a technical malfunction. While the pilots and crews stood waiting in the darkness, Swede ordered an ordnanceman to check Barnum’s release mechanism. It was found to be in good working order. In the heat of the attack on the cruisers, Barnum had apparently forgotten to open the bomb bay doors.
Swede told Barnum the screwup was going into his After Action Report.
When Swede finally got down to the wardroom, it was packed with fliers, not just the Saratoga air group, but many of the temporarily stranded Enterprise pilots as well. They were all replaying the actions of the day.
Regardless of the final tally, one thing was certain: they had beaten the Japanese back, and had shot down a lot of enemy planes in the process. The Enterprise had taken three hits and survived. Commander Felt said he was sure his group had sunk the Ryujo, even though no one had been there to see it go down.
Seeing Swede come in, Clark Lee cornered him for an interview.
“What did you hit?” he asked, notebook in hand.
Swede told him about the mission to find the carriers that had led to the discovery of the enemy cruiser force. There was no way to know for sure if they had sunk anything, but one of the Dauntless pilots flying above the Avengers reported seeing at least one torpedo hit home.
A bone-weary Smiley Morgan was still savoring the afterglow of his brandy when Bob Ries came over to tell him that John Taurman and Frenchy Fayle had gone missing with their crews. Ries had just come back from the communications center, where someone had confirmed that the two missing pilots had not landed at either Henderson Field or on the Enterprise.
The news took a little time to sink in. His best friend, James Hill Cook, had been killed just two days earlier. Now Taurman and Fayle were gone, too, although it was possible they had survived a night landing in the Pacific. That was their only hope.
Later that evening, Swede sat down with Bruce Harwood to discuss the day’s missions. Harwood told him about the attack on the Ryujo, and how they had left the carrier burning in the water.
“I think we got this thing licked,” said Swede. “It will be a picnic. We’ll go over them like ants over a picnic.”
Resurrection Blues
Tuesday, 25 August 1942
Eastern Solomons
0200
It had been the biggest naval battle since Midway. The opposing fleets had each positioned themselves to deliver a decisive blow with their heavy carriers, accompanied by the massive firepower of their battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.
When it was over, the Enterprise and Saratoga were heading south-east again, away from the Japanese fleet. The Japanese heavy carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku were heading north again, away from the American fleet. Aboard their respective flagships, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher and Admiral Chuichi Nagumo were both convinced they had earned a hard-fought victory.
For the first time since his defeat at Midway, Nagumo was exultant, convinced that he had left behind two burning American carriers, and believing he had driven the American Navy out of the Eastern Solomons.
Fletcher held the less ebullient view that his ships had won a tactical victory over the Japanese at the cost of temporarily losing the Enterprise.
The Japanese didn’t know it, but they had come close to sinking the Enterprise and winning a truly decisive victory. After the first wave of Japanese planes had completed their attack, the burning and battered Enterprise lost its steering control. With the rudder locked in the starboard position, she kept swinging around in a wide circle.
At that moment, the second wave of thirty-six Japanese planes from the Shokaku and the Zuikaku were just beyond the carrier’s sighting range. As radar operators aboard the Enterprise nervously tracked their flight, the bombers came steadily closer.
The Japanese planes were no more than ten minutes from finding the wounded carrier when fate, as it had at Midway, again dramatically affected the fortunes of war. At the end of the Japanese air group’s southerly search pattern, its commander turned west instead of east, missing the American task force.
Late that night, Admiral Nagumo reviewed the results of the battle with his senior commanders. His first wave of attackers claimed to have left two heavy carriers burning when they withdrew. They had only exaggerated by half. Although they had badly damaged the Enterprise, no hits were made on the Saratoga. Nagumo accepted their claim anyway.
It appeared justified because a phalanx of fast Japanese cruisers had spent the previous several hours trying to catch up to the American carrier force and it had disappeared, leading Nagumo to believe that the carriers had been sunk and the surviving escort ships were in full retreat after the beating they had received at the hands of his carrier planes.
One of his senior captains strongly urged Nagumo to go after them. The captain argued that the two Japanese carriers still had plenty of aircraft to deal the Americans a finishing blow. Nagumo considered the idea but rejected it, believing another attack was unnecessary.
The cost of the battle had been high. Nineteen of the twenty-seven Japanese bombers and six of the ten Zeroes in the first wave had not come back. And the Ryujo was gone, sunk with all its planes.
Early on the morning of August 25, Nagumo radioed Admiral Yamamoto that his air group had left two of the American carriers burning and presumably sinking, and that the Americans were now retreating from the Solomons. With victory won, he said that he was retiring back to Truk to replenish fuel, pilots, and aircraft.
Yamamoto took Nagumo at his word about the destruction of the American carriers. Together, he and Nagumo had suffered the humiliating defeat at Midway. Now they could jointly enjoy the retribution. Believing that the American Navy had been swept clear, Yamamoto felt confident that the Japanese army now could destroy the Marines marooned on Guadalcanal.
Far to the south of Nagumo aboard the Saratoga, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher was sifting through his own After Action Reports as he pondered what to do next with the forces under his command.
His air staff had collated all the battle reports, which indicated that fifty-two of the enemy bombers and fighters in the first Japanese attack wave had been destroyed. It was an optimistic assessment considering there had been only thirty-seven planes in the first Japanese attack group.
With all the turmoil of battle, it was inevitable that claims were exaggerated. Two pilots were often shooting at the same target, and both might claim the same kill. Antiaircraft gunners firing at the same plane might claim it, too.
Commander Felt was still making a spirited claim that his air group had sunk the Ryujo, although the assertion was disputed by Fletcher’s air staff. The Enterprise had taken three direct hits and was still afloat. Why not the Ryujo? Ultimately, they agreed to report to Nimitz that the Ryujo had been left “burning badly.”
Fletcher’s staff was also briefly encouraged by a report that four B-17s had made multiple bomb hits on an unknown Japanese carrier in Nagumo’s task force. In truth, the target had been a Japanese destroyer, and the bombers had failed to hit it. After Midway, Fletcher had learned to discount the Army Air Forces reports.
Some of the day’s triumphs had been astonishing. While the Enterprise was temporarily unable to land her planes, the Saratoga had safely recovered nearly eighty of her aircraft, many in total darkness with pilots who had never made a night carrier landing. It was an incredible achievement.
The report on the condition of the Enterprise’s air group was more depressing. In July, she had left Pearl Harbor with nearly forty fighter pilots. Twenty-two were still aboard. Seventy-six sailors had been killed in the day’s air attacks, and more than a hundred wounded. The Enterprise would need major repairs.
Fletcher knew for certain that he was still facing at least two and possibly four Japanese carriers, including the undamaged Shokaku and Zuikaku. With the Enterprise heading to dry dock, there was no margin for error.
It was time to withdraw, he decided.
USS Enterprise
Fred Mears
0700
When he awoke that morning, Fred Mears was nursing the hope that the Enterprise would soon be heading back to Pearl Harbor, allowing him to swap the monotonous diet of rice, rice, and more rice for the delectable meals and other creature comforts of the Moana Hotel.
On the previous afternoon, Fred had flown one of the attack missions against the Japanese carriers. After returning from an unsuccessful search, he was approaching the screen of escort ships around the Enterprise when the antiaircraft batteries on the battleship North Carolina suddenly erupted and Fred realized the carrier force was under attack.