The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (43 page)

A half hour later, with his fuel gauge now well below the halfway mark, McInerny broke formation, climbed up to Pat Mitchell’s lead Wildcat, and settled in next to him. When Mitchell looked over, McInerny gesticulated forcefully toward his gas gauge. Mitchell simply shook his head. McInerny went back into his position on Madga’s wing, but he continued to stew. After a few more minutes, he tried it again. This time Mitchell reacted angrily, waving him back into position and pointing to him (in Mitchell’s words) “as a warning.”
²²

If Mitchell was angry, so was McInerny. He went back to his position in the formation. Getting Magda’s attention, he mouthed, “Come with me.” He then banked out of the formation and began to fly a reciprocal course back toward the
Hornet.
He was essentially abandoning the formation and his commanding officer, and even as he did it he assumed that he would be court-martialed for it. Magda went with him. One by one, so did all the other Wildcat pilots of VF-8. Abandoned by his squadron, Pat Mitchell turned too. He insisted later that he did it on his own. “I broke off,” he claimed in 1981, “when I saw … that it would be foolish to go any farther.” In fact, Mitchell had lost control of his command and had to hurry back to the front of his mutinous squadron to remain a part of it. All ten fighters now headed back toward the
Hornet
, leaving the thirty-four bombers on their own. It was around nine o’clock.
²³

It is not certain that Ring was even aware of the moment when his fighter cover left him. The Wildcats were flying above and behind him, and no one had broken radio silence. Even a few of the fighter pilots were unaware of it. Focused on keeping their position in the formation, some made the slow turn to the left without realizing they were doing it until they noticed that instead of the sun being at their backs, it was now in their faces.

Abandoned by both the torpedo bombers and the fighter escort, Ring and the thirty-four dive-bombers continued to fly westward. At about 9:20, a few of the bomber pilots, or rather their radiomen, overheard a call from Waldron: “Stanhope from Johnny One.” If he heard it, Ring did not reply. Waldron tried again: “Stanhope from Johnny One.” Again there was no response. But there was more from Waldron, including, “Watch those fighters!” and then later, “Attack immediately!” After that, there was this: “My two wing men are going in the water.” Then nothing. To those who heard it, it was now evident that Waldron had been correct about the bearing to the target, and that he had found the enemy—and they had found him.
²⁴

Lieutenant Commander Robert “Ruff” Johnson, the commander of VB-8, may or may not have heard Waldron’s broadcasts. Johnson was a popular squadron commander with a “genial disposition.” One of his classmates said of him: “To know him is to like him.” Johnson’s greatest concern now was that the planes of his squadron were running out of fuel. Though his pilots flew the longer-range Dauntless dive-bomber, they had each been armed with a 1,000-pound bomb, which cut into their fuel efficiency. Now after flying over two hundred miles, well beyond the presumed intercept point, he concluded that they had missed the target. He worried that his pilots would not be able to make it back to the carrier. He decided to fly south toward Midway, partly to see if he could find the Japanese carriers, and partly in the hope of making it to the landing field on Eastern Island. He signaled to his wingman and turned southward. His squadron followed. Ring went on the radio to order the bombers to stay with him, but only his assigned wingman, Ensign Clayton Fisher, did so. The other sixteen planes of VB-8 went with Johnson to the southeast. Now Ring led a strike force composed only of the fifteen dive-bombers of Walt Rodee’s scouting squadron, plus Fisher.
²⁵

Ring and what was left of his command continued to fly westward. Soon even the scout bombers, loaded with the lighter 500-pound bombs, were beginning to run low on fuel. Rodee and his squadron had stuck with Ring for 225 miles. Now, past ten o’clock, having been in the air for most of three hours, Rodee, too, turned his squadron around. Every other plane in the formation followed him. In his only postbattle writing on this event, Ring claimed that he “attempted to rally the departing aircraft of VB-8 and VF-8 in order to lead them back to
Hornet
, but I could not catch them.” As a result, he headed for the
Hornet
(in his words) “proceeding singly at 20,000 feet.” In other words, he flew back to the
Hornet
completely alone. One can only imagine his emotional state.
²⁶

Since neither Browning nor Mitscher had established a point option for the recovery, Ring and the others were dependent on the
Hornet’s
YE-ZB homing system. Using a dedicated YE transmitter, the ship sent out a single Morse-code letter to various quadrants—a different letter for each 30-degree arc of the compass. Pilots who received the signal in their ZB receivers could then determine a course back to the ship. Ring got a reading on his ZB receiver, but it was the signal from
Enterprise
, not
Hornet.
As a result, Ring relied on “dead reckoning” to find the carrier, and he flew—unerringly for once—back to the task force. His was the first plane to land on the
Hornet’s
deck at 11:18 a.m., after four hours in the air. Not noticing that Ring’s plane still carried its 500-pound bomb, the
Hornet’s
crew assumed he was returning from a successful strike and cheered when he climbed out of the cockpit. Ring did not acknowledge the cheers and went straight to his stateroom without reporting to the bridge. Not until Walt Rodee landed a few minutes later and climbed up to the bridge to report did Mitscher find out what had happened.

The mission was not yet over for everyone. Ruff Johnson’s heavily laden bombers flew to the southeast until it was obvious they had missed the enemy, and then Johnson turned them northeast hoping to get back to the
Hornet.
Shortly before 10:00, they encountered an American PBY, which blinkered them a course to Eastern Island. At about the same time, the squadron exec, Lieutenant Alfred B. Tucker, picked up the YE homing signal from the
Hornet.
At this point, the squadron broke up: Johnson with fourteen planes flew on to Midway; Tucker and his section of three planes turned northeast to try to find the task force. Of Johnson’s fourteen planes, two ran out of fuel en route and had to ditch; a third plane ran out of gas just as it approached the airfield and ditched in the Midway lagoon. The rest encountered “friendly” AA fire as they attempted to land at Midway, though it stopped once they were recognized. The eleven surviving planes were refueled, rearmed (they had jettisoned their 1,000-pound bombs), and eventually sent back to the
Hornet.
Tucker’s three-plane section also found the
Hornet
, so that in the end only three bombers were lost on the mission. None, however, had dropped a bomb on the enemy.

The Wildcat pilots were less fortunate. Mitchell did not pick up the
Hornet
’s YE homing signal, though several other Wildcat pilots did. Mitchell therefore turned the lead over to Lieutenant Stan Ruehlow, who led the loose formation of fighters eastward at a comfortable 150 knots. The fighters dropped gradually from 20,000 feet down to 8,000 feet, not only to conserve fuel but also because below 8,000 feet they did not need their oxygen canisters, which were also running low. Unfortunately, at low level the ZB receivers were less efficient, and the fighters flew past the
Hornet
without spotting it. As they continued eastward, their engines began to cough and sputter, and then one by one they stopped altogether, the propellers windmilling in silence as the planes ran out of fuel. The heavy Wildcats were poor gliders, and it required some skill to bring them down onto the water for a controlled crash landing. Each man sent out a perfunctory Mayday message and then focused his attention on all the things he had to do once the plane hit the sea: throw open the cockpit cover, unbuckle his seat belt, grab his canteen, climb out onto the wing, manipulate the hatch cover to release the small life raft and inflate it along with his “Mae West” (life preserver), and then clamber into the raft—all before the plane sank.
²⁷

Most of them grouped up for company. When McInerny’s plane went down, his wingman, Johnny Magda, still had power, though his gas gauge showed empty. Magda calculated his chances of finding the task force at zero and decided he was better off sticking with his wingman, so he ditched in the water alongside Mac. Mitchell, too, went down near two other pilots, Dick Gray and Stan Ruehlow. It was fortunate for him that he did, for Mitchell couldn’t get his life raft out of its compartment and ended up as the third man sharing two tiny one-man rafts. Over the next four days, they rotated, taking turns in the water. That was particularly dicey during the several shark attacks. The sharks were especially aggressive on the third night, pushing and bumping the rafts; once a shark’s fin cut the fabric on one of the rafts and it began losing air, though the men were able to patch it. There was also only one set of emergency rations, and the three pilots allowed themselves only one sip of water each day. “We watched each other take this drink,” Mitchell recalled. Small fish swam near the rafts occasionally, and Dick Gray was able to grab one with his bare hands and eat it raw. The sun was merciless, and all of them suffered severe sunburn. The rafts were slowly losing air. Soon instead of sitting, they had to straddle them with their feet dangling in the water. Mitchell got blisters on his head from sunburn, as well as swollen feet from constant immersion in the water.
²⁸

Eleven PBY Catalinas from Midway were committed to the search for the downed pilots. Eight of the ten fighter pilots were rescued on June 8 and 9. After Lieutenant Junior Grade Frank Fisler’s PBY touched down in the water to rescue Johnny Talbot, Ensign Jerry Crawford helped Talbot into the plane. Talbot’s face and hands were completely covered with huge blisters from sunburn, and the blisters themselves were encrusted with salt. Crawford knew Talbot well but did not recognize the man in the raft. Talbot eventually recovered, as did the others. The downed bomber pilots were rescued as well, though two of the fighter pilots were never found, and of course all ten of the fighter planes were lost.
²⁹

On board the
Hornet
, Pete Mitscher was no doubt horrified to learn from Walt Rodee what had happened. In its first mission against the enemy, the
Hornet
’s air group had literally fallen apart. First the torpedo planes, then the fighters, and finally the bombers had all abandoned their commanding officer, who had returned alone. None of the torpedo planes or fighters had returned at all, and by noon, after five hours, Mitscher had to know they never would. Of the fifty-nine planes that had launched from the
Hornet
that morning, only twenty had come back. Eleven more bombers of VB-8 would eventually fly in from Midway, but for all those losses in both men and machines, not one bomb had been dropped on the Japanese.

Neither Mitscher nor anyone else on the
Hornet
yet knew what had happened to Waldron’s torpedo squadron.

13

Attack of the Torpedo Squadrons
(8:30 a.m. to 10:20 a.m.)

I
f the story behind Stanhope Ring’s flight remains something of an enigma, the story of the attack on the Kidō Butai by John Waldron’s Torpedo Squadron Eight is one of the best-known episodes of the Battle of Midway. Waldron’s command was virtually wiped out in its bold but utterly futile attack, and after it was over only one man was left alive to tell the tale. As a result, the episode carries with it some of the aura of the Battle of Little Bighorn, with “the Indian,” John Waldron, in the unlikely role of George Custer and Nagumo Chūichi in the even more unlikely role of Chief Sitting Bull. By deciding to abandon Ring and fly his own course to the Kidō Butai, Waldron almost certainly expected to be court-martialed afterward, but he was willing to face that fate in order to strike a blow against the enemy. Had he lived, he might very well have been brought up on charges; his disobedience was too overt and too public to be ignored. But since he was martyred in the sacrificial loss of his entire squadron during what turned out to be an American victory, he was instead awarded a posthumous Navy Cross.

In addition to Torpedo Eight, two other American torpedo squadrons attacked the Kidō Butai that morning—those from the
Enterprise
and
Yorktown. They
fared little better. The attacks by Torpedo Six (from
Enterprise)
and Torpedo Three (from
Yorktown
) were equally heroic and equally tragic. For years it has been assumed that this terrible slaughter was redeemed by the fact that the sacrifice of these planes and pilots brought the Japanese fighter cover down to their level and thereby cleared the path for the American dive-bombers. That turns out to be true, but it was not the full measure of their contribution.

The pilots of Torpedo Squadron Eight pose on the deck of the USS
Hornet.
George Gay, the only survivor of the attack on June 4, is kneeling in the center of the front row. (U.S. Naval Institute)

At around 8:30, when Waldron and his fifteen planes flew away from Ring’s air group, they flew toward the southwest. Earlier that morning Waldron had calculated a course of 240 degrees to the enemy target, which was simply an extrapolation of the enemy’s course based on Lieutenant Ady’s initial report. Since taking off from the
Hornet
at 7:55 that morning (his plane was the last one to lift off), Waldron and his squadron had flown a westward course below Ring for twenty minutes or so before making the turn southward. As a result, the relative-motion problem had changed. Now Waldron had to fly a few degrees more to the south to make up for his westward reach. He took the lead, heading southwest on a course of 234 degrees.
¹

The planes of Torpedo Eight flew in two sections, with Waldron leading the first section of eight, flying in four two-plane groups, and Lieutenant James C. Owens leading the second section of seven planes. Owens led the squadron’s second section because when the
Hornet
had departed Norfolk back in March, the squadron’s executive officer, Harold Larsen, had stayed behind to accept delivery of the new TBF Avengers. Now Larsen was at Pearl Harbor, frustrated by the fact that not only had he arrived in Hawaii too late to board the
Hornet
in time for its sortie, he had not been chosen to be one of the six Avenger pilots to fly out to Midway. Consequently he did not participate in the attack on the Kidō Butai that morning, though his nonselection probably saved his life. Now Owens, who had been the backup quarterback on the USC football team before the war, flew in his place. Unlike Larsen, who was the squadron’s enforcer and therefore unpopular, Owens had a quiet confidence that the other pilots appreciated and admired.
²

The weather was good and “visibility was excellent,” with only a few broken clouds at 1,500 feet and light winds of no more than eight knots. Though Waldron was sure he was at last going in the right direction, he had no clear idea of the precise location of the enemy (despite his frequent assertion that he had a sixth sense about such things). After about a half hour, therefore, he ordered his eight-plane section to fan out in a scouting line. His rookie pilots did so, but soon they were spread out so wide that Waldron had to signal them to close back in. Just as he did so, he saw black smoke on the horizon to his right. He turned toward it and soon saw that it came from ships—many ships. George Gay, flying “tail end Charlie” as the squadron’s navigator, saw them too. The first ship he recognized was a large carrier, then two more, then another, and then more ships “all over the damned ocean.” Waldron had found the Kidō Butai. He tried to call the sighting into Ring—”Stanhope from Johnny One … Stanhope from Johnny One.” Despite getting no response, he left his radio on, very likely in the hope that someone would pick up the radio chatter and use it to locate the target.
³

On the flag bridge of the
Akagi
, Nagumo already knew that yet another group of American planes was headed his way. Petty Officer Amari, still hovering in the vicinity of Task Force 16 in
Tone
’s number 4 scout plane, had spotted torpedo bombers en route and reported their approach. For Nagumo, it was unwelcome news. The last of the surviving American planes from Midway had only recently departed, and his carriers were busy recovering Tomonaga’s force returning from Midway and striking those planes down to the hangar deck to be rearmed and refueled. No doubt, Nagumo hoped for a period of relative quiet to complete that process. After the last of Tomonaga’s planes landed, at 9:17, Nagumo ordered the Kidō Butai to turn to the northeast to close the range to the American carrier group.
*
One minute later, Nagumo’s big cruisers
Tone
and
Chikuma
spouted plumes of black smoke in order to alert the flagship to the approach of Waldron’s squadron. Here was yet another attack by the so far inept but obviously determined Americans. The
Kaga
launched six more fighters to join the eighteen that were already in the air, and twenty-four Zeros headed out to intercept Waldron’s fifteen plodding Devastators.
⁴

Waldron had no good options. He could not attack according to doctrine, for there were no dive-bombers for him to cooperate with. He could not circle and wait for them, because even if the bombers responded to his call and found the Kidō Butai, by then the Zeros would have shot down all his planes—unless the Devastators ran out of fuel first. There was really only one option. Waldron went on the radio and announced: “We will go in. We won’t turn back. Former strategy [of a coordinated attack] cannot be used. We will attack. Good luck.” Back in formation now, the pilots of the fifteen torpedo planes closed in tighter and began to drop down to attack level. At their cruising speed of 110 knots, the run-in to the drop site must have seemed like an eternity. The four big carriers turned away from them, toward the west, to present a narrower target and to compel the attackers to fly a longer distance to get an angle on the bow. Waldron had picked out the southernmost carrier as the initial target. After the formation turned, however, he shifted to another carrier that was slightly closer. Though at least one pilot believed it was the
Kaga
, it was in fact the
Sōryū.
Long before the Americans got within range of either ship, at about eight miles out, the Zeros were on them.
⁵

The Zeros attacked from above and behind, starting with the lead plane and working their way back in the formation. “Zeros were coming in from all angles and both sides at once,” Gay recalled. “They would come in from abeam, pass each other just over our heads, and turn around to make another attack.” Some, after making one pass, performed an acrobatic vertical loop to come in behind the next plane in the formation. “Watch those fighters!” Waldron barked out over the open radio, perhaps intending the remark for his backseat radioman/gunner, Horace Dobbs. Dobbs and the other gunners swiveled their twin .30-caliber machine guns and fired at the Zeros as they flashed past. Instead of jinking and sliding to try to throw off the enemy fighters, Waldron and the other Devastator pilots held a steady course to achieve a good torpedo drop and to provide their gunners with a stable firing platform. Waldron called his gunner on the intercom to ask, “How am I doing, Dobbs?” Because Waldron still had his radio on, the question was heard throughout the squadron, and by at least one radioman in Ring’s air group eighty miles to the north.
⁶

Boring in from above, the Zero pilots used their machine-gun tracers, which one pilot described as “thin whips of light,” to get the range. Then they fired their 20 mm cannon for the kill. The sturdy Devastators could absorb a lot of machine-gun fire, but the cannon shells were fatal. One Devastator went down, then another. The American rear-seat gunners were firing, too, and Waldron thought he saw a Zero crash into the sea as well. “See that splash?” Waldron called out. “I’d give a million to know who done that!” But there were too many Zeros, and they were too fast for the backseat gunners. One by one, the skilled Japanese pilots sent the slow and level-flying torpedo bombers spinning into the sea. “My two wing men are going in the water,” Waldron reported to no one in particular. It was his last broadcast. Hit by several cannon shells, his plane “burst into flames.” George Gay saw it dive for the sea, and he reported later that he saw Waldron throw back the canopy and stand up in the cockpit, putting one leg out onto the wing just as his plane “hit the water and disappeared.”
⁷

Those few Devastators that were left continued on to the target. At one of their training sessions the week before, Waldron had passed out a mimeographed sheet he had typed up himself. It is quoted here in its entirety:

Just a word to let you know I feel we are all ready. We have had a very short time to train, and we have worked under the most severe difficulties. But we have truly done the best humanly possible. I actually believe that under these conditions we are the best in the world. My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don’t and worst comes to worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make the final run-in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with us all. Good luck, happy landings, and give ‘em hell.
⁸

Now worst had indeed come to worst and the skipper was gone, but true to his spirit the remaining Devastators continued on, lining up on the
Sōryū
, which now made a radical turn to starboard to throw off the attackers. It seemed unlikely, however, that any of the American planes would get close enough to drop what Waldron had always called “the pickle.”