The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (35 page)

The second thing that went wrong that week was that the Japanese were tardy in establishing the submarine cordons that were supposed to track the American carriers as they left Pearl Harbor in response to an attack on Midway. Seven submarines, constituting Cordon A, were to occupy a north-south line west of Pearl Harbor. Six more would constitute Cordon B north and east of French Frigate Shoals. Another six would occupy a line near Midway. The subs were to report the carriers’ movements and then inflict whatever damage they could as a prologue to the main event. All three cordons were to be established by June 2. They got a late start out of Japan, however, and also lingered a day in Kwajalein, so that they were late in arriving. In addition, several subs were delayed by their involvement with the aborted Operation K. As a result of all this, only one sub made it into position by June 2; the others did not arrive until June 4. By then, the American carriers were nearly a thousand miles to the north. Watanabe Yosuji, Yamamoto’s loyal logistics officer, blamed the submarine commander Captain Kuroshima Kameto. Watanabe insisted that Kuroshima was simply not energetic in pursuit of his duties. Whatever the merits of that assertion, Yamamoto and Nagumo steamed eastward unaware that the American carriers—their principal quarry—had already flown the coop.
¹⁹

On June 2, Yamamoto’s battleships and Nagumo’s carriers, fighting their way eastward through rough seas, were blanketed by a fog so thick that the ships had to use searchlights to find one another in the formation. On the one hand this was a stroke of luck, for it hid them from the prying eyes of American long-range search planes from Midway. On the other it also prevented Nagumo from sending out search planes of his own, and it was stressful for the entire formation to execute the required zigzag course (to confuse American submarines) while maneuvering through a fog. A witness on board
Akagi
recalled seeing Nagumo and members of his staff on the bridge staring “silently at the impenetrable curtain surrounding the ship, … each face tense with anxiety.” Nagumo may indeed have been anxious. He had heard nothing from the submarines other than one report from I-168 off Midway, which relayed the information that, although the Americans were conducting intensive air search operations, the only vessel in sight was a picket submarine off Sand Island. Nagumo had to assume that no news was good news.
²⁰

In fact, of course, the Americans were very much on the alert. On May 29, Nimitz had designated Navy Commander Logan C. Ramsey as the operational air coordinator for the airplanes at Midway, and Ramsey dramatically stepped up both the frequency and the range of the air search patrols. There had been some discussion within the American high command about Ramsey’s authority to send Army B-17 Flying Fortress bombers on such missions. Just as Theobald and Butler quarreled over their respective roles in defending Alaska, Army and Navy leaders at Midway squabbled over whose job it was to search for enemy warships. The Army insisted that the B-17s should be reserved for combat missions. The Navy’s position was that (in the words of one admiral) it was “criminal waste and stupid folly” not to take advantage of their two-thousand-mile range for air search missions. The discussion made it back to Washington, where George Marshall decided in favor of the Navy. As a result, the Americans were able to use not only the Navy PBY sea planes but also the heavy B-17 Army bombers in their air search pattern.
²¹

The work was tedious. Every morning before dawn, the PBYs took off one by one at five-minute intervals from Midway’s protected lagoon while the B-17s took off from the airstrip on Eastern Island. They flew for seven or eight hundred miles out on their assigned vectors, then flew back again along a different axis to cover more area. After ten to twelve hours in the air, the crews landed, secured their planes, ate, slept, and then got up the next morning before dawn to do it all again. They flew mostly at low altitude—around 1,000 feet. That narrowed their search area, but the visibility was better and they were less likely to make mistakes in identification.
²²

The first sighting report came in at 9:00 a.m. on June 3 from Ensign Charles R. Eaton, piloting a PBY about five hundred miles west of Midway. Eaton reported seeing “two Japanese cargo vessels” that fired on him with antiaircraft fire. Back in Midway, Captain Simard concluded, correctly, that these were only minesweepers patrolling ahead of the main body. Only minutes later, another report from a different search plane electrified the listeners at Midway, at Pearl Harbor, and out at Point Luck where Fletcher, Spruance, and the American carriers lay in wait.
²³

The report came from Ensign Jewell Reid, flying another PBY out of Midway. Near the end of his plotted search area, some seven hundred miles west of Midway, he saw some tiny specks on the horizon. At first he thought it was dirt on the windscreen. His copilot snatched up the binoculars and stared out the windscreen. Reid postponed his turn for home and maintained his course. As the range closed, he saw that they were indeed ships—many ships. At 9:05 he sent the message: “Sighted main body.”
²⁴

Back at Midway, Ramsey ordered Reid to amplify his report. Already near the edge of his plane’s maximum range, Reid dived toward the water, stayed low, and completed a wide circle out to the north. At about 9:30, he eased his plane up to about 800 feet and peered southward. At 9:35 he sent in a more complete report: “Six large vessels in column.” Again Ramsey asked for clarification: What kind of ships? What course? What speed? To get that information, Reid headed back to low altitude and maneuvered around behind the formation. He reasoned that the lookouts on the Japanese ships, which still lacked radar, would more likely be searching forward than aft. With the sun behind him, he crept back up to 800 feet to have another look. Finally he was able to deliver the information that Simard, Nimitz, and Fletcher needed: “Eleven ships, course 090 [due east] speed 19 [knots].” The formation included “one small carrier, one seaplane tender, two battleships, several cruisers, several destroyers.” He also requested instructions. By now, he was well past his optimum turnaround time for fuel use, and an entire Japanese fleet was between him and his base. His crew was therefore much relieved when the radio crackled out permission for him to return to Midway.
²⁵

Ensign Jewell “Jack” Reid (perched on the wheel strut) and his PBY crew were the first to make a visual sighting of the approaching Japanese force on June 3. (U.S. Naval Institute)

At Pearl Harbor, Nimitz was engaged in conversation with Layton when Arthur Benedict, who had just gotten off watch at Hypo, came running in waving a piece of paper. It was a copy of Reid’s sighting report. Nimitz had maintained his usual placid public demeanor through the past several days, though he confessed privately in a letter to his wife that his days were full of “anxious waiting.” Based on the initial Hypo intercepts, he had expected the enemy to begin the attack on June 3, and the absence of any sighting reports had been worrisome. Now, as he read Ensign Reid’s report, his weathered face broke into a broad grin. This must be Kondō’s “Invasion Force,” the “bait” that was supposed to lure the American carriers to their doom. Its composition was exactly what Rochefort had predicted, and it was almost exactly where Rochefort had said it would be. Nimitz handed the report to Layton. “This ought to make your heart warm.”
²⁶

Nimitz knew, however, that this was not the “main body,” as Reid had reported it. Technically, the “main body” was Yamamoto’s battleship force, which the Americans still did not know about, though the real target—the key piece in the entire puzzle—was the enemy’s carrier force, the Kidō Butai, and so far there was no word as to its whereabouts. Aware of that, Nimitz decided to forward Reid’s report to Fletcher even though he was certain that Fletcher’s own communications team had monitored it. He did so because forwarding the message allowed him to add his own comment at the end. “That is not, repeat not, the enemy striking force,” Nimitz wrote. “That is the landing force. The striking force will hit from the northwest at daylight tomorrow.” Nimitz did not want to micromanage his operational commanders, but neither did he want them to go off half-cocked. At Point Luck, Fletcher was still well beyond striking range of this target, and the subtext of Nimitz’s forwarded message was unmistakable: Wait. Be patient.
²⁷

Kondō’s force was, however, a perfectly appropriate target for the Army’s heavy bombers on Midway. If Fletcher’s position at Point Luck was still a secret, the location of Midway was never a secret, so launching an air strike from the atoll gave nothing away. As soon as word could be sent to the airfield, nine Army B-17s under the command of Colonel Walter Sweeny took off from Eastern Island and headed west to strike the first blow. It took them most of four hours to find the Japanese, and when they did it was not Kondō’s “Invasion Force” but the nearby “Transport Group” under Rear Admiral Tanaka Raizō, consisting of one light cruiser, ten destroyers, and thirteen transport ships filled with the 5,000 men of the landing force. Tanaka had outrun his air cover, and as a result all he could do now was try evasive maneuvers while his destroyers threw up as much antiaircraft fire as they could muster.
*

The big American bombers dropped their ordnance from 10,000 feet. Each B-17 carried four 600-pound bombs—thus a total of nearly eleven tons of bombs fell among the ships of Tanaka’s command. The Japanese ships maneuvered radically under the rain of ordnance, most of which exploded when it hit the water. The flash of the explosions, the enormous geysers of water they generated, and the black smoke from the Japanese ships as they twisted and turned in the roiling water all looked pretty spectacular from 10,000 feet. Making accurate damage assessments is difficult in the best of circumstances, and especially so for Army pilots untrained in antiship operations. The returning pilots did the best they could. They reported five hits, one probable hit, and four near misses against two battleships and two large transports. Sweeny reported that one transport was on fire and that a battleship was on fire and sinking. Based on that report, American submarines were vectored toward the site to finish off the damaged battleship.
²⁸

In fact, there were no battleships in Tanaka’s group, only a light cruiser and several destroyers, and none of them had suffered any damage. Despite all the sound and fury, no ship had been hit; no one, on either side, had been injured.

Nevertheless, the apparent success of the raid inspired Rear Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger, commander of PBY Patrol Wing Two, to attack as well. Bellinger was a career aviator who had sent the famous radio report that had informed the world of the Japanese attack back in December: “Air Raid, Pearl Harbor—This is no drill.” Now, eager to retaliate, he devised a way to use his PBYs to strike at the foe in a night torpedo attack. He had four of his Catalinas modified to carry the heavy Mark 13 torpedo, and he called for volunteers to fly them out to attack the enemy. As Gordon Prange remarked forty years later, this was an idea “straight out of a comic strip,” but it illustrated the American willingness and ability to improvise.
²⁹