The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (10 page)

In addition to the scouting and bombing squadrons, each American carrier also had a torpedo plane squadron (whose designation was VT), though both the planes and the torpedoes they carried were markedly inferior to their Japanese counterparts. The plane was the TBD-1 Douglas Devastator, which like the Japanese Kate could be used either as a level bomber or a torpedo plane, in which role it carried the Mark 13 torpedo, a smaller aerial version of the trouble-plagued Mark 14 used by U.S. submarines. The Devastator had been designed and built in the 1930s for a crew of three: a pilot in front, an enlisted bombardier/navigator in the middle seat, and a radioman/gunner in the back. When carrying a torpedo, however, there was no need for a bombardier, and so the middle seat was often empty. The Devastator was state of the art when it had joined the fleet in 1937, but it was already nearing obsolescence by 1942. Heavy at 10,000 pounds, it was agonizingly slow. Officially, it had a top speed of 206 knots (237 mph), although in practice it seldom exceeded 160 knots (184 mph), and cruised at just over 100 knots (115 mph). One pilot claimed later that when carrying the 2,200-pound Mark 13 torpedo, the Devastator actually cruised at no more than 80 knots (92 mph) or “with the nose down maybe 100.” When climbing, the Devastator was even slower. One pilot joked that while carrying a torpedo in a climb, the Devastator “practically backs up.” Even at such slow speeds, the Devastator had a limited range of a little over 400 miles which meant, accounting for assembly time over the task force and maneuvering over the target, that it could attack only those targets within about 175 miles. That assumed that the pilot did not need to search for the target.
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To launch their cumbersome weapons, pilots of the Devastator torpedo plane flew to their intended target at a fairly low level, between 1,500 and 4,000 feet, then dropped even lower for the run into the target. At only 100 to 150 feet, they throttled back to near stalling speed to release their torpedo so that it did not break apart when it hit the water. The release was crucial, for if the torpedo hit the water with its nose down, it might dive too deep to have any effect; if it hit with the nose up, it could “porpoise” along the surface. Since the torpedoes ran at 33.5 knots, which was only marginally faster than the ships they targeted, it was essential for the pilot to come in fairly close before dropping his “fish.” Even then he had to lead the target a little, and since the target was also maneuvering, it often took more than one pass to get a satisfactory angle on the bow. It took great concentration and a cool disregard for danger to fly a Devastator into its target, or to man the rear-seat machine gun, sitting backward and fending off swarming enemy fighters while the pilot lined up for a shot.
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A Douglas TBD Devastator from the
Enterprise flies
over Wake Island in 1942. The Devastator was both old and slow and therefore an easy target for the swift Japanese Zeros. (U.S. Naval Institute)

By far the most serious problem with American torpedo bombing, however, was the simple fact that, like the Mark 14 used by American submarines, the warheads on the Mark 13 did not always function as advertised, and the torpedoes themselves were so delicate that when dropped at an elevation above fifty feet or at a speed greater than 110 knots they could easily be damaged upon impact with the water, meaning that they would fail to work at all. These facts were overlooked for far too long—for several reasons. One was that, as with submarine skippers, the brass at BuOrd simply refused to believe that the weapon was flawed and attributed failures to bad shooting. A few Devastator pilots contributed to this conclusion by reporting that they had scored a hit with the Mark 13 torpedo when they had not. Pilots who saw the wake of their torpedo lead right into an enemy ship understandably reported a hit, and with bombs sometimes exploding all around the target at the same time, it was easy to conclude that one of the explosions was the result of a torpedo strike. Finally, analysts in Washington who examined the damage reports of American ships in Pearl Harbor knew full well that the Japanese had great success with their aerial torpedoes, and they were simply reluctant to believe that Japanese torpedo technology was superior. Devastator pilots and their gunners would pay a high price for this unwillingness to acknowledge a technical problem.

As for American fighter planes, they were still a work in progress in early 1942. The U.S. Navy had adopted its first single-seat monoplane fighter only three years earlier. It was the Brewster F2A, named the “Buffalo,” an appropriate designation given its aerodynamic performance. While an improvement over the Grumman F3F biplane that it replaced, it was small (5,000 pounds), stubby (26 feet long), and relatively slow for a fighter (260 knots, or 300 mph). After the Battle of Midway, one veteran pilot wrote in his after-action report that the Buffalo “is not a combat aeroplane…. Any commander that orders pilots out for combat in an F2A-3 should consider the pilot as lost before leaving the ground.” Though quite a few Buffaloes remained on active service when the war began—as did a number of Grumman biplanes—a newer plane, the Grumman F4F, called the “Wildcat,” replaced both models in early 1942. The F4F-3, which was the first version to reach the fleet, was longer (30 feet) and heavier (7,000 pounds) than the Buffalo, and, with a top speed of 287 knots (331 mph), much faster. Though it was still markedly inferior to the Japanese Zero in maneuverability, Navy pilots nevertheless liked the sturdy F4F-3, which had two .50-caliber machine guns in each wing.
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The designers were still tinkering. Within months, a newer version of the Wildcat, the F4F-4 (which the pilots called the “Dash 4”) came into service. The newer version had folding wings so that more of them could be fitted into the confined spaces on the hangar deck and more could be spotted on the flight deck for an attack. Moreover, instead of four machine guns, the Dash 4 Wildcat had six. As far as the pilots were concerned, however, these changes were a mixed blessing. The folding wings meant that about 50 percent more fighters could be placed on each carrier, thus increasing the size of the VF squadrons from eighteen to twenty-seven, which was good. However, a number of pilots remained suspicious of the whole concept of folding wings. After all, if the wings could be folded up, might they not come off altogether in flight? Furthermore, the folding apparatus and the two additional machine guns added about 1,000 pounds of weight to the Wildcats, which affected their speed and especially their climbing ability. While the lighter, unarmored Zeros could climb at a rate of 3,000 feet per minute, a Dash 4 Wildcat could climb at only about 1,000 feet per minute.
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American fighter pilots therefore sought to avoid engagements with Zeros at low altitudes, where the Japanese had a clear advantage, and sought instead to come in high so they could dive on their prey. These factors would play an important role in the confrontation at Midway.
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The two extra machine guns were even more problematical. American designers added the extra guns to allow European versions of the Wildcat (which the British called the Martlet) to compete with heavier German bombers and fighters and to increase the impact of strafing attacks against ground targets. Yet the extra firepower was overkill against the lighter, and mostly unarmored, Japanese planes. Worse, it severely restricted the length of time a Wildcat pilot could fire. The four guns in the earlier version each had a magazine of 450 rounds, but since those guns fired 700 to 750 rounds per minute, that gave the pilots only about thirty-five seconds of firepower before they expended all their ammo. In the newer Dash 4 version, despite the two extra guns, there was no increase in the size of the total magazine, and as a result pilots in an F4F-4 Wildcat could shoot for only about twenty seconds. Movie depictions of pilots boring in on a foe with guns blazing are pure fiction; the pilots had to hoard their few seconds of firepower for use only under the most ideal circumstances. Even when they fired in short two-second bursts, they risked running out of bullets. Moreover, there was no evidence that having two extra guns made the Wildcats any more lethal. As the commanding officer of VF-3, Lieutenant Commander John S. “Jimmy” Thach, put it, “The pilot who would miss with four .50-caliber guns won’t be able to hit with eight. Increased firepower is not a substitute for marksmanship.” Another problem with the new fighters was that the ammo belts of .50-caliber bullets, loaded into trays in the wings, shifted around violently during the high-speed maneuvers necessary in aerial combat, and as a result the guns occasionally jammed. More than once a Wildcat pilot lined up for a shot and pulled the trigger only to find that nothing happened.
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The fighter pilots made some adjustments on their own. In late January, Lieutenant Jim Gray urged Wade McClusky, the commander of VF-6 on the
Enterprise
, to authorize the installation of a sheet of 3/8-inch boilerplate steel behind the pilot’s seat of the squadron’s Wildcats. McClusky agreed. Like the Marines in Iraq sixty years later who had to “up-armor” their Humvees themselves, the pilots of VF-6 installed their own armor. Eventually, armor plate behind the pilot’s seat became official and routine, but initially it was a pilot initiative. Gray soon had reason to be very pleased with his innovation.
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Like the scouting and torpedo squadrons, the fighting squadrons “belonged” to the carrier they rode, though circumstances could lead to their being transferred from one ship to another. Before the
Yorktown
left Norfolk to return to the Pacific, her regular fighting squadron (VF-5) had gone ashore for training and was temporarily replaced by a squadron from the USS
Ranger
(CV-4), a much smaller carrier that would remain in the Atlantic for most of the war.
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The replacement was supposed to be temporary but ended up being permanent, and as a result, in addition to Scouting Five (VS-5), Bombing Five (VB-5), and Torpedo Five (VT-5), the
Yorktown
also carried eighteen Dash 3 Wildcats of VF-42 under Lieutenant Commander Oscar “Pete” Pederson, who later became the commander of all the squadrons on the
Yorktown
, or CYAG (commander,
Yorktown
Air Group). Similarly, when the
Saratoga
headed back to the West Coast for repair in January, her fighter squadron (VF-3) joined the
Lexington
while the
Lexingtons
fighter squadron went ashore on Oahu for training. This willingness to treat air squadrons as interchangeable parts contrasted sharply with Japanese doctrine in which air squadrons were inextricably tied to their host carriers. This gave the Americans flexibility that the Japanese did not have and would pay important dividends in the battles to come.
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