The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History)

by Craig L. Symonds

  Leslie led the attack even though by now his plane no longer carried a bomb. The planes of his squadron had recently been equipped with a new electrical release that was supposed to make dive-bombing more accurate. Instead of pulling back on a lever, which sometimes threw off the bomb’s trajectory, all the pilot had to do now was press a button on top of his control stick. The electrical release system was not armed during takeoffs, so after departing the Yorktown, Leslie prepared to arm it. Much to his astonishment, when he did so, his bomb dropped away. Three other pilots in the squadron did the same thing, and fifteen thousand feet below them four bombs exploded on the surface, startling the pilots of the torpedo planes and their escorting Wildcats. Leslie broke radio silence to warn the other pilots not to arm their release devices. As a result of this mishap, four of his seventeen bombers had lost their principal weapon. They flew on anyway, Leslie because it was his command, and the others because they could still use their .50-caliber machine guns to strafe the enemy.32

  When Leslie pushed over at 10:25, the crew of the Sōryū was on full alert. Minutes before, a bugle had sounded over the intercom system and a voice had announced that Kaga was under air attack. Indeed, crewmen crowding the rails on the Sōryū could see smoke rising from the big carrier off to the south. Then, just as Dick Best was diving on the Akagi, an American dive-bomber emerged from out of the clouds north of the Sōryū. Then another. Captain Yanagimoto Ryūsaku ordered the Sōryū hard to port, to throw off the bombers and to unmask his own antiaircraft battery, which opened fire at once. Leslie later recalled that “the sides of the carrier turned into a veritable ring of flames as the enemy commenced firing small caliber and anti-aircraft guns.”33

  Leslie planned to strafe the flattop, but at 4,000 feet his guns jammed and he pulled out. The next plane in line was piloted by his wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul “Lefty” Holmberg. His bomb landed near the Sōryūs forward elevator and exploded on the hangar deck. A second bomb, dropped by Lieutenant Harold Bottomly, penetrated deep into the carrier’s engine spaces before detonating. Leslie described the result as “the greatest inferno and holocaust I could ever imagine … with debris and material flying in all directions.” He counted a total five “direct hits” and three near misses by the planes of his squadron, though in fact only three bombs actually struck the Sōryū. Each one, however, landed in a different part of the carrier: one forward, one aft, and one amidships. In consequence, the Sōryū became, in Leslie’s words, “an inferno of flame.” She was so obviously a total loss that pilots in the trailing section of Leslie’s squadron chose to attack other nearby targets, including a cruiser and a destroyer. A sailor on the Hiryū who watched the attack thought the Sōryū “looked like [she] … had been sliced in two” and recalled that “it was possible to see right through her to the other side.” Like the Kaga and Akagi, the Sōryū had been mortally wounded. Though desperate damage-control parties on all three ships fought valiantly to contain the raging fires, it was hopeless. In little more than five minutes, three of the four carriers of the Kidō Butai had been smashed beyond recovery.34

  The Sōryū maneuvers radically in reaction to the attack by Max Leslie’s bombers. Note the rising sun painted on the forward part of the flight deck. (U.S. Navy)

  Witnessing all this, Nagumo was reluctant to face reality. Though the fires on his flagship were burning out of control and her communications system had been knocked out, he did not want to leave the ship. Urged to transfer to another vessel, he replied, “It is not time yet.” But it was very nearly past time. The Akagi’s captain, Aoki Taijirō, urged Kusaka Ryūnosuke, Nagumo’s chief of staff, “to leave this vessel as soon as possible.” Kusaka pleaded with Nagumo. The Hiryū was still undamaged, and a swift counterstrike could still redeem the situation, but, he pointed out, Nagumo could not command the Kidō Butai from a ship whose radio communications had been destroyed. Reluctantly, Nagumo allowed himself to be transferred to the light cruiser Nagara. Perhaps victory could still be snatched from the jaws of defeat.35

  * The Mark III Torpedo Data Computer (TDC) was an early electromagnetic analog computer used for calculating fire-control solutions on American submarines.

  15

  The Japanese Counterstrike

  (11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.)

  It was evident very quickly that the Kaga and the Sōryū were doomed. Though the Kaga’s heavy armored battleship hull allowed her to continue to limp along at two to three knots, she was obviously dying. Flames raged unchecked all along her hangar deck and black smoke poured out of her from stem to stern. As for the Sōryū, Lieutenant Harold Bottomley’s 1,000-pound bomb had penetrated deep into the ship and destroyed her engineering spaces. Dead in the water and without power, the Sōryū was helpless. To save his men, Captain Yanagimoto Ryūsaku ordered abandon ship at 10:45, barely twenty minutes after the first bomb struck. He chose to stay on board. On Akagi, which had been hit only by Dick Best’s single bomb, damage-control teams struggled to fight the fires while other men labored to get her engines working again. It was a losing fight, however, since exploding ordnance and especially the aviation fuel on the hangar deck continued to feed the inferno. Consistent with a preference for attack over defense, Japanese damage-control doctrine and equipment were less robust than on American ships, with little built-in redundancy. With the ship’s main engines out, the water pumps didn’t work, and there were no portable gasoline-powered pumps or generators. Desperate crewmen manned a hand pump on the anchor deck that produced a thin stream of sea water, but it was like spitting into a forest fire. Though efforts to save the flagship would continue until that evening, at 1:30 in the afternoon, Captain Aoki, in silent acknowledgement that the situation was hopeless, ordered the emperor’s portrait removed and sent over to the destroyer Nowaki.1

  Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, the aggressive and well-liked commander of Carrier Division 2, flew his flag on the carrier Hiryū at Midway. (U.S. Naval Institute)

  Catastrophic as the situation was, Nagumo thought less about his losses than about how to strike back. Once he had reestablished himself aboard the cruiser Nagara, he reported to Yamamoto that three of his carriers were burning—a message that, when it arrived, produced only a low groan from the commander in chief. Reflecting a culture that valued heroic effort nearly as much as ultimate success, Nagumo’s understanding of his duty compelled him to continue the fight even if it did not produce a victory. Though Hiryū was the only functioning carrier he had left, he was determined to find the American carriers and attack them. During his transfer to the Nagara, operational command fell temporarily onto Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki, commander of Cruiser Division 8. At 10:50, Abe signaled Yamaguchi Tamon in the Hiryū to “attack the enemy carriers.”2

  Yamaguchi hardly needed such an order. Very likely he felt vindicated by the horrific turn of events. At 8:30 that morning he had argued for an immediate strike—even a partial strike—against the enemy, and his advice had been rejected. Nagumo had been reluctant to send only thirty-six dive-bombers without a significant fighter escort to attack the Americans; now he would have to do so with only half that number. In response to Abe’s order, Yamaguchi had replied, “All our planes are taking off now,” but that did not mean a full deck load. The Hiryū launched only eighteen Val dive-bombers—all there were—accompanied by six Zero fighters. Yamaguchi also had nine Kate torpedo bombers on board (one more, a refugee from Akagi, would land a half hour later). They were not ready to go, however, and rather than wait for them, he sent off what he had. It was far short of the “armored gauntlet” that Nagumo had expected to hurl at the Americans.*

  These circumstances emboldened Yamaguchi to offer more unsolicited advice to his commander. By blinker signal to the new flagship, he insisted that only a single destroyer should be left behind to watch the three crippled carriers; everything else should be sent at once to attack the Americans. It was not the first time Yamaguchi had offered his views, but this time the syntax of his message was that o
f an order: “Leave one destroyer with the damaged carriers and have the others proceed on the course of attack.” This was more than presumption, it was insolence. Either Nagumo ignored the “order” or his staff never showed it to him, for there was no acknowledgment from the flagship, only the order from Abe to “attack the enemy carriers.”3

  The Hiryūs eighteen Val dive-bombers were in the air by 11:00 a.m., merely thirty-five minutes after the first American bomb had landed on the Kaga. Lieutenant Kobayashi Michio commanded the mission, which included six Zeros under Lieutenant Shigematsu Yasuhiro. All of the pilots were experienced veterans. They headed east toward the most recent contact location sent in by a scout pilot from the cruiser Chikuma. Though the initial contact that morning had identified Spruance’s Task Force 16, this newest sighting was of Fletcher’s Yorktown group.

  As Kobayashi’s strike force flew eastward, Nagumo reorganized what was left of the Kidō Butai into two groups: a battleship-cruiser group in the lead, followed by Yamaguchi’s lone carrier, which was surrounded by a circular screen. Despite Yamaguchi’s “advice” to leave only one destroyer behind, Nagumo delegated six of them (two each) to try to save the stricken carriers, or, at worst, to rescue their crews. Meanwhile he directed his much-reduced and reorganized Kidō Butai to steam to the northeast (course 060), toward the Americans, who, according to an 11:10 scouting report, were now only ninety miles away. That report inspired Nagumo to think about the possibility of getting close enough for a surface attack by his battleships and heavy cruisers. He was encouraged in this line of thought by a noon message from Admiral Kondō, who reported that he was bringing his two battleships and four cruisers north to join the Kidō Butai. If air strikes from the Hiryū crippled one or more of the American carriers, it might allow Kondō’s battleships to get close enough to finish them off with their 14-inch guns, or so Nagumo imagined. Much, therefore, depended on the success of the air strike by Kobayashi’s eighteen Vals.4

  En route to the target, Kobayashi saw what he thought were four American torpedo bombers below him. They were, in fact, dive-bombers: a section of Earl Gallaher’s VS-6 under Lieutenant Charles Ware, returning to the Enterprise from the successful strike on the Kaga. Eager for a fight, Kobayashi’s escorting Zeros dove on them, expecting to make quick work of it. But the American pilots were flying low, which restricted the Zeros’ maneuvering room, and they were flying in formation, which meant the backseat gunners were able to put up a heavy curtain of .30-caliber machine gun fire. In the ensuing fight, the Zeros not only failed to shoot down any of the American dive-bombers, two of the Zeros were badly mauled.* The two crippled Zeros turned back toward the Hiryū, and only one of them made it, the other crashing into the sea nearby. Moreover, the remaining four Zeros spent so much time vainly assailing Ware’s bombers that the eighteen Vals they were supposed to be escorting had to begin their attack on the Yorktown without fighter cover.5

  Yorktown’s radar picked up Kobayashi’s inbound Vals forty-six miles out. At 11:59, Radio Electrician V. M. Bennett reported “thirty to forty” bogeys approaching. Buckmaster ordered preparations to receive them: the crew purged the fuel lines, locked down the watertight doors, and pushed an 800-gallon auxiliary gas tank over the side. Jimmy Thach’s six Wildcats had just been recovered on the Yorktown, but the last of them, flown by Machinist Tom Cheek, had failed to catch a wire and crashed into the barrier. That delayed the landing of the bombers of Max Leslie’s squadron, returning from their strike on the Sōryū. Pete Pederson, the Yorktown‘s air group commander, ordered them to stay aloft and join the Wildcats that were flying CAP, vectoring all of them out toward the inbound bogeys. Leslie himself could do little since his guns had jammed while he was diving on the Sōryū, but other planes of his squadron, though already low on gas, joined the attack on the inbound bombers. Once again, radar had played a crucial role, for without it the Yorktown might easily have been caught recovering airplanes when the Japanese arrived. Instead, the attacking Vals came under a furious air attack while they were still twenty to thirty miles out from their target.6

  The onslaught of the American fighters broke up Kobayashi’s attack formation and the air battle turned into a free-for-all. From the deck of the Yorktown, the fight looked like a swirling, chaotic mass. Buckmaster reported that “planes were seen flying in every direction, and many were falling in flames.” Once the four Zeros that had survived the skirmish with Ware’s dive-bombers joined the fray, a total of some fifty airplanes swirled and looped in the crowded sky.7

  Pederson sought to bring order out of the chaos. Though he would have preferred to lead his air group in person, his role as onboard fighter director foreshadowed future Navy doctrine in which commanders managed air battles from a shipboard Combat Information Center. Pederson did not have a Combat Information Center, but he anticipated its function by using a search plot to keep track of inbound bogeys and a fighter director board to keep track of his own air assets. Using the Yorktown‘s call sign “Scarlet,” he addressed the pilots collectively and individually over the radio as he sought to turn a chaotic free-for-all into a coordinated attack. The transcript of the radio transmissions suggests something of the nature of the fight:

  “All Scarlet planes keep a sharp look-out, a group of planes is coming in at 255 unidentified.”

  “All Scarlet planes, bandits eight miles, 255.”

  “This is Scarlet 19. Formation seems to be breaking up.”

  “O.K. Break ‘em up.”

  “Tallyho!”

  The radar allowed Pederson to vector specific planes to particular contacts.

  “Scarlet 19, investigate plane bearing 235. … Distance ten to twelve miles, altitude low.

  Go get ‘em.”

  “O.K. got him. Have bogey in sight.”8

  Thus directed, the Wildcats were able to splash eleven of the inbound bombers. Lieutenant Junior Grade Arthur J. Brassfield (who was “Scarlet 19”) shot down the lead bomber, then pulled left into a wingover and found another Val at close range. “I watched my tracers going into the engine and lacing on back into the cockpit,” he remembered; then, “suddenly it blew up.” A third bomber headed for cloud cover. Brassfield chased it, fired off two short bursts, and it, too, fell in flames.

  Occasionally Pederson forgot to use the call sign and lapsed into the familiar: “Art,” he radioed to Brassfield, “go out and investigate a bogey down low, 3,000 feet.” It turned out to be the plane that was closing in on downed pilot Bill Esders and his badly wounded gunner in their raft. If the Japanese pilot had been planning to strafe the downed flyers, he changed his mind when Brassfield came charging at him, and he instead fled for home at high speed. Pederson warned Brassfield not to chase him too far, but Brassfield’s blood was up and he took off in pursuit. Because of the extreme range, he tried lifting the nose of his plane and arcing his tracers in toward the target. He remembered that the tracers “looked like a swarm of bees looping high through the sky.” Soon the Val began smoking, and Brassfield had his fourth kill of the day.9

  In addition to the attacking bombers, the Americans also shot down three of the four Zeros—only Shigematsu himself survived. Indeed, so many Japanese planes were falling from the sky that one witness on the Yorktown thought “it looked like a curtain coming down.” The Dash-4 Wildcats had only about twenty seconds of firepower and quickly began to run out of bullets. To indicate they needed to land and reload, the pilots flew past the Yorktown f bridge and communicated using hand signals: they shook their fists if they needed ammo, or raked their hands along the outside of the fuselage where the gas tank was to show that they were low on fuel. Landing planes in the midst of an air attack was impossible, however, because the Yorktown was maneuvering radically to throw off the attacking bombers. Pederson directed the planes that were low on ammo or fuel to head for Task Force 16, some forty miles to the southeast, and he called on Enterprise (call sign Red) for help.10

  “Red from Scarlet. We need some VFs.”

&nbs
p; “Scarlet from Red. Repeat.”

  “Red from Scarlet, we need relief for our combat patrols, getting low on ammunition”

  “Scarlet from Red, we are sending the Blue patrol to assist. … Blue patrol being launched now.”11

  Before the Wildcats from Task Force 16 could arrive, seven of the Val bombers that had survived the air battle entered the envelope of the antiaircraft fire from the circle of surface ships screening the Yorktown. As the American pilots veered off to avoid being hit by friendly fire, Buckmaster ordered the Yorktown sharply to port to throw off the attackers. The two cruisers and five destroyers of her protecting screen opened up with scores of 5-inch guns, 1.1-inch “pom pom” guns, 20 mm guns, and .50-caliber machine guns. Leslie thought it looked like “a fire works display at a Fourth of July celebration.”12

  Through this virtual cloud of antiair fire, the seven surviving Val dive-bombers of Kobayashi’s command pressed home their attack. Two more fell into the sea, victims of the heavy antiair fire, but not before one of them released its bomb, which hit the Yorktown “just abaft No. 2 elevator on the starboard side.” That bomb exploded near a 1.1-inch antiaircraft gun, slaughtering its crew and starting several fires. Only seconds later, a second bomb hit the Yorktown squarely amidships, passing through both the Yorktown f flight deck and hangar deck and exploding on level three among the engine uptakes, extinguishing the fires in five of the ship’s boilers. A third bomb hit near the Yorktown’s forward elevator, starting a fire in a rag-storage area. That one forced Buckmaster to flood the ship’s forward magazine.13