A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  The description of Bert Earnest’s remarkable flight back to Midway in his battered Avenger was provided to the author by Earnest and Harry Ferrier. Additional details were drawn from Earnest’s After Action Report (June 23, 1942; official source), which was submitted to CINCPAC after the battle.

  The actions of Admiral Nagumo, and the frantic activity aboard his flagship Akagi from the moment of the destruction of Torpedo Squadron Eight at approximately 0945, to the arrival of the American dive-bombers at 1020, were distilled from Lord’s Incredible Victory, Parshall and Tully’s Shattered Sword, Prange’s Miracle at Midway, and Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan.

  Gay’s account of the arrival and attack of the Yorktown and Enterprise dive-bombers after his plane was shot down, and his subsequent survival in the ocean for nearly thirty hours, came from the first statements he made to debriefing officers at Midway after his rescue on June 5 (Action dispatches, June 4–5, 1942; official source), and the in-depth After Action Report (June 7, 1942; official source).

  The fruitless search by John McInerny and the rest of his fighter squadron to find the Hornet before their Wildcats ran out of gas was drawn from the taped interviews Bowen Weisheit conducted with John McInerny, Pat Mitchell, Richard Gray, Johnny Talbot, and Humphrey Tallman, along with the detailed interview notes Walter Lord transcribed after his lengthy interview with Stan Ruehlow. Additional details were supplied by Ruehlow in two letters to John Lundstrom in 1974.

  The brief sketch of Commander Ring’s return alone to the Hornet at 1118, and his refusal to go to the bridge, was provided to the author by historian Mark Horan in a taped telephone interview in September 2006, and by Harold Towne in a separate interview. These sources were complemented by a November 2007 e-mail to the author from historian James Sawruk, in which he confirmed that he received a similar account from Ring’s wingman, Ensign Clayton Fisher, who landed aboard the Hornet shortly afterward. Bowen Weisheit confirmed to the author that in a 1982 interview, Hornet officer Clark Barrett told him that Commander Ring’s unwillingness to go to the bridge made it necessary for Walter Rodee to report the results of the air group’s mission to Captain Mitscher.

  The only published comment Commander Ring ever made on this subject came from an unpublished letter he wrote on March 28, 1946, excerpts of which were released by his family, and which formed the basis for a sympathetic article by retired Navy captain Bruce Linder in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (August 1999). In his letter, Admiral Ring wrote that after returning to the Hornet from his morning mission on June 4, “I was shaken at the realization of such losses and will admit that I was in poor condition to take the air in a renewed attack on the Japanese carriers which had, by then, been located. About one hour after my landing the remaining aircraft of the group were ordered launched for the next attack.”

  It is unclear how Commander Ring could have possibly known the extent of the losses within his air group at that particular time unless it was from Waldron’s radio transmissions. There are a number of other inconsistencies in the letter.

  The background information on Pete Mitscher’s academic record at Annapolis, including his struggle to graduate, was drawn from Theodore Taylor’s The Magnificent Mitscher (pp. 20–27).

  The description of the flight of Lieutenant Commander Ruff Johnson and his seventeen-plane dive-bomber squadron after he led it south away from the rest of the air group was culled from a variety of sources, including author interviews with pilot Roy Gee, Bowen Weisheit’s interview with pilot Troy Guillory, a completed questionnaire submitted by Ruff Johnson to Walter Lord in 1966, the account of Johnson’s mission in Shattered Sword, and the narrative of these events in Miracle at Midway.

  The account from a Japanese perspective of the first dive-bombing attack by the Dauntless pilots from the Enterprise and the Yorktown, followed by Admiral Nagumo’s last hours aboard his doomed flagship Akagi, the escape to the Nagara, and the subsequent destruction of the four Japanese carriers, was drawn from Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan (pp. 153–177).

  When the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead

  The aftermath of Bert Earnest’s and Harry Ferrier’s flight back to Midway, including Bert’s subsequent meeting on the runway with pilots from Ruff Johnson’s dive-bomber squadron, was drawn from author interviews with Earnest and Ferrier.

  The narrative scenes of Gay’s thirty hours floating in the Pacific were re-created from his personal recollections in Sole Survivor. The details of his rescue, as well as the initial statements he gave to intelligence officers at Midway of what he saw during the battle, were drawn from classified Action Dispatches (official source) sent to CINCPAC on June 5. His appearance and demeanor at his first meeting with Admiral Nimitz in Pearl Harbor were described by Commander Ernest Eller in the oral history he provided to the U.S. Naval Institute, at Annapolis, Maryland.

  The sketch chronicling the reaction of the Japanese Imperial Navy to the defeat it suffered at Midway, including the cover-up of the catastrophe to the Japanese people, and the subsequent quarantining of Midway survivors after their return to the home islands, was documented in Parshall and Tully’s Shattered Sword, Lord’s Incredible Victory, Prange’s Miracle at Midway, and Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan.

  The cover-up by newly promoted Admiral Pete Mitscher and his staff of his disastrous decisions on the first day of the Midway battle cannot be found in any written records or oral histories. Eminent historians of the Pacific War, including Samuel Eliot Morison, Walter Lord, and Gordon Prange, relied on Mitscher’s “official” version of what took place during the Hornet air group’s morning mission on June 4.

  However, Admiral Mitscher’s mistakes were not limited to the first mission on June 4. The account of the failure of the Hornet’s second strike mission against the fourth Japanese carrier, Hiryu, including the botched launching of the Hornet air group, was drawn principally from the recollections of men who fought in the battle, including an author interview with pilot Roy Gee, and Henry A. Carey’s letters to John Lundstrom. Additional confirmation is provided in John B. Lundstrom’s Black Shoe Carrier Admiral (p. 273), in which he describes the “marooning” of the “entire leadership” of the air group due to Mitscher’s egregious error.

  The account of the Hornet’s failed mission on June 5, in which many of the Hornet’s dive-bombers were armed with heavy ordnance in contravention of Admiral Spruance’s direct order, was drawn from John Lundstrom’s The First Team, as well as from author interviews with Roy Gee, who told the story of Commander Ring’s return from the mission on June 5, when he complained to the other pilots that he had been unable to launch his bomb because the launch mechanism was inoperative. According to Gee, Ring had absolutely no idea how to drop a bomb from the Dauntless.

  This stunning fact was further confirmed in a 1987 interview given to historian James Sawruk by dive-bomber pilot Clay Fisher, who told Sawruk of being summoned to Commander Ring’s stateroom on the evening of June 5. Worrying that he might be in trouble, Ensign Fisher was amazed when the group commander asked Fisher to instruct him in the specific procedures needed to launch a bomb.

  The anger of Admiral Spruance after learning that Mitscher had failed to comply with his order about the size of the ordnance to be carried by the dive-bombers on June 5 was then compounded by the Hornet air staff’s attempt to lie about it. Admiral Spruance’s heated reaction is documented in Thomas Buell’s The Quiet Warrior. Buell further amplified his thoughts on Admiral Spruance’s lack of trust in Mitscher in an oral history interview conducted by historian Paul Stillwell on May 9, 1982, which is on file at the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland.

  The most solid evidence of Mitscher’s cover-up of the June 4 fiasco is the false USS Hornet After Action Report (official source) he submitted to Admiral Nimitz shortly after the battle. It is unlikely that anyone will ever know who actually drafted the report, along with its accompanying map purporting to show the many convolute
d directions its air squadrons supposedly flew on June 4, 1942. It is also noteworthy to point out that the “official” map contains no specific navigational headings for the course followed by the air group after leaving the Hornet. Certainly, no one ever took credit for these documents after they were declassified on November 23, 1964, more than twenty years after the battle took place.

  The captains of all three American carriers in the battle were required not only to submit an After Action Report on behalf of their ship and its crew, but under Navy regulations, they were also required to forward the After Action Reports submitted by the air group commanders and the air squadron commanders. In the case of the Yorktown and the Enterprise, not only were the ships’ After Action Reports submitted to CINCPAC, but individual reports were forwarded from each air group commander and all eight air squadron commanders.

  Admiral Mitscher alone failed to submit the additional reports.

  Certainly, Admiral Raymond Spruance was aware of the falsehoods in the Hornet After Action Report. He was required to endorse it before the report was submitted to Admiral Nimitz. In his endorsement, Spruance wrote Nimitz that the Hornet report “contains a number of inaccuracies.” In a separate communication to CINCPAC, he stated, “Hornet dive-bombers failed to locate the target and did not participate in this attack (June 4). Had they done so, the fourth carrier could have been attacked and later attack made on Yorktown prevented.”

  Spruance held Mitscher indirectly responsible for this costly failure. Like Mitscher, Spruance was part of the Annapolis elite, “blue school Navy,” and he was almost unfailingly magnanimous when it came to an Annapolis peer. His uncharacteristically blunt language was an indication of the anger he felt at Mitscher’s conduct during the battle, and Mitscher’s subsequent attempt to cover up his mistakes. Further amplification of Spruance’s views, including his ongoing distrust of Mitscher later in the war, can be found in Buell’s The Quiet Warrior (p. 149), and in Prange’s Miracle at Midway (p. 244).

  Based on the 265-degree course the Hornet air group actually followed on June 4, and the fact that some of the group’s pilots had seen the fighter squadron turn back, it was theoretically possible for the Hornet air staff to extrapolate that one of the sectors where Mitchell’s squadron might have ditched was to the northeast of Midway Atoll instead of to the northwest, as suggested in their subsequent After Action Report and its accompanying map. The spurious map shows the fighter squadron heading in a direction to the northwest of Midway Atoll, which is where the Midway rescue planes focused their search for them from June 4–8.

  The author was unable to find any dispatches indicating that the Hornet staff provided clues to the rescue pilots as to where their lost squadron went down. The air staff may have thought the squadron had headed for Midway, and had actually gone down northwest of it. Ultimately, the eight survivors were found through sheer chance nearly two hundred miles to the east.

  The ordeal of the ditched fighter pilots as they floated in the Pacific was documented through interviews conducted by Bowen Weisheit with Pat Mitchell, Richard Gray, Johnny Talbot, Humphrey Tallman, John McInerny, and PBY rescue pilot Jerry Crawford, as well as the interview conducted by Walter Lord with Stanley Ruehlow.

  The sketch of Fred Mears as he went through the personal effects of each one of the lost pilots and crewmen from Torpedo Eight was sourced from his own description in Carrier Combat.

  The final letters written by Russell “Rusty” Kenyon to his wife, Brownie, before Torpedo Eight’s last mission were provided to the author by Kenyon’s daughter, “Rusty” Edwards.

  The account of Rete Gaynier’s personal torment in waiting to hear word of the fate of her husband was provided to the author by Rete Gaynier Janiec. It was representative of what so many of the wives and loved ones endured as they waited for news of the missing combatants.

  The letter written by Jennie Teats on June 11 to her already dead son Grant was provided to the author by Grant Teats’s niece, Nancy Mahi.

  The discovery by George Gay that he had become famous as the lone survivor of John Waldron’s attack, and the resulting emotional roller-coaster ride it led to upon his return to the States, was recounted by Gay himself in Sole Survivor. Rete Gaynier Janiec provided additional details about the resulting fractured relationship with two of the wives of lost pilots. Other pertinent information on this subject was provided in letters to Brownie Kenyon from Hal Ellison’s widow, Audrey Faye, which were provided to the author by Rusty Kenyon Edwards.

  Copies of the letters to Bert Earnest’s parents from the bereaved father of Charlie Brannon, as well as the letters sent to Brannon’s family from James Earnest were given to the author by Bert Earnest, along with copies of both Navy Cross citations Bert received for his actions at Midway.

  The account of Earnest’s and Ferrier’s final days at Midway after the battle was provided by them to the author in separate interviews. The story of the Marines falling asleep under the blood-soaked Avenger when it was being shipped back to Pearl Harbor came from an interview with Ferrier, who met one of the Marines who had taken shelter under the plane.

  Sister Sara

  The reaction of Swede Larsen’s detachment at Pearl Harbor to the news that forty-five out of forty-eight of their squadron mates had been killed at Midway was drawn from interviews by the author with William Magee, Ervin “Judge” Wendt, Smiley Morgan, and Jack Stark.

  The story of Swede Larsen’s assumption of command of Torpedo Eight on the hangar deck of the Hornet on June 12, 1942, including his disparagement of George Flinn in front of the men, was recounted to the author by Smiley Morgan. The excerpts of Swede’s speech came from Ira Wolfert’s Torpedo 8 (pp. 25–27).

  The anecdote in which Commander Stanhope Cotton Ring offered to stand a round of drinks for every pilot at the Ewa Field Officers’ Club in Hawaii, and the subsequent refusal of the Hornet pilots in the bar to drink with him, was described in detail in a letter to John Lundstrom from Yorktown fighter pilot Johnny Adams, who was an eyewitness.

  The description of the post-Midway celebration that took place on Waikiki Beach, including the fistfights and drunken brawls between Army and Navy aviators, is documented in Lord’s Incredible Victory, Mears’s Carrier Combat, and the author’s interviews with Smiley Morgan.

  The narrative describing Torpedo Eight’s reorganization under Swede Larsen, and its training period from June 15 to July 6, 1942, was drawn from the Torpedo Squadron Eight War Diary, Wolfert’s Torpedo 8, and author interviews with Gene Hanson, Smiley Morgan, and Bert Earnest.

  The impressions of Bruce Harwood after he arrived to become Torpedo Eight’s executive officer were distilled from author interviews with eight survivors of the squadron. All of them remembered him as one of the finest men they served with in the war. The assessments of the other pilots in the squadron by the enlisted men who served under them were provided to the author in interviews with William Magee, Ski Kowalewski, Frank Balsely, Del Delchamps, Harry Ferrier, Bill Tunstall, Judge Wendt, and Wiley Bartlett.

  The scene in which Fred Mears and Harry Ferrier learned they had become new crewmates aboard the Enterprise was drawn from Mears’s Carrier Combat and an author interview with Ferrier.

  The narrative chronicling the squadron’s first two weeks aboard the carrier Saratoga was re-created from the private diary of Pete Peterkin, along with author interviews with Gene Hanson, Jack Stark, and Bill Tunstall. The makeup of the carrier task force and the course it followed toward Guadalcanal were drawn largely from Lundstrom’s Black Shoe Carrier Admiral and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign, as well as from the USS Saratoga Deck Log (official source).

  The description of the Saratoga’s crossing of the equator, the subsequent appearance of King Neptune, and the initiation of Torpedo Eight’s “pollywogs” into “shellbacks” was re-created from the diary of Pete Peterkin.

  The first briefing of the Saratoga air group by Harry Don Felt about Guadalcanal and the following discussion
and questions from the pilots were drawn from Lundstrom’s The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign (p. 23), and an interview with Gene Hanson.

  The account of Aaron Katz’s arrival aboard the Saratoga, including his introduction to Swede Larsen in the Torpedo Eight squadron office, was provided to the author in interviews with Jack Stark and Smiley Morgan. Swede’s prejudices were never cloaked behind polite verbiage. He was very direct about them. His animosity toward Jews and minorities was described to the author in interviews with Gene Hanson, Jack Stark, Smiley Morgan, Bert Earnest, and Ski Kowalewski. The exchange between Larsen and Katz in their first meeting was something that remained indelibly in Morgan’s memory.

  The information related to Katz’s formative years in Cleveland prior to becoming a Navy pilot was given to the author by Katz’s two sons, Rick and Roger. Their help was invaluable in reconstructing his life before and after the war.

  The substance of the controversial planning session for the Guadalcanal invasion that took place aboard the Saratoga between its senior commanders on July 27, 1942, came from a variety of sources, including Lundstrom’s Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, Richard B. Frank’s Guadalcanal, and Alexander Vandegrift’s Once a Marine.

  The description of the preinvasion exercise at Koro Island was drawn from Mears’s Carrier Combat, Vandegrift’s Once a Marine, the Torpedo Squadron Eight War Diary, and author interviews with Ski Kowalewski, who flew that day with the unlucky Bob Evarts.

  Dog Day

  The primary sources utilized by the author in describing the panorama of the August 7 invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi were Richard Frank’s authoritative masterpiece, Guadalcanal, Vandegrift’s Once a Marine, Lundstrom’s The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign, Clark Lee’s They Call It Pacific, Richard Tregaskis’s Guadalcanal Diary, Jon Hoffman’s Once a Legend, Thomas Miller’s The Cactus Air Force, Clark Reynolds’s The Saga of Smokey Stover, and Colonel Joseph H. Alexander’s superb Edson’s Raiders.