The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (13 page)

Gratifying as this small victory was, Admiral King remained concerned about the security of the South Pacific, and especially that tenuous communications link between Hawaii and Australia. The Japanese capture of Rabaul on New Britain Island on January 23—an operation in which four carriers of the Kidō Butai had participated—led him to press Nimitz once again to “operate a carrier group in the South Pacific.” There was even a hint of sarcasm in his message, which asked Nimitz whether he was “aware of [the] serious threat to communications with Australia created by current enemy occupation of … Rabaul.” Nimitz was indeed aware of it, but he balked at the idea of committing his mobile carrier forces to the defense of static lines of communication. It was far better, in his view, to use them offensively to disrupt the enemy’s own lines of communication. In the stilted language of a naval message, he protested to his boss: “A mobile striking or covering force to remain constantly in the area [of Samoa-Fiji] seems likely to result in [the] principal employment of fleet being [the] defense [of] distant communication lines.” This, he argued, would leave the initiative entirely to the Japanese. “Recommend against proposal as a guiding directive.” He suggested instead that as a permanent force in the Samoan area, two cruisers and four destroyers “should be the maximum.” King, too, favored the offensive, but he was under tremendous political pressure to defend American allies in the region, especially the Australians. In a compromise, he told Nimitz to send two cruisers and two destroyers to operate “continuously in Samoan area” and rotate other ships there “as you see fit.”
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At least some of the pressure on King came from the White House. In a “fireside chat” on February 23, the president told his radio listeners, “If we lost communication with the Southwest Pacific, all of that area, including Australia and New Zealand and the Dutch Indies, would fall under Japanese domination.” Were that to happen, the president warned, Japan could “extend her conquests” to the Americas, or, in the other direction, to India, “through the Indian Ocean to Africa, to the Near East, and try to join forces with Germany and Italy.”
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Responding to these concerns, King wrote the president that “our primary concern in the Pacific is to hold Hawaii,” but that “our next care in the Pacific is to preserve Australasia.” He ordered Wilson Brown’s
Lexington
group into the South Pacific, effectively removing it from Nimitz’s control, for a raid against the Japanese citadel at Rabaul at the northern tip of New Britain. At the same time, in order to divert Japanese attention from that raid, Halsey and Fletcher were to strike again at targets in the Central Pacific, including another attempt on Wake.
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The raid on Rabaul was Wilson Brown’s opportunity to duplicate Halsey’s success in the Marshalls. It didn’t work out that way. While still several hundred miles from the target on February 20, his task force was spotted by three Japanese long-range scout planes. The
Lexington
had several Wildcat fighters of VF-3 (formerly of the
Saratoga
) aloft that day, including one piloted by the squadron’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander John S. “Jimmy” Thach, one of the most skilled and innovative pilots in the fleet. Thach shot down the first snooper himself, and another pilot claimed a second. Despite that, Brown had to assume that the patrol planes had radioed his location, course, and speed to Rabaul. Having lost the element of surprise, and claiming an “acute fuel shortage,” he decided to call off the strike, though he continued to steam in the direction of Rabaul during the daylight hours, turning around only after nightfall.
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The Japanese patrol planes had indeed reported the presence of the
Lexington
group to Rabaul, and at 2:00 that afternoon, Vice Admiral Gotō Eiji sent seventeen two-engine bombers to the attack. They were big Mitsubishi G4M1 bombers (“Bettys”) that were both newer and faster than the seven Nells that had assailed Halsey in the Marshalls. The ability to employ land-based airplanes from a web of Pacific bases was a central feature of Japanese prewar defensive plans. These long-range planes could strike at American warships well before the carriers got close enough to launch their own aircraft. What the Japanese didn’t anticipate was that the Americans would be able to see them coming.
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Vice Admiral Wilson Brown commanded the
Lexington
task force during two planned raids on the Japanese base at Rabaul. Here he wears the gold aiguillette that he sported as President Roosevelt’s’ naval aide in 1943–44. (U.S. Naval Institute)

If the Japanese had an edge on the Americans in torpedo technology, the Americans had a huge advantage in that they had radar and the Japanese did not. Radar had made its debut in the fleet in 1937 when a prototype—looking much like a bedspring tied to the mast—had been installed on the destroyer
Leary
, A much newer and more efficient version, CXAM radar, made by RCA, was installed on the American carriers in the fall of 1940. Depending on the skill of the operator, CXAM radar could identify approaching aircraft from fifty to a hundred miles out, and surface ships fourteen to twenty miles away. The new system was idiosyncratic, however; images appeared and faded, and it was difficult, if not impossible, to determine altitude or even the number of contacts. Nonetheless, it was a huge improvement over the naked eye. Just before 4:00 p.m., the
Lexington
’s radar picked up an air contact seventy-six miles out. As it happened, the
Lexington
was about to rotate its CAP and had just launched six replacement Wildcats. The planes coming off patrol were already circling for a landing when they were ordered to stay aloft. Instead, the
Lexington
launched four more Wildcats plus eleven Dauntless bombers (without bombs), which gave them twenty-seven aircraft to contest an assault by what turned out to be seventeen Japanese bombers approaching in two waves.
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The first wave of nine bombers was simply overwhelmed by the Americans, which provoked cheers from the crewmen of the
Lexington
, who could see the planes falling from the sky. The Bettys were well armed, but they had no fighter support and, like most Japanese combat aircraft, were poorly armored. Jimmy Thach got one, and his squadron mates took care of the rest. Like Lieutenant Nakai, who had tried to crash his plane into Halsey’s
Enterprise
, Lieutenant Nakagawa Masayoshi tried to crash his crippled bomber into the
Lexington
. When it was 2,500 yards away and closing, the guns on the
Lexington
opened up. Most of the shells exploded behind the plane, and an officer on Brown’s staff who had a reputation as a crack duck hunter, yelled out “Lead him! … damn you, lead him!” As the
Lexington
turned away, Nakagawa’s plane, riddled with bullets and with most of its crewmen likely dead, crashed into the sea.
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The annihilation of that first wave of bombers was gratifying, though when a second wave of eight Bettys arrived, only five recently launched Wildcats had enough fuel left to make an attack. One of them was piloted by Lieutenant Edward “Butch” O’Hare and another by his wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Marion Dufilho. The other three were widely separated. Dufilho’s guns jammed almost at once so that O’Hare faced the challenge of fending off eight medium bombers virtually alone. The Bettys may have lacked armor, but they bristled with armament. Each plane had a machine gun in the nose, another in a blister on the top of the fuselage, two more in blisters on the sides, plus a 20 mm cannon in the tail. It took remarkable courage for one pilot to assail a formation of such planes; O’Hare had to know that as many as two dozen gunners would be aiming at him. However, unlike the Japanese, who were flying in formation, O’Hare had freedom to maneuver, and he began to pick off the Japanese bombers one by one. With only thirty to forty seconds’ worth of ammunition, he attacked the starboard plane first and then worked his way through the formation. “When one would start burning, I’d haul out and wait for it to get out of the way,” he said later. “Then I’d go in and get another one.” He shot down three bombers and badly crippled two more, continuing his attack until he had expended all his ammunition. He was credited with five kills and became the first official U.S. Navy ace of the Pacific war.
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The three surviving Japanese planes dropped their bombs over the task force, scoring no hits, and then turned to head back to base—all but one. O’Hare had shot the engine off the left wing of Lieutenant Commander Itō Takuzō’s command airplane, and the big bomber spiraled out of the formation, losing altitude quickly. Like Nakagawa, Itō ordered his pilot, Warrant Officer Watanabe Chūzō, to crash into the American carrier. With only one engine, however, Watanabe could not hold his course. The
Lexington
turned hard to starboard, and the big Japanese bomber flew alongside for a few heart-stopping seconds before it splashed into the sea 1,500 yards off the port bow.
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Butch O’Hare’s adventures for the day were not quite over. As he came in to land on the
Lexington
, low on fuel and out of ammunition, an overzealous young gunner on the carrier’s port quarter opened fire on him. O’Hare saw where the fire was coming from, but coolly continued to execute his landing. After he climbed out of the cockpit, he walked slowly back to the gun tub on the port quarter and, looking down at the machine gunner there, said to him: “Son, if you don’t stop shooting at me when I’ve got my wheels down, I’m going to have to report you to the gunnery officer.”
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The F4F-3 Wildcat was the U.S. Navy’s principal carrier-based fighter in the spring of 1942. In this staged photograph, two of them are being flown by two of the Navy’s best fighter pilots: John S. “Jimmy” Thach flies F-1 in the foreground, and Edward “Butch” O’Hare flies F-13. (U.S. Naval Institute)