The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (41 page)

The only squadron commander who did not do so was the CO of the fighting squadron (VF-8), Lieutenant Commander Samuel G. “Pat” Mitchell. Given that the job of the fighters was to escort and protect the attack squadrons, Mitchell felt that he did not need to compute an independent course; he would necessarily conform to whatever course they chose. Mitchell himself had very little time as a fighter pilot—no more, in fact, than the young pilots he led—and it was a bit unusual that he had never served as a squadron executive officer before taking over as skipper of Fighting Eight. A 1927 Naval Academy graduate, he had spent most of his career piloting seaplanes and flying boats. He had worked for Pete Mitscher at the Bureau of Aeronautics, and when Mitscher got command of the
Hornet
, he brought Mitchell along.
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Thanks to the folding wings on the new Dash-4 Wildcats, there was room for twenty-seven fighter planes on board the
Hornet
, but since many of their pilots were inexperienced, and because some needed to stay behind to protect the task force, only ten would be committed to the strike. Mitchell’s main concern that day was which element of the strike force he would protect. The dive-bombers would fly at 20,000 feet, and the torpedo planes at 1,500 feet. Those ten Wildcats could therefore protect one group or the other, but not both—unless they split into two sections. Pat Mitchell felt that the old torpedo planes had first call on his fighters. Not only were the Devastators significantly slower, their heavy and ungainly torpedoes required them to approach the target at no more than 100 feet and to hold a steady course while they lined up on the target. All this made them sitting ducks for the Zeros that would be flying CAP. The American dive-bombers by contrast, came in high and dove on the target at nearly 250 knots. Moreover, the Dauntless dive-bombers carried twin .50-caliber machine guns and were better equipped to defend themselves. They were often used (without a bomb load) as additional fighters to protect the task force. In Mitchell’s view, these circumstances dictated that his fighters should go with the torpedo planes.
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Certainly that was the view of the skipper of the torpedo squadron, Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron. Waldron was a twenty-year Navy veteran from South Dakota who at age 41 was nearly twice as old as some of his pilots. Born at a time when the West was still wild, he had grown up on a hardscrabble farm in Canada and then on an Indian reservation near Pierre, South Dakota. He was proud of being one-eighth Sioux, a heritage affirmed by his facial features, dark eyes, and prominent chin. At the Academy, his nickname was “Redskin,” and a few of his fellow officers on the
Hornet
referred to him simply as “the Indian.” Waldron claimed that this heritage gave him a kind of sixth sense about coming events. He had a reputation as a skilled pilot and an enthusiastic reveler. He worked and played hard. As one person who knew him put it, “He had his parties when he had his parties, and when he got aboard ship it was business.” He was a demanding taskmaster. Aware that his mostly rookie pilots had yet to complete all the training considered necessary before combat, he maintained a tough regimen of both classroom study and physical training. One pilot described it as “work, work, and more work.” His was the only squadron where the pilots reported for calisthenics every morning. Pilots in the other squadrons thought this was amusing and offered taunting suggestions during the exercises. That did not deter Waldron, who thought war no joke. To a nephew who was about to enter pilot training, Waldron wrote a letter advising him to “take this business seriously. It is a serious business and it is not a sport.”
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Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, who some nicknamed “the Indian,” commanded Torpedo Squadron Eight on the
Hornet
on June 4. (U.S. Naval Institute)

At a meeting of officers four days earlier, on May 31, Waldron had taken the opportunity to argue that his torpedo squadron had a greater need for fighter protection than the bombers. Pat Mitchell had supported him, but Pete Mitscher shook his head. Not only were there more than twice as many bombers (34) as torpedo planes (15), but Mitscher knew that the great weakness of the Wildcats—especially the new Dash-4 version on the
Hornet
—was their indifferent climbing ability. The light and nimble Zeros could climb at nearly three times the rate of the Wildcats, and the best chance the American fighters had in dealing with their Japanese counterparts—maybe the only chance—was to dive on them from above. To Mitscher, this meant the fighters had to come in high. This would allow them to protect the dive-bombers and the torpedo planes too, because when the Zeros attacked the lumbering Devastators, the Wildcats could come screaming down on them from altitude. Of course, one option was to split the difference and send some fighters with each group, as Fletcher had done in the Coral Sea. The outcome there had been disappointing, however, for there had not been enough fighters to protect either group fully, and the bombers had suffered far more than the Devastators from the Zeros. The Wildcats had experienced their best success when they dove on the Zeros during the attack on the
Shōhō.
Whether or not Mitscher was aware of this, he chose
not
to divide Mitchell’s fighters into two sections and declared that all ten Wildcats would go with the dive-bombers. The torpedo planes, at least at the outset, would be on their own. Mitchell and especially Waldron were unhappy with the decision. They were overruled.
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There were two false alarms that morning when the teleprinter in the ready rooms clicked out orders for the pilots to man their planes, provoking a quick scramble for equipment and plotting boards, until in the same message a correction appeared: “Do not man planes until directed.” Apparently, when Mitscher heard Fletcher’s 6:07 order to Spruance to attack, he anticipated an immediate launch order. Instead, as we have seen, Spruance decided to wait until 7:00 in order to close the range. Mitscher had to order his pilots to stand down. During that hiatus, at about 6:30 Mitscher called Ring and the four squadron leaders to the bridge for final instructions. There, Waldron tried once again to convince Mitscher to send the fighters with his torpedo planes, and once again Mitchell supported him. Mitchell later recalled that he went up to the bridge that morning expressly to “recommended to Captain Mitscher that we [the fighters] go in with protection for the torpedo planes alone.” But it was Waldron who was so persistent that he verged on insubordination. If Mitscher would not send all ten fighters with his squadron, Waldron argued, he could at least send some of them. When that plea failed, he begged Mitscher to send just one fighter. (It is possible to imagine the emotional Waldron holding up a single finger and demanding “one, just one” fighter.) If Mitscher didn’t want to commit a fighter pilot, Waldron argued, he could have one of his own pilots fly a Wildcat, though none of them had ever been up in one before. This was an absurd argument, and by now Mitscher was surely becoming annoyed. He was not the type to negotiate with junior officers. The answer was still no. Mitchell recalled Mitscher telling him to “go out and stay with the bombers.” The planes were already warming up on the flight deck and there was no room for another discussion of alternatives. It was time to go. The squadron commanders wished each other good luck and good hunting and went down to man their airplanes.
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A more critical issue than deciding the role of the fighter planes was the launch sequence and the departure plan used on the
Hornet
that day. At 6:38, Mitscher finally got orders from Spruance to launch aircraft at 7:00 a.m., and those orders specified that the air groups were to “use deferred departure.” Instead of having the planes head off toward the target as they launched and effecting a rendezvous en route, the first of them would circle the task force until all the planes in the strike group were in the air; then they would assemble into one grand formation and fly to the target together. The intent of a deferred departure was to ensure unity, attack discipline, and a coordinated strike against the enemy. Almost certainly this order came from Miles Browning, for it is highly unlikely that the black shoe Spruance would have dictated to the brown shoes the type of departure they should use.
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With the order to man their planes, the pilots wished each other good luck, quit their ready rooms, and hurried up the ladders to the flight deck. There they met briefly with their back seat gunners, went over the mission and recognition charts, and gave their planes a quick inspection before climbing into the cockpits. It was habit, and perhaps superstition, that led them to kick the tires. For most of them, this would be the first time they had ever taken off from a carrier while carrying a live bomb. One recalled that as he sat in his plane waiting for the signal to start engines, he “got the same feeling of apprehension and butterflies in the stomach” that he used to get “at the start of competition in high school.”
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The ten Wildcat fighters went first—they needed the shortest runway to get airborne. The air officer watching from the ship’s island gave the go order to the officer on the flight deck who was designated as Fly One. That individual waved his take-off wand in a circle as the pilot revved his engines to full power. When the pilot gave a thumbs-up sign to show that he was ready, Fly One dropped into a crouch and pointed toward the bow. The pilot released his brakes and the plane roared forward. The process was repeated with the next plane. Once all ten Wildcats were in the air and began their climb to their assigned cruising altitude of 20,000 feet, the fifteen Dauntless dive-bombers of VS-8, each of them armed with a 500-pound bomb, began to take off. Next came the CHAG, Stanhope Ring, whose plane also carried a 500-pound bomb, and following him were the eighteen bombers of VB-8, which carried 1,000-pound bombs. The big Devastator torpedo planes of Waldron’s VT-8, each with a 2,200-pound Mark 13 torpedo, needed the longest deck run to get aloft, and because of that they were spotted at the back. Only six of them fit on the crowded flight deck, so the other nine had to be brought up from the hangar deck afterward and launched separately. This launch sequence meant that the Wildcats, which had the shortest range, were in the air first, burning up fuel while they circled and waited, and the Devastators, which were the slowest, launched last and were therefore certain to lag behind the rest of the formation.

Once all the fighters and bombers were in the air, they began jockeying into formation. Ring mandated a double V-shaped “parade” formation with himself at the point and the two bombing squadrons on either side of him. Mitchell’s ten fighters flew above and slightly behind them. Assembling this large formation took longer than it should have. Ensign Ben Tappan, piloting a Dauntless in Walt Rodee’s Scouting Eight, felt that “they were doing too much fiddle faddling around … waiting to get permission to go.”
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