The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (46 page)

In his official report on the Battle of the Coral Sea, Pederson had recommended that in future engagements the escorting fighters “should take position up sun from, and at least 5—6,000 feet above the torpedo planes. From this position,” he wrote, “they can readily observe any attack coming in and can dive down and break it up.” At Midway, Pederson took his own advice and ordered that Thach’s Wildcat fighters should fly in between the high-flying bombers and the low-flying Devastators at 5,000 to 6,000 feet. That way Thach would be high enough to dive down on any Zeros that attacked the torpedo planes, but not so high as to be out of touch with them. It also meant that Thach’s planes didn’t have to burn all that fuel climbing to 20,000 feet. As a result of collaborative decision making, battle experience, and efficient execution, the
Yorktown
air group was the only one that arrived over the target in a timely fashion and effected a coordinated attack without any argument, insubordination, or error.
²⁸

Jimmy Thach in the cockpit of his Wildcat. Thach was a creative tactical innovator, but with only six Wildcats, he was unable to protect the lumbering Devastators of Lem Massey’s VT-3. (U.S. Naval Institute)

The planes of the
Yorktown
air group flew almost directly to the Kidō Butai and found it in just over an hour, at about 10:00 a.m. Massey’s low-flying Devastators saw the Japanese first, led to the target by the black smoke generated by the Japanese cruisers. Massey led his squadron from 2,500 feet down to 150 feet as he prepared to make his torpedo run. Two and a half miles above him, Max Leslie, leading the dive-bombers, called him on the radio to ask if he was ready to start a coordinated attack. Massey replied that he was. Almost at once, however, Massey reported “frantically” that he was under attack by enemy fighters. As a result, in the end there was no coordinated attack, for, as one Devastator pilot put it, “We were forced to go in on our own attack as soon as possible to prevent all of the torpedo planes from being shot down.”
²⁹

By now, despite all their success, some of the Zero pilots must have felt a bit whipsawed. Having fought off one American attack from the northeast, then another from the south, here was yet another from the northeast. And not only were many of the Zero pilots nearly out of the 20 mm ammunition, they were now facing new attackers that had a fighter escort.

That fighter escort consisted of only six Wildcats. Of the eighteen Wildcats on the
Yorktown
, Fletcher had kept six for CAP and reserved another six to accompany Wally Short’s VS-5 for the attack on the two “missing” carriers if and when they were located. That decision annoyed Jimmy Thach; his defensive weave pattern could be executed only when his fighters maneuvered in groups of four. He complained to Arnold that six was not divisible by four. Arnold told him that the decision had come from the flag bridge. Thach, disappointed, was nonetheless determined to do the best he could. When his fighters caught up with Massey’s torpedo bombers en route to the target, he signaled Warrant Officer Tom Cheek to position his two-plane section just behind the torpedo bombers while Thach himself, with a four-plane section, flew above them at about 5,500 feet.
³⁰

Thach first saw the outer screen of the Kidō Butai about ten miles out. Colored shell bursts began to explode around him—directional signals from the screening warships to guide the Zeros to the new target. And soon enough, they came. Thach tried to count them and figured “there were around twenty.” In fact, there were more than twice that number. By now, Nagumo’s four carriers had launched every Zero they had, including the reserves, a total of forty-two. Because Thach’s Wildcats had launched last rather than first, and because they had flown at 5,500 feet instead of 20,000 feet, they arrived with enough fuel in their tanks to engage in aerial combat. But there was not a lot six Wildcats could do against forty-two Zeros.

The Japanese pilots attacked both the torpedo planes and the escorting fighters. Ensign Edgar Bassett, occupying the trailing spot in Thach’s fourplane formation, was attacked from below, and his plane fell smoking into the sea. Bassett never got out of the cockpit. Other Zeros “were streaming in right past us and into the torpedo planes,” Thach recalled. “The air was like a bee hive.” He found he could not seize the initiative against such overwhelming numbers. Though his mission was to protect the torpedo planes, it was all he could do to defend himself from the swarming Zeros. Because only one of his surviving wingmen was familiar with his “beam defense maneuver,” Thach had to improvise. When a Zero came up behind them, he led his three surviving planes in a sharp right turn, which forced the Zero pilot to attempt a side shot. Then, as the Zero followed him through the turn, Thach turned sharply left. As the swift Zero flew past them, it gave Thach a shot at him from behind. After a long burst from Thach’s .50-caliber machine guns, the Zero exploded and went down. Despite their agility, and the deadliness of their 20 mm cannons, the poorly armored Zeros succumbed quickly when they were hit.
³¹

Nonetheless, the Zeros had the numbers, and they savaged Massey’s torpedo bombers just as they had Waldron’s and Lindsay’s. Massey’s plane was one of the first to be taken out. “It just exploded,” Thach recalled. Machinist Harry Corl, flying a Devastator in Massey’s section, remembered that it “went down in flames with no hope of anybody surviving.” The steadily decreasing number of torpedo planes tried to hold a straight course to give their own gunners, who were firing continuously, a steady platform. The value of having fighter cover was not that the Wildcats fended off the Zeros but rather that they occupied some of the Zeros that might otherwise have focused exclusively on the Devastators. Somewhat bitterly, Thach wrote in his after-action report that “six F4F-4 airplanes cannot prevent 20 or 30 Japanese VF from shooting down our slow torpedo planes.”
³²

Thach’s 21-year-old wingman, “Ram” Dibb, was the only pilot in the squadron to whom Thach had explained the principles of his “beam defense maneuver.” Before flying out that day, they had agreed to try it if circumstances allowed. In the midst of the air battle, Thach heard Dibb call out, “There’s a Zero on my tail! Get him off!” Dibb and Thach were flying side by side but widely separated, and in accordance with the plan, they turned toward each other. As they closed on one another, Thach ducked under Dibb’s plane to come up face-to-face with the onrushing Zero. The two planes sped toward each other at a combined 500 miles per hour. “I was really angry,” Thach remembered later. “I probably should have decided to duck under this Zero, but I lost my temper a little bit, and decided I’m going to keep my fire going into him and he’s going to pull out.” As the two planes flashed past each other, only feet apart, flames began spouting from the Zero, and Thach watched it fall away into the sea.
³³

The five planes of Massey’s squadron that survived this onslaught dropped their torpedoes, turned, and headed for home, seeking cloud cover to hide from the relentless Zeros. Wilhelm Esders recalled that the Zeros “continued to make passes at us” for more than twenty miles before they finally gave up the pursuit and returned to the Kidō Butai. Esders planned to use his YE homing system to plot a course for the
Yorktown
, and asked his backseat radioman/gunner, Aviation Radioman Second Class Robert B. Brazier, to change the radio coils so he could activate the system. Brazier had been hit three times and had bullets through both legs and one in his back. He replied weakly that he didn’t think he could do it. Several minutes later, however, Brazier called Esders on the intercom to report that he had changed the coils. Because of that, Esders was able to get a signal from
Yorktown
and he headed for home. As he approached the task force, however, he saw that the
Yorktown
was herself under air attack (it was 12:40 by now), and, virtually out of gas, he had to ditch in the water about ten miles away. He managed to get Braziers out of the cockpit and into the raft, but Braziers’ wounds were too serious for him to survive such rough handling; he died in the raft. A Japanese dive-bomber returning from his attack on the
Yorktown
flew past and turned back for a second look. Esders ducked under the water and waited for the inevitable strafing. But instead, Lieutenant Junior Grade Art Brassfield, flying CAP over Task Force 17, came to the rescue, shooting down the Val dive-bomber, his fourth of the day. Esders was picked up the next day by the destroyer
Hammann.
³⁴

Of the forty-one Devastator torpedo planes launched from three American aircraft carriers that morning, only four made it back to their carriers, and one of those was so badly damaged as to be of no further service. Three more ditched in the water trying to make it back to the carriers, though their crews were later rescued. Despite those horrific losses, not a single torpedo struck home. Indeed, since 7:00 that morning, the Americans had hurled a total of ninety-four airplanes at the Kidō Butai in eight separate and uncoordinated attacks, and not a single bomb or torpedo had found its mark. The Japanese had shot down most of those planes and sent the rest fleeing. Nagumo had still not managed to get the planes of his own strike force up onto the flight deck for launch. To do so, all he needed was a short respite.

He was not going to get it. Three miles above the handful of retiring American torpedo planes, Max Leslie’s dive-bombers from
Yorktown
were preparing to attack, astonished that there was no enemy CAP over the target. Simultaneously, and coincidentally, the long-delayed bombing and scouting squadrons from
Enterprise
under Wade McClusky were arriving from the south. It was 10:20 a.m., and the battle had reached a pivotal moment.

*
The fact that Nagumo made his turn at 9:17is more evidence that Ring did not miss the Kidō Butai because it turned northward during his flight as stated in Mitscher’s report. If Ring and his air group had flown a course of 240, he would very likely have found the Kidō Butai
before
Nagumo’s turn northward, as Waldron did. See
appendix F
.

*
Gray’s second report, sent at 10:00 a.m., caused a moment of consternation on board the
Enterprise.
John Lundstrom notes that both Spruance and Browning initially thought the report had come from McClusky, and they were appalled that he might be returning to the task force without attacking. McClusky sent in his own sighting report at 10:02, but it is not clear that it was received at the task force. In any case, responding to one or the other of these reports, at 10:08 Miles Browning grabbed the handset and hollered: “McClusky, attack! Attack immediately!”