The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (28 page)

The
Lexington
strike force, arriving later, had even less luck. By now the
Zuikaku
had made it under the cover of the weather front and only the
Shōkaku
was visible. Moreover, amid the thickening weather there was a lot of confusion, and most of the
Lexington
’s bombers never found a target at all. Those that did encountered a sky full of Japanese fighters and cloud bursts from antiaircraft fire. “It was an incredible scramble,” one pilot recalled. “People yelling over the radio, mixed up, and you never knew who the hell was on top of whom.” In the end, only four bombers from the
Lexington
dove on the
Shōkaku
, and only one got a hit. The American pilots reported a total of six hits, but the
Shōkaku
was actually hit only three times, though all three were by 1,000-pound bombs, which damaged her deck so badly that she could no longer launch or recover airplanes. After that, Takagi decided to send her northward, out of the fight. Hara directed the planes from the
Shōkaku
that were still airborne to land on the
Zuikaku
, which had escaped entirely.
³³

Meanwhile, 150 miles to the south, Hara’s planes were hitting Task Force 17. By now, the cloud cover no longer protected the American carriers, and both of them were clearly visible in the bright sunshine. Thanks to radar, the Americans had spotted the incoming bogeys at 68 miles, and they braced for the attack. All available fighters, seventeen of them (the rest had gone with the attack force), were put in the air, bolstered by twenty-three Dauntless bombers (without bombs). On board the carriers, watertight doors were secured, gasoline was purged from the fuel lines, and fire hoses and first aid kits were made ready.
³⁴

The Japanese used a coordinated attack with torpedo planes coming in from both sides in an “anvil” attack while their bombers prepared to dive out of the sun. Ted Sherman, skipper of the
Lexington
, wrote admiringly that their attack was “beautifully coordinated.” Soon, the water around both carriers was filled with erupting geysers from near misses and the tracks of swiftly running torpedoes. The two carriers maneuvered radically in an attempt to avoid the torpedoes. The
Lexington
, however, was not a nimble ship. According to Sherman, “it took 30 to 40 seconds just to put the rudder hard over. When she did start to turn, she moved majestically and ponderously.” Despite that, she seemed for a time to lead a charmed life. On one occasion, a torpedo ran alongside on the port beam while another streaked past the starboard beam, both missing. Two more ran directly under her without exploding. But the
Lexington
’s luck could not last forever. Within minutes, she was struck by two bombs and two torpedoes. Several fires broke out, and the ship gradually took on a 7-degree list.
³⁵

The
Yorktown
also received attention from the attackers. She was repeatedly shaken by several near misses, including one explosion that was so violent it lifted the stern of the big carrier clear out of the water so that her four brass propellers could be seen spinning in the air. She also took one direct bomb hit amidships, fifteen feet from the ship’s island. That bomb penetrated the flight deck and exploded deep inside the ship. The “main steam lines vibrated excessively for a few seconds then steadied.” The lights blinked and went out, and three of the ship’s nine boilers had to be secured. Buckmaster called down to the engine room to ask what speed the engines could produce under these circumstances. The engineer told him he could generate steam for 24 knots. Buckmaster wondered if they should back off from that to avoid overtaxing the remaining boilers. “Hell no!” was the answer. “We’ll make it.”
³⁶

Back in Hawaii, Nimitz was kept appraised of the action by Rochefort and the “roofers” at Hypo who listened in on the radio traffic, both friendly and hostile. The Japanese pilots were reporting the destruction of one carrier and serious damage to another. Soon afterward, Fletcher reported damage to both American carriers, but also that they both continued to operate.
³⁷

Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. The attack had lasted about half an hour—from 11:13 to 11:40. On the
Yorktown
, Buckmaster allowed some members of the crew to go down to the mess deck to get something to eat. When they got there, they found that the ship’s surgeons had used the mess tables to lay out some of the fifty-five men who had been killed in the attack. Yeoman Second Class Sam Laser remembered, “They hadn’t been covered yet, and many of them had horrible wounds—blood streaming from their eyes, missing limbs, and so on. We had to walk past all that to get to the chow line, and the only thing they had was crackers and salmon. For five years after that I couldn’t eat salmon.”
³⁸

This photograph captures the moment at 12:47 p.m. on May 8, 1942, when an internal explosion on the
Lexington
triggered the sequence of events that led to her destruction. (U.S. Naval Institute)

Over on the
Lexington
, Sherman corrected the ship’s list with counter flooding, and by 12:30 both carriers were recovering the planes returning from the strike against the
Shōkaku
. Then at 12:47 p.m., there was a huge internal explosion deep inside the
Lexington
. The big carrier had linear gas tanks that went from the bottom of the ship up several decks, and they had been ruptured by a number of near misses. Gas fumes had accumulated, and a spark from an electric generator ignited a massive explosion. It was so powerful that the huge forward elevator platform flew into the air and crashed down onto the flight deck “with a great bang” on top of an airplane. The explosion also started a number of fires that the damage control teams struggled to contain. An hour later came a second explosion that destroyed the
Lexington
’s ventilation system. Sherman had to order the engine rooms evacuated before the men there were asphyxiated. At 2:50 p.m., he blinkered a message to Fletcher on the
Yorktown:
“This ship needs help.” Destroyers came alongside to help fight the raging fires, but it was a losing battle. The
Lexington
had no power, and the fires were burning out of control. At 4:00 there was a third blast. The out-of-control fires were cooking off the stored ammunition. As the big torpedoes exploded, one officer thought that it “sounded like a freight train rumbling up the hangar deck.” Fitch leaned over the rail of the flag bridge and told Sherman that he had better “get the boys off the ship.”
³⁹

Discipline held. Sherman recalled that as the crew came topside and prepared to go over the side, “some of them lined up their shoes in orderly fashion on the deck before they left, as if they expected to return.” Most of the crew was saved—more than 2,700 men. Sherman made sure he was the last one off, and by nightfall, as one witness recalled, “the whole sky was lit up red with that ship burning from stem to stern.” That night, Fletcher sent the destroyer
Phelps
to sink her with torpedoes. It took five of them. As the
Lexington
sank, there was one more “tremendous explosion” underwater as she broke apart.
⁴⁰

Again, Fletcher considered another strike. Though the
Yorktown
now trailed a fifty-mile long oil slick behind her, she could still make 25 knots, more than enough to launch and recover aircraft. The problem was that although most of his attack planes had returned, they were, in the words of one pilot, “all shot to hell,” and of questionable utility. Fletcher decided instead to retire southward, and Fitch agreed.
⁴¹

Takagi and Hara also considered a second strike. But they had only nine bombers and torpedo planes left, and the
Zuikaku
was running low on fuel. Admiral Inoue had ordered Gotō’s invasion force to turn around and head north soon after the
Shōhō
went down, and now he sent the same order to Takagi and Hara. For his part, Hara was glad to get it. He admitted later in a private conversation with Yamamoto’s chief of staff that the battle with the Americans had broken his confidence. Consequently, while Fletcher and the
Yorktown
retired to the south, Hara and the
Zuikaku
steamed north. That afternoon, about the time that Sherman ordered the crew of the
Lexington
to abandon ship, Inoue postponed Operation MO indefinitely.
⁴²

There was one more tense moment for the Americans on May 9, when Lieutenant Junior Grade Frederic Faulkner reported sighting undamaged Japanese carriers only 170 miles away. Fletcher rang up 28 knots and sent Bob Dixon with four dive-bombers (of the sixteen he had left) to try to pinpoint their location. Dixon returned, having spotted nothing but coral reefs. Fletcher began to suspect that what Faulkner had seen was a series of small islands. He called Faulkner to the flag bridge and spread out a chart of the area.

“Here’s a chart that shows a chain of small islands at the identical spot at which you made your contact,” he told Faulkner. “Do you think you could have made a mistake?” A chastened Faulkner replied that he might have been wrong. Fletcher expressed no anger. He merely replied, “That’s all I wanted to know.” He reduced speed to 15 knots to conserve fuel and headed for Noumea in New Caledonia.
⁴³

In the Battle of the Coral Sea—the first engagement in history between opposing carrier forces—the Japanese inflicted more damage on the Americans than the Americans did on the Japanese. The United States lost its largest carrier
(Lexington)
, a fleet oiler
(Neosho)
, and the destroyer
Sims
, and suffered damage to the
Yorktown
; the Japanese lost only the small carrier
Shōhō
and suffered significant but not mortal damage to the
Shōkaku
. On the other hand, Japanese airplane losses were heavier. The Americans lost 81 planes while the Japanese had lost 105. Moreover, while the Americans recovered all but a few of their pilots, the Japanese did not. Many of their best frontline pilots had been killed, a loss they could ill afford. When Hara sent the twenty-seven-plane attack toward the American “battleships” on the afternoon of May 7, he had handpicked his best pilots for the mission because of the difficult conditions. Nine of them had failed to return.