by Ian W. Toll
“This was a beautiful report,” remarked Ensign Kenji Hori, a dive-bomber pilot based on the Zuikaku. It was clear, unequivocal, and perfectly correct, a refreshing contrast to the previous day’s deadly pandemonium. Admiral Hara sent off his sixty-nine-plane “air shot” quickly, with orders to stay together in formation and follow the strike leader, Lieutenant Commander Kakuichi Takahashi.
The American task force sailed in a circular formation with the two carriers at the hub. Periodically both carriers turned port, into the wind, to launch or recover aircraft—but the destroyer and cruiser escorts continued to make way at 20 knots to the northeast, toward the direction of the enemy. Captain Sherman, bronzed by long exposure to the sun, spent the morning on his signal bridge on the island, twenty-five feet above the flight deck. He was dressed for battle in a khaki uniform, a canvas windbreaker, and a steel helmet secured with a chin strap. Although this was the first exchange of carrier airstrikes in naval history, the skipper had an intuitive sense of how the battle would unfold. He deduced that the Japanese carriers had launched their planes at about the same time as the Americans (they had); that the two air groups had passed one another en route (they had); and that the enemy planes would attack Task Force 17 at approximately 11 a.m. (they would). He thought it possible that both airstrikes would sink the other’s carriers, leaving all surviving planes marooned in the air. Speaking briefly to Stanley Johnston, who was permitted to observe the action from the bridge, he explained his reasoning by way of a boxing metaphor. The aircraft carrier was a fighter with a long reach, a strong punch, and a glass chin. “I feel that at the present time an air attack group cannot be stopped,” he remarked. “It’s likely that the position will be similar to that of two boxers, both swinging a knockout punch at the same time, and both connecting.”
Returning SBD scout bombers were quickly refueled and sent back up to fly low-level “antisubmarine” patrols, which would also put them in the path of the incoming torpedo planes. The engine room raised steam so that the Lexington could quickly accelerate to 30 knots. High-speed evasive maneuvering—the helm—was still a ship’s best defense against air attack.
American radar screens picked up the incoming enemy planes at 10:55 a.m., when they were sixty-eight miles away, but the primeval system in use at that time could not accurately measure altitude. The Lexington’s fighter director officer (who had control of all seventeen fighters in the air, including the Yorktown’s) estimated that they would be above 10,000 feet. Fitch’s air staff was reluctant to vector the Wildcats out to intercept at long distance, lest they miss the incoming planes and leave the carriers unshielded. The fighters were kept close, altitude 10,000 feet. Several SBD Dauntless dive-bombers were assigned to fly a low-altitude patrol, at 2,000 feet, to watch for submarines and intercept the enemy torpedo planes. This use of dive-bombers as makeshift fighters was resented by their aircrews, who believed they were utterly disadvantaged in such a role and were being served up to the Zeros as cold meat. It was the most significant controversy to emerge from the battle, and contributed to the growing feeling in navy air circles that all the American carriers needed many more fighters.
Five Lexington fighters made contact with the enemy air armada at a distance of twenty miles, and found them in layered formations from 10,000 to 13,000 feet. They climbed to altitude, but lost speed in the effort, and had to turn onto the Japanese tails in chase. The Lexington’s loudspeakers broadcast the radio communications between the FDO and the aircraft: “Norma to carrier. Enemy torpedo planes, Nakajima 97s, spilling out of a cloud eight miles out. They are at 6,000 feet in a steep glide. We’re intercepting now.” Takahashi’s attack was finely choreographed, and the contrast with the discombobulated American air groups was stark. With fifteen miles to go, they fanned out into two groups of torpedo planes and one large group of dive-bombers. Lieutenant Willard Eder, of the Lexington’s squadron VF-2, was one of those who intercepted: “My wingman and I headed for two Jap planes, which ducked into a cloud. We lost them in the clouds. Then he and I became separated and I turned out and saw below me this fighter. He turned up toward me. I headed down toward him and we met head-on. I was firing four .50-calibers in a down slant and he was firing in an up slant. I could see his 20-mms were falling quite short of me. His 7.7-mms were doing better when my .50-caliber began hitting him. Almost immediately his plane sort of snap-rolled, then spiraled downward, uncontrolled.”
The Lexington’s lookouts first saw the enemy planes at 11:13 a.m. They appeared as “clusters of black dots” on the northeast horizon, hardly moving at all. Gradually each dot resolved into a recognizable shape—a fuselage, a horizontal wing-line, a propeller-disk, a bomb or torpedo attached underneath. The torpedo planes fanned out and approached from two directions, while the dive-bombers soared overhead and rolled into their dives. “Here they come!” cried the lookouts on the catwalk around the stack. The Lexington’s engines surged as the ship accelerated, and her deck sloped steeply to port as Sherman ordered the first evasive turn to starboard. Antiaircraft guns on the carrier and the nearby cruisers and destroyers opened fire, and the sky filled with dirty gray-black flak bursts. Vertical plumes of smoke marked the spots where American or Japanese aircraft had been shot out of the sky.
“Never in all my years in combat have I even imagined a battle like that!” said Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki, group leader of the two Japanese torpedo squadrons. “When we attacked the enemy carriers we ran into a virtual wall of antiaircraft fire; the carriers and their supporting ships blackened the sky with exploding shells and tracers. It seemed impossible that we could survive our bombing and torpedo runs through such incredible defenses. Our Zeros and enemy Wildcats spun, dove, and climbed in the midst of our formations. Burning and shattered planes of both sides plunged from the skies.”
From the perspective of witnesses aboard the Lexington, a swarm of malevolent aircraft seemed to attack suddenly and from every angle and direction. In the adrenaline-fueled chaos of the general melee, no one man could form a complete impression of what was happening—the events had to be pieced together after the fact.
Shimazaki’s Nakajimas approached on the Lexington’s port beam, traveling very fast in a shallow dive from 4,000 feet. Six broke away to circle around the carrier’s starboard bow in a classic “anvil” pattern, leaving Captain Sherman with few viable options. (The skipper later wrote that the attack had been “beautifully coordinated.”) To port, Shimazaki’s planes flew low across the bow of the Minneapolis, and the cruiser’s fusillade of antiaircraft fire blew the first out of the sky, but the others flew on toward the Lexington, seemingly unfazed. When they had drawn to within about 1,000 yards, and leveled out at about 100-feet altitude, they released their Type 91 800-kilogram aerial torpedoes. Each weapon dived nose-first into the sea with a splash, then recovered and streaked toward the Lexington under its own internal propulsion, just beneath the surface, running straight and true at 50 knots.
The Japanese planes continued on the same track, descending to the height of the Lexington’s flight deck or even lower, nearly grazing her bow as they passed. Antiaircraft gunners claimed one at point-blank range—the explosion was so close aboard that fragments of flaming aluminum skittered across her flight deck. “I had to fly directly above the waves to escape the enemy’s shells and tracers,” said Shimazaki. “In fact, when I turned away from the carrier, I was so low that I almost struck the bow of the ship, for I was flying below the level of the flight deck. I could see the crewman on the ship staring at my plane as it rushed by. I don’t know that I could ever go through such horrible moments again.”
Torpedoes were in the water to port and starboard, and dive-bombers were hurtling down from overhead, but Captain Sherman appeared completely unperturbed, as if the Lexington fought off such an attack every day of the week. “From my bridge I saw bombers roaring down in steep dives from many points in the sky, and torpedo planes coming in on both bows almost simultaneously,” he later w
rote. “There was nothing I could do about the bombers, but I could do something to avoid the torpedoes.” In an even tone, he told the helmsman, “Hard astarboard.” The long axis of the Lexington’s hull was agonizingly slow to respond, even with more than 30 knots of speed. The captain recalled that she turned “majestically and ponderously,” and that those moments “seemed an eternity.”
A trail of foam marked the track of each torpedo as it closed the range toward the ship. Some were “porpoising”—alternately breaking the surface and then diving. Johnston watched the submerged missiles with dismay, and realized that the Lex was not going to dodge them all. “Their wicked noses look to me like death incarnate. I have the illusion they are alive, and breaking water to peek at us, only to dive again after having made sure of their courses.”
The ascending shriek of the dive-bombers served notice that bombs were about to fall from above. The Aichi D3A1 Type 99s, with their distinctive fixed landing gear, were streaking down in near-vertical dives, spaced out at regular intervals. They released one by one, at about 1,500 feet. Each bomb, a sinister black dot, separated from the fuselage and took a divergent trajectory as the aircraft began to pull out of its dive. The first several fell astern, into the Lexington’s wake, and several more fell close abeam. Each near miss was marked by a deep, rippling explosion that seemed to come from within the hull itself; each blast threw up a white waterspout to the height of the carrier’s highest masts, and soaked men stationed on the catwalks. One 242-kilogram high-explosive bomb struck forward, near the port forward 5-inch gun gallery. A blinding reddish flash reached to a height of 50 feet. The entire marine gun crew was wiped out, and firefighting teams hurried over to extinguish the flames. Another projectile came within a few feet of hitting the island itself, but missed and fell into the sea. A third hit the Lexington’s big smoke funnel, high on its port side, killing several of the gunners stationed on the catwalks around the rim. A near miss had cut a rod that operated the ship’s steam siren, jamming it open so that it screamed without interruption for the next several minutes while the battle continued.
A second wave of torpedo planes approached in a shallow glide on the Lexington’s port quarter, through an intense barrage of antiaircraft fire. They dropped their fish at a range of 1,000 yards and continued over the ship, strafing the carrier’s deck as they flew over her. The Lexington twisted and turned on a violent serpentine path. Her screening destroyers and cruisers, which the enemy planes had completely ignored, were unable to remain in their circular formation.
With a dozen Japanese torpedoes converging on his carrier, Captain Sherman realized he was powerless to avoid them all. But not all of the weapons were functioning correctly—two that had seemed sure to hit the Lexington apparently dove right under her keel, and were seen to emerge on the opposite side. Another pair ran parallel, one on either side of the ship about 50 yards away, and an officer on the navigation bridge shouted: “Don’t change course, Captain! There’s a torpedo on each side of us running parallel!” Sherman held course until they passed ahead and disappeared. But at 11:20 a.m., the Lexington’s luck ran out. She was struck by two torpedoes in quick succession, on her port side, forward and amidships. Unlike the bomb blasts, these submerged explosions were muffled, but the great carrier’s entire hull lurched and shuddered with enough violence to throw men from their feet. Beaver recorded that the two blasts “seemed to lift the ship’s entire bulk right out of the water and let it fall back into the sea in a series of up-and-down bounces that had the masts staggering and the rigging jingling. Bits of old paint and the dust of fourteen years was jarred from the ship’s secret cracks and crannies.” The first blast punctured the port aviation gasoline tanks and released gasoline vapors that would later ignite a crippling internal explosion. The second severed a water main, which had the doubly destructive effect of cutting water to the firehoses and to several of the engine boilers. The ship listed 7 degrees to port, and a heavy oil slick trailed in her wake.
The last of the Japanese planes were escaping low over the carrier’s bow, chased by mostly ineffective antiaircraft fire. “They were curious and sort of thumbed their noses at us,” said Stroop of the Japanese aircrews. “We were shooting at them with our new 20-mm and not hitting them at all. The tracers of the 20-mm were falling astern of the torpedo planes.” Several Japanese aircraft raked the ship with their machine guns as they flew over. Then they were gone, shrinking into black specks on the horizon, and the antiaircraft guns fell silent. The entire action had lasted less than twelve minutes.
The sea around the ship was littered with burning debris and downed airplanes. Two miles away, a plume of black smoke could be seen rising from the Yorktown. She had apparently taken a hit on her flight deck, amidships.
The Lex’s damage control teams appeared to have the situation well in hand. Between 11:45 a.m. and noon, Captain Sherman received a series of upbeat reports from Commander H. R. “Pop” Healy, the chief damage control officer, who was supervising the coordinated efforts of several hundred men from his command center below the hangar deck. Two Japanese torpedoes had struck the Lexington below the waterline, and thousands of tons of water had entered the hull, causing her 7-degree list—but Healy’s men were isolating the damage by sealing off flooded compartments and shoring up bulkheads, and the list was soon corrected by pumping fuel and fresh water from port tanks into empty starboard tanks. Medical corpsmen were collecting the wounded and transferring them down to the hospital on stretchers. Firefighting crews were smothering the fires with foamite, and by 11:45 a.m., no more smoke could be seen emerging through the flight deck. Men were patching over the damage inflicted near the port forward gun gallery with fresh steel plates. Both the fore and aft elevators were jammed in the up position, rendering it impossible to transfer aircraft to or from the hangar deck, but the flight deck was still able to launch and recover planes. The Lexington’s engines were in good working condition, and even with the wounds in her hull, she could do 25 knots and maneuver briskly.
To aircrews of returning airplanes, looking down at the ship from above, nothing seemed amiss. “She looked okay from the air,” Lieutenant Gayler later recalled. “It was only when I landed . . . I looked around and some of the faces were looking sort of strange. Then I saw flecks of firefighting foam all over the deck and I knew she had been hit.”
Admiral Fitch and Captain Sherman had good reason to believe that the Lexington could stand up to two torpedo hits and two topside bomb hits. She had been designed to absorb that much punishment and more. The damage control squads had trained long and hard, and they were well equipped and well led. An hour after the action, it appeared that the Lexington was nearly squared away. She seemed capable of fighting off another enemy air attack, should one come. “We felt like throwing out our chests at our condition after the attack,” wrote Sherman. “But our satisfaction was soon to be changed to apprehension.”
The carrier’s aviation gasoline storage tanks, installed on her port side against the inner hull, had been ruptured by the two torpedo blasts. There was no visible fuel leak, but the odor of gas fumes was unmistakable throughout the compartments adjoining the IC motor generator room. Highly combustible vapors were spreading through the lower regions of the ship like a malignant virus, and because the exact location of the leak could not be pinpointed, there was no obvious way to contain the problem.
At 12:47 p.m., a tremendous explosion rocked the ship. From his post on the bridge, the captain thought the blast had seemed to come from the “bottom” of the carrier, just above her keel. Almost at once, oily black smoke boiled up around the edges of the elevators on the flight deck. Internal telephone connections had cut out, so runners were sent below to receive Commander Pop Healy’s verbal report. They descended the steel ladders into a Stygian warren lit by battle lanterns, choked with smoke, and crowded with grievously wounded men who were crying out for help. Central Station, Healy’s damage control command post, had been completely wiped out wi
th the loss of twenty-five lives, and the compartments around it were a raging inferno. Steel doors had been ripped from their hinges all along a 300-foot length of corridor leading to the hospital in the bow. A lieutenant described having been lifted up and thrown against a bulkhead by “a gale of wind with the force of a hurricane. . . . The wind seemed to be made up of streams of flame and myriads of sparks. . . . The flames were between a cherry red and white, and the sparks were crimson. The gale lasted for only a few seconds and left nothing but heavy choking fumes. There were cries from the surrounding rooms, so I shouted at the top of my voice: ‘Take it easy and hold your breath, and we’ll all get out.’”
Firefighting gangs descended into that hellish world, dragging long hoses behind them. They wore masks against the smoke, breathed from portable oxygen tanks, carried flashlights to light the way, and when the water pressure in their hoses failed, they turned handheld chemical extinguishers on the advancing flames. The sweat ran into their eyes and they became light in the head—but they fought on, enduring the ovenlike heat, the choking smoke, and the constant threat of new explosions. They dragged the burned and wounded men to the ladders and carried them up to the hangar deck, where medical corpsmen had commandeered plane-handling dollies to transport the stretchers aft.
Though Sherman and Fitch did not yet know it, the Lexington had entered a vicious spiral that would end in her total loss. By tearing open watertight doors and bulkheads, the first internal gasoline explosion had allowed volatile fumes to circulate more widely through the ship, and the damage control teams could no longer seal off and isolate the critical areas. New explosions rippled through the ship every ten to fifteen minutes. Fuel tanks were further damaged, bleeding their combustible fluids into the inferno. Water mains were crushed or cracked, causing the pressure in the firehoses to diminish and then fail entirely. Electrical mains fell to the advancing flames, cutting out power and leaving the lower decks in darkness. The chemical extinguishers and oxygen tanks began to run low. Firefighters fell wounded and had to be evacuated by their mates. Even in areas where the watertight doors were shut and sealed, the fire heated the bulkheads to such a degree that the paint on the opposite sides ignited, allowing the flames to penetrate through the steel walls. There was a second devastating explosion at 2:42 p.m. and a third at 3:25 p.m., and by that time it was clear that the fires were unmanageable.
