The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  The little ball showed him whether the plane's wings were level. If the ball moved off dead center, he was skidding. Watching the ball, he continued to adjust the trim. In the center of his telescope, Mike could see the plane in front of him nearing the target. Farther below, bombs exploded on the ship's yellow deck, as it swung into a tight turn. A squadron of planes stood on her deck.

  The dive felt good. "Boy, this is nice," Mike thought. "I'm just flying down. I got a nice rising sun painted on the bow of the ship for a target." And then he noticed the white specks coming off of this ship. He wondered what it was for a moment, until black puffs appeared nearby. Enemy antiaircraft gunners were shooting as he fell toward them at 240 knots (275 mph).

  He aimed for the bow. The ball held in the center, but the ship seemed to be slipping away from him. He tried increasing his dive angle. A steeper dive increased the chances of hitting the ship, since it decreased the distance between the release point and the point of impact. The plane below him cleared the ship. It looked like his bomb hit. Dance was calling out the elevation into the intercom: five thousand feet, four thousand feet. Mike had a clear view of what might be Kaga now. She was slipping fast. With no more angle to increase, he adjusted his sights for the center of the ship. Dance called out three thousand feet. Mike tried to wait one more second, to reach twenty- five hundred feet, before he pulled the bomb release. He tried to wait another second, to allow the bomb to get fully away, before pulling out.

  As he pulled back, the g- forces felt a bit weak to him and he started wondering if he had somehow made his dive too shallow. The Dauntless flew right down to the water as he eased her out, thinking it had been just too easy to have been right. His bomb's forward speed could have carried it over the carrier. Mike thought about pulling up sharply, rolling to one side, and getting a look at where his bomb hit. Everybody did it. The maneuver, however, would make him a big, slow sitting duck for the ship's antiaircraft (AA) gunners or its fighter planes. He told himself, "I can't control my bomb now. It either hit or didn't, and I'll let the guy who followed me tell me whether I hit or not."

  He closed the dive brakes and shoved the throttle forward. The Dauntless did not jump as she should have. Something was wrong. Skimming low over the water in the middle of the enemy fleet, he looked around. The one-hundred-pound bombs under each wing had not been released. He hadn't pulled that lever. Mike looked up to see a cruiser cutting directly across his path. Cruisers had lots of AA guns. He decided the bow had fewer than the stern and broke that way, dropping his two small wing bombs as he crossed its path. He pulled back on the stick and headed skyward.

  Jinking his plane around to keep the gunners off him, Mike looked for enemy fighters. If the cruiser's gunners shot back he didn't notice, but then Dance didn't notice any great explosions behind them, either. Up they went. Looking around, he saw a sight that amazed him: not one plane--friend or foe--in view. He didn't know how to get back to his carrier, he didn't know where the rendezvous point was, he was low on fuel, and he had the sneaking suspicion he was on the wrong side of the enemy fleet. Mike pulled out his Ouija, looked at his watch, and realized he could not navigate himself home. He put his plane on his best guess of a heading, eastward, heedless of the angry ships below. Dance, in the rear seat and facing backward, kept watch for fighters. Puckering gas, Mike leveled the plane off at about two thousand feet and slowed it down to 110 knots.

  Dance saw them first: two dive-bombers closing from behind and then zooming past. They bore the markings of Enterprise's bombing squadron and they looked like they knew how to fly home. Mike adjusted his heading. The urge to close up, to fly in formation, gave way to the realization that he did not have the fuel to burn. The two Dauntlesses got far ahead of him. He willed himself to remain calm. It was still a beautiful day in the Pacific. He had the right heading. More than an hour passed. Miles away on the horizon, the U.S. fleet hove into view. A wave of elation washed over him.

  The two planes ahead of him, though, began to lose altitude. He caught up to them without trying. One slid into the sea, followed quickly by its partner. He guessed they had run out of fuel, although no one said anything over the radio. Seeing them go down in the open ocean scared Mike. He made a note on his plotting board as they passed overhead. His watch read a few minutes before two p.m. Dance swung his chair so he faced west and watched. A few minutes later Dance said, over the intercom, "Both crews have gotten out and they were in the raft."

  The landing, his eighteenth, went easily. He taxied forward to where the plane handlers took over. He told Dance to meet him in the ready room for the debriefing and strode toward the bridge. Micheel wanted to make sure that the air group staff or the captain or someone knew about the two crews who went down. Up on the third story of the island, however, he had a hard time attracting anyone's attention. A mile or so away, great clouds of smoke engulfed Yorktown, rising in a column to a mushroom high above. The antiaircraft fire made the sky around it look like it was "breaking out in a rash."7 With one of America's three carriers fighting for its life in plain view, none of the brass paid much attention to an ensign in a flight suit and Mae West (life jacket). Ensign Micheel, on his first visit to this exalted station, finally just grabbed someone, a second or third class petty officer, he couldn't even tell, and gave him what little info he had. "About ten miles astern" of our position, four men were in rubber rafts and needed to be rescued. Pointing at a map, he demanded, "Put an x there that these guys went down there." He had done what he could, but he was not sure it was enough.

  Back in the ready room, it was euphoria. They and the other squadrons had left three enemy carriers burning. Everyone thought "it had been the best dive they had ever made."8 Mike's roommate, Bill Pittman, said he had been attacked not by a Zero, but by a German Messerschmitt.i Pittman's gunner had shot it down, even though his machine gun had fallen out of its mount in the dive; the gunner had held the twin .30 caliber in his lap.9 Other pilots attested to seeing the gunner holding the 175 pounds of machine gun in his hands and firing it. It was amazing. While everyone stood in the front of the room talking excitedly, Mike went to the back with Dance to meet the air staff 's intelligence officer. The intelligence officer asked the pair for their "two bits." Beyond the positions of the two downed pilots, Ensign Micheel did not feel he had much to add to what was already obviously well known. He had dropped on the carrier on the left as ordered. It looked like Kaga. He had not seen any fighters and he had been lucky to make it back. The officer turned to Dance and asked if he had anything to add. "When we landed," Dance said, "we only had four gallons of gas left in our plane."

  With the ship at general quarters, the officers' mess was closed. Sandwiches and lots of black coffee were there for those that wanted it. Most of the pilots were intent on figuring out "who had scored a hit and on which jap carrier." If it had not been Akagi or Kaga--both of which had participated in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor--it had been large enough to be in their class. Gallaher noted that the Akagi was the only carrier to have its island on the port side; that made it easier to identify.10 The pilots of Bombing Six claimed that Scouting Six had cut them off in their dive and they had had to fly on to the far carrier. Someone put up on the screen all the silhouettes of the carriers, as seen from above. Each pilot picked out the one they thought they hit. It was fun. Elated pilots could not share their stories without using their hands to show the relative positions and angles of their planes and their targets and anything else. They agreed their skipper, Gallaher, had planted the first hit and perhaps as many as four more hits had followed.11 When asked, Mike said he had been told to dive on the carrier to the left, so he did. He was not sure of the name of it or the other nearby. " They were large carriers. That's all."

  As time passed it became clear that no more Dauntlesses would land. By their count, seven crews were missing at that moment, including the executive officer, Dickinson, and most of the third division.12 The good cheer faded. Mike looked around and notic
ed John Lough was missing. Was John out there in a life raft?

  There was hardly time to think. Yorktown, a sister to the Big E, might sink soon. Some of her planes had landed on the deck above them. Pilots and their crewmen also circulated word of the losses in the other Enterprise squadrons. The torpedo squadron in particular had lost a lot of men. Those losses left a bitter taste, since everybody knew the old torpedo planes were, as one put it, "easy prey for Jap fighters."13 Worse, their torpedoes often failed to detonate. From the bomber squadron came rumors that there was "something screwy" with the new electrical arming system installed in their planes. The new system's malfunction had caused some bombs to be dropped prematurely.

  When Gallaher came back to the ready room at about five p.m., he brought news that a second strike would be flown against another task force. Although volunteering was believed to bring bad luck in the navy, Ensign Micheel wanted to go. He did not want to sit around waiting for a torpedo to hit the hull. He went up to the skipper and told him, "I'll volunteer for the second flight." Lieutenant Gallaher did not make his decision based upon volunteers or, much to Mike's relief, upon rank. Those pilots whose planes were in flying condition would go. As determined by the planes' captains, Scouting Six had seven flyable planes. Pittman would not go: the enemy had blown a huge hole in his starboard wing before his gunner drove them off.14

  Gallaher kept the briefing short. A scout had spotted one enemy carrier, two battleships, three cruisers, and four destroyers at latitude 31 degrees, 40 minutes, longitude 172 degrees, 10 minutes west. That placed it to their northwest and well within range. Gallaher would lead a strike comprised of what was left from Scouting Six, Bombing Six, and the squadron from the Yorktown, Bombing Three. It totaled twenty-four Dauntlesses armed with a roughly equal number of five-hundred- and one-thousand-pound bombs. Hornet's Dauntlesses would follow them. All the Wildcats would remain, protecting the carriers. Twenty minutes later, Mike and Dance walked back out on the sunny flight deck as their carrier turned into the eight- knot breeze and picked up the speed necessary for flight operations. The Big E's flight deck was not crowded. Their plane, S-6-17, had one five-hundred-pound bomb, but no wing bombs. Fewer planes meant a longer runway. Another quick prayer and they set off. A towering column of smoke from Yorktown could be seen as the ad hoc group formed up.

  They found the fourth enemy flattop easily and quickly. As they approached, Gallaher got on the radio and informed the group that his squadron and Bombing Six would dive on the carrier. He ordered the other squadron, Bombing Three, to dive on one of the escorting cruisers or destroyers. Gallaher led Scouting Six around the perimeter of the ships below. The skipper obviously wanted his team to drop with the sun at their backs and therefore make it harder for the ship's gunners and its captain. He signaled the men to move into echelon formation. From nineteen thousand feet they began to descend, gaining speed as Gallaher brought them over the target in such a way that their dives would take them from bow to stern over the ship, thus increasing their accuracy.

  Micheel saw the carrier below him. Smaller than the one earlier, it churned wakes seemingly in all directions at once as it maneuvered. Gallaher's plane slid over on its back and dove away. Two followed; then the division leader saluted and dropped away. Completing his checklist, Mike rolled up and over, dropping out of the sun from fifteen thousand feet. A roll out of echelon started him in the opposite direction. He spun around bit by bit until he drew a bead on his flight leader.

  In the next seventeen seconds he saw flak coming up at him. The carrier and her escorts slewed this way and that. Dance called off their altitude as they plunged. Smoke roiled up at them. The carrier swung hard into another turn in the final seconds. Mike could not get the Dauntless to track the motion and it looked like he would miss, so he threw it into a bit of a skid to the left and pulled the bomb release lever. He figured he had missed the flight deck. Perhaps he had gotten in close enough to damage the hull. Without a look back, he jinked his way around the escort ships, gained altitude, and joined up with Scouting Six. Black bursts of AA fire followed them.

  They flew eastward for the second time that day, plenty of gasoline in their tanks and another successful mission under their belts. As Scouting Six and its friends arrived over the Big E and assumed a landing pattern, the late sun sent its rays horizontally across the deck.

  Once more they found themselves in the ready room, debriefing, as the clock approached nine p.m. The pilots of Scouting Six planes claimed one direct hit and at least one if not two probable hits on the fourth carrier, said to be named Hiryu. The pilot who had dropped behind Mike told him his bomb had missed the carrier. It had exploded just off the starboard bow. That sounded right to Mike. The Dauntlesses of Bombing Three had disobeyed Gallaher's order because it looked to them like it had not been hit. After almost crashing into the leader of Bombing Six, the Yorktown squadron had hit the carrier hard, leaving it burning from "stem to stern."15 That meant the enemy had lost two carriers and had two others on fire. The admiral in command of the task force and the captain of Enterprise both sent along their congratulations. Captain Murray included a wish "that many of our gallant and heroic shipmates in the Air Group who are now unaccounted for will be rescued."16

  Amid the heated speculation of who had hit what came the first news of the planes from Hornet. Its second strike had ignored the burning carrier and had attacked one of the cruisers. Hornet's losses from the first strike had not been as bad as thought: some of its planes had landed at Midway. Mike wondered aloud, "Well, what in the world would they go to Midway for?" No one responded. Their thoughts focused on the men from their own ship; Enterprise had lost more than half of her aircrews. Scouting Six had suffered the fewest losses. Eight of its sixteen planes were down, although one flight crew had been pulled from the ocean. Only four Devastators of the torpedo squadron had returned--some of them blamed the Wildcats for allowing ten of them to be shot down. The Japanese had bombed the hell out of Yorktown and she had been abandoned. Another battle like this and they'd all be dead. A lot of the talk concerned the enemy fighters, the Zeros. Someone had counted six Zeros on the second mission; others recalled a dozen. One Dauntless had been shot down during its dive; two others just after their dives. A few had landed aboard with bullet holes.

  Ensign Micheel wondered how he could have missed seeing all the Zeros. Was he blocking them out somehow? He recognized that lately he had begun deliberately ignoring anything that threatened to scare him. Blocking out Zeros seemed very unhealthy. Everybody else had seen them. It gave him a peculiar feeling. After a time, he decided he would not have made a good fighter pilot after all.

  Sleep must have come easily for the pilots of Scouting Six. With several enemy task forces still steaming toward Midway, including a flattop, the Klaxon for general quarters and the call to man their planes would wake them early the next morning. As they slept, the Big E, Hornet, and their respective flocks of support ships steamed back toward the U.S. mainland, away from the enemy and the damaged Yorktown. In the early hours, the task force reversed course. As the pilots came back into the ready room on June 5, they were once again headed into battle. The fighters launched first, determined to protect the remaining carriers; then the search planes took off. Most of Scouting Six sat in their ready room and waited. As the morning passed, it became clear that the enemy had given up. The task force sped up its chase westward, hunting the retreating enemy.

  That day and the next, the scouts found a few stragglers, enemy surface ships that either had hung around to pluck their men from the sea or had been too damaged to move quickly. The dive- bombers went after them. Without the danger of Zeros, these ships should have been easy marks. The results, however, were mixed. Scouts reported finding the enemy ships several times. The reports proved misleading or completely false. The remaining carrier dive- bombers did hit two enemy larger cruisers or battleships. One enemy ship not only dodged the bombs of thirty-two diving Dauntlesses, however, but also shot on
e plane down with its AA guns. Returning from this mission, one that certainly did not justify the loss of a crew, Micheel and a few other new pilots received credit for their first night landing.

  They had seen the necessity of a night carrier landing coming from a long way off, as the water went from blue to black below them. They reached the Big E as the light failed, causing difficulties as the Dauntlesses jostled to get into the landing groove. A dim red light illuminated the dials and gauges on the planes' control panels. Below them, the flattop's landing lights came on, outlining the flight deck. Coming around the stern of the ship, Mike saw that the LSO had lighted paddles to guide him in and give him the cut. After he was aboard, he admitted to himself that getting aboard had been "another pucker job." One of his colleagues mistakenly landed on Hornet, while a few Hornet planes landed on Enterprise.

  With the return of the sortie, the Battle of Midway ended. By the next morning, the Japanese ships would be within range of their land-based planes on Wake Island. The U.S. carrier squadrons had chased the enemy as far as was prudent and necessary. There was time to linger in the wardroom after dinner and talk. A bottle of whiskey came out and was passed among them. Though normally an illegal maneuver in Uncle Sam's navy, all of the aircrews had the opportunity to drink--if not from a personal supply then from the ship's doctor. Mike had a shot. After much discussion, the pilots decided the ship that had eluded them had been a light cruiser, and those were just too fast and too small to hit. The disappearance of the enemy task forces, still numerically superior and suspected of including a carrier, remained a surprise to Mike. It just didn't make sense to him.