The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (37 page)

The Americans, too, were up early that morning. On Midway, Commander Ramsey, in charge of air ops on the atoll, sent up a CAP of five Dash 3 Wildcats (all he had) at 4:00 a.m., and the first of an eventual twenty-two Catalina PBYs lifted off from the lagoon at Midway to begin long-range searches north and west of the atoll. As soon as the Wildcats were airborne, fifteen Army Flying Fortress bombers took off for a second attack on Tanaka’s “Transport Group,” though they were prepared to shift targets if any of the patrol planes found the Kidō Butai. The rest of the Midway air crews congregated in the mess hall to wait for news. “It was pretty crowded in there,” one pilot recalled, “with various crews of different services.” There was not a lot of conversation. “The atmosphere was quiet and somber, more or less foreboding, you might say.” The soft-drink machines had been opened up and everything was free. At least one pilot thought the free drinks “gave you a ‘last meal’ feeling.”
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Meanwhile, 320 miles northwest of Midway, Fletcher also launched early that day, sending up a CAP of six Wildcats at 4:20, followed by ten Dauntless dive-bombers for a “security search” to cover the area north of him out to a hundred miles. He knew the Catalinas were patrolling out of Midway, and he relied on them to report any contacts to the west where, according to Hypo, the Kidō Butai would be found. He sent these ten Dauntlesses to the north, to ensure that the Japanese did not attempt an end run as they had in the Coral Sea. Spruance did not send up a CAP that morning because the two carriers of Task Force 16 were already loaded and cocked—the decks of both carriers spotted with the strike force intended for the Kidō Butai when it was discovered. Had Spruance launched fighters for CAP, he would not have been able to recover them without sending the attack planes below, thereby delaying the eventual launch. Fletcher’s need to steam into the wind to launch both the Wildcats for CAP and the Dauntlesses for the search drew him away toward the east, and soon Spruance’s two carriers were beyond sight.
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At 5:34 the Americans at Midway received a report from Lieutenant Howard P. Ady, piloting a PBY northwest of Midway. The first words of his report sent a jolt through the listeners: “Enemy Carrier bearing 320 [degrees], distance 180 [miles].” At 180 miles from Midway, this target was within easy range of the American bombers on Eastern Island. The pilots in the mess hall scrambled for their equipment anticipating an immediate order to attack. Before any of them could man their planes, however, another PBY pilot, Lieutenant William A. Chase, called in to report: “Many planes headed Midway.” Obviously, the Japanese carriers had already launched, and Midway would soon be the target of a bombing attack. The radar station picked up Tomonaga’s strike force ninety miles out. Captain Simard and Marine Corps Colonel Ira Kimes scrambled all the available fighters they had to contest them. Between 6:00 and 6:30, the Eastern Island airfield was a frenzy of activity, with planes taking off every few seconds. Simard and Kimes sent all their available bombers out toward the reported position of the Japanese carriers and all their available fighters out to intercept Tomonaga.
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The attack planes from Midway comprised an eclectic collection that included four Army medium bombers (armed with torpedoes), six Navy torpedo planes, and thirty Marine Corps dive-bombers of two different types. Kimes wanted all the planes to fly in a single formation and to attack together, but the three services had never practiced a coordinated assault against an enemy task force and did not even have a doctrine for doing so. Moreover, the four types of airplanes all flew at different speeds. In the end, therefore, the American attack on the Kidō Butai turned into a kind of free-for-all, with each group attacking on its own, employing whatever tactics seemed appropriate at the time. If the cavalier Japanese air search that morning reflected a cultural preference for combat, the haphazard American bombing strike betrayed the American tradition of service independence. Finally, because the Americans sent all of their available fighters out to challenge Tomonaga’s incoming attack force, this mixed bag of bombers and torpedo planes not only attacked piecemeal, it did so without any fighter cover. Perhaps the best that could be said of this effort was that at least the planes were not sitting passively on the runway when Tomonaga’s bombers arrived. By 6:45 the only planes left on Midway were the few that were undergoing repair or maintenance.
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While the American bombers flew off to find the reported enemy carriers, the fighters of Midway’s Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF-221), commanded by Major Floyd Parks, were vectored toward the incoming attackers. Parks was short and stocky, with dull red hair (his nickname was “Red”) and “lots of energy.” Twenty-one of the twenty-six Marine pilots, including Parks, flew the old and slow Brewster Buffaloes, and one of those had to turn back because of engine trouble. Five others flew the newer Dash 3 Wildcats.
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They climbed to 16,000 feet and headed off to meet Tomonaga’s strike force. Forty miles out, they spotted the Japanese two thousand feet below them in a series of stacked V formations, with the Zero fighters on top. Marine Captain John F. Carey, leading a section of three Wildcats, radioed, “Tally ho! Hawks at Angels twelve supported by fighters,” and dove to the attack. Parks and the others attacked as well. For a few precious seconds the Marines had a tactical advantage, since the Zero pilots had been looking downward and were surprised when American fighters dove on them from above. Carey flew directly at the lead plane in the enemy bomber formation. A bullet punched a hole in Carey’s windshield, missing his head by inches, but he held his course and fired a long burst at the lead Japanese bomber, which caught fire and fell out of the formation. Carey’s wingman, Second Lieutenant Clayton Canfield, targeted the third bomber in the formation, and it, too, caught fire and fell away. Soon enough, however, the swarming Zeros overwhelmed the Americans. As one pilot put it, “After the first coordinated attacks the thing degenerated into a rat race.” Parks was one of the first to be hit. He successfully bailed out of his burning aircraft, but a Zero fighter strafed his chute as he descended and then strafed him again in the water. His body was later found on the rocks near Midway.
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One of the rear-seat gunners of a Kate peppered the right side of Carey’s airplane, and bullets smashed both of his legs. Carey executed a power dive almost straight down—the only chance he had to escape the swift Zeros—and managed to pull out just at wave height. Unable to perform combat maneuvers—indeed, barely able to maneuver at all—he nursed his crippled plane back to Midway, where he executed a controlled crash landing on the runway. Canfield also managed to get back to the airfield. His landing gear collapsed when his plane touched the runway, but he extricated himself from the wreck and rolled into a nearby slit trench to avoid the Japanese bombs that were already falling.
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Carey and Canfield were among the lucky ones. Though the Marine pilots claimed six kills that morning, the slow and clumsy Brewsters were easy pickings for the nimble Zeros. Of the twenty-five Marines who flew out to challenge Tomonaga’s strike force, fourteen were killed, and four more wounded—a loss rate of over 70 percent. Even those who survived did not come back unscathed. Second Lieutenant Charles Kunz had the disquieting experience of having Japanese bullets graze his scalp twice, one on each side of his head. That night, after treating him, the surgeon prescribed several “stiff shots” so that Kunz could get to sleep. As Carey reported afterward, “The ‘Zero’ fighters out-maneuvered, out-performed, and out climbed the Brewsters and Grummans in every respect.”
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Ady’s 5:34 sighting report did not reach the American carriers until 6:03, when it was relayed from Pearl Harbor. Officers on all three carriers bent over the chart tables and made a quick calculation. The reported location of the enemy carriers put them just over 200 miles southwest of their own position. Since the Wildcat fighters and Devastator torpedo bombers had an effective combat radius of about 175 miles, they were not quite within range. In his conversations with Nimitz, Fletcher had agreed that his best hope was to hit the Kidō Butai first, and hit it hard. It was understood that the two carriers of Task Force 16 under Spruance were to strike first, while Fletcher held his air group in reserve. But before Fletcher gave Spruance the “go” order, two factors stayed his hand. The first was that Ady’s report indicated the presence of only two carriers. Thanks to Rochefort and Hypo, Fletcher knew that the Japanese were almost certain to have at least four, and possibly five. Where were the others? If Fletcher unleashed Spruance’s two air groups at once, they might catch the two enemy flattops early and sink them; they might also miss the rest of the Kidō Butai. Not quite a month before, in the Coral Sea, Fletcher had sent ninety-three planes to savage the
Shōhō
while Hara’s two big carriers remained undiscovered and unscathed until the next day. He did not want a repeat performance now. In fact, all four Japanese carriers were there and Ady had simply not seen them, but there was no way for Fletcher to know that.

The second factor was the timing. When Fletcher heard Chase’s report of “Many planes headed Midway,” he knew that an enemy carrier (or carriers) had launched a strike against the atoll. What he did not know was how many was “many.” Was it a deck load from one or two carriers, or an entire strike force from the combined Kidō Butai? More to the point, the news that the enemy had launched gave Fletcher a kind of timetable for their operations. He knew that it would take the Japanese planes about three hours—that is, until around 8:30 or so—to complete their mission over Midway and return to the Kidō Butai. Ideally, the best time to hit them would be when they were in the midst of recovering planes that were low on fuel and needing to land. Then, too, if Fletcher waited until that critical moment, it would give the Catalinas more time to find the rest of the Kidō Butai. If he could wait an hour, perhaps two, before launching, he might catch Nagumo’s force unready and vulnerable. On the other hand, Fletcher knew that his greatest advantage was that the Japanese still had no idea where the American carriers were, and he wanted to launch his attack before they found out. A Japanese snooper might discover them at any moment, and the element of surprise would be lost.
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That last concern proved decisive. At 6:07 Fletcher used the short-range TBS (talk between ships) radio to order Spruance: “Proceed southwesterly and attack enemy carriers when definitely located. I will follow as soon as planes recovered.” While Spruance attacked, Fletcher would hold the
Yorktown’s
planes in reserve, pending “receipt of information on additional enemy carriers.” In the meantime, Fletcher could recover the planes returning from the morning search. As the
Yorktown
continued northeast on the point option recovery course, Spruance headed southwest toward the enemy. Eventually the two task forces ended up some twenty miles apart.
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Over on the
Enterprise
, Spruance was ready. Ever since the first sighting report, Captain Miles Browning, the volatile and self-confident chief of staff he had inherited from Halsey, had been eager to attack. Browning was something of an eccentric in the aviation community. Tall and ruggedly handsome, and with the same kind of bad-boy allure that made Ernie King attractive to women, Browning was a temperamental loner on shipboard. An excellent pilot and an imaginative tactician, he was also cocky and dismissive, characteristics that did not endear him to subordinates. Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Best, who commanded the bombing squadron on the
Enterprise
, found Browning intolerable. “He was a bully,” Best recalled after the war. “I despised him.” The ebullient Halsey, however, got along very well with Browning and had recommended him for his promotion to captain. For his part, Spruance thought Browning was “smart and quick,” and he knew that Halsey trusted him. Moreover, because Spruance was not an aviator, he was bound to rely heavily on Browning for tactical advice. Six days earlier, soon after Task Force 16 had left Pearl Harbor for Point Luck, Spruance had called a meeting in his cabin to which he invited the air group commander and the four squadron commanders. Almost at once, Browning took charge of the meeting, outlining the plan to ambush four Japanese carriers north of Midway, even naming the four carriers that would be involved. He did not tell the pilots where the information came from—that was still classified—and the information was so detailed that some of the pilots were skeptical. Best thought it sounded “phony.” He asked Browning, “Suppose they don’t attack Midway, suppose they keep going east and hit Pearl Harbor again?” Browning looked at him with narrowed eyes for a long minute, then replied, “Well, we just hope they don’t.”
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