by Ian W. Toll
The American task force was only about 170 miles west, and the outbound planes apparently flew over the American carriers and their escorts, failing to spot them through the heavy overcast. At six, the strike leaders, talking by radio, decided to turn back. They jettisoned their bombs and torpedoes and reversed course, hoping to pick up their carriers’ homing signals. The Americans’ newly installed radar sets tracked the bombers flying above the cloud cover, and a group of F4F fighters were vectored out to intercept them on their return flight. They closed at 6:15 p.m., right as the sunlight faded out of a gunmetal gray sky. The American fighters emerged out of cloud cover on the tails of several of the Japanese planes. In the ensuing aerial melee, the Japanese got the worst of it, losing nine aircraft (eight Kates, one Val), against three American Wildcats. That was one of the war’s earliest demonstrations of the game-changing potential of radar.
After nightfall, when most of the American planes had been taken aboard, a new formation of planes arrived over the task force. First, the drone of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover; then they slipped into view, at about the height of the Lexington’s masts. “These planes were in very good formation,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Stroop. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both carriers and several of the screening vessels noted that something was awry. Captain Sherman of the Lexington counted nine planes, more than could be accounted for among the American planes that were still aloft. They were flying down the Yorktown’s port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the American landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the Americans could decipher the signal. Electrician’s mate Peter Newberg, stationed on the Yorktown’s flight deck, noticed that the aircraft exhausts were a strange shape and color, and Stroop noted that the running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue.
The TBS (short-range radio circuit) came alive with chatter. One of the nearby destroyers asked, “Have any of our planes got rounded wingtips?” Another voice said, “Damned if those are our planes.” When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low, and the Yorktown’s landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. “In the last few seconds,” Newberg recalled, “when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight deck, he poured the coal to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The signal light flicked briefly on red circles painted on his wings.”
One of the screening destroyers opened fire, and red tracers reached up toward the leading plane. A voice on the Lexington radioed to all ships in the task force, ordering them to hold fire, but the captain of the destroyer replied, “I know Japanese planes when I see them.” Antiaircraft gunners on ships throughout the task force opened fire, and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it was the Fourth of July. But there were friendly planes in the air as well; one of the Yorktown fighter pilots complained: “What are you shooting at me for? What have I done now?” On the Yorktown, SBD pilot Harold Buell scrambled out to the port-side catwalk to see what was happening. “In the frenzy of the moment, with gunners firing at both friend and foe, some of us got caught up in the excitement and drew our .45 Colt automatics to join in, blasting away at the red meatballs as they flew past the ship—an offensive gesture about as effective as throwing rocks.” The intruders and the Americans all doused their lights and zoomed back into the cloud cover; none was shot down. It was not the last time in the war that confused Japanese pilots would attempt to land on an American carrier.
Later that night, fascinated radar operators on the Lexington tracked the enemy planes on their flight to the east and reported that they were circling only thirty miles away. Could the Japanese carriers be that close? So it seemed. When the intelligence unit tuned in to the Japanese flight frequency, they could overhear the carriers communicating with the pilots in plain Japanese, trying to talk them in. (After the war it was determined that they had been farther east, perhaps sixty to a hundred miles.) There was some discussion of dispatching the task force’s destroyers to stage a night torpedo attack, but Fletcher chose not to risk it.
Hara’s gambit had been a debacle. The Japanese carriers lit up their searchlights to guide their planes back in, but twenty-one of the twenty-seven planes launched that late afternoon failed to return to their carriers. Nine had been shot down in aerial combat, twelve more lost at sea, and none of the lost aircrews were rescued. The pilots who did return reported having sighted the American carriers fifty to sixty miles to the east. As night set in, the opposing commanders prepared for the battle that would follow the next day. Fletcher turned southwest and prepared a large search pattern to be flown at dawn. Admiral Takagi accepted Hara’s proposal that the Japanese task force should head north, so they could concentrate their morning search flights toward the south.
THE AMERICAN AVIATORS ATE AN EARLY DINNER and debriefed in their ready rooms. Each side was now perfectly aware of the other’s presence, so neither could count on surprise. The big Japanese carriers might even be visible on the horizon at daybreak. “In our enemy we recognized a tough, fanatical foe whose courage and cunning could not be discounted,” wrote Johnston. “Our forces appeared about equal. It seemed to be a question of who would get the first blow home. We had seen on the previous day what aircraft could do to a carrier and so we knew the consequences that day might bring.” On the Yorktown, mimeographed copies of the following day’s “ops plan” were posted in the ready rooms. At 5:40 a.m., the aircrews would go to flight quarters. At 6:20 a.m., the scout bomber aircrews would man their planes. They would sit in their cockpits as their engines warmed, awaiting the flight officer’s signal. They would launch at first light and fly their assigned reconnaissance patterns. The fighters would launch immediately afterward, and then the SBDs and TBDs of the airstrike would be brought up from the hangar deck, ready to get aloft upon the first contact report.
The flyboys slipped back to their cabins and fell into deep, insensible sleep, their nervous tension overridden by physical and mental exhaustion. (Flying, though essentially sedentary, was much more taxing than driving a car, especially under the strain of combat). Crewmen crept down corridors dimly lit by the blue battle lamps, taking care not to wake the aviators as they passed the propped-open doors of their cabins. Except for the whirring fans and the steady throbbing of the engines, the ship was quiet. The task force steamed out of the frontal area into a clear, still night lit by a half moon in the west. On deck, the gunners stood alert by their batteries, wearing steel helmets and cumbersome kapok life vests that smelled strongly of the flame-retardant chemicals with which they had been treated. The screening ships drew in close, advancing at exactly the same speed and heading as the carriers. Their white bow waves—“bone in teeth,” as the sailors called them—stood out in stark relief against their darkened hulls. As always, the fleet zigzagged to thwart enemy submarines, turning often and in perfectly timed unison, as if connected by an unseen thread. They did not seem to communicate at all, except by the occasional dim flashing of blinker lamps. The phosphorescence whipped up by the mighty screws could be seen in every direction, and if a man leaned over his ship’s stern and looked down into the wake, the blue-green glow appeared to descend to a depth of 30 or 40 feet.
A blazing sunrise revealed a nearly cloudless sky. It was a beautiful morning, with no sign of the fog, scud, or squalls that had provided cover for the task force in recent days. The Americans would have gladly done without the change, as it left them feeling naked and vulnerable—“with no place to hide,” as Signalman Beaver put it. Worse, the frontal zone had passed over them and swept north, where the enemy now lay at a distance of about 175 miles; the Shokaku and Zuikaku would have the advantage of dirty weather in which to conceal themselves against airborne scouts and attackers. It would be a vital factor in the action to come.
As soon as light was sufficient for flight operations, the Lex launched eighteen scouts to fly search patterns all the
way around the compass, spreading out from the task force like spokes radiating from the hub of a wheel. Those flying the northern semicircle were directed to fly to a distance of 200 miles, about the limit of the SBD’s radius. Shortly thereafter, the F4F fighters went aloft to fly CAP. The Japanese search planes would no doubt appear overhead soon.
The expected sighting report did not come until 8:20 a.m. Lieutenant (jg) Joseph Smith—who had flown his northeast segment to the end of its outbound leg, completed his cross-leg, and flown fifty miles of his return leg—radioed that he had spotted the Japanese fleet: “Two carriers, four heavy cruisers, many destroyers, steering 120 degrees, 20 knots.” The position was 175 miles from the American task force, bearing 028 degrees. “It was thrilling news,” wrote Captain Sherman, “the first sighting of the large Japanese carriers by either land-based or carrier planes.”
Aubrey Fitch, who now took over tactical command of both American carriers, decided to steam north for an hour to close the range. The distance to the reported contact was about as far as the short-legged Devastators could fly with enough fuel to return safely. The admiral was also painfully aware, based on recent experience, that the first sighting report was not always to be trusted. The aircrews copied down all last-minute navigational data off the chalkboards and filed out of their ready rooms. Festooned with gear, flight goggles pushed up on their foreheads, they ducked and weaved through the maze of parked planes, guided by the plane crews with their multicolored hoods. Both carriers went into “condition Zed,” when interior doors and hatches were slammed closed and dogged down, a measure to seal the hull off into watertight compartments. Unneeded gear was stowed out of the way, the fuel hoses were drained, and the firefighting equipment brought out and readied. The crew on deck put on their life vests and helmets and went to their battle stations. On the bridge, the glass plate windows enclosing the crowded wheelhouse were retracted into their sills, leaving the interior exposed to the open air.
The two carriers turned into the wind, and the first airplanes left the flight decks at 9:07 a.m. Half an hour later, a massive seventy-five-plane strike was on its way toward the Japanese fleet: thirty-nine dive-bombers (all armed with 1,000-pound bombs), twenty-one torpedo planes, and fifteen fighters.
Lieutenant Commander Dixon, the skipper of Scouting Two, had been flying the segment adjacent to that of Lieutenant Smith, who radioed the contact report. Upon intercepting the contact, Dixon abandoned his own segment and made a beeline for the reported location. He circled above a heavy squall, failing to see the enemy fleet at first; but he kept at it until he spotted several ships through a gap in the overcast. He stalked the enemy for more than two hours, radioing more than a dozen position corrections and guiding the incoming strike into the target. That was a very dangerous move, as the Zeros were aloft and determined to shoot him down. He slipped in and out of the clouds in a deadly game of cat and mouse, and shot back at them with his aircraft’s powerful .50- and .30-caliber Browning machine guns. The Zeros made feinting runs at him, apparently trying to tempt Dixon and his rear gunner to throw away ammunition, but the Americans did not take the bait. “If they came in too close,” Dixon recounted, “I would make a steep turn and head toward them with one wing low. This allowed me to be in shooting position with my front guns and also permitted my gunner to fire forward over the wing with his twin flexible mounted guns.”
The air armada flew north, but not in good order. The Yorktown and Lexington groups drew apart, eventually losing sight of one another. The different plane types—dive-bombers, torpedo planes, fighters—flew at different speeds and altitudes, and drifted further apart as they put the miles behind them. The dive-bombers had to climb to high altitude, above 15,000 feet, to be in position for their diving attacks; the torpedo planes, lugging their heavy fish, could not spare the fuel to climb so high, and had no need to do so as they would approach the enemy at low altitude. The fighters had to throttle back to maximize fuel economy, which left them vulnerable to sudden diving air attacks. Flying into the frontal area, the pilots craned their necks to find gaps in the wet, white murk; often they lost sight of their own wingmen.
The Yorktown SBDs and fighter escorts were the first to spot the Japanese carriers, at 10:32 a.m. The carriers were about five miles apart, heading due south at 25 knots. Lieutenant Commander William Burch, Jr., who had tactical command of the Yorktown’s two SBD squadrons, held the dive-bombers in a circling pattern while awaiting the arrival of the torpedo planes, so they could make a coordinated attack. The decision was consistent with tactical doctrine, but the twenty-minute delay was not worth it. The Japanese carriers took the opportunity to launch more Zeros for air defense, and the Zuikaku slipped away to the south and found cover behind a black squall line. One of the Yorktown’s SBD pilots judged that “This loss of initiative was more costly than any advantage gained by a coordinated attack.” When the Yorktown’s torpedo planes came lumbering onto the scene at 10:57 a.m., they fanned out to make an “anvil” approach on the Shokaku.
Lacking any fighter escort, they made awkward torpedo drops at ranges of a quarter to a third of a mile, and scored no hits. High above, Burch and his seven-plane squadron (VS-5) rolled into their dives. As they hurtled through 8,000 feet, their bombsights and windshields became fogged over (as they had done over Tulagi four days earlier), and the problem was so severe that they were nearly blinded. Burch estimated that the fogging problem reduced the accuracy of their drops by 75 percent, and remarked that they had been obliged to “bomb from memory.” All seven of their bombs went into the sea.
The seventeen Dauntlesses of Lieutenant Wally Short’s Bombing Five, which had circled around to take up a better initial diving position, followed about three minutes later. Plummeting toward the Shokaku at a 70-degree angle, they were harassed by Zeros and their windshields fogged over. Yet they somehow managed to plant two 1,000-pound bombs on the flight deck, one fore and one aft. The second was dropped by Lieutenant John J. Powers, who held his dive to below 1,000 feet before releasing. The low drop guaranteed that he would not survive—the explosion of his own bomb, on the starboard side abaft of the Shokaku’s island, engulfed his aircraft. It was virtually a suicide attack; Powers traded his life (and that of his rear-seat man) to remove the possibility of missing the target. He was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.
Maintenance officer Hachiro Miyashita of the Shokaku was below, in one of the machine shops on the hangar deck. The first blast ignited secondary explosions that wiped out the machine and maintenance facilities. Several dozen men were killed outright, and many more succumbed to smoke inhalation as they tried to escape. Miyashita climbed a ladder to the flight deck, which he reached just in time to see Power’s bomb hit that deck. Those two bombs tore gaping holes in Shokaku’s flight deck and left her burning furiously for several hours. She had suffered casualties of 108 men killed and 40 wounded. She was not fit to conduct flight operations until she could be repaired in port, and her air group was obliged to land on the Zuikaku. But the Shokaku’s wounds were not mortal. Her damage control teams eventually managed to subdue the fires. Having taken no torpedo hits, her hull was intact and she could make way under her own power at 30 knots. Her captain requested permission to withdraw from the battle, and was granted it. At 12:10 p.m., the Shokaku retreated toward Truk with an escort of two destroyers.
The Lexington air group had a frustrating day. The outbound flight had been confused and disjointed, and most of the Lexington planes arrived in small formations, separated by intervals of five to ten minutes. Three Wildcats and nine SBDs failed to find the enemy fleet at all, and turned back. The Lexington air group commander, Commander Bill Ault, caught sight of both Japanese carriers through a break in the fog and rain, but he could muster only four dive-bombers, eleven torpedo planes, and six fighters. “You couldn’t see much,” recalled Lieutenant Gayler, one of the Lexington’s fighter pilots. “Big towering columns of rain clouds, sort of like pillars. You’d go around them and al
l of a sudden you’d see the carrier. Here he is, and there he’s gone. . . . It was just such an incredibly confusing, mixed-up, screwed-up situation. Poor visibility and people yelling on the radio.” The ubiquitous Zeros seemed to attack from every direction. The Wildcats fought them off, while the sluggish torpedo planes sought cover in the mists. “There was always one of them making a run at me,” said Gayler. “Early in the scrap I evaded the attack of one and then jumped his tail. He immediately resorted to the old Zero trick of zooming for altitude. Remember those babies will climb 4,000 feet a minute. They just love to have you on their tail trying to follow them up. If you do, they climb out of your range, flop over backward at the top of their zoom and you suddenly find them diving back at you when you are almost stalled and easy meat.”
Before the Lexingtonians could organize themselves, the overcast moved back in and hid the enemy fleet from view. Ault began a quartering “box” search and soon found the wounded Shokaku about twenty miles west. He attacked immediately with three wingmen. The four SBDs dived and scored one additional hit on the starboard side of the flight deck. All twelve of Lexington’s torpedo planes also attacked the carrier, and came away with the optimistic belief that five of their fish had scored. But it is a confirmed fact that no torpedoes struck the Shokaku that day—or if any did, they must have failed to detonate.
SPREAD OUT ON A SPARKLING BLUE SEA under a fair sky, Task Force 17 was like a worm writhing on a hook. The officers and crew of the American flattops knew they would come under heavy air attack that day, probably before noon. So it came as no surprise when the Yorktown’s radio room intercepted a contact report transmitted by Warrant Officer Kenzo Kanno in a Nakajima Type 97 at 8:28 a.m., just a few minutes after Lieutenant Smith had found the Japanese carriers. “Have sighted enemy carriers. Location of enemy carriers 205 degrees and 235 miles from your position, course 170 degrees, speed 16 knots.”
