The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (8 page)

It is noteworthy that the men who flew these planes off the decks of Japanese carriers were mostly enlisted men—warrant officers and petty officers—and not commissioned officers, as was common in the U.S. Navy. This is especially curious because the Japanese Navy had a higher overall percentage of officers than the U.S. Navy. Yet until 1938, the number of graduates from the Japanese naval academy at Eta Jima who chose aviation was quite small. Pilots were thought of mainly as technicians, and such technical skill was held to be only marginally relevant to the burden of command. This changed after 1938. By then most Eta Jima graduates who were physically qualified were being reserved for aviation service. When war began in late 1941, these officers were still relatively junior, and, during the war, the Imperial Japanese Navy suffered a dearth of middle-grade officers—lieutenant commanders and commanders—who had both flight training and combat experience. The few who did became squadron commanders. Most of the pilots they commanded, however, were warrant officers or petty officers.
²⁴

For an enlisted sailor, there were two paths to becoming a carrier pilot. One was the Pilot Trainee System, in which petty officers or seamen under the age of 24 could apply for flight training. The acceptance rate was very small. As in the production of the airplanes themselves, the selection of young men for pilot training focused on ensuring quality rather than quantity. To those who ran the programs, it seemed more important to keep out the undeserving than to encourage the marginal. The historian John Lundstrom notes that for the class of 1937, of fifteen hundred applicants, only seventy were selected for training, and only twenty-five graduated.
²⁵

The other source of Navy pilots was the Flight Reserve Enlisted Trainee System. In the mid-1930s the Japanese concluded that taking sailors who were already trained in surface warfare and making pilots of them wasted valuable training. As a result they began to draw aviation candidates directly from civilian life, often teenagers from the equivalent of junior high or high school. In addition to flight training, these candidates got three years of classroom education, so that their experience resembled that of students at Eta Jima, though they graduated as petty officers rather than as commissioned officers. Moreover, their numbers remained small. As in the Pilot Trainee Program, until 1938 the Japanese focused on making flight training as fierce as possible in order to wash out marginal performers. Pilots trained in small classes of only four men each. After 1941, with war looming, instructors were allowed to teach eight at a time, and by 1943 they were teaching twelve. By then, however, it was too late to make up for lost time. By then, too, many of the best instructors were either at sea operating with the carriers or had already been lost in combat. The result was that while Japan began the war with a cadre of very highly skilled and intensively trained pilots, there was no established program to add large numbers of new pilots to the fleet as the war went on. In part this was another result of the commitment to quality over quantity, and it was also the product of the Japanese assumption that the war with the United States would not last very long. That assumption led to the conclusion that it was more important to have this cadre of highly skilled pilots at the outset than to have large numbers of indifferent pilots for the long run. When the war began, the Japanese had a total of about 3,500 superbly trained and experienced naval aviators, about 90 percent of them enlisted men. (The American pool of aviators was larger, but many of them were still in training programs, and none had the combat experience of their Japanese counterparts.) The Japanese thus bet on quality triumphing over quantity, but they also gambled that the war would be a short one, for they had very little in reserve.
²⁶

This, then, was the Kidō Butai: the ships, the planes, and the pilots that struck at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Throughout the country, the Japanese celebrated the apparent success of that raid, though Yamamoto was disappointed that Nagumo had been content to hit and run instead of “completely destroying Pearl Harbor.” Not only had the attack missed the American carriers, it had left untouched the American submarine base and especially the oil-tank farm—valuable resources that the Americans would have found it difficult to replace—though such targets were not part of Nagumo’s initial assignment. Despite misgivings about him, Nagumo remained in command of the Kidō Butai because, as Ugaki put it, “the navy had no other adequate candidate.”
²⁷

During the four months after Pearl Harbor, the Kidō Butai burnished its reputation further, as those months witnessed a dizzying string of Japanese successes that fed what historians later labeled “victory disease” in Japan, and caused lots of hand-wringing in Washington. And it was not just the Kidō Butai. Perhaps the most chilling event of this period for the Allies was the loss of the Royal Navy battleship
Prince of Wales
, just arrived in the Far East after a lengthy high-speed cruise from the Atlantic, and her consort, the battle cruiser
Repulse
, both sunk on December 10 by land-based Japanese bombers staged out of Indochina. Though Japanese carrier bombers and torpedo planes had sunk or damaged eight U.S. battleships in Pearl Harbor, those ships had been at anchor. The sinking of the
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
while they were alert, manned, and under way was proof that airplanes could indeed sink battleships.
²⁸

In the subsequent weeks and months, Japanese forces landed in the Philippines, on the Malay Peninsula, and on Borneo, Sumatra, and Java. Thailand surrendered on December 9; Hong Kong fell on Christmas Day; Manila on January 2; and, most shocking of all, the supposedly impregnable citadel at Singapore fell on February 15. The Kidō Butai attacked Darwin, Australia, on February 19. After that, the giant
Kaga
headed back to Japan for a refit after striking a submerged reef off Palau, but the other five carriers of the Kidō Butai, along with a substantial escort, steamed into the Indian Ocean. In the wake of this rampage, the Japanese conquered an island empire of more than ten thousand square miles and secured the resource base that they hoped would make them self-reliant and invulnerable. More cautious observers within the Japanese leadership might have noted that most of these dramatic naval victories had been raids—hit-and-run strikes—that the American battle fleet in Pearl Harbor had been at anchor, and that the
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
had lacked air cover. It was hardly the time for carping, however, for the Kidō Butai and its unlikely commander had become the absolute master of the seas. In the early spring of 1942, the Japanese decision to go to war with Britain, Holland, and the United States seemed not “romantic and illogical” but shrewd—even brilliant.

*
Imperial Navy junior officers attempted a coup of their own in May 1932 when a group of them participated in the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. As in 1926, the long-term result was an effort to placate and appease the dissatisfied junior officers.

*
Initially the Japanese had planned to convert the battle cruiser
Amagi
into acarrier, but after the
Amagi
was damaged during a 1923 earthquake, the Japanese were allowed to substitute the even larger battleship
Kaga
. As shown in the next chapter, the Americans did much the same thing with two battle cruisers that they had under construction that subsequently became the carriers
Lexington
(CV-2) and
Saratoga
(CV-3).

*
Japan also had three large seaplane tenders (
Ryuho, Chitóse
, and
Chiyoda
) that were converted into aircraft carriers after the Battle of Midway. See
Appendix A
.

*
During 1942, the United States built 47,836 airplanes to Japan’s 8,861. Over the course of the war, the United States built more than four times as many combat airplanes as Japan: 324,750 to Japan’s 76,320.

**
Though the Allied code names for Japanese aircraft did not come into use until 1943, these code names will be used throughout the text for the sake of clarity.

3

The Brown Shoe Navy

A
nd what of the American carriers? Where were they during this rampage by the Kidō Butai? In January of 1942 there were three American carriers in the Pacific. Two of them were big, oversize carriers equivalent to the Japanese
Kaga
and
Akagi
—and for much the same reason. They had been laid down as battle cruisers in 1916 as part of America’s buildup for possible involvement in World War I. By the time the United States entered the war in 1917, it had become clear that the most urgent need was for destroyers to protect the convoys, and the United States halted work on the big warships to concentrate on escorts. When the war ended, their big hulls lay unfinished on the building ways. American sponsorship of the 1922 Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty made it clear that they would never be completed as battle cruisers, and like the Japanese, the U.S. converted two of them into carriers, naming them for battles of the American Revolution: the
Lexington
(CV-2) and the
Saratoga
(CV-3). At 50,000 tons each, they were even larger than
Kaga
and
Akagi
and capable of carrying as many as ninety airplanes each.
*

In addition to these two behemoths, the United States had five other carriers on the Navy List. Two of them,
Ranger
(CV-4) and
Wasp
(CV-7), were smaller ships, generally equivalent to the Japanese
Sōryū
and
Hiryū
, but three of them,
Yorktown
(CV-5),
Enterprise
(CV-6), and
Hornet
(CV-8), were all relatively new, purpose-built carriers that displaced just under 20,000 tons empty and about 25,500 tons with their embarked air group of 60 to 80 planes, which made them roughly comparable to the Japanese
Shōkaku
and
Zuikaku
.

Had all five of America’s big carriers been deployed as a unit, they would have made a worthy opponent for the Kidō Butai. The United States, however, faced a two-ocean war, and consequently only one of those new carriers—the
Enterprise
—was in the Pacific. Until April 1941, the
Yorktown
had been there too, but that month Roosevelt had ordered her to the Atlantic to beef up the so-called neutrality patrols against Nazi U-boats. For its part, the
Hornet
was so new that, although she was commissioned in October, six weeks before Pearl Harbor, her final fitting-out kept her in Norfolk, Virginia, until March of 1942. In addition, both of the smaller carriers (
Ranger
and
Wasp
) were also in the Atlantic. Until the
Yorktown
returned to the Pacific and the
Hornet
was fitted out, Nimitz would have only three carriers: the
Lexington
and
Saratoga
, and the smaller but newer
Enterprise
.
¹

Nimitz kept them busy, putting each at the center of a task force that conducted nearly constant patrols north, west, and south of Hawaii. In addition to the carrier, each task force had two or three cruisers and a squadron of destroyers to provide a screen, plus a fleet oiler to keep the warships (especially the fuel-guzzling destroyers) under way. A task force of one carrier, three cruisers, and six destroyers burned up 5,800 barrels of oil every day—and more when conducting high-speed flight operations. Throughout the Pacific War, fought as it was over a huge expanse of ocean, it was critical for both sides to pay close attention to the fueling needs of their warships; the loss of an oiler could severely restrict the operating capabilities of an entire task force.
²

The commanding officers of these task forces were a disparate lot, and only one of them was a brown shoe. When Congress created the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAir) in 1921, it had mandated that all Navy flight squadrons were to be commanded by qualified pilots. In addition, a Navy board had recommended (but did not require) that only qualified aviators should command carriers. Because of that, a number of ambitious black-shoe officers, including several who were quite senior, applied for pilot training in order to have access to these new commands. Veteran pilots considered them opportunists and scornfully referred to them as “Johnny-come-latelys.” Even worse, from their point of view, other senior officers who never completed pilot training at all still managed to qualify for carrier command by going through a four-week familiarization program in Pensacola, Florida, to become “naval observers.” These men wore silver wings rather than gold, and though they were not certified to fly, they
were
authorized to command flight units, including carriers. Behind their backs, the pilots called them “kiwis” after the flightless New Zealand bird. Opportunism and careerism may have been factors for many, but some Johnny-come-latelys underwent a genuine conversion. One who did was William F. Halsey.
³

Halsey graduated from the Naval Academy in 1904, three years behind King and a year ahead of Nimitz. Like most officers of his generation, he had spent most of his career as a surface warfare officer, serving aboard the battleship
Kansas
during the world-circling cruise of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet in 1907–9, and commanding destroyers during World War I. He commanded several more destroyers after the war until he was assigned to the Naval Academy in 1927 to take charge of the
Reina Mercedes
, a prize from the Spanish-American War that the Navy had turned into a training vessel for midshipmen. In that capacity, Halsey was responsible for all of the Academy’s floating property, including its small seaplane squadron. Eager to learn something about this new service, he asked the squadron’s young commander, Lieutenant Dewitt “Duke” Ramsey, to take him on a flight. More flights followed, some with Captain Halsey at the controls. “My whole naval career changed right then,” Halsey wrote later. “I became fascinated with it…. Soon I was eating, drinking, and breathing aviation.” Halsey was so excited by the potential of this new service that he applied for flight training at the end of his Naval Academy tour. He was hugely disappointed when he failed the eye test.
⁴

After a year as a student at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and another at the Army War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., Halsey received an offer from King, then serving as chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, to command the carrier
Saratoga
if he completed the short observer’s course at Pensacola. Once he got there, however, Halsey managed to get himself transferred into the full pilot training program despite his age and his poor eyesight; he earned his gold wings as a 52-year-old grandfather. In January of 1942, he was the only vice admiral in the Navy who was a naval aviator. Officially he was commander, Aircraft Battle Force; operationally, he was the commanding officer of Task Force 8, built around the carrier
Enterprise
. Halsey did not command the ship itself—that responsibility fell to the ship’s captain, George D. Murray, a career naval aviator who had earned his gold wings in 1915. Murray was responsible for the day-to-day management of the vessel and its crew. Halsey was a kind of passenger on the
Enterprise
, having a suite of rooms known as flag quarters in the island amidships, and dispensing orders through a staff.

Vice Admiral William F. Halsey sports gold wings on the breast of his forest-green aviator’s uniform. Note the cigarette in his right hand. (U.S. Naval Institute)

As a midshipman at the Academy, Halsey had played fullback on the football team and he possessed something of a fullback’s attitude. He was direct, often blunt, occasionally profane, and utterly fearless. Some thought his facial features resembled those of a bulldog, and not only did that give him his nickname, it added to his reputation for ferocity. To balance that, he was outgoing and gregarious, a bit of a showman and, like Yamamoto, willing to speak his mind openly. Once the war began, he became a favorite of newspaper reporters, who counted on him to provide some fiery rhetoric for their columns. He seldom let them down. After Pearl Harbor, he claimed that he had always distrusted “Japs,” and vowed that by the time he was through with them, the Japanese language would be spoken only in hell.
⁵

The most senior of Nimitz’s task-force commanders was Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, who was in charge of Task Force 11, built around the big carrier
Lexington
. Brown was three years older than Halsey or Nimitz, having graduated from the Academy in the class of 1902. Brown was, in the words of one modern scholar, “an intelligent paragon of old school formality.” In the 1902 yearbook,
Lucky Bag
, his classmates described him as “modest and unassuming … with a sweet voice and a sweeter smile.” In short, he was a dramatic contrast to Halsey in almost every way. Like Halsey, however, Brown had started out in destroyers and commanded the destroyer
Parker
in the First World War. After the war, while Halsey was still commanding destroyers, Brown occupied a series of staff positions, including a tour as naval aide to President Calvin Coolidge. When Halsey underwent flight training, Brown remained in the black-shoe community and commanded the battleship
California
, then served a tour as the superintendent of the Naval Academy, a position in which his headmasterly qualities served him well. In February of 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor, he was promoted to vice admiral and made commanding officer of the Scouting Force. His health was suspect. Though only a few years older than Nimitz and Halsey, he looked at least a decade older. Thin and pallid, he had a slight tremor that caused his head to twitch, leading irreverent junior officers to dub him “Shaky” Brown. As events would show, he was an intelligent and thoughtful officer, but he lacked the boldness and the energetic self-confidence of Bull Halsey.
⁶

The third of Nimitz’s task-force commanders was Rear Admiral Herbert Fairfax Leary, who commanded the
Saratoga
group, dubbed Task Force 14. Leary was another black shoe, a 1905 classmate of Nimitz, a tall, thin, lantern-jawed man whose tenure was destined to be short. On January 11, a month after Pearl Harbor, the
Saratoga
was operating near Johnston Island five hundred miles southwest of Hawaii in seas so rough that Leary cancelled flight operations for the day. Waves broke over the bow and washed the flight deck. At 7:00 that evening, in the midst of the storm, a terrific explosion jolted the big carrier. A pilot on board said, “It felt like the whole ship had been moved about five feet.” A Japanese submarine, the I-6, had slipped through the screen of cruisers and destroyers and delivered a deadly Type 95 torpedo. The blast killed six men and flooded three fire rooms. Though the Japanese submarine skipper reported to Tokyo that he had sunk a Saratoga-class carrier, the big flattop managed to stay afloat and steam back to Pearl Harbor under her own power, arriving on January 15. Nimitz saw that the necessary repairs could not be completed in Hawaii and two days later reluctantly ordered her back to Bremerton, Washington.
⁷

That loss would have reduced Nimitz to only two carrier groups but for the return to the Pacific that same week of the USS
Yorktown
. After Pearl Harbor,
Yorktown
had been rushed into dry dock in Norfolk for a quick overhaul, and by December 16 she was en route back to the Pacific. After passing through the Panama Canal, she arrived in San Diego at the end of the month. There she joined the heavy cruiser
Louisville
, a light cruiser, and half a dozen destroyers, plus the essential oiler, to comprise Task Force 17. To command this new task force, Nimitz picked a man he knew well and who had commanded the
Saratoga
task force during the aborted relief expedition to Wake Island: Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher.