I found this interesting -- history from World War II in the Pacific LCM
Japanese Burst into Tears When
Americans Crushed Them at Midway
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku stood on the bridge
of the battleship Yamato in late May 1942, reviewing intelligence reports that
made him smile. American carrier strength in the Pacific. Two, maybe three
flattops. Japanese carrier strength. 11 fleet carriers, the finest bridge of
the battleship Yamato in late May 1942, reviewing intelligence reports that
made him smile. American naval aviators in the world. Veterans who’ burned
Pearl Harbor and crushed the British at Salon.
His staff officers assured him the
Americans were still reeling, still confused, still months away from mounting
serious resistance. Japanese naval intelligence estimated the enemy would need
until 1943 to rebuild. They were planning an operation for June 4th, 1942. The
Americans wouldn’t even see it coming. Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, commander
of the first airfleet, read the battle plan with satisfaction.
His four carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and
Hiru, carried 248 aircraft flown by pilots who averaged 800 flight hours each.
They’d struck Pearl Harbor, devastated Darwin, driven the Royal Navy from the
Indian Ocean. American pilots were barely trained kids with maybe 200 hours in
the cockpit. Japanese torpedoes ran true at 49 knots.
American torpedoes, intelligence reported,
didn’t work half the time. The math was simple. The outcome
inevitable. Radio Tokyo broadcast to the
home islands that Admiral Yamamoto was about to deliver a decisive blow that
would force American surrender. Newspapers in Tokyo ran maps showing Midway as
the steppingstone to Hawaii, to the West Coast to final victory.
Mathematics
In officers’
clubs from Yokosuka to Tru Lagoon, toasts celebrated the coming annihilation of
what remained of American naval power. Six
months into the war, Japan had lost exactly one major warship. The United
States had lost most of its Pacific battleship fleet. Japanese war planners
calculated they had 18 months, maybe two years, before American industrial
capacity became a problem.
They
intended to win the war in 12. What Yamamoto didn’t know, what none of them
knew, was that Lieutenant Commander Joseph Rofort sat in a basement at Pearl
Harbor reading their mail. Station Hypo, the basement coding unit at Pearl
Harbor, occupied a space that smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and mimeograph
ink. Roshfort worked in a bathrobe because the air conditioning ran too cold,
hunched over intercepts that shouldn’t have been readable.
Japanese
naval code JN25 was supposed to be unbreakable, but Rofort’s team had cracked
enough of it, maybe 40%, to see patterns. A massive operation. Carrier force.
Target designated AF. Messages about water supplies. Seaplane reconnaissance. A
date June 4th or 5th. Roshfort told Admiral Chester Nimmits the target was
Midway.
Nimttz,
who’d taken command of the Pacific Fleet when it was still pulling bodies from
the oil slicked harbor, made a decision that would have gotten him court
marshaled. If he was wrong, he recalled carriers from the South Pacific. He
positioned them northeast of Midway, exactly where Japanese planning assumed no
American carriers could be.
He scraped together every flyable aircraft
within a thousand miles. And he waited. The Japanese plan was elegant in its
complexity, catastrophic in its arrogance. Nagumo’s four carriers would strike
Midways airfield at dawn, suppressing American land-based aircraft. Then the
invasion force would land 5,000 troops to seize the atoll.
Yamamoto’s main battle fleet, including
the Yamato with her 18-inch guns, would wait 300 miles northwest, ready to
annihilate any American ships foolish enough to respond. It was a trap designed
to finish what Pearl Harbor started. The Americans were expected to react
exactly as Japanese war games predicted, too late, with too little in confused
desperation.
But on the morning of June 3rd, 1942,
three American carriers already sat in ambush. USS Enterprise, USS Hornet, and
USS Yorktown, the latter barely operational after the Battle of Coral Sea,
patched with wood and prayers by Pearl Harbor shipyard workers who’d worked
72-hour shifts to make her seaworthy.
Yorktown should have needed three
months of repairs. She got three days. Her captain, Elliot Buckmaster, reported
her ready for action, knowing damage control teams were still welding below
decks. Admiral Raymond Spruent commanded Enterprise and a Hornet from
Enterprises flag bridge. He was a battleship admiral commanding a carrier,
promoted to the job 5 days earlier when Admiral Hally came down with shingles.
Spruent had never commanded a carrier in
combat. Japanese intelligence didn’t even know his name. He studied the
position reports, calculated distances and fuel consumption, and made the kind
of cold mathematical decision that wins wars. Launch everything at maximum
range. If the Japanese carriers were where Rofort said they’d be, American dive
bombers would arrive with maybe 10 minutes of fuel to spare.
If Rofort was wrong, every American
aircraft would ditch in the ocean, and the carriers would be defenseless. At
0430 hours on June 4th, Nagumo’s carriers turned into the wind 240 miles
northwest of Midway. Flight decks swarmed with armorers loading 550 lb. bombs
onto Nakajima B5N bombers. The first wave, 108 aircraft, launched into
darkness, forming up as the sky turned purple, then pink.
Lieutenant Joi Tomaga led them southeast.
His orders: destroy Midway’s airfield. Suppress defensive aircraft. Prepare the
way for invasion. Below him, mechanics already armed the second wave with
torpedoes for ship attacks. Standard doctrine. Carriers hold one strike ready
for land targets, one for ships. The Americans had no carriers in the area
anyway.
Midway’s radar picked them up at 0553
hours, 93 miles out. Every flyable aircraft on the atoll scrambled. 26 Brewster
F2A Buffalos and Grumman F4F Wildcats. Obsolete fighters flown by pilots too
green for carrier duty. 27 dive bombers. Four B-26 Marauders rigged with
torpedoes. 11 B17 flying fortresses. The Marines on Midway knew what was
coming.
Most of them had never seen combat. They
climbed into their planes anyway. The Japanese strike hit Midway at 0630 hours
with textbook precision. Zeros shredded the Marine fighters. 17 shot down in
minutes. The Buffalos couldn’t match the Zero’s climb rate or maneuverability.
American pilots died learning that lesson.
But the Marines on the ground had dug in.
Anti-aircraft fire filled the sky. Tomga’s bombers hit the powerhouse, the fuel
tanks, the missal. But the runways
remained operational. The defenses were still firing. At 0700 hours, Tomaga
radioed Nagumo. There is need for a second attack. Nagumo faced a decision. His
second wave carried torpedoes for anti-ship work.
Changing ordinance meant bringing
every aircraft below, unloading torpedoes, loading bombs, returning aircraft to
the flight deck, 90 minutes minimum. But Tomga said Midway needed another
strike. And Japanese doctrine said Midway had to be neutralized before the
invasion. At 0715 hours, Nagumo gave the order, “Rearm for a second Midway
strike.
Flight deck crews swarmed the second wave
aircraft. They removed Type 91 torpedoes, the ones that worked, unlike American
Mark13s that ran too deep or broke apart on impact. They rolled them to the
hangers, stacked them against bulkheads, and began hauling up 550lb bombs. It
was dangerous work done quickly under pressure.
Standard procedure in the Japanese Navy.
They’d done it dozens of times. At 0728 hours, a PBY Catalina radioed a message
that changed everything. Enemy carriers. The float plane had spotted the
American task force 200 m northeast. The report was confusing. Maybe one
carrier, maybe more.
But carriers meant an immediate threat.
Nagumo’s staff erupted in controlled chaos. They had to recover Tomaga’s strike
wave returning from midway. They had aircraft below decks, half rearmed. They
had torpedoes stacked in the hangers, and somewhere to the northeast, American
carriers launched strikes that were already inbound. Nagumo made his second
decision.
Recover the midway strike first. They were
low on fuel, circling overhead. Then launch immediately against the American
carriers. The crews below decks received new orders. Stop loading bombs. Reload
torpedoes. They’d already spent 45 minutes swapping ordinance. Now they
reversed course. Torpedoes came back out. Bombs went back down.
And both sat in the hangers, armed,
unstacked, ready to explode if anything went wrong. 300 miles away, Spruent had
launched his strike at 0700 hours, 156 aircraft from Enterprise and Hornet,
every flyable plane. At 0800 hours, Yorktown added 35 more. The American
formations were ragged, poorly coordinated. Different squadrons flew different
courses.
The torpedo bombers flew slow and low. The
dive bombers flew high but couldn’t find the Japanese fleet on their initial
heading. The fighters burned fuel trying to escort bombers that flew at
different speeds and altitudes. It was exactly the kind of uncoordinated mess
Japanese war games assumed American attacks would be.
But mess and desperation can look like
tactical genius if you squint. Hornets Torpedo Squadron 8 VT8 15 Douglas TBD
Devastators led by Lieutenant Commander John Waldron found the Japanese
carriers at 09 18 hours flying alone without fighter escort. Waldron’s pilots
could see all four carriers in a box formation, flight decks crowded with
aircraft, destroyers churning wakes and protective screen.
They could also see 30 zeros climbing to
intercept them. The TBD Devastator cruised at 115 knots, turned like a truck,
and carried one torpedo that ran at 33 knots, if it ran at all. The Zero
climbed at 3,000 ft per minute and carried two 20 mm cannons. Waldron pushed
over into his attack run. Anyway, the Zeros hit them from above and behind.
Enson George Gay, flying tail end
position, watched the plane ahead of him explode. Then another, then another.
The Devastators couldn’t maneuver, couldn’t run, couldn’t defend themselves.
They flew straight into the wall of fire because that’s what torpedoes
required. Steady course, low altitude, close range. Zero pilots shot them into
the water methodically.
At 0925 hours, Gay’s aircraft took cannon
fire through the left wing. His gunner stopped returning fire, dead in his
seat. Gay held course until he was 800 yards from the carrier Soryu, dropped
his torpedo, and pulled up as his plane disintegrated around him. He splashed
into the water.
Behind him, 14 other TBD Devastators
burned on the ocean surface. 15 planes launched. One pilot survived. The
torpedo missed. At 0940 hours, Enterprises VT6 arrived from a different
direction. 14 Devastators led by Lieutenant Commander Eugene Lindseay. They’d
found the Japanese fleet by following the cruiser’s wakes. Same story. Zeros swarmed them.
Lindsay took a 20 mm round through the
cockpit 2 minutes into his run and kept flying. The TBDs dropped torpedoes from
minimum range. Most of them never pulled out of their runs. Shot down before
they could climb. Lindsay made it 200 yd before his plane hit the water. 10 of
14 Devastators destroyed.
Every torpedo missed or malfunctioned. At
1,000 hours, Yorktown’s VT3 came in. 12 more Devastators. They had at least six
Wildcat fighters for escort. It didn’t matter. The Zeros killed the Wildcats
first, then methodically destroyed 10 of 12 torpedo bombers. The two survivors
limped away with shredded airframes. Another 12 torpedoes in the water.
Maybe one ran true. It missed. In 40
minutes, three American torpedo squadrons ceased to exist. 41 aircraft
launched, six returned. The Japanese carriers didn’t have a scratch. They’d
shot down the attackers the way their doctrine said they would, easily,
efficiently, with minimal effort. On Akagi’s bridge, Nagumo’s staff allowed
themselves brief satisfaction.
The Americans were brave, but incompetent.
Their torpedoes didn’t work. Their tactics were suicidal. Their coordination
was non-existent. Below decks, Japanese crews finally finished rearming for the
carrier strike. Nakajima B5N bombers now carried type 91 torpedoes. ID3A dive
bombers carried 550lb bombs. Zeros topped off fuel tanks. The strike was ready.
Tomaga’s Midway wave had landed and been
struck below. The flight decks were clearing. They needed five more minutes to
position the strike aircraft. warm engines and launch. At 1020 hours, Nagumo
ordered the carriers to turn into the wind. 20,000 ft above them, Lieutenant
Commander Wade McCcluskey circled Enterprises dive bomber group, 33 SBD
Dauntlesses, nearly out of fuel.
He’d flown the course navigation gave him
and found empty ocean. He turned southwest on a hunch, following a lone
Japanese destroyer steaming northeast at flank speed. The destroyer was racing
to rejoin the carrier force. McCcluskey followed her wake like a highway in the
sky. At 10:22 hours, he saw them. Four carriers in a rough box, two miles
between ships.
White wakes cutting the blue Pacific.
Flight decks crowded with aircraft, wings folded, engines warming. Every
carrier was turning into the wind for launch. McCcluskey radioed, “Enemy
carriers.” He split his force without hesitation. He’d take one squadron
against the nearest carrier, Kaga. Lieutenant Richard Best would take the other
against the second carrier, a Kogi.
Two American squadrons diving from the sun
against the most powerful carrier force in the world. The Japanese were looking
down, watching for more torpedo attacks. Their combat air patrol orbited at
10,000 ft, low altitude, where the torpedo bombers attacked. Nobody looked up.
At 10:25 hours, McCluskey pushed over. The SBD dauntless dove at 240 knots,
angle near vertical, pilot fighting the stick as air pressure built.
The bomb site was a simple circle of wire.
You put the target in the circle, calculated wind and dive angle by instinct,
and released at 2,000 ft. Then you pulled out hard enough to gray your vision
and prayed the 500lb bomb went where you aimed it. Japanese carriers presented
huge targets over 800 feet long, but at terminal velocity from 20,000 feet, you
had maybe four seconds to aim.
McCluskeyy’s bomb hit Kaga amid ships at
1026 hours. 500 lb. of composition B explosive punched through the flight deck
into the upper hanger where torpedoes sat stacked, where aviation fuel lines
ran, where armed aircraft sat with engines running. The explosion blew a hole
30 ft across. Fires erupted instantly. 10 seconds later, another bomb hit Kagga
aft, then another forward.
Three
hits in 30 seconds. Best’s squadron dove on a Kogi simultaneously. Lieutenant
Dick Best himself, leading three aircraft, put his bomb through a Kaggi’s
flight deck just aft of the midship elevator. The explosion detonated in the
upper hanger among 18 armed aircraft being positioned for launch.
The bomber’s fuel tanks ruptured, their
torpedoes cooked off. The 550lb bombs stacked in the hanger from the aborted
rearmament went up in sympathetic detonation. Akagi’s flight deck heaved upward
like a steel wave. On Akagi’s bridge, Nagumo felt the deck shutter. Smoke
poured from the hangar. The ship’s executive officer reported fires on three
decks, ammunition detonating, and flooding in the engine spaces.
At 10:27 hours, 3 minutes after
McCluskeyy’s dive, Akagi was done as a fighting ship. She’d taken one bomb, one
perfectly placed bomb into a hanger full of armed ordinance and aviation fuel.
3 mi south, Kaga burned from four bomb hits. Her crew fought fires in the
hangers where torpedoes and bombs cooked off in rolling explosions. Flight deck
crews tried to push burning aircraft overboard, but the deck itself was warping
from heat.
At 10:30 hours, the forward bomb magazine
detonated. The explosion blew the bow section open to the sea. At precisely
10:27 hours, the same minute a kagi and Kaga took mortal wounds, Yorktown’s
dive bombers arrived over the third carrier, Soryu. Lieutenant Commander
Maxwell Leslie led 17 SBDs down from 14,500 ft. They’d launched later than
Enterprise and Hornets groups, flown a more direct course, and arrived by pure
chance at the perfect moment.
Three American dive bomber groups from
three carriers launched at different times on different headings. All arrived
over the Japanese fleet in a 6-minute window. Leslie’s first three bombs hit
Soryu forward amid ships and aft. Same result, hanger fires, ordinance
explosions, aviation fuel igniting in rivers of flame that ran through the
ship.
At 10:30 hours, Soru’s captain ordered
abandoned ship. The carrier had been combat ready 3 minutes earlier. Now she
was an inferno, listing 7° and accelerating, magazines detonating below decks.
In 6 minutes, three of the four Japanese carriers had been destroyed. Not
damaged, destroyed. The carriers that burned Pearl Harbor that drove the
British from the Indian Ocean that made Japan master of the Pacific for 6
months.
The finest carrier force ever assembled.
The ships that were supposed to be untouchable. Three of them burning,
exploding, dying. One remained. Hiru steamed north of the other three,
separated by enough distance that the American dive bombers didn’t spot her
initially. Her captain, Tomoko Kaku, watched smoke pillars rise from his sister
ships and made an instant decision.
He didn’t wait for orders from Nagumo, who
was being evacuated from Akagi’s burning bridge. He didn’t coordinate with the
battleship fleet 300 m away. He launched everything he had at the American
carriers. At 1040 hours, 18 dive bombers and six fighters roared off Hiru’s
deck. At 12:45 hours, 10 torpedo bombers followed.
Hiru’s strike commander, Lieutenant Mishio
Kobayashi, followed the American aircraft back toward their carriers. At 1330
hours, he found Yorktown. The carrier that shouldn’t have been there, that Navy
intelligence reported sunk at Coral Sea, that had been repaired in 3 days
instead of 3 months. She stood out. Different island structure than Enterprise
and Hornet.
Kobayashi radioed his bombers. Attack the
one on the left. Yorktown’s radar picked them up at 1335 hours, 47 mi out.
Combat air patrol scrambled. 12 Wildcats climbed to intercept. The Japanese
came in at 18,000 ft, higher than the torpedo bombers. The Wildcats got seven
of them. The remaining 11 pushed over into dives. Yorktown’s anti-aircraft
batteries opened up.
5-in guns, 40mm boworks, 20
millimeter orlicons. The sky filled with black bursts and tracer streams. At 13:42
hours, the first bomb hit Yorktown’s flight deck. It punched through to the
fourth deck and detonated in the uptakes, killing the fires in five of her nine
boilers. Yorktown slowed from 30 knots to six. The second bomb hit 40 seconds
later, exploding in the smokestack and showering the deck with burning debris.
The third bomb penetrated the flight deck
and exploded in the rag storage compartment. Fires erupted. Damage control
parties flooded magazines and fought fires. Within 12 minutes, Chief Engineer
Jack Delaney had three boilers back online. Yorktown accelerated to 20 knots.
Her crew thought they might save her.
At 14:30 hours, three torpedo bombers
arrived. 10 Nakajima B5Ns came in low from four directions simultaneously. The
kind of coordinated attack American torpedo squadrons couldn’t manage. Yorktown
turned hard to port to comb the wakes, reducing her profile. She dodged three torpedoes.
The fourth one, launched from 500 yards by a pilot who held his course through
a wall of anti-aircraft fire hit Yorktown amid ships on the port side.
The type 91 warhead designed to kill
battleships, blew a hole 40 ft across below the water line. The explosion
ruptured fuel tanks, shattered the bulkheads, and knocked out the electrical
grid. Yorktown listed 11° immediately. Seawater poured into the engine rooms.
At 1500 hours, Captain Buckmaster ordered abandoned ship.
The crew filed off in good order. No
panic. Textbook evacuation. Destroyers pulled 2,270 men from the water.
Buckmaster was the last man off, saluting the flag before stepping onto the
destroyer’s deck. 200 m west, Spruent received the report. Yorktown hit,
probably sinking. Hear you still operational.
He calculated distances, fuel states, and
aircraft availability. Enterprise and Hornet still had dive bombers ready. He
knew Hiru’s approximate location from Yorktown’s last contact report. At 15:30
hours, he launched a second strike. 24 SBDs from Enterprise, including 10
orphaned Yorktown aircraft that had landed on Enterprise after the first
strike.
Lieutenant Earl Gallagher led them to
Hiru’s last known position. They didn’t find her. He expanded the search
pattern, burning fuel he couldn’t afford to waste. At 1700 hours, a scout
bomber radioed coordinates. Carrier located course northwest. Speed 25 knots.
Gallagher turned his formation toward the contact. Hiru’s lookout spotted the
American dive bombers at 1701 hours.
Zeros scrambled to intercept, but too
late. The SBDs were already in their dives. At 1703 hours, the first bomb hit Hiru’s
flight deck forward. The second hit 20 seconds later am a midship. The third
and fourth bombs hit within 45 seconds. Four bombs. Four hits. Same result as
her sister ships. Hiru’s hanger became an inferno.
Her crew fought the fires for 9 hours, but
the forward magazines cooked off at 0230 hours on June 5th. The explosion broke
her keel. At 0510 hours, Captain Kaku ordered abandon ship. At 0900 hours,
Japanese destroyers fired torpedoes into Hiru’s hull to scuttle her. She rolled
over and sank stern first, taking 416 men with her.
Captain Kaku went down with his ship,
standing on the bridge as the water rose. By dawn on June 5th, all four of
Nagumo’s carriers were gone. Akagi scuttled by Japanese destroyers at 0500
hours after burning all night. Kaga sank at 19:25 hours on June 4th, magazines
exploding as she went down. Soryu sank at 19:13 hours the same day, burning for
7 hours before the sea claimed her.
With them went 248 aircraft, the best
pilots in the Imperial Japanese Navy and 6 months of unchallenged victory.
The mathematics of the loss staggered the imagination. Japan
had started the war with 10 fleet carriers. She’d lost four in one day.
Training a carrier pilot required 18 months in aviation fuel Japan couldn’t
spare.
Mathematics
Building a fleet carrier required three
years and steel Japan didn’t have. The Americans were launching Essex class
carriers every 6 months from shipyards that could build them faster than Japan
could sink them. Yamamoto aboard Yamato 500 miles northwest received the
reports in stages, each worse than the last. At 10:50 hours, three carriers
burning.
At 13:30 hours, hear you counterattacking.
At 1,800 hours, hear you hit, sinking. He’d planned to annihilate the American
carriers with his battleship force, but his battleships never got within 300 m
of an enemy ship. The decisive battle he’d engineered had been decided by dive
bombers, dropping 500 lb. bombs from four miles up.
His battleship’s 18-in guns were
irrelevant. The Americans never came close enough for surface action. At 02:55
hours on June 5th, Yamamoto canceled the Midway operation and ordered a general
withdrawal. The invasion force, 5,000 troops crammed into transport ships,
turned west without ever seeing the objective. The battleship fleet, most
powerful surface force in the Pacific, retreated without firing a shot.
The submarine cordon positioned to
intercept American reinforcements found empty ocean. The entire operation,
weeks of planning, dozens of ships, thousands of men, collapsed because four
American dive bomber squadrons hit four carriers in 6 minutes. Japanese search
planes found Yorktown still afloat on the morning of June 5th, listing but not
sinking.
At 13:31 hours, Japanese submarine
the Var RAM 168 put two torpedoes into her hull and one into the destroyer
Hammond alongside. Hammond sank in 4 minutes, depth charges detonating as she
went down, killing 81 men. Yorktown finally rolled over at 07:00 hours on June
7th and sank in 3,000 fathoms. She’d taken seven bombs, two torpedoes, and
three days to die.
Even in death, she tied down Japanese
resources, hunting her. The Battle of Midway cost the United States one
carrier, one destroyer, 150 aircraft, and 307 men. Japan lost four carriers,
one heavy cruiser, 248 aircraft, and 3,570 men. The numbers told the story, but
the strategic implications went deeper. Japan had lost the carriers that gave
her offensive reach.
She’d lost the pilots who couldn’t be
replaced. She’d lost the initiative she’d held since Pearl Harbor. Most
critically, she’d lost the six-month window to force a negotiated peace before
American industry became unstoppable. In Tokyo, the naval general staff
suppressed news of the defeat. Newspapers reported a great victory at Midway.
Wounded survivors from the carriers were
isolated in hospitals, forbidden to speak about what happened. The crews of
returning ships were scattered to different units. Imperial headquarters
announced the destruction of two American carriers, Enterprise and Hornet, both
of which were actually fine and minimal Japanese losses.
The civilian population never learned the truth.
But the officers planning Japan’s war strategy knew they’d lost. American
intelligence intercepted Japanese damage reports that confirmed the scale of
the disaster. Four fleet carriers sunk. The carrier force that attacked Pearl
Harbor destroyed in one battle.
Rofort’s code breakers read Japanese naval
communications describing the losses, the shock, the desperate attempts to
maintain secrecy. The intercepts revealed something else. Japan had no
strategic reserve. Her carrier force was gutted. Her pilot training program
couldn’t replace the losses. Her ship building capacity couldn’t match American
production.
Admiral Spruent received the Medal of
Honor recommendation after the battle, but characteristically declined, saying
his staff deserved the credit. He’d made the essential decisions. Trust
Roshfort’s intelligence, position the carriers in ambush, launch at maximum
range despite the risks, and pursue aggressively when Hiru remained
operational.
He’d commanded carriers for the first time
in combat and orchestrated the most decisive naval battle in the Pacific War.
The Japanese had expected confusion and panic. They got cold calculation and
aggressive execution. The torpedo squadrons that died in the first attacks,
VT8, VT6, VT3, never knew they’d succeeded. Their sacrifice pulled the Japanese
combat air patrol down to low altitude, left the carriers vulnerable from
above, and disrupted Nagumo’s launch cycle at the critical moment.
The 41 crews who flew into certain death
created the conditions for the dive bomber success. Enson George Gay, only
survivor of VT8, floated in the water and watched the Japanese carriers burn
from a raft. He was rescued 30 hours later by a PBY Catalina. 15 men in his
squadron died so he could see the smoke pillars rising from Kaga’s shattered
hull.
Captain Buckmaster returned to Yorktown on
June 6th with a salvage party trying to save his ship. They pumped
compartments, corrected the list, rigged tow lines. For 24 hours, they thought
they might bring her home. Then 1 168’s torpedoes ended that hope. Buckmaster
watched her sink from a destroyer’s deck, the ship he’d commanded for 18
months, disappearing beneath the Pacific.
She’d fought at Coral Sea, been repaired
in three days, fought again at Midway, and absorbed punishment that should have
killed her three times over. Her crew saved over 2,200 men from the water. Her
aircraft sank two Japanese carriers. She’d done her job. Nagumo survived the battle
but never commanded carriers again.
He’d lost the first air fleet through a
combination of bad luck, poor intelligence, and doctrine that assumed Japanese
superiority would overcome any American response. The decision to rearm the
second wave for a land attack, then reversed that order when carriers appeared
left his ships vulnerable at precisely the wrong moment.
But the fundamental error was strategic,
the assumption that Americans would react slowly, incompetently, and
predictably. They’d done none of those things. In 6 months, Japan had gone from
master of the Pacific to strategic defense. She’d hold islands and fight
delaying actions and inflict casualties. But the mathematical reality
was settled on June 4th, 1942.
Mathematics
The United States would build 24 Essex class
carriers before the war ended. Japan would build two fleet carrier’s total. The
Americans would train 60,000 naval aviators. Japan couldn’t replace the 110
elite pilots who died at midway. The battle wasn’t just a tactical victory. It
was the moment the inevitable became visible.
The pilots who attacked the Japanese
carriers flew obsolete aircraft. The SBD Dauntless was already being phased out
in favor of newer designs with minimal training and coordination that fell
apart as soon as formations were launched. They had still found the enemy,
pressed attacks through fighter defenses and anti-aircraft fire, and hit four
moving targets from four miles up while diving at terminal velocity.
The Japanese expected American
incompetence. They got American adaptability, aggression, and enough skill to
capitalize on one perfect moment of opportunity. At 10:26 hours on June 4th,
1942, the war turned. Three carriers burning. The fourth was doomed three hours
later. The crews who’d attacked Pearl Harbor dying in burning hangers.
The pilots who’d driven the British from
Salon floating in oil slicked water. The doctrine that assumed Japanese
superiority proven fatally wrong. The Americans weren’t supposed to be there.
Weren’t supposed to find the carriers. Weren’t supposed to coordinate attacks
from three separate task forces at the exact moment the Japanese were most
vulnerable.
But they were. And they did. And the
Empire of the Rising Sun discovered that the sun sets on everyone. Eventually,
Admiral Yamamoto stood on Yamato’s bridge as dawn broke on June 5th, receiving
confirmation reports. Four carriers gone, the invasion canceled, the decisive
battle lost. He’d warned the naval general staff before Pearl Harbor that Japan
could run wild for 6 months, maybe a year.
After that, American industrial capacity
would overwhelm them. The clock had been ticking since December 7th, 1941. At
midway, it ran out. The men who flew from Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown that
day weren’t the elite pilots Japan assumed would crumble under pressure. They
were kids from Iowa farms and Texas oil fields and New York tenements who’d
learned to fly dive bombers and torpedo planes and obsolete fighters because
their country needed them to.
41 of them flew into anti-aircraft fire
and zero interceptors knowing they probably wouldn’t come back. They bought six
minutes for the dive bombers with their lives. That’s not propaganda. That’s
documented in after action reports and Japanese records and the coordinates
where their aircraft hit the water.
Share this with anyone who needs to understand
that underestimation is fatal, that arrogance meets reality eventually
and that the Americans the Japanese dismissed as soft, incompetent, and broken
in 1942 destroyed four fleet carriers in 6 minutes because they did the math better.
The 72 men of Torpedo Squadron 8 earned the Navy Cross for their final attack.
Only one survived to receive it. Remember them.
.png)
.png.jpg)