McClusky turned the formation slightly to the right and flew due west for thirty-five miles; then he turned right again to the northwest, intending to conduct a standard box search. He scanned the horizon eagerly for a sign of any surface ships, his binoculars “practically glued” to his eyes. After fifteen more minutes, he turned right again to the northeast. By now, fuel had become a serious problem, especially for the pilots in Best’s squadron, who were lugging the big 1,000-pound bombs. Two of them, Ensign Eugene Greene and Ensign Troy Schneider, fell out of the formation, out of fuel, and landed in the water. Schneider and his radioman/gunner were rescued three days later, but Greene and his backseat gunner were never found.14
Nor was fuel the only problem. Best’s wing man, Lieutenant Junior Grade Ed Kroeger, used hand signals to indicate to Best that his cylinder had run out of oxygen. Best could simply have signaled Kroeger to drop down to a lower level where he could breathe the air without an oxygen mask, but he did not want to break up what was left of his squadron. Instead he removed his own mask, holding it up to show Kroeger that he had done so and then began a gradual descent, leading his thirteen remaining planes down to 15,000 feet where the air was still thin, but breathable. That downward glide put him well below McClusky and Gallaher, and about a quarter mile behind them.15
Then, at about 9:55, well north of the plotted intercept position, McClusky noticed a ship, all by itself, proceeding northward at great speed, its bow wave making a broad wake that looked for all the world like a white arrow painted on the surface of the blue sea. It was, of course, Commander Watanabe in the Arashi, racing northward at 35 knots to catch up to the main body. Mc-Clusky guessed at once that it was a laggard from the Kidō Butai, and using that V-shaped bow wave as a guide, he altered course and followed the arrow just east of due north. Ten minutes later, at 10:05, he saw dark specks on the horizon ahead of him. As he flew closer, the specks resolved themselves into surface ships. Thanks to Brockman’s persistence, Watanabe had provided the crucial signpost that enabled McClusky’s air group to find the Kidō Butai.16
By now, the box formation of the four Japanese carriers had completely disintegrated. Each ship had maneuvered independently to avoid the persistent torpedo attacks of the Americans, and any resemblance to the original formation had long since disappeared. The southernmost of the four carriers, and therefore the first one spotted by McClusky’s bombers, was the giant Kaga. Two miles ahead of it and “five to seven miles” off to the right was Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi. Another fourteen miles beyond them, the Hiryū was under attack from Lem Massey’s torpedo planes, and another six miles beyond her and all but out of sight was the Sōryū. Cruisers, battleships, and destroyers maneuvered between and around these four behemoths apparently at random.17
Unbeknownst to McClusky, Max Leslie’s dive-bomber squadron from Yorktown was nearing the Kidō Butai at the same moment. Though the Yorktown planes had launched almost two hours after McClusky’s, the more efficient launch sequence and the more accurate course of her air group put her bombers over the target at the same moment. (It is noteworthy that while the Hornet’s air group flew some eighty miles north of the Kidō Butai, and the Enterprise bomber group flew eighty miles south of it, the Yorktown’s air group flew almost directly to it.) Despite the near simultaneous arrival of McClusky and Leslie over the Kidō Butai, the Americans did not conduct a coordinated attack. McClusky approached from the south and Leslie from the east, each of them unaware that the other was there. Had they targeted the same ships, there might have been great confusion when they intruded into one another’s air space. Instead, each targeted the first carrier he saw: Leslie the Sōryū, and McClusky the Kaga and Akagi, and because those carriers were widely dispersed, the Americans did not interfere with each other.18
There was considerable confusion, however, between the two squadrons of McClusky’s air group. According to doctrine, each squadron was to attack a different capital ship. To do that, the lead squadron, which was Gallaher’s, should fly past the first carrier and attack the more distant one, while the trailing squadron (Best’s) attacked the near target. That would ensure that the attacks occurred nearly at the same time, so that the attack on the first ship did not alert the second. Another element of American divebombing doctrine was that the planes carrying the heavier 1,000-pound bombs should attack the nearest target simply because of their heavier ordnance load. On both counts, Dick Best, whose planes trailed Gallaher’s by a quarter mile and carried the heavy 1,000-pound bombs, assumed that McClusky and Gallaher would fly past the first carrier and attack the more distant one.
But McClusky, the former fighter pilot, had not internalized bombing doctrine in the same way Best had. He approached the situation with typical American straightforwardness. He saw the two carriers not as near and far but as left and right. To be sure, the Akagi was a few miles ahead of the plodding Kaga, but it was also five or six miles off to the right. McClusky could not give hand signals to Best, who was down at 15,000 feet, so he got on the radio and ordered Gallaher to take the carrier “on the left” (Kaga) and Best to take the carrier “on the right” (Akagi). Gallaher heard him loud and clear. He remembered McClusky telling him to follow him to the carrier on the left and that he told Best “to take the carrier on the right.” That is certainly what McClusky intended. But for such a simple order, it produced profound confusion. Best either never heard it, or, because he was so deeply steeped in standard doctrine, he processed it differently. In either case, he continued to assume that he would take the near carrier and that Gallaher would take the more distant one. In his subsequent report, Lieutenant Joe Penland, who led Best’s second division, wrote that “Commander Bombing Squadron Six understood his target to be the ‘left hand’ CV.”19
For his part, Best radioed McClusky to tell him that he was attacking “according to doctrine.” It was a curious way to indicate his intentions, certainly less specific than McClusky’s left-right distinction. Such a declaration assumed that McClusky was sufficiently familiar with “doctrine” to know what that meant, and Best knew that McClusky “was not well informed on bomber doctrine.” That being the case, Best would have been better advised simply to say that he was planning to attack the “closest carrier,” or “the carrier on the left.” It hardly mattered, however, because McClusky never heard it. Best later speculated, “My radio didn’t work,” which is possible, but another explanation is that Best and McClusky sent their reports to each other simultaneously. Had both men pressed the transmit buttons on their radios at the same time, neither would have heard the other. In any event, this confusion meant that both squadrons under McClusky’s command prepared to dive on the Kaga. Though the Americans had gained a great advantage by arriving over the Kidō Butai at a critical moment, the confusion in assigning targets threatened to throw that advantage away.20
Flying at 15,000 feet, Best turned his squadron toward the Kaga and “put the planes in echelon so that they were no more than 150 feet apart.” His pilots prepared to dive by shifting to low blower and low prop pitch, cracking open the hatches of their cockpits to reduce the likelihood of the windscreen fogging up, and opening their split flaps. Best did not know that a mile above him, Gallaher’s pilots were doing the same thing until, just as he was about to push over, the sixteen bombers of VS-6, plus McClusky’s, all came flashing down past him, avoiding a catastrophic collision only by a matter of yards. In Best’s words: “God! Here came McClusky and Gallaher from Scouting Six pouring right in front of me.” Best’s first thought was: “They had jumped my target!” Thinking fast, he closed his flaps and waggled his ailerons as a signal to the rest of his squadron to hold back. Too late. Already committed to the dive, ten of the pilots of VB-6 joined the onslaught on the Kaga. They almost certainly never saw Best’s last-minute effort to recall them. Only Best’s two wingmen, Kroeger and Ensign Frederick Weber, were close enough to see his frantic signals and hold up. As a result, no fewer than twenty-seven Dauntless dive-bombers plunged o
ut of the sky to target the Kaga.21
Until that moment, the Japanese on Kaga had been entirely unaware of this new threat. Lacking radar, they were fully dependent on the sharp eyes of their lookouts. This time, however, the lookouts on the screening vessels had let them down. At 10:22, with the first of the bombers already screaming down toward them at 250 knots, first one, and then many observers on the Kaga pointed skyward and shouted “Kyukoka!” (“Dive-bombers!”) Jimmy Thach, who was still trying to fend off the Zeros from Lem Massey’s few remaining torpedo bombers, looked up and saw the sun glinting off silver wings. To him “it looked like a beautiful silver waterfall, those dive-bombers coming down.”22
Because the Zeros were still focused on Massey’s torpedo bombers, they were unable to interfere even minimally with the attack. Moreover, the guns of Kaga’s antiair battery were all still at low angle. With the shouted warnings, the gun crews furiously began to crank the ship’s sixteen five-inch guns up to the vertical position, but it took only about forty seconds for the first of the plunging American bombers to reach the release point. The skipper of the Kaga, Captain Okada Jisaku, ordered the ship hard to port in order to throw them off. However, the 42,000-ton Kaga was slow to respond and had barely begun her turn when the first bombs came hurtling down.23
The first three bombs all missed, but the fourth plane, piloted by Earl Gallaher himself, placed its 500-pound bomb squarely on the flight deck of the big flattop. It was the first time all morning that American ordnance had found a target. The 500-pound bombs had a fuse with a 0.01-second delay, so that it pierced the flight deck before exploding in the crew’s berthing compartments, starting the first of many fires that would eventually consume the big ship. That hit was followed by two more misses, and then by several hits in succession. One bomb struck on or near the forward elevator and penetrated to the hangar deck; another smashed into the flight deck amidships, and yet another hit squarely on the Kaga’s small island structure, killing Captain Okada and most of his senior officers, rendering the Kaga leaderless.24
As with the attack on the Shōhō a month before, the bombers simply overwhelmed the Kaga. Following these four hits by 500-pound bombs from Gallaher’s squadron, the ten bombers of Best’s VB-6 added several 1,000-pound bombs to the smoking wreck. Thach claimed later, “I’d never seen such superb dive bombing. It looked to me like almost every bomb hit.” Watching from 12,000 feet, Best tried to count the number of hits. “They were hitting from stem to stern,” he recalled later. At “four or five second intervals there would be a fresh blast and fire would come up and smoke would pour out.” At least one 1,000-pound bomb exploded on the packed hangar deck crowded with fully fueled planes armed with torpedoes. The historians Jon Parshall and Anthony Tully estimate that a total of 80,000 pounds of ordnance “lay scattered” there. Some of it was on the big Kate torpedo bombers, some was still on the bomb carts, and some was “simply shoved against the hangar bulkheads.” One of the first bomb hits had wrecked both of the Kaga’s fire mains, and the damage-control parties were helpless against the raging fires. The leaderless ship became an inferno fed by explosives and aviation fuel. A series of secondary explosions rocked the big carrier—one of them so powerful it sent the Kaga’s forward elevator platform spiraling up hundreds of feet into the air.25
While most of McClusky’s dive-bombers assailed the doomed Kaga, Best led his three-plane section toward the carrier “on the right,” which was Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi. The three Dauntless bombers had dropped down to 12,000 feet before Best had been able to recall them, so now they had to climb back up to 14,000 feet for the attack run. As Best climbed, he was astonished that “there was no gunfire, no fighters aloft” Thanks to the sacrifice of the torpedo squadrons, the circling Zeros were all at low altitude and the ships’ antiaircraft guns all at low angle. As a result, Best’s three planes were entirely unmolested. Nonetheless, it was uncertain what his three airplanes might accomplish against the flagship. Despite his experience attacking targets in the Marshalls, and on Wake and Marcus Islands, this was the first time Best had ever attacked a carrier. Having only three planes meant that he could not order a conventional echelon attack or divide his command into sections to attack from different angles. Moreover, the fuel situation dictated that there was no time to maneuver for a bows-on attack. Best and his two wingmen therefore approached the Akagi from abeam, which meant they would have only the carrier’s relatively narrow 100-foot width rather than its 850-foot length as a target. Even a slight misjudgment would result in a near miss rather than a hit.26
Lieutenant Richard Best commanded Bombing Six (VB-6) in the Battle of Midway. He and Norman “Dusty” Kleiss of VS-6 were the only pilots to land bombs on two Japanese carriers in the same day. (U.S. Navy)
His two wingmen tucked in behind their commanding officer, one on each side, and flew toward the Akagi in a shallow V formation. Best signaled, and they opened their flaps and nosed over into “a long easy dive.” It was “a calm placid morning,” he recalled, and he remembered thinking that it felt just like “regular individual battle practice drill.” He put his bombsight in the middle of the Akagi’s flight deck, just forward of her small island. Like Kaga, Akagi had only a few Zero fighters on her flight deck because she was still actively rotating CAP for the air battle. As he dove, Best saw a Zero taking off to rejoin the CAP. He remembered thinking, “Best, if you’re a real hero, when you’ve dropped your bomb, you’ll aileron around and shoot that son-of-a-bitch” But he knew that his job was to bomb carriers, not shoot at fighters. There were other Japanese flattops out there, and he decided that after he hit this one he would head back to the Enterprise to get another bomb.27
Best released his bomb at about 1,500 feet. His wingmen dropped at almost the same moment. Though doctrine called for them to retire at once at low level, Best could not resist turning to look back and see the results. He watched his 1,000-pound bomb land squarely in the middle of the Akagi’s flight deck. Other explosions erupted at her bow and stern as well, and he subsequently reported “three 1000 lb bomb hits.” In fact, however, the bombs from Kroeger and Weber had both hit close alongside. While they probably opened up holes in the skin of the Akagi’s hull below the water line, Best’s was the only direct hit. But it was enough.28
Best’s 1,000-pound bomb penetrated the flight deck and exploded on the Akagi’s crowded hangar deck. The immediate damage was extensive. The secondary damage was catastrophic. As on the Kaga, Akagi’s hangar deck was crowded with big Kate torpedo bombers, eighteen of them, every one with fuel tanks filled to the top and armed with the big Type 91 torpedoes. Other ordnance lay on the carts and on the racks along the bulkhead. Within minutes, that ordnance began to cook off. Once the explosions started, the aviation fuel from the wrecked planes fed the fires. Under most circumstances, a big carrier like Akagi could be expected to absorb four or five bomb hits and still function, but Best’s one bomb had hit at just the right moment and in just the right place to do the most damage. By 10:25, both Kaga and Akagi were burning out of control. Ensign Weber’s near miss astern had jammed the Akagi’s rudder hard over, so that she continued to turn in a tight circle out of control, burning furiously.29
Best did not try to shoot down the enemy Zero after dropping his bomb. Having descended to low altitude, however, there were now plenty of them around. Several flashed by just below him as they continued to target the hapless Devastators of Lem Massey’s VT-3 from Yorktown. Instead of lingering to join the fray, Best led his three planes eastward back toward the Enterprise. His last view of the Kidō Butai left him with the impression that “everything was blowing up.”30
The death throes of the Kaga and Akagi were terrifying and spectacular, but there were two more Japanese carriers a dozen miles away with enough striking power to turn the battle around.
While Best was diving on the Akagi, twenty miles to the north Max Leslie was preparing to dive on the Sōryū. There was some initial confusion there, too. When Leslie led the
seventeen bombers of VB-3 away from the Yorktown at 9:00 that morning, he had assumed that Wally Short’s VS-5 was right behind him, unaware that Fletcher had decided to keep Short’s squadron on board as a reserve. Consequently, when the Kidō Butai came into view at about 10:00, Leslie called Short on the radio and ordered him to attack the carrier to the west (Hiryū) while he took the other (Sōryū). He got no reply. Next he called Massey to ask if he was ready to begin a coordinated attack. Massey replied that he was. Then, almost immediately, Massey reported that he was under furious attack from Japanese Zeros. Massey’s radio went dead. Leslie concluded that the planned coordinated strike was not going to happen and decided he “had better get going before our presence was discovered.” While Massey’s surviving torpedo bombers attempted to fight their way through the intercept to attack the Hiryū, and Jimmy Thach tried out his “beam defense maneuver” in their support, Leslie took his bombers off to the right, to approach the Sōryū from out of the sun. He gave the signal and pushed over from 14,500 feet at 10:25.31
The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) Page 33