The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (40 page)

The B-17 s were unmolested, but the Marine Dauntless pilots were savaged by the Japanese CAP, and the survivors had a difficult time getting back to Midway. With Henderson killed and the formation scattered, each pilot was on his own. Many stayed low and skimmed the surface; others sought to hide in the cloud cover. None escaped unscathed. Captain Richard Blain nursed his Dauntless for twenty miles before his fuel pump went out. Then the engine stopped altogether. It recaught momentarily, then went out again. He crash-landed in the sea, and he and his rear-seat gunner, Sergeant Robert Underwood, scrambled into their tiny life raft. Finding that it had a hole in it, they put ersatz makeshift patch on it and spent much of the next two days bailing. After two days and two nights, they were rescued by a PBY. In the end, only eight of the sixteen planes that set out from Midway made it back. On one of them, maintenance crews found 179 bullet holes; on another they counted 219.
³⁴

The Americans were not done yet. After the Dauntlesses departed, a dozen antiquated Marine Corps SB2U Vindicators made a run at the Japanese carriers. These aged canvas-covered monoplanes were even older than the Brewster Buffaloes and literally held together by adhesive tape. The pilots derisively referred to them as “Wind Indicators” since the tag ends of the tape fluttered in such a way as to indicate the wind direction. Many of the pilots had never flown one before. They came out of the cloud cover over a Japanese battleship, and immediately came under attack by the Zeros, which convinced Major Benjamin Norris, who commanded the group, to target the battleship rather than take the time to look for the carriers. Three of his planes were shot down almost at once. It would have been worse except that by now many of the Zeros had expended their 20 mm cannon ammunition and had only their lighter 7.7 mm machine guns. Two more Vindicators were hit by bursts of antiair fire from the battleship. The shell explosions buffeted the flimsy planes so violently that, as one pilot recalled, “it was practically impossible to hold the ship in a true dive.” Nevertheless, they grimly persisted and dropped their ordnance. Once again, none of them scored a hit.
³⁵

Thus it was that between 7:55 and 8:35 that morning, the Kidō Butai endured three separate attacks by more than forty American aircraft from Midway. The Americans had hurled themselves on the Kidō Butai in a series of uncoordinated attacks, heedless of danger and profligate with their lives, but none of them managed to land any of their ordnance on target. Eighteen of the attackers were shot down, and most of the rest were so badly damaged that they were of questionable further use. Only the high-flying B-17s had been spared.

There were, however, two important consequences of these attacks that greatly affected the subsequent course of the battle. First, because the big Japanese torpedoes and fragmentation bombs could not be moved about on the hangar decks of the carriers while they maneuvered radically under air attack, the American onslaught slowed the transfer of armament for most of that forty-minute period. And second, because Nagumo felt compelled to commit virtually all of his remaining Zero fighters to the defense of the Kidō Butai, he would have to recover, rearm, and refuel those fighters before they could be used to accompany his bombers and torpedo planes in an attack on the American warships.

In the midst of these attacks, at about 8:20, Nagumo received an update from Amari. Apparently the clouds had parted enough to give him a better look at the ships below him, and he now reported: “Enemy force [is] accompanied by what appears to an aircraft carrier to the rear of the others.” Though Nagumo had suspected as much, this was nevertheless critical news. Kusaka later asserted that though he knew it was likely, he was still “shocked” by the report, describing it as “a bolt from the blue.” Here was not only a worthy target but also the primary objective of the whole mission. This was the moment to launch those ship-killing attack planes Nagumo had been hoarding on the hangar decks. The problem was that by now Tomonaga’s strike force was returning from Midway and needed to land. In addition, the Zeros that had fended off the American air attacks from Midway were low on both fuel and ammunition and also needed to land. Nagumo had used all four carriers to launch the planes of his Midway attack force; he would need all four decks to recover them. He could not recover planes and launch at the same time. He seemed to have two choices: order the returning strike force and his own Zero fighters to circle the task force (and risk having them run out of fuel as they did so) while he brought up the reserve planes for an attack on the American surface forces—an attack that would have to go with little or no fighter cover—or recover his CAP and Tomonaga’s planes, rearm and refuel them, and dispatch a fully coordinated strike.
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On
Hiryū
, Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, the commander of CarDiv 2, had also received Amari’s updated report. He was bold enough to offer Nagumo some unsolicited advice by blinker signal: “Consider it advisable to launch attack force immediately.” Back in December, Yamaguchi had been the one who had blinkered Nagumo that he was ready to launch another strike at Pearl Harbor. Nagumo hadn’t taken the hint then, and he was disinclined to accept Yamaguchi’s impertinent advice now. It was not just a matter of pique, however, for launching “immediately” was not really an option. Yamaguchi’s dive-bombers on
Sōryū
and
Hiryū
, which were armed with the smaller 551-pound bombs, were ready (or nearly ready) to go, but the big torpedo-carrying Kates of CarDiv 1 were not, and even after they were armed, they would have to be brought up from the hangar deck and spotted for launch. That would take half an hour at least, and likely longer, and by then Tomonaga’s returning planes might well run out of gas.
³⁷

Of course, Nagumo could order a partial strike by Yamaguchi’s thirty-six Val diver-bombers, and that may have been what Yamaguchi had in mind. The difficulty was that those bombers would have to proceed not only without the cooperation of the torpedo bombers but also with little fighter protection. An attack by only thirty-six dive-bombers (less than a quarter of his available force) without any coordinating torpedo planes or fighter cover would violate Japanese doctrine to strike the enemy with full strength in a combined and coordinated attack. Moreover, Nagumo had just watched the Americans hurl their odd collection of bombers and torpedo planes at him without fighter protection, and not only had they failed, they had been all but obliterated. As Kusaka put it later, “I witnessed [how] enemy planes without fighter cover were almost annihilated. … I wanted most earnestly to provide them [our bombers] with fighters by all means.” Nagumo made his decision: He would recover his CAP and Tomonaga’s returning planes, and then prepare his entire strike force for an all-out death blow against the American flattop.
³⁸

By the time Nagumo made that decision, it was 8:35. The planes from the
Hornet
and
Enterprise
had been in the air for more than half an hour.

*
To avoid confusion, all times used in the text will reflect the local time in the area of the Battle of Midway, which was two hours earlier than the time kept on board U.S. ships. The Japanese maintained Tokyo time on their ships, which was twenty-one hours ahead of Midway time.

*
All five operable Wildcats on Midway were launched as CAP at 4:00 a.m., but Ramsey recalled them once all of the long-range search planes had departed. Two of the pilots did not hear the recall order and continued to circle. They finally landed at 6:15, just as all the other fighters and attack planes on Midway were being launched. Quickly refueled, they sped north to join their squadron mates.

*
In his book
Midway Inquest
, Dallas Isom makes a strong case that Nagumo did not receive this information until 8:00 a.m. He argues that the 7:45 time given in the radio traffic log was reconstructed from memory because the original radio traffic log went down with the
Akagi.
Isom also asserts that the time noted on the Hypo intercept log was added after the war based on the reconstructed (and inaccurate)Japanese log. The timing was important, Isom argues, because if Nagumo did not receive the message until 8:00, it meant that the rearming had been going on for forty-five minutes instead of half an hour, and as a result it took longer to reverse the process. It is an interesting and plausible argument, but also highly speculative, and the preponderance of noncircumstantial evidence puts the message in Nagumo’s hands by 7:45.

12

The Flight to Nowhere
(7:00 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.)

A
t 7:00 a.m., about the time that Tomonaga was informing Nagumo that Midway needed a second strike, and while the Kidō Butai was fending off the first of the American bomber attacks from Midway, the two carriers of Spruance’s Task Force 16 were turning into the wind to launch. Mounting a coordinated attack by air groups from two different carriers was unusual—indeed nearly unprecedented—for the Americans, who continued to conceive of their carriers as independent units. While U.S. Navy doctrine called for the air squadrons from each carrier to cooperate, there was no established doctrine about how planes from multiple carriers might operate together in an integrated formation as the Japanese did routinely. Back in March, when planes from the
Lexington
and
Yorktown
had attacked Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea, and again in May when they attacked the
Shōkaku
and
Zuikaku
in the Coral Sea, the air groups from the two American carriers had flown to the targets separately, each under its own commander. Though Spruance and Browning had visions of a single, combined strike by planes from both
Hornet
and
Enterprise
, in the end each of the air groups flew to the target independently, and this meant that much of the responsibility for the conduct of the attack fell to the captains of those two carriers and to their respective air group commanders.

This was especially true in the case of the
Hornet
, the only American carrier that did not have a flag officer on board, though Pete Mitscher had been selected for Rear Admiral (and some members of his staff already referred to him as “Admiral Mitscher”). Mitscher had logged as many air miles as any other American officer afloat, and he may have been a bit miffed that Spruance had designated George Murray, captain of the
Enterprise
, as the tactical air officer for the combined task force. Murray was slightly senior as a pilot (he was Naval Aviator #22 and Mitscher was #33), but Mitscher was senior to Murray in rank. Spruance likely made this decision because Murray had more combat experience and was on the
Enterprise
and therefore closer to hand. In the end, Murray would have little influence over the
Hornet’s
attack against the Japanese carriers that day, an attack that would be orchestrated and managed by Mitscher and the
Hornet’s
air group commander, Stanhope C. Ring.

To all outward appearances, Mitscher and Ring were complete opposites. Mitscher, as we have seen, was short, slight, sun-ravaged, and bald; Ring was tall and movie-star handsome, with a full head of hair. Ring, as the expression went, wore the uniform well; one junior officer thought he was “the picture of the ideal naval officer.” The two men were also different in background and temperament. At the Naval Academy, where Mitscher had been a poor student and a discipline problem, Ring had graduated in the top 25 percent of his class and had few demerits. Ring was urbane and sophisticated, and a strong believer in protocol and discipline. As a sailor on the
Enterprise
put it, Ring “belonged to the starchy, do-it-by-the-book side of the Navy.”
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Stanhope C. Ring, shown here as a rear admiral in a 1954 photograph, was the commander of the
Hornet
air group (CHAG) in the Battle of Midway. (U.S. Naval Institute)

Ring’s Nordic good looks and polished manners very likely played a role in securing him a number of plum staff jobs during his career. After a tour on the
Lexington
, he became the aide to Rear Admiral William Moffett, and after that he served as the naval aide to President Herbert Hoover. Following tours on the
Langley
and
Saratoga
, Ring worked in the Bureau of Aeronautics, and then as the U.S. naval attaché in London, where he was the American observer on the staff of Admiral Sir James Somerville (whose fleet was subsequently decimated by the Kidō Butai in the Indian Ocean). Somerville had liked him and, at the end of Ring’s tour in October 1941, recommended him for the Order of the British Empire. For his part, Ring was so taken with the British way of doing things that he began carrying a swagger stick, a habit that led many to mock him behind his back. Promoted to the rank of full commander, he was assigned as the
Hornet’s
air group commander, or CHAG, an unfortunate acronym that was pronounced “sea hag.”
²

Ring was generally well liked by his superiors, including Mitscher, but not by the young pilots in his charge. Even forty years later, they seethed with resentment. The main reason for this was that Ring led by authority rather than by example. He was quick to assert his rank, as, for instance, when he grounded several pilots because they failed to stand up when he entered the wardroom. During the brief stopover at Pearl Harbor before heading out to Point Luck, the pilots on
Enterprise
and
Yorktown
had been granted shore leave. Ring decreed that the
Hornet
pilots had to remain at Ewa Airfield on continuous alert. One pilot recalled that “there was much grumbling and a near ‘mutiny’ against the CHAG” as a result of that decision. A few pilots risked court martial by “expressing their opinion of CHAG to his face.”
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Ring’s strictness might have been tolerable but for the fact that he himself was an indifferent pilot. When the
Hornet
was first put in commission, he insisted on being the first to land a plane on her deck. Ensign Troy Guillory was in the rear seat of Ring’s SBC-4 scout biplane, and he remembered that Ring made his approach too high and too fast. Guillory heard “this little tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet” alarm and thought to himself that they were signaling the crash signal for somebody. In fact, it was for them. The plane hit the deck hard and much too fast, failed to catch a wire, and struck the crash barrier. It damaged the plane’s landing gear and broke the support wires on the wings. No one was hurt, but it was a bad omen for the first arrested landing on a new ship, and a poor augury for Ring’s credibility as CHAG. A week later, when a camera crew came on board
Hornet
to film carrier operations, Ring insisted on being the one photographed. As his plane accelerated down the flight deck, he turned his head to the camera and affected a pose, to the disgust of the pilots who witnessed it. Nor were Ring’s navigational skills up to par. On one occasion, he got lost while leading a training exercise in the Gulf of Mexico and had to turn the mission over to the executive officer of the scouting squadron, Gus Widhelm, to find the ship. As a result of these and other incidents, the pilots in the
Hornet’s
mostly inexperienced air group had limited confidence in Ring as a pilot or a navigator. At Midway, the extent of their confidence would be sorely tested.
⁴

No aspect of the Battle of Midway is more controversial or enigmatic than the role of the
Hornet
air group under Stanhope Ring on June 4. Four squadrons took off from the
Hornet
that morning, but only one managed to find the Kidō Butai—and that one did so only because its squadron commander flagrantly disobeyed Ring’s direct orders. The rest of the air group—two squadrons of bombers and all of the fighters that were committed to the strike—forty-four planes altogether—failed to see the enemy at all. Worse, in trying to get back to the
Hornet
, thirteen of those planes ran out of gas and had to ditch in the ocean, subjecting the pilots to hours or days of terrible suffering and, in two cases, death. That flight has become known in the lore of the Battle of Midway as “the flight to nowhere.” In effect, despite Nimitz’s furious efforts to ensure that the Americans would have three carriers at Midway to confront the Kidō Butai, only two of them succeeded in attacking the enemy that morning.

Reconstructing how this came about is difficult. For one thing, Mitscher and Ring never wrote or spoke candidly about it. Mitscher’s official report not only avoids the key issues, it is manifestly incorrect in several elements. Ring either never wrote a report or Mitscher failed to forward it, for it has not surfaced in the seventy years since the battle. In addition, none of the reports of the four squadron commanders survive, if indeed they were ever written. Submitting an after-action report following a mission was mandatory under Navy regulations. Nevertheless, other than Mitscher’s flawed report, the only contemporary evidence of what happened to the
Hornet’s
air group that morning comes from the oral testimony of the survivors, much of it written decades afterward and some of it contradictory. Telling the story of the
Hornet’s
air group on the morning of June 4 therefore remains a daunting task.

Breakfast call for the pilots on the
Hornet
sounded at 3:30 that morning. Few of them had slept much anyway, and, knowing they would have a busy day, they headed down to the officer’s mess for “a hurried breakfast.” Some opted for a “one-eyed sandwich,” a slice of toast holed out to accommodate a fried egg, though others merely grabbed a mug of coffee and went directly to the ready room, their leather helmets and goggles close to hand, to wait for the call to man their planes. Many were understandably nervous; none of them had any combat experience, including the squadron commanders. Unlike the pilots on the other American carriers who had participated in the raids on the Marshalls, Wake, or New Guinea, or fought in the Coral Sea, those on the
Hornet
, including Ring, were facing their first combat mission. The
Hornet
had gone to sea only in March. The pilots had conducted air operations during the shakedown cruise, but new pilots had to make eight carrier landings to become carrier-qualified, and many had not yet met that standard by the time the
Hornet
passed through the Panama Canal on her way to the Pacific. In San Diego, the dive-bombing squadrons got new planes, so that even those who had qualified had yet to make an arrested landing in the plane they would fly in combat. Some had qualified off San Diego before the
Hornet
headed up to Alameda. From March 20 to April 18, however, the
Hornet’s
deck was encumbered by the sixteen B-25 bombers that she had carried into the western Pacific for the Doolittle raid. Flight operations had resumed immediately afterward, but even with that, the
Hornet
pilots had a total of only about six weeks of on-board training. Many had still not completed the initial training syllabus. In short, they were rookies, and the Battle of Midway would be their trial by fire.
⁵

In the four ready rooms (one for each squadron), time passed slowly. There was much less of the usual banter; a few pilots tried their hand at reciting or inventing bawdy limericks, but for the most part it was quiet. One recalled, “The boys were getting fidgety.” A few tried to read; several napped. Most kept one eye on the teleprinter that projected the sighting reports onto a 3-foot-by-3-foot screen. Not long after 6:00, they read Lieutenant Chase’s report of “many planes headed Midway,” and soon afterward Lieutenant Ady’s report of two enemy carriers 180 miles from Midway. The pilots copied the coordinates onto their plotting boards. The squadron commanders in particular focused on this data, for it would be their job to lead their pilots to the target. They wrote down the enemy position relative to Midway, the reported course and speed, plotted the
Hornet’s
own course and speed, then entered the usual variables: wind speed on the surface and at various altitudes, plus magnetic compass variation. Applying all these elements, each worked out for himself the navigational solution for a course from the
Hornet
to the reported enemy position.
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