A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  WILLIAM ESDERS

  Bill Esders, one of the handful of survivors of the three torpedo squadrons that fought at Midway, continued to fly torpedo planes through the rest of the war. After his active-duty service in the Navy, he retired to Pensacola, Florida, where he served as a volunteer guide at the naval history museum.

  When Swede Larsen visited the museum in 1980, Bill Esders was surprised to see that his former commanding officer was in a wheelchair. Personally committed to remaining in good physical condition, Bill Esders ran every day regardless of the weather.

  During a morning run in 1995, he collapsed and died of a heart attack.

  ROBERT EVARTS

  Bob Evarts returned to the States long enough to serve as the best man at the wedding of Gene Hanson and his fiancée, Joy. Always the hard-luck pilot of Torpedo Eight, Evarts was shot down during the air battle over Saipan in 1944. He and his crew disappeared in the sea.

  HARRY FERRIER

  Upon his return to the States, Harry went home to visit his mother in West Springfield, Massachusetts. Boarding a train in Los Angeles, he was assigned a seat next to an enlisted soldier whose sister had come to see him off. When she left, the soldier told Harry that she was an aspiring movie actress, and that her name was Ava Gardner. Harry had never heard of her.

  Harry continued to fly in torpedo planes and dive-bombers for most of the war, serving aboard the carriers Enterprise and the second Yorktown. He was commissioned as an ensign at the age of nineteen in January 1945, and decided to make the Navy his career.

  Married in August 1945, he and his wife, Chris, had two children, four granddaughters, and five great-grandchildren. In the 1950s, he participated in two atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada. Kneeling in a trench not far from ground zero, he was told to keep his head down when the flash came. He remembers feeling the hot blast of the explosions sweep over him. To this day, he blames his poor blood-platelet count on those tests.

  During the Vietnam War, Harry made three combat cruises aboard a helicopter carrier supporting Marine amphibious troops. He retired from the Navy in 1970 with the rank of commander.

  Following his retirement, he served as a public school director, a planning commissioner, and the elected auditor of Whideby Island, Washington. In 1998, he accompanied Dr. Robert Ballard in his successful search to find the remains of the first USS Yorktown where it sank in the Central Pacific after the Battle of Midway in 1942.

  His military awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart, and three Air Medals. Today, Harry Ferrier lives on Whideby Island. He still has the baseball cap he was wearing when he was wounded at Midway.

  GEORGE FLINN

  At the conclusion of the war, the independently wealthy Yale graduate joined the naval reserve, eventually being promoted to the rank of captain. Always proud of his service as the personnel officer of Torpedo Eight, he lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  On March 8, 1967, he met with the author Walter Lord, who was writing a book about the Midway battle to be called Incredible Victory. In the interview, Flinn expressed great admiration for John Waldron as an extraordinary combat leader who never resorted to patriotic harangues or locker-room speeches.

  GEORGE “TEX” GAY

  Tex never asked for the celebrity he earned as the one man from Waldron’s squadron to come back alive. The nationwide publicity he received as the sole survivor came with a high price.

  A few of the widows and fiancées of the Torpedo Eight pilots killed in the battle concluded that he was only after personal glory. The fact that he hadn’t sought any didn’t keep them from resenting the massive publicity he received.

  Admiral Chester Nimitz did not subscribe to this view. After meeting Gay at Pearl Harbor right after the battle, he took a genuine liking to his fellow Texan, and later in the war invited him to go on private fishing excursions in Hawaii and Florida.

  Tex served his second tour in the Pacific as a member of Torpedo Squadron Eleven, which was based at Guadalcanal between April and July 1943. There, he won an Air Medal for flying numerous combat missions against Japanese naval and land-based targets.

  Tex came back to serve as a flight instructor at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. Appreciating the value of Tex’s celebrity to the nation’s continuing war bond drives, the Navy periodically ordered him to travel across the country, visiting patriotic organizations, shipyards, aircraft plants, and high schools, and giving radio and newspaper interviews.

  Tex met his future wife, Tess, at a going-away party arranged for him shortly before he was transferred from the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. For Tex, it was love at first sight, and they were married on May 14, 1946. Recruited to become a commercial airline pilot, he enjoyed an unblemished thirty-year career with Trans World Airlines.

  Occasionally, he was invited to speak at historical forums commemorating the American victory at Midway. At one of them, Bert Earnest and Harry Ferrier were also invited to attend. They were standing at the back of the auditorium when Tex was introduced as the sole survivor of Torpedo Eight. Someone asked them why they were there, and Bert replied, “We’re the other sole survivors.”

  Tex Gay died on October 21, 1994. Prior to his death, he had requested that his cremated ashes be flown out to the grid coordinates in the Central Pacific where John Waldron and the rest of his squadron had gone down while attacking the Japanese fleet. There, they were scattered on the wind.

  RETE GAYNIER

  After Ozzie Gaynier went missing at Midway, Rete remained confident that he had somehow survived. The vivid dream in which he visited her bedside after the battle had convinced her that he was alive, perhaps on an island or as a captive of the Japanese.

  Needing to support herself, she started work at the Naval Air Station in San Diego in the overhaul and repair shop. One of her jobs was to ride in a gas-powered scooter to meet each arriving aircraft and check its serial numbers to make sure they matched the manifest. She would always ask the men coming back from the Pacific if they had ever met Ozzie.

  It was only after Swede Larsen came to visit her many months later that she finally changed her mind. In a surprisingly gentle way, Swede told her that Ozzie wasn’t coming back. Later, she came to interpret his dream visit in a different way. When Ozzie had told her he was all right, it must have meant that he was in a better place.

  Rete didn’t fall in love again until she met Roy Janiec, a Navy flier who commanded an air squadron. She and Roy were married in 1949, and raised two sons, Chris and David. Both boys attended Annapolis and became Navy aviators.

  Today, Rete and Roy live in Oregon.

  WILLIAM R. GRADY

  The other “Tex” in Torpedo Eight recovered from the injuries he suffered falling out of the back of a truck on his second day at Guadalcanal. Considered by other squadron members to be an overly risk-taking pilot, he was killed in a training accident later in the war, purportedly while performing air acrobatics. Unable to pull up, his plane crashed and burned.

  JAMES C. HAMMOND

  Chief Petty Officer Hammond received a Silver Star for his service at Guadalcanal, in large part for reconstructing three combat aircraft to fly missions against the Japanese during the most critical weeks of the campaign, and while under daily attack from enemy artillery and aircraft. As was the case with Bill Dye, the author was unable to learn more about this remarkable man.

  EUGENE HANSON

  Gene returned from Guadalcanal having earned two Navy Crosses but with a lingering sense of unwarranted guilt over the death of Major Michael Mahoney on October 23, 1942.

  In early 1943, Gene married his fiancée, Joy. Bob Evarts was his best man at the ceremony. It would be the last time Gene saw Evarts before he was shot down and killed off Saipan.

  After joining a new composite squadron in Alameda, California, Gene headed back out to the Pacific aboard the carrier Lexington in early 1944. He and Joy had arranged a primitive code so he could send her clues about where he was, but t
he campaigns moved so quickly that she could rarely keep up with him. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Lexington was hit by a kamikaze plane. It slammed into the carrier’s island and exploded close to where Gene was standing on the flight deck. The man next to him was killed when a piece of shrapnel tore through his abdomen. Gene was miraculously uninjured.

  When the war ended, Hanson became the operations officer for VS-27, an antisubmarine squadron that began monitoring the movement of Soviet submarines off the East Coast of the United States. Gene was promoted to its commanding officer, and the squadron earned the Navy “E” for excellence that year, marking it as the best naval air unit in the Atlantic Fleet.

  Gene and Joy had two sons, David and Robin. After graduating from the Naval War College, Gene served in a succession of important posts. His last job was on the staff of Admiral John McCain, the father of the senator from Arizona.

  Gene retired from the Navy in 1966 as a captain. After his retirement, he accepted a job with the City of New York, taking command of the small fleet of vessels that dumped the city’s sewage sludge far out in the Atlantic. He jokingly told old friends that he had finally made admiral.

  In 1980, he was planning to attend a reunion of Torpedo Eight and had already booked his reservations when he discovered that Swede Larsen was planning to attend. He canceled his plans.

  Joy Hanson passed away after a long illness in 2007. Gene lives today with his son Robin in Pensacola, Florida. At ninety, he feels he has been blessed with living on borrowed time ever since 1942.

  BRUCE HARWOOD

  Admired by every man in the squadron for his quiet humility, Bruce returned from his service at Guadalcanal to join his wife, Sadie, in San Diego. Appointed to the staff of the commander of Fleet Air in Seattle, Washington, he was promoted to commander in March 1944. He left the staff to become the air officer on the USS Princeton, an Independence-class light carrier that was heading out to the Pacific as part of soon-to-be-legendary Task Force 58, commanded by Admiral Pete Mitscher. By all accounts, Mitscher had grown into a brilliant carrier tactician and combat leader in the years after Midway.

  On October 24, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a Japanese dive-bomber scored a direct hit on the Princeton, setting off a series of violent explosions. With intense fires raging along the hangar deck and threatening to ignite the Princeton’s ammunition magazines, Bruce Harwood personally led the crews’ firefighting efforts as they attempted to save the ship. Showing utter disregard for his own safety, he repeatedly went belowdecks to compartments in which men were trapped by fire and smoke, dragging a number of them to safety. In a final attempt to save another group of trapped men, he ordered the rest of his team to stay behind as he went forward alone. A few minutes later, a bomb exploded in the compartment, killing Harwood and everyone inside. The Princeton went down later that day.

  Recommended by his commanding officer to receive the Medal of Honor for his consummate valor, Bruce Harwood posthumously received a third Navy Cross, the first having been awarded for leading the attack against the carrier Ryujo, and the second for leading Torpedo Eight on six successful missions against the Tokyo Express during the Guadalcanal campaign. The destroyer USS Harwood was named in his honor.

  HERB JAY

  Jay, the first Jewish pilot who served in Torpedo Eight, was flying cross-country on a training mission later in the war when his aircraft disappeared over the Great Lakes. No trace of him was reportedly ever found.

  AARON KATZ

  After enjoying home leave with his parents and seven sisters in Cleveland, Aaron reported to VT-37, an air squadron assigned to the escort carrier USS Sangamon. Shortly before the carrier left for the Pacific, Katz received an invoice from a supply officer in Alameda, California, requesting reimbursement to the United States government of $25.69. The charges were for one scarf, one pair of goggles, and one flying suit that he had not turned in after the Guadalcanal campaign. He sent his check.

  Promoted to executive officer of VT-37, he participated in combat actions at Tarawa, Palau, Hollandia, Saipan, and Leyte Gulf. In addition to the Navy Cross he won on August 24, 1942, for his part in the attack on the Ryujo, Katz went on to earn the Distinguished Flying Cross and five more Air Medals.

  After the war, Aaron returned to Cleveland, where he joined his father, Sam, in the family scrap-metal business. In August 1945, he married the lovely Marjorie Osher, whom he had met while on leave after his second Pacific tour. They had three children, Roger, Rick, and Barbara.

  Katz was a stoic man, and one of the few times his children ever saw him become emotional was when the family visited Hawaii. After riding out in the harbor to see the Arizona memorial, he remained in the launch, quietly weeping.

  Aaron remained proud of his service with Torpedo Eight, and of the friendships he had made with many of its pilots and crewmen. When it came to his commanding officer, he only told his sons that Swede Larsen was a “tough guy.”

  Aaron Katz passed away on June 21, 1999.

  ZYGMOND “SKI” KOWALEWSKI

  While on leave at his parents’ home, Ski learned that he had been awarded the Silver Star for bravery for his missions as a radioman-gunner aboard the Saratoga in August 1942. It took a spot on his mother’s mantelpiece alongside the medal he received from Admiral William Halsey for his missions as a turret gunner during the Guadalcanal campaign.

  Like Frank Balsley, Ski wanted to become a Navy flier, and put in an application for flight training. There was no response. In 1944, he was serving in a ground-support role at Quonset, Rhode Island, when Swede Larsen happened to visit the airfield. It was the first time Ski had seen him since they had left Espiritu Santo on the Kitty Hawk.

  Ski told Swede that he had applied for flight training, but hadn’t heard anything for more than a year. Swede asked for a copy of his application. Two weeks later, Ski received orders to attend flight school. He won his wings in 1944, and went on to enjoy a wide range of flight assignments all over the world. After retiring from the Navy in 1960, he became a flight inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration.

  At the age of eighty-nine, he lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

  HAROLD HENRY “SWEDE” LARSEN

  Swede got his wish to go back to Guadalcanal, but he never succeeded in winning the Medal of Honor. Along with the two Distinguished Flight Crosses he earned during the early months of the Guadalcanal campaign, he was awarded two Navy Crosses, the first for his attack against the Japanese cruiser force on August 24, 1942, and the second for his leadership in the critical weeks of October 1942, when he often went up alone to deliver air strikes against Japanese ships and positions.

  After family leave in Alabama with his wife, Sadie, and their young daughters, he returned to Guadalcanal as operations officer of the air command still operating there. Shot down on a night mission off the Japanese-held island of Kolumbangara, he survived in the sea until he was rescued. During his second tour, he earned a Bronze Star with combat “V” for meritorious service.

  Released from combat duty, Swede served on the staff of the chief of naval operations before becoming an assistant naval attaché in England. After the war, he served as executive officer of the USS Norton Sound, a guided missile ship, before graduating from the Naval War College. Later he commanded the USS Tripoli, a transport carrier. His last operational assignment was as a Navy task group commander.

  By most accounts, Swede mellowed as he got older. Lee Marona, who saw him several times through the 1980s, said that Swede spoke proudly of the record achieved by Torpedo Eight, and fondly remembered most of the men who served in it. He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1965, and settled in Birmingham, Alabama, where he became a real estate agent and was active in St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Happily married until Sadie’s death in 1987, Swede and Sadie had four daughters: Sarah, Melissa, Maria, and Evelyn. Their son, Harold Jr., passed away in 1972.

  In 1980, Swede attended a reunion in Pensacola of the pilots who served in Torpedo Eight. A
lthough he was in declining physical health, he clearly enjoyed visiting the Naval Aviation Museum, and receiving a tour from former squadron pilot Bill Esders.

  He died on February 6, 1994, and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery next to his wife and son.

  NANCY LEWIS

  The younger sister of Vic Lewis was broken-hearted at his loss, as were Vic’s parents, and Anna McGory, the young woman Vic had hoped to marry. Tragically, Anna died soon after Vic. In 1944, the Lewis family attended the launching of the USS Victor Lewis, the destroyer escort named in his honor. Vic’s mother, Serena, christened the hull before it slid down the slipway.

  After his son’s death, Maurice Lewis continued his work as a traveling salesman for the American Safety Razor Company. His territory included the state of Maine. Later in the war he was returning home after a business trip when he saw a small group of enlisted sailors thumbing a ride from the side of the road. He stopped to pick them up, and one of them expressed his gratitude. Their leave had nearly expired, and they were required to report back aboard their ship within the next few hours. “What ship is that?” Maurice asked them.

  The Victor Lewis, one of them responded.

  WILLIAM MAGEE

  While enjoying home leave in New Castle, Pennsylvania, Bill decided to apply for flight training. His application was approved a few months later. After winning his wings, he was commissioned ensign and assigned to fly Curtiss Seahawk observation planes. For the next two years, he participated in air-sea rescue operations. He left the Navy in 1946.

  Hired as the personal pilot to a wealthy banker, he found the job boring, and decided to go into business for himself, initially operating a feed store in San Diego and then starting a pet supply company, before eventually becoming a successful contractor and construction consultant, specializing in interiors for major department stores.

  He married his first girlfriend, Ann, a professional singer whose books he used to carry to school in the third grade. They currently live in Phoenix, Arizona. Bill often wakes up remembering the night of October 13, 1942, when the Japanese battleships shelled Guadalcanal and he survived the wild ride down to the beach while bent over the front fender of the ammo delivery truck.