17. The Hypo intercepts are in the Layton Papers, NWC, box 26, folder 5.
18. Horn, Second Attack on Pearl Harbor, 175–77.
19. Prange interviews with Watanabe (Sept. 26 and Oct. 6, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 42, 45–46.
20. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955; repr., 1992), 155; Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 145.
21. Nimitz to Midway garrison, June 2, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:550. The “criminal waste” passage is from John S. McCain to “Frog” Low, March 14, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2. See also King to Marshall, March 19, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2.
22. Prange et al., Miracleat Midway, 160–61.
23. Ibid., 162–63.
24. Ibid.
25. The details of the sighting come from a letter from Reid to Gordon Prange dated Dec. 10, 1966. It is cited in Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 162–64. See also Potter, Nimitz, 91; Symonds, Decision at Sea, 225.
26. Layton to Walter Lord, Feb. 10, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 17; Nimitz to Mrs. Nimitz, June 2, 1942, Nimitz Diary # 1, NHHC; Layton, And I was There, 436; Potter, Nimitz, 92.
27. Quoted in Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 170.
28. Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 173.
29. Dick Knott, “Night Torpedo Attack,” Naval Aviation News, June 1982, 10–13; Gerald Astor, Wings of Gold: The U.S. Naval Air Campaign in World War II (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 87–88; and Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 174–76.
30. James C. Boyden to Walter Lord, Jan., 24, 1966, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; Lieutenant Junior Grade Douglas Davis interview (Oct. 1, 2000), NMPW; and Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktowns Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 106.
31. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 236.
Chapter 11
1. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 75; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 123.
2. The numbers used here are from Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 90–91.
3. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 184–85.
4. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 185. The discovery that the Japanese did not bring the second strike force onto the flight deck is a particular contribution of Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, who were the first to combine an analysis of Japanese carrier doctrine with the battle photos of the Kidö Butai to conclude that the decks of the four Japanese carriers were largely bare throughout the morning. They note that “at no time during the morning prior to 1000 was the reserve strike force ever spotted on the flight decks.” (Shattered Sword, 131.) Another important contribution is the time-motion study, based on interviews of Japanese crewmen, done by Dallas Isom to determine both the process and the time needed to arm (and rearm) the Japanese planes. See Dallas Woodbury Isom, Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 116–28.
5. Thomas Wildenberg, “Midway: Sheer Luck or Better Doctrine?” Naval War College Review 58 (Winter 2005):121–35, In his after-action report, Nagumo acknowledged that, “under such weather conditions, it is believed that the number of recco planes should be increased.” See “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6,” ONI Review 5 (May 1947), available on line at ibiblio.org/hyper-war/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/Nagumo/. See also Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 146–48.
6. Craig L. Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 228–29.
7. Douglas C. Davis interview (Oct. 1, 2000), NMPW.
8. Fletcher to Nimitz, June 14, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
9. “Pertinent Extracts from Communications Logs Relative to Midway Attack,” Action Reports, reel 2; Fletcher to S. E. Morison, Dec. 1, 1947, Fletcher Papers, AHC, box 1; interview of Howard P. Ady by Walter Lord (April 9, 1966), Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
10. Communications Log Relative to Midway Attack, Action Reports, reel 2; James R. Ogden oral history (March 16, 1982), 76–77, U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
11. Interview with John F. Carey by Gordon Prange (July 1, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Robert J. Cressman et al., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 62; statement of Captain John F. Carey, USMC, June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Kirk Armistead to Walter Lord, Feb. 15, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
12. Statement of Captain John F. Carey, USMC, June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 62.
13. Statement of Captain John F. Carey, and statement of Capt. P. R. White, both June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. The story of Kurz and the “stiff shots” is from Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 64.
14. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 237–43.
15. Fletcher to Nimitz, June 14, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 134–35; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 242. John Lundstrom notes that Spruance did not acknowledge Fletcher’s order and that Fletcher had to send a follow-up message fifteen minutes later. By then, Spruance was already heading toward the southwest (Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 242). Interestingly, Spruance does not mention getting this order from Fletcher in his own after-action report (Spruance to Nimitz, June 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.) In 1947, when Samuel Eliot Morison asked both Fletcher and Spruance who had commanded the combined American carrier task forces at this time, both men replied that it was Fletcher. “I ordered Spruance to attack,” Fletcher wrote, “but as we were well separated he was left to select his own point option.” Curiously, however, Task Force 16 did not set a point option. Fletcher to Morison, Dec. 1, 1947, Fletcher Papers, AHC, box 1.
16. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 37–38.
17. Clark Reynolds, “The Truth About Miles Browning,” in Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 214–15; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW; Gordon Prange interview of Spruance (Sept. 5, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
18. Communications Log Relative to the Battle of Midway, Action Reports, reel 2.
19. Kimes to Nimitz, June 7, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Nimitz to King, June 4, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8, no page number, date-time group 042007; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 301–2.
20. Gordon Prange, with Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 206; Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 156; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 149.
21. Albert K. Earnest and Harry Ferrier, “Avengers at Midway,” Foundation 17, no. 2 (Spring 1996), 1–7; Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 6–10.
22. Willard Robinson interview (July 20, 2003), NMPW.
23. Ibid.; Albert Earnest interview (July 20, 2003), NMPW; Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 61, 121; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 70.
24. The details of Earnest’s saga come from interviews conducted by Robert Mrazek in February 2006. See Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 122–23, 142–145.
25. Recollections of Frank Melo, as told to Charles Lowe, Lowe Diary, BOMRT; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 152; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 72–73. Fuchida Mitsuo recalled that one of the B-26 bombers tried to crash into the Akagi, but Fuchida very likely conflated Jim Muri’s plane, which flew very low over the Akagi’s deck, with that of First Lieutenant He
rbert Mayes, which cartwheeled into the sea after being shot down. I am grateful to Jon Parshall for his insights about this particular attack.
26. Nagumo’s chief of staff was RADM Kusaka Ryünosuke, who made these remarks in an interview with Gordon Prange (no date), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 153.
27. Dallas Isom describes the rearming process in detail in Midway Inquest, 124–28; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 157.
28. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6” ; Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 148. It was Fuchida who sustained for so long the notion that the delay in launching Tone’s search plane no. 4 was a piece of horrible luck that doomed the Japanese at Midway. Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully have suggested that his motive was to imply that the Japanese defeat at Midway was a fluke of timing and circumstance rather than the product of doctrinal error or command failure. See Parshall and Tully (Shattered Sword, 132, 159, 161), who render Amari’s first name as Hiroshi.
29. Credit for figuring out this irony belongs to Dallas Isom, “The Battle of Midway: Why the Japanese Lost,” Naval War College Review 53, no. 3 (Summer 2000), 68–70. Isom makes the same point in Midway Inquest, 114–16.
30. Kusaka’s recollection is taken from a questionnaire he completed for Gordon Prange in 1966, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. In that same document, Kusaka asserts that “it was not before 0500 [8:00 a.m.] that the said report reached our ears.” Based partly on this, Prange and Isom both argue that the message probably did not reach the bridge on the Akagi until 8:00. Isom in particular makes a strong case that Nagumo did not learn of the sighting until 8:00 and concludes that this was why Nagumo could not get his strike launched until after 10:20. Parshall and Tully argue for the 7:45 time, citing not only the Japanese message log but also the intercept by Station Hypo. Isom suggests that the 7:47 notation in the Hypo log was added after the fact to comport with the reconstructed Japanese message log. See Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 217; Isom, Midway Inquest, 133–37; and Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 159–60. See also Isom’s article “Battle of Midway.”
31. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6”; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 162.
32. Isom, Midway Inquest, 158–59; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 155.
33. R. D. Heinl, Jr., Marines at Midway (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, U.S. Marine Corps, 1948), 34–35.
34. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 79; Statement of Captain R. L. Blain, USMC., no date, Action Reports, reel 3.
35. Second Lt. George Lumpkin, USMC, quoted in Heinl, Marines at Midway, 38.
36. Interview of Kusaka by Gordon Prange (1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6”; Kusaka questionnaire, 1966, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
37. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 264.
38. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 165–66; interview of Kusaka by Gordon Prange (1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also the discussion of the impact of doctrine on operational decisions in Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 404–5.
Chapter 12
1. The young officer was LT James James E. Vose, who was interviewed by Barrett Tillman in June 1973 and quoted in Tillman, The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 66, The sailor on the Enterprise was Alvin Kernan, in The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 73.
2. Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 18–20; Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 71–75.
3. Peter C. Smith treats Ring more positively in Midway: Dauntless Victory; Fresh Perspectives on America’s Seminal Naval Victory of World War II (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2007), 59–60, though most of the supportive comments about him come from Ring’s superiors. Barrett Tillman tells the story of Ring grounding pilots for refusing to come to attention in Wildcat: The F4F in WW II, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 50. Ring’s insistence that the Hornet pilots remain on duty at Ewa Field is from E. T. Stover and Clark G. Reynolds, The Saga of Smokey Stover (Charleston, SC: Tradd Street, 1978), 29.
4. Troy Guillory interview (March 14, 1983), 33, by Bowen Weisheit, in Weisheit, “The Battle of Midway: Transcripts of Recorded Interviews,” Nimitz Library, USNA (hereafter Weisheit, “Transcripts”); Clay Fisher and Roy Gee are quoted in Ronald W. Russell, No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 128–29; J. E. McInerny interview (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 41. The story of Ring’s navigational error is in a letter from K. B. White to Bill Vickery, which was read aloud at a BOMRT event in 2003. See Russell, No Right to Win, 129. See also Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 73–74.
5. George Gay, among several others, asserted that few of the pilots slept on June 3. Gay also reported that five of the pilots of VT-8 had not made a single carrier landing until they reached the Pacific. George Gay, Sole Survivor: The Battle of Midway and Its Effect on His Life (Naples, FL: Naples Ad/Graphics, 1979), 64. The “one-eyed sandwich” is described by LT Jim Gray in “Decision at Midway,” BOMRT, www.midway42.org/aa-reports/vf-b.html. Interview of Troy Guillory (March 14, 1983), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 4; Tillman, Wildcat, 50.
6. Gay, Sole Survivor, 115; Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 105–6, 110–11; Clayton E. Fisher, Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior (Denver: Outskirts, 2009), 76–77; interview of Ben Tappan (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 39–40; Roy P. Gee, “Remembering Midway,” BOMRT (2003), www.midway42. org/vets-gee.html.
7. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 142.
8. Interview of S. G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 16–17.
9. George Gay interview (no date), World War II Interviews, Operational Archives, NHHC, box 11; Gay, Sole Survivor, 59; Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 13–14, 86–87; Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 64–67. Kernan quotes Waldron’s letter to his nephew on p. 68.
10. Interview of Ben Talbot, Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 8; Lundstrom, First Team, 324.
11. Interview of S. G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 17–18; Waldron’s effort to get a single fighter to fly with his squadron is in Gay, Sole Survivor, 115.
12. “Pertinent Extracts from Communications Logs Relative to Midway Attack,” Action Reports, reel 2; John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 245–46. With Browning as his chief of staff, Halsey had used a deferred departure in his attacks in the Marshalls and Wake. Fletcher had used a normal departure in the Coral Sea.
13. Lewis Hopkins interview, NMPW, 17; Gee, “Remembering Midway.”
14. Frederick Mears, Carrier Combat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran, 1944), 18; Interview of Walt Rodee (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 2; Stanhope Ring, letter of March 28, 1946, in Bruce R. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 125, no. 8 (August 1999), 31; interview of Ben Tappan (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 46.
15. The fuel use numbers come from the interview of J. E. McInerny (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 24, 37; Smith, Midway, Dauntless Victory, 75; Bowen P. Weisheit, The Last Flight of Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Junior, USNR, Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942 (Baltimore: Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Jr., Memorial Foundation, 1993), 5; interview of S G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 17; interview of LT James E. Vose by Barrett Tillman (June 1973), quoted in Tillman, Dauntless Dive Bomber, 68.
16. Mitscher to Nimitz, June 13, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3, also available at www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/mid5.htm. The most telling piece of evidence that the Hornet’s air group flew a course of 265 is that Walt Rodee, commander of the sco
uting squadron (and later an admiral), wrote the course down in his log book. Still, not all of the contemporary testimony points to a course of 265. Ring’s wingman, Clayton Fisher, remained adamant that they flew a course of 240. See Fisher, Hooked, 80–81, and Russell, No Right to Win, 134, 140.
17. John Lundstrom asserts that Mitscher made a deliberate decision “to go after the supposed second, trailing group of two Japanese carriers” in part because he was “contemptuous of the lack of aviation expertise of Fletcher and Spruance.” Posting to BOMRT, July 30, 2009. I am grateful to John Lundstrom for our conversations about this enigmatic event.
18. Nimitz to Commander Striking Force, May 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3, p. 3. The passage from Jurika’s intelligence briefing is from the diary of E. T. “Smokey” Stover, Stover and Reynolds, Saga of Smokey Stover, 29 (entry of June 7). Fletcher’s message to Spruance is quoted in Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 248. The Ring letter of March 28, 1946, is in Bruce R. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 125, no. 8 (August 1999), 31. It is interesting that both Mitscher and Ring employed the passive voice in their statements: Mitscher noted that the course “was calculated” and Ring notes that departure “was taken.” Of course the passive voice was (and is) common in Navy documents, where special requests are worded: “It is requested that.…”
19. Gay, Sole Survivor, 116. In his memoir, Gay has Waldron telling him that he was planning to go “more to the north.” This comports with Mitscher’s report, which has Ring flying to the southwest and Waldron heading off to the north to find the Kidö Butai. Very likely, however, Gay relied on Mitscher’s report to assist his memory thirty-seven years after the fact and adjusted the language of the remembered conversation to fit the report.
20. Interview of Troy Guillory (March 14, 1983), 28, 23; and Ben Tappan (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts.” The last response from Waldron is rendered here as a combination of what Tappan and Guillory recalled.
The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) Page 46