Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

by Ian W. Toll

  Almost as an afterthought, he added the obvious: “The successful conclusion of the operation now commencing will be of great value to our country.”

  Chapter Twelve

  IN THE SECOND WEEK OF MAY, DURING THE FINAL, HARRIED PREPARATIONS for the Midway offensive, the Yamato put into the naval base at Kure to load provisions and undergo minor repairs. Shrugging off the risk of a public scandal, Yamamoto invited Chiyoko Kawai, the famed geisha who had become his surrogate wife, to take the train down from Tokyo. They checked into a small inn in the city under false names. Returning to the flagship four days later, the admiral wrote her: “I myself will devote all my energy to fulfill my duty to my country to the very end—and then I want us to abandon everything and escape from the world to be really alone together.” He closed with a few lines of verse:

  Today too I ache for you,

  Calling your name

  Again and again

  And pressing kisses

  Upon your picture.

  Kure harbor was bustling with activity. Ships came and went; warships embarked crates and casks from lighters; yellow tugs plied to and fro, trailing thick black smoke from their stacks. It seemed that the entire civil population of Kure, and perhaps all of coastal Japan, knew of the upcoming operation. One officer was quizzed about it by his barber. “I personally felt angry,” recounted Ensign Takeshi Maeda of the Kaga, because senior naval officers “talked about our secret plans for the upcoming Midway operation to the prostitutes in the red-light district. Prior to our departure everyone was talking about our Midway plans, so it wasn’t a secretive mission like the Pearl Harbor attack . . . this was a bad omen.” As the Kaga prepared to sail, women pressed against the fence at the entrance to the base, calling out to the men they knew and wishing them farewell.

  On the 21st, major fleet units put to sea for two days of fleet maneuvers, and then returned to Hashirajima anchorage on May 25. Final details of the grand sortie were disseminated to the fleet. Tactical groups would depart independently, according to a meticulous timetable, from three different staging points—Hashirajima; Ominato harbor in northern Honshu; and Saipan, in the Marianas. Nagumo was forced to tell Yamamoto that Kido Butai, the carrier striking force, would not be prepared to sortie on May 26 as ordered. The crews were working at a breakneck pace to embark provisions and other supplies, but needed an extra day to complete the work. Yamamoto consented, but would not alter the operation’s timetable—if the carriers had to leave a day late, so be it; they could make up the lost time by fast steaming. Commanders and staff officers gathered for a party and toasted the emperor with cups of hot sake.

  Many in the fleet felt that they were being forced into a rushed, inflexible schedule. Maintenance and repairs were neglected; training exercises were cut short; the distribution of final orders was chaotic and slipshod. A destroyer captain assigned to escort the Midway invasion force later wrote: “Instinctively, I felt that something was wrong with this operation, and my heart was not buoyant.” Flight training was badly needed, and not only for the recently commissioned aviators. In aerial torpedo exercises held on May 18, even the veteran Nakajima Type 97 aircrews turned in disgracefully bad results. Dive-bombing drills held in the western Inland Sea had to be drastically curtailed because of the time spent by the airmen in flying to and from the remote site. Aerial gunnery, formation flying, and carrier takeoff and landing exercises were similarly neglected for lack of time. “Since the carriers were undergoing repair and maintenance operations,” Nagumo later observed in his post-battle report, “the only available ship for take-off and landing drills was the Kaga. She was kept busy from early morning to nightfall but even at that the young fliers barely were able to learn the rudiments of carrier landings. The more seasoned fliers were given about one chance each to make dusk landings.”

  On the morning of May 27, Nagumo’s flagship Akagi raised a signal to her signal yard: “Sortie as scheduled!” The carriers and their screening vessels heaved their anchors out of the Hashirajima mud and steamed out toward the Bungo Strait. Crews of moored ships lined the rails and waved their caps in the air, and Ensign Maeda of the Kaga recalls being sent off by “military marching songs” blared from the loudspeakers. Anti-submarine seaplanes of the Kure Naval Air Corps circled protectively overhead, but despite several false alarms, no enemy submarines were sighted. “Through scattered clouds the sun shone brightly upon the calm blue sea,” Fuchida wrote. “For several days the weather had been cloudy but hot in the western Inland Sea, and it was pleasant now to feel the gentle breeze which swept across Akagi’s flight deck.” By noon, Kido Butai had emerged from Bungo Strait into the open ocean, and the Akagi signaled the destroyers and cruisers to assume their normal circular cruising disposition, spaced at intervals of 1,000 yards. The carriers sailed in two columns at the center of the ring.

  Night passed uneventfully, and on the morning of the 28th, the sun revealed a clear blue sky. The carrier crews were relaxed and in good spirits. In port they had bent might and main to get their ships to sea, and now, in these tedious days of open-ocean cruising, they were grateful for the chance to catch their breath. Men sunned themselves, played cards, smoked, read, and wrote letters. They assembled on deck each afternoon to sing patriotic and sentimental songs at the top of their lungs. They ate better than usual, having recently laid fresh victuals into the galleys; by tradition, on the eve of an expected battle, they were served shiruko (red-bean soup with rice cake). The officers enjoyed other, more sumptuous delicacies such as broiled sea bream served in miso. Kido Butai churned through the gray waters of the North Pacific at 14 knots, the better to conserve fuel. Refueling from tankers continued en route, almost constantly: most ships in the force refueled at least twice during the passage. Search patrols were sent out from the cruisers and carriers; a combat air patrol orbited ahead throughout the long daylight hours. “White clouds drifted lazily across the sky,” recalled Yeoman Mitsuharu Noda. “The thin smoke which poured out of the stacks hung in the air like summer clouds over a field in May.”

  On June 1, Kido Butai left the clear weather behind and sailed into a zone of heavy overcast, rain showers, and low-lying mists. By early evening, visibility had fallen to a few hundred feet. In such a fog, with a fleet of that size, there was a real and constant danger of collisions, and every ship posted extra lookouts to peer into the obsidian gloom. Searchlights cut through the gray murk, and fog buoys were trailed in the wakes of all ships to give following vessels a proximity warning. Nagumo deemed it safe to discontinue their anti-submarine zigzagging course, and the speed of the striking force was cut to 12 knots.

  At dawn the next day, from the Plexiglas windows of Akagi’s bridge, Nagumo and his officers gazed out at impenetrable whiteness in every direction, as if the ship were enclosed by four plaster walls. Even during intermittent periods of slightly better visibility, the nearest ships in the formation could be discerned only as ghostlike shapes. Operational plans called for a course change on June 2, but Akagi was to order the change using blinker lights, and the fog rendered that impossible. Nagumo was under a strict injunction to maintain radio silence. But he decided to transmit the order using a low-powered voice radio, which he hoped would not carry beyond a few miles. At ten-thirty that morning, Akagi broadcast the order to the task force: “At 1200 hours, change to course 100 degrees.” As noon came, the task force turned and began its final approach toward Midway on a south-southeast heading.

  The Japanese had no reliable recent intelligence on the whereabouts of the American carriers, or even on the state of American naval strength at Pearl Harbor. For that information, Yamamoto had counted on long-range reconnaissance flights by Kawanishi flying boats operating out of the Marshalls. But Nimitz had sent a destroyer and seaplane tender to prevent the Kawanishis from refueling at French Frigate Shoals, forcing Yamamoto to cancel those flights on May 31. Yamamoto’s second source of intelligence was to have been a picket line of submarines, spread out between Oahu and Midway;
but the two American task forces traversed that position before the Japanese submarines reached their assigned stations. Thus the Japanese had no clue that the American carriers were even north of the equator, let alone lying in ambush on Nagumo’s eastern flank.

  On June 3, more than 1,000 miles to the north of Kido Butai, the light carriers Ryujo and Junyo launched a predawn strike on Dutch Harbor. Though the defenders knew the raid was coming, and met the enemy planes with heavy antiaircraft fire, the bombers inflicted heavy damage on the port facilities, and killed about twenty-five men. Four days later, Japanese forces stormed the beaches of the remote fog-shrouded islands of Kiska and Attu against minimal resistance.

  June 3 also marked the first direct encounter between American planes and the Japanese fleet converging on Midway. Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka’s troop transportation group, approaching Midway from the southwest, had passed under the shadow of the atoll’s far-ranging air search radius. Nine army B-17s under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Walter C. Sweeney took off from Midway at 12:40 p.m., and flew west to attack the group. Locating Tanaka’s convoy at 4:23 p.m., they dropped their 600-pound bombs from between 8,000 and 12,000 feet. Six months of war had provided abundant evidence that high-altitude bombing of ships at sea was fruitless, and this case was no different. The Japanese crews watched the bombs fall from high overhead, and steered their ships to avoid them. All of Sweeney’s bombs fell into the sea, some missing by more than half a mile. The Japanese destroyers returned fire with their antiaircraft guns, but they could not reach the altitude of Sweeney’s planes with any degree of accuracy. Divested of their bombs, the B-17s turned home toward Midway.

  The encounter served only to boost the morale of the Japanese. “We were well aware that we were advancing against a fully prepared enemy,” wrote Lieutenant Commander Tameichi Hara, skipper of one of the destroyers, “but I was no longer ill at ease. The attempts thus far against our convoy had been furtive and feeble.” A group of four American PBY seaplanes armed with torpedoes came upon Tanaka’s group and attacked at 1:30 a.m. on the morning of the 4th. One torpedo struck an oil tanker, the Akebono Maru, killing a dozen sailors. But the oiler was able to continue east with her speed undiminished. The Japanese now knew that their presence had been revealed, but took comfort in the relative ineffectiveness of the American attacks.

  At midday on the 3rd, Kido Butai raised speed to 24 knots. A strong combat air patrol circled overhead, as always, and additional Zeros were fueled and spotted for a quick launch in case of a sudden air attack. At first light on the 4th, the force altered its cruising formation for flight operations. The four carriers edged apart into a “box” pattern, each separated from the others by several miles. Extra lookouts were posted, and several false contacts were reported, one of which turned out to be a star.

  Reconnaissance floatplanes were launched by catapult from the cruisers Chikuma and Tone. Though the force had sailed out of the heavy weather front that had dogged it for the past three days, those same murky conditions remained just to the northeast, and the search patterns would have to be flown directly into this zone of poor visibility. Intermittent squalls and cumulus overcast with ceilings of 1,000 to 3,000 feet would make it difficult for the scouts to see anything at all. It was conceivable that they would fly directly over an enemy fleet and fail to see it.

  The plane crews had been roused from their bunks at 2:30 a.m., and toiled throughout the predawn hours to arm and fuel the attack planes for launch. Then they pushed the planes into the elevators and spotted them on the flight deck. This was accomplished before the first glow of dawn rose on the eastern horizon. When each machine had been tethered down to its assigned position, its wings were unfolded and locked into position. A crewman climbed into the cockpit to fire the engine, and tongues of blue flame flashed from the exhaust pipes. The engine was run steadily at 1,000 to 1,500 rpm, allowing it to warm; the mechanics watched and listened to confirm that it was turning smoothly. Then the throttle was pushed forward and the engine howled at near-maximum rpm. “The sound of engines alternately hummed and then rose to a whining roar,” wrote Fuchida. “The flight deck was soon a hell of ear-shattering noise.”

  At 4:15 a.m., with the ships still in darkness, the aircrews were summoned from their ready rooms by the loudspeaker: “Airmen line up!” The aviators, bundled in their brown flight suits and helmets, emerged on the flight deck and gathered around the island, where they were briefed by their squadron leaders. Then they spread out among the maze of planes, climbed onto the wings, and slid down into their cockpits. The hooded deck lights at the center and margins of the decks provided a takeoff path in the darkness. On the flight deck of each carrier, the ship’s radio antennae were lowered into the horizontal position to allow room for the sweep of the wings as the planes took off. It was a calm night, with an easy breeze from the southeast, and fine visibility over a moonlit sea.

  The four carriers of Kido Butai turned into the wind, and Nagumo gave the order: “Launch the air attack force.” Genda relayed the order via speaker tube, while the flagship’s signal lamps began flashing the order to Akagi’s three sisters. A stream of white vapor was released from a stack at the bow, an indicator of wind direction. An officer on the air platform waved a white flag; a figure standing forward on the flight deck swung a green signal lantern in a wide circle; the deck crewmen pulled away the wheel chocks; the lead pilot pushed his throttle forward and lifted his feet from the brakes. The first plane clattered down the teak decks and lifted into the air, red and green lights on its wingtips. It banked left and began the well-honed rendezvous routines that allowed the air groups of multiple carriers to coalesce into one large flight formation, a trick the Americans had not yet mastered. By 4:45 a.m. the entire force, 108 planes, was aloft—they wheeled around the fleet in a wide counterclockwise corkscrew pattern, and droned away to the southeast at 125 knots.

  MIDWAY, A LOW-LYING RING OF SAND AND SCRUB, was armed to the teeth and ready to receive the enemy. Radar discovered the incoming strike at 5:53 a.m. The air-raid alarm rang out, though the atoll’s defenders were already wide awake and at their stations. By 6:15 a.m., Midway had managed to get every serviceable aircraft aloft, so none could be caught on the ground. One of the search planes, a Catalina PBY piloted by Lieutenant William A. Chase, caught sight of the incoming armada, and transmitted his report at once, in plain language: “Many planes heading Midway bearing 320 degrees, distance 150.”

  As the Japanese planes rose over the northern horizon, the marine antiaircraft gunners were ready and waiting at their gun emplacements, well concealed under camouflage netting. They sent up a wall of flak as the intruders came into range. Several Japanese bombers took heavy damage in the first minutes of the action and went into the sea trailing smoke and flame. The antiaircraft fire was so thick in volume, and so densely distributed around the circumference of the atoll, that it appeared to take the shape of a cylindrical wall. The Hiryu’s after-action report noted of these weapons: “the accuracy is excellent, and the anti-aircraft fire is intense.”

  The same was not true of Midway’s fighter defenses. Marine Fighting Squadron 221 was equipped with twenty obsolete Brewster Buffalos, the same aircraft that had been massacred by the Zeros over Malaya. There were only four F4F Wildcats on the atoll. In an aerial melee, the Zeros destroyed virtually every one of Midway’s fighter planes, while losing none. With no fighters left to oppose them, the carrier bombers lined up to make their attacking runs. They concentrated their efforts on the buildings, hangars, fuel drums, and ammunition pits, and inflicted heavy damage on the atoll’s installations. Power and gas lines to Eastern Island were knocked out. The mess hall, hangars, and oil tanks were left as burning ruins. The Japanese airmen did little damage to the antiaircraft batteries, however, and they avoided the runways, as they would need them in serviceable condition after capturing the islands. Most of the men on the ground survived by taking cover in concrete dugouts and slit trenches. The antiaircraft batteries w
ere almost unscathed, and Midway’s air force, with the exception of its ill-fated fighters, was still intact.

  The attackers had lost eleven aircraft in the action, and more than twice that number damaged; twenty aviators had been killed or downed in the sea, and several more were injured. Those losses were not devastating, but if the Japanese were ordered to make several more strikes on the atoll, the cumulative losses would multiply. Once rid of their bombs, the Japanese planes rendezvoused west of the islands. At 6:45 a.m., they began their return flights to the carriers, joining up in flight formation as best they could. Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga, the leader of the attack force, radioed back to Nagumo advising that a second strike was needed.

  Akagi began cycling her combat air patrol—landing the defending Zeros for refueling, and launching new ones to take their place. This was a housekeeping task that Nagumo hoped to complete before Tomonaga’s reappearance, so that the flight decks would be clear to recover the returning airplanes.

  A few minutes after 7 a.m., the first of several small, assorted groups of American airplanes from Midway arrived to attack the Japanese carriers. All of these attacks would be bravely carried out but ineffective, scoring no hits on any Japanese ship. But the continuous pressure of new air attacks, however ineffectual, put the Japanese off balance, and began to deform Yamamoto’s painstaking plans. These first air attacks on Kido Butai limited Nagumo’s flexibility to react to the morning’s various twists of fate, and started a chain of events that would climax, three hours later, in the most decisive five minutes of the entire Pacific War.