by Ian W. Toll
By 10:26 a.m., all three carriers had suffered terrible blows. None would land or launch an airplane ever again, and by the following morning all would be abandoned by their surviving crews and sent to rest on the bottom of the sea.
AS THE THREE STRICKEN CARRIERS BURNED, the American air groups fled the vengeful Zeros and antiaircraft gunners. All of the retreating aircraft were now at low altitude—the TBDs because they attacked and launched their fish from low altitude, the Wildcats because they had accompanied the torpedo planes, the SBDs because they had pulled out of their dives a few hundred feet above the sea. The dive-bombers and torpedo planes, rid of their bombs and torpedoes, and low on fuel, were lighter, faster, and more maneuverable than they had been. Many escaped safely through gaps in the screening vessels. As Lieutenant Dickinson pulled out of his dive on the Kaga, he was less than 100 feet above the sea. Looking back, he saw three Zeros on his tail. A destroyer lay dead ahead, and her antiaircraft batteries opened up on him. Flak bursts blossomed above and below him; he dived or climbed to avoid the anticipated range corrections. Two or three miles farther, when he had shaken the Zeros and flown out of range of the gunners, Dickinson looked back and saw three columns of fire and smoke, marking the positions of the Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu.
Tom Cheek of Fighting Three, separated from his wingmen in a wild aerial melee, heard a command shouted through his radio—“Group rendezvous! Rendezvous!”—but he could see none of his squadron mates through his windshield, nor any friendly planes of any squadron. The prearranged rendezvous point was twenty miles north of the Japanese task force, but in that direction lay more enemy ships, and Cheek was too low on fuel to take any but the most direct route home. He chose a heading that seemed likely to take him back to “Point Option,” where he was to find his carrier, the Yorktown.
The American air groups were spread out all over the sky, flying alone or in small groups. Some of the flyers had been shot or taken shrapnel, and were bleeding under their flight suits. The environment in the cockpit grew punishing. The men struggled with heat, sweat in their eyes, mental and physical fatigue, improperly functioning gas masks. No airplane had gas to spare, and many did not have enough left in their tanks to reach home. From the time they left the scene of battle, the American aircrews’ entire effort was bent to the task of navigating back to their carriers with their limited fuel reserves. Each pilot had to make continuous corrections for a host of variables—his position, airspeed, compass headings, wind direction and velocity, the imputed speed and heading of the carrier. He had to monitor perhaps a half a dozen different instrument readings, including fuel, time, rpm, airspeed, manifold pressure, and the “needle and ball.” Calculating wind velocity was more art than science—flyers studied the sea beneath them, judging the play of wind on waves, noting whether spray was being blown from the whitecaps.
In theory, the American aircraft could follow a “YE-ZB” radio homing signal, a coded bearing transmitted by each carrier to a receiver in the radioman-gunner’s cockpit. If a pilot was receiving a clear signal, he could simply fly the reciprocal heading back to his carrier. But many of the American planes were returning at low altitude, beneath the line-of-sight horizon to the antennae atop the carriers. With their fuel tanks running dangerously low, they could not afford to climb above that horizon in search of the homing signal. They had to find their way home by dead reckoning.
Lacking fuel to search for his squadron mates, Lieutenant Dickinson turned his Dauntless home and flew on alone. Even leaning his fuel mixture to the utmost limit, he would barely make it to Point Option; and even if he reached the task force, he doubted he would have enough fuel to make a carrier landing. Flying his easterly course in fine visibility, he caught sight of a pattern of wakes ahead in the distance. With about twenty miles yet to fly, the arrow on Dickinson’s fuel gauge bounced on zero and the engine “began to sputter and miss.” He was going down. He unbuckled his parachute and cleared his harness; he disconnected the radio cord from his helmet; he cleared away any gear that would prevent him from exiting the cockpit in seconds. With his last few drops of fuel he turned into the wind, put down his flaps, dropped to a few feet above the wavetops, nosed up, gave the engine a last burst of throttle and then chopped it. With his propeller windmilling, he dead-sticked his SBD into the oncoming waves.
The impact was surprisingly violent, and Dickinson braced his hand against the instrument panel to protect his head. In seconds he had unbuckled his safety belt and climbed out of the cockpit. Standing on the right wing, he pulled the lanyard of his CO2 cylinder and inflated his life jacket. His radio-gunner climbed onto the other wing. They did not bother with their rubber rafts; the fleet was so close that they could expect to be picked up in short order. They stepped into the sea. Within a minute, the propeller and cowling went under, dragged by the weight of the engine; the dripping tail lifted from the sea; and the entire aircraft dived from view. A friendly destroyer was already bearing down on them, the faces of her crew staring down curiously.
Tom Cheek cruised toward home at 1,500 feet, just beneath the cloud ceiling, hoping to sight the ships of the American task force. He gave up trying to raise his squadron mates on the radio. He could not find the Yorktown’s homing signal. For a long while he could see nothing but the North Pacific wastes stretching away in every direction. At last, off his right wingtip, he caught sight of a “faint streak of white on the blue-grey water.” It was a “genuine made-in-the-USA destroyer.” He turned to follow her, dropping to 500 feet, and eventually caught up to the Yorktown. He entered the landing circle, cranked down his landing gear, and got a “cut” from the LSO on his first approach. His tailhook missed the arresting wire, and his plane somersaulted over the barrier and landed upside down on the deck. Cheek had balled himself forward to protect his head from the coming impact, and was unharmed in the crash. To the crewmen who came running to peer under the plane, he shouted: “Get this SOB off of me!” They lifted the tail, giving him enough room to crawl out on deck.
Having seen nothing of the battle, the carrier crews were naturally eager to learn as much as they could from the returning airmen. As the pilots climbed out of their cockpits, curious deckhands, bundled in their bulky canvas life vests, crowded around them and asked questions. In the interest of keeping up crew morale, bridge officers had provided regular updates over the loudspeaker system, and the sailors had given these announcements their full attention. At one point during the battle, Alvin Kernan recalled, “An information officer on the Enterprise tried to draw a map with chalk on the huge gray side of the stack, so that all on deck could follow the battle, and we were fascinated at the idea of being given information; but every fifteen minutes the man on the painting scaffold suspended from the top of the stack changed the location and size of the fleets.” The truth was that no one, not even Admirals Fletcher or Spruance, knew precisely how the battle was unfolding. It was too big, too spread out; too much was happening at once, and what little data could be pieced together may or may not be reliable. They were all feeling their way through the fog of war.
For the aviators who returned safely, survival was bittersweet. They had lost many friends. Ensign Fisher, after landing on the Hornet, was shocked to learn that he was the only pilot of his squadron (VB-8) who had thus far returned, while none of the carrier’s fighter or torpedo planes had been accounted for. (Shortly thereafter, Ring and most of the other pilots of VS-8 landed safely.) Another VB-8 pilot who returned safely, Ensign Roy P. Gee, was likewise shocked to learn of the losses suffered by the carrier’s air group. “When I entered the VB-8 ready-room,” he said, “I was shocked to learn that none of VT-8’s fifteen TBDs nor VF-8’s ten F4Fs had returned, and that all the crews had been declared MIA. I went to the wardroom to get something to eat and paused to look at the empty chairs that were normally filled by my friends from VF-8 and VT-8.” Lieutenant Dickinson, who was aboard the destroyer that had fished him out of the sea, studied the planes landing on the Enterprise
through binoculars, trying to read the aircraft numbers so that he could know who among his squadron mates had survived. On the Enterprise, the fighters returned first, landing entirely unharmed and intact. Shortly afterward came four torpedo planes, all badly shot up. They were the only survivors of their squadron. One of the returning TBD pilots was so incensed at the lack of fighter support provided his squadron that he leapt out of his cockpit, drew his .45 automatic, and threatened to shoot the F4F squadron leader, Lieutenant James Gray. Others physically restrained and disarmed him.
The aviators were hungry, sweaty, and tired. They made their way down to the “admiral’s pantry” for coffee and sandwiches. They spoke excitedly about what they had seen and done, and as more and more airmen came aboard, it became increasingly evident that they had dealt the Japanese fleet a devastating blow. When the Enterprise SBD squadrons came aboard, the aircrews were jubilant. “They were shouting and laughing as they jumped out of the cockpit, and the ship that had been so somber a moment before when the torpedo planes returned became now hysterically excited,” recalled Kernan, who listened to their banter with growing exhilaration. “These were heroes dressed in their khaki and green nylon flight suits, carrying pistols and knives over their yellow Mae Wests, and describing with quick hands and excited voices how they had gone into their dives, released their bombs, and seen the Japanese flight decks open up in flames just below them.” As more planes came aboard, eyewitness after eyewitness corroborated the story. “There were three carriers,” Cheek told his squadron leader. “I saw bomb hits on all of them and I think one torpedo hit on one. They were all burning like hell when I left.”
As the hours dragged on, and none of the Hornet’s torpedo planes appeared, the mood on the carrier grew darker. Some voiced the hope that Waldron’s squadron had landed on Midway, but that seemed unlikely. All were aware of the shortcomings of the TBD Devastator. But what had happened to the Hornet’s fighters? No one could say, and no one would know for days. As the truth emerged, it became evident that the Hornet’s air group had had a disastrous morning. Her torpedo planes had been slaughtered; her fighters had lost their way and been forced to ditch at sea; her SBDs failed to find the enemy fleet, though most survived either by landing on Midway or by returning safely to the carrier. In sum, all of the Hornet’s TBDs had been destroyed; a third of her fighters had been lost; and a third of her dive-bombers had landed on Midway, though they would return to the carrier later that afternoon. With the exception of the fifteen TBDs of Waldron’s Torpedo Eight, all of which had been wiped out without scoring a hit on the enemy carriers, no Hornet aircraft had engaged the enemy.
THE THREE STRICKEN JAPANESE CARRIERS were engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the fires raging below their decks. Even if their hangars were not crammed wingtip to wingtip with aircraft that had been fueled up and armed with bombs and torpedoes, each ship was filled with other flammable materials to feed and nourish the flames. Their aviation fueling systems offered a network of highly combustible fuel-filled lines that transported the fire throughout the ships—forward and aft, down to the lower decks, down to the main storage tanks. Bombs, torpedoes, and ammunition were stored in racks and storage lockers in the hangars, or even scattered haphazardly along the deck, and many detonated within the hulls of the ships. The Japanese navy, with its overriding emphasis on offensive warfare, had neglected to train and prepare adequately for firefighting and damage control. The interior of the ships offered plenty of sustenance for the conflagration—wood flooring and furniture, internal timber support beams, cotton pipe insulation, cotton bedding. The galleys and ovens were caked with accumulated grease and oils. Firehoses and foam-spraying systems were installed on the hangar decks, but these systems were fed by water mains that were vulnerable to bomb or fire damage.
The Kaga, hit by four (possibly five) bombs, was in the worst shape of the three stricken carriers. Her hangar was engulfed by a maelstrom of fire, touching off bombs and torpedoes on the planes and in the storage rooms. Burned, mutilated, and mangled bodies were scattered along the length of the deck. No more than a handful of crewmen stationed there at the time of attack would survive. The fire mains were knocked out, as was the electric generator that powered the fire pumps. Smoke filled the enclosed space, and the lights cut out. The fuel mains were ruptured, pouring aviation gas onto the fires, which erupted in a blazing inferno. A few hideously burned survivors crawled through the wreckage and the scattered remains of their shipmates.
The Kaga’s fires spread so rapidly that they simply overwhelmed damage control efforts. Many of the men who had drilled in firefighting were either killed or so severely wounded that they could not function effectively. Lieutenant Takayoshi Morinaga, a Nakajima torpedo plane pilot, recalled that he and other survivors gamely tried to control the fires with old-fashioned bucket relays from the latrines, but “the water evaporated quickly, and it was useless.” Two or three minutes after the attack, munitions on the hangar deck detonated, and a rolling ball of fire and a mushroom cloud ascended to a height of several thousand feet above the ship. The sides of the ship were peeled open and thrown outward by the explosion, ejecting bodies, debris, and parts of aircraft into the sea. “Numerous explosions rocked Kaga over and over,” said another Nakajima pilot, Ensign Haruo Yoshino. “When I came to my senses and looked around, everyone who was there just a moment ago had disappeared.”
On the Soryu, the situation was much the same. The hangar deck had been penetrated by three bombs, the hangar crews had been decimated, and the secondary explosions of fuel and munitions quickly overwhelmed the efforts of damage control teams. By chance or fate, one bomb had struck in each of three separated compartments on the hangar deck, ensuring the complete devastation of the entire area. In the engine room, deep in the lower reaches of the ship, the men heard the tremendous explosions over their heads and realized that the space between them and the open air above decks was blocked by a sea of fire. Lieutenant Michitaro Naganuma recalled that the explosions caused the deck above their heads to warp downward, and tongues of flame shot out of the ventilation ducts. The temperature climbed quickly, and the supply of breathable air suddenly dropped. Within fifteen minutes of the attack, the Soryu’s officers had concluded that the ship was probably beyond saving, and Captain Ryusaku Yanagimoto ordered abandon ship. Many of the crew had anticipated the order—or, not receiving it, obeyed it anyway. Men leapt from the deck into the sea, driven overboard by the intolerable heat of the fires. Others were lifted from their feet by explosions and catapulted into the water.
At first, it seemed that the Akagi, having taken only one direct hit, was not as badly mauled as her two sisters. But that one bomb, having touched off a chain of powerful secondary explosions on her hangar deck, sealed her fate. Her fires quickly overpowered the firefighting squads by driving the men back, cutting the water mains, and killing the electrical power to the pumps. Captain Aoki ordered the magazines flooded, but water would not flow into the aft magazine, possibly because the valves had been damaged by the near miss off the stern. The conflagration descended into the lower hangar deck and found more fuel to feed upon. The crew, working with hand pumps, could not get enough water on the fire. “Firefighting parties, wearing gas masks, carried cumbersome pieces of equipment and fought the flames courageously,” Fuchida recalled. “But every induced explosion overhead penetrated to the deck below, injuring men and interrupting their desperate efforts. Stepping over fallen comrades, another damage-control party would dash in to continue the struggle, only to be mowed down by the next explosion.” Lieutenant (jg) Kiyoto Furuta, a Type 99 pilot, recalled that when the ship’s power plant was disabled, “our fire extinguishing pump didn’t work, and even if it worked, the pump would not have put out this inferno. So we just gave up trying to put out the blaze.”
It was clear that the Akagi could no longer serve as Nagumo’s flagship. The fire emerging from the flight deck threatened to consume the island. Admiral Nagumo was reluctant t
o leave the ship, insisting, “It is not time yet.” But Nagumo’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Kusaka, pressed him to transfer his flag to the light cruiser Nagara: “Sir, most of our ships are still intact. You must command them.” Captain Aoki added: “Admiral, I will take care of the ship. Please, we all implore you, shift your flag to Nagara and resume command of the force.” Tearfully, Nagumo assented. The bridge was filling with smoke, and the lower sections were engulfed in flames. The only route of escape was to descend by rope from the forward window of the bridge down to the deck. He and Kusaka did so. At 10:46 a.m., the two admirals went down a rope ladder from the anchor deck into a waiting launch to be taken to Nagara.
On the bridge of the Hiryu, flagship of Carrier Division 2, Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi and his staff watched the three burning carriers in horror and incredulity. The Soryu, second carrier of Carrier Division 2, was nearby, and her death throes were vivid to behold. A witness compared her to “a giant daikon radish that had been sliced in two. Now it was possible to see right through her to the other side.” Yamaguchi sent a profoundly unhelpful message: “Try to save your carrier!” (No reply was made, perhaps the most eloquent response possible under the circumstances.) Miles astern, the two carriers of Carrier Division 1 discharged towering columns of dense black smoke. Hiryu was the sole remaining carrier of Kido Butai capable of conducting flight operations, and the entire hopes of the Japanese navy now rested on her air group.
Showing all the alacrity and resolve that Nagumo had lacked earlier that morning, Yamaguchi elected to throw everything he had at the enemy, as quickly as possible, without waiting for a full deckload of planes or a balanced strike package. Getting the planes aloft was as much a defensive measure as an offensive one—the fate of Hiryu’s sisters had supplied an awful illustration of the consequences of being caught with fueled and armed planes on board. He had a flight of eighteen Type 99 “Val” dive-bombers fueled up and armed, and he ordered them into the air without delay. When the Hiryu’s Nakajima Type 97 torpedo planes were ready to launch, they would follow. If they could find and kill all three American carriers, the Midway invasion might go forward. If they could kill two, perhaps Akagi could be salvaged and the battle could be fought to a draw. On the other hand, the safe return of Hiryu’s air group was doubly important now that three Japanese flight decks were ablaze, so Yamaguchi urged his airmen to take no unwarranted risks, and to do their best to bring their planes and themselves back to the carrier.
