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

by Ian W. Toll

  Conditions on the Akagi were somewhat more manageable, and her crew labored mightily in hopes of saving her. At noon, with her fires still raging, her engines unexpectedly came back to life, and she surged ahead at low speed. But her rudder had been jammed to starboard by a near miss, and she could only travel in a wide clockwise pattern. The damage control parties managed to set up a pump on the bow and get it working, but the water pressure was pitiful and did little good. By 1:50 p.m., the engines had failed again, leaving the ship dead in the water. An hour later, a powerful explosion in the hangar deck caused the entire ship to shudder as if she was trying to tear herself apart. Lieutenant (jg) Kiyoto Furuta recalled that the Akagi did not seem to be in her death throes, but her flight deck amidships was glowing bright red. The crew fought on valiantly, but at 6 p.m., with the numbers of dead and wounded multiplying, Captain Aoki concluded that the cause was lost, and ordered abandon ship. Stretchers were winched down into boats sent by the destroyers, and men descended by ropes from both the bow and the stern, where they had retreated to escape the heat and the repeated explosions.

  At seven o’clock that evening, in the gathering dusk, the Enterprise and Hornet tucked themselves into bed. They had already brought their strike aircraft aboard, and began landing their last cycle of CAP. When Spruance radioed Fletcher to ask if he had any further instructions, the latter replied: “Negative. Will conform to your movements.” This was, in effect, a generous transfer of tactical command from Fletcher to his subordinate. With Yorktown abandoned, Task Force 17 had no air-striking capability, and Fletcher apparently concluded that he had no business directing a carrier duel from a cruiser. Moreover, Spruance could draw on the counsel of Halsey’s staff, the most experienced carrier air staff in the American fleet. Relinquishing tactical command mid-battle was an unusual step, but it did Fletcher credit.

  Spruance elected to stand off to the east until midnight, so as to keep the Japanese surface units safely at arm’s length. In the early morning hours of June 5, they would turn north, and then southwest, to put themselves under Midway’s air umbrella by dawn. The decision to pull back was conservative, because there was no great risk that the Japanese battleships and cruisers would find the American carriers in the dead of night. But Spruance’s prudence was consistent with Nimitz’s desire that he should avoid “exposure to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting, as a result of such exposure, greater damage to the enemy.” Retreating to the east would ensure that the American fleet would fight in the daylight, when it was most effective, and prevent the Japanese from bringing their comparative skill in night fighting to bear on the carriers.

  It was a controversial decision, even at the time. As a student of military history, Spruance was well aware that he might be committing the classic and recurring tactical error known as the “failure to pursue.” Lieutenant Commander Thach, who had fought a magnificent battle on June 4, urged Spruance to chase the Japanese fleet, even if it meant steaming headlong into the west all through the night. He told the admiral, on the flag bridge of the Enterprise, “I saw with my own eyes three big carriers burning so furiously they’ll never launch another airplane.” Spruance replied (in Thach’s version of the conversation the admiral wore a slight smile as he spoke): “Well, you know we don’t have any battleships. All we have are cruisers, and if we start chasing them, they may be able to chew us up before we can get within gun range at night, and we don’t have much of a night attack capability.”

  It had been a long day, and Spruance was aware that he needed sleep to remain fresh on June 5. At 1 a.m., he ordered a course change to the southwest, with a speed of only 15 knots, and then crawled into his bunk and fell asleep. Later he explained: “I had good officers with me; they knew their jobs; they would carry on. Why should I not sleep soundly? Besides, a mind that suffers from lack of sleep is not likely to be clear and have good judgment. So I had to sleep soundly.”

  THE FOUR JAPANESE CARRIERS blazed into the night, but none had been struck by a torpedo, leaving their hulls intact beneath their waterlines. If left alone, they would not sink; they would burn until the fires burned themselves out, leaving nothing but four charred, drifting hulks. In that case, they might be seized by the Americans and towed into Pearl Harbor. As military assets they would probably be worthless, apart from their scrap value—but as trophies of war, to be exhibited in newsreels and newspapers, they would make bravura propaganda showpieces. This the Japanese could not abide. Further, destroyers had been left to rescue survivors and to guard each floating inferno, but the fires and smoke might serve as beacons to attract enemy submarines or aircraft, putting the destroyers at serious risk. Moreover, the destroyers were needed for the night surface attack that Yamamoto had ordered. As painful as it was to contemplate, the Japanese now reckoned with the need to scuttle the stricken carriers.

  Kaga and Soryu were each torpedoed by Japanese destroyers between 7:15 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., though Nagumo’s post-action report obscured the fact by referring only to their “sinking.” At about the same time, Captain Aoki of the Akagi radioed Nagumo to ask permission to scuttle the former flagship, but the transmission was intercepted on the Yamato, and Admiral Yamamoto intervened to deny the request. Aoki then returned to the Akagi alone and lashed himself to an anchor, resigned to sharing his ship’s fate.

  Though he had been ordered to chase down and engage the American carriers, Nagumo continued to withdraw to the northwest, the still-burning Hiryu in company. Based on a misleading scouting report by a cruiser floatplane, he believed that the Americans had four operational carriers, and that they were headed west, directly toward him. He reported as much to Yamamoto at 9:30 p.m. But Nagumo’s transmission was received on the bridge of the Yamato with surprise and disgust. Other scouting reports, to which Nagumo was not privy, had correctly reported that the Americans were withdrawing to the east. Yamamoto’s staff was quick to blame Nagumo for the loss of the Japanese carriers, though he had acted according to the battle plan. Ugaki thought Nagumo’s decision to withdraw was “entirely passive,” and should be corrected by a “strong lashing order of the supreme command.”

  Yamamoto placed Admiral Kondo in tactical command of the pending operation—a humiliation from which Nagumo never recovered. Kondo was directed to rally all available surface forces, form a battle line, and chase the American carriers into the east. With luck, they would meet the enemy in a pitched battle sometime after 1 a.m. Nagumo appears to have simply ignored the order, and kept the remnants of Kido Butai on a northwesterly course.

  Within two hours, however, doubts crept into Yamamoto’s mind. Dawn was drawing steadily closer, and with it the prospect of devastating air attacks on his remaining forces. No new enemy contact reports arrived. Was he sending the fleet into a trap? All the senior staff officers had gone sleepless for the better part of twenty-four hours; fatigue and stress were taking a toll on the decision-making capabilities of the Japanese high command. None wanted to acknowledge defeat, but the danger of further crippling losses weighed more heavily on their minds as the night progressed. Ugaki judged that there was “little prospect of challenging the enemy with a night engagement before dawn,” and worried that the continued pursuit with daylight approaching risked “bringing the situation after dawn beyond control.” They had ordered Kurita’s cruisers to bombard Midway atoll without air cover, but it was clear that the cruisers would have to contend with Midway’s still-formidable air forces before coming within 200 miles of the islands. The hunters would become the hunted.

  At 12:15 p.m. on June 5, Yamamoto ordered Kurita to turn his cruisers around and retreat to the west; he instructed Kondo and Nagumo to reverse course and fall in with the Main Body. Plainly, these orders amounted to a declaration of defeat, and must be followed by a general retreat back to Japan. But the staff, passing through the stages of grief, could not bring themselves to admit it to themselves or each other. “Everyone inwardly recognized that we were defeated,” wrote Fuchi
da and Okumiya, “yet not a single member of the staff proposed suspension of the operation. Instead, they desperately cast about for a way to salvage something from the defeat. They were like drowning men grabbing at straws.” Commander Yasuji Watanabe proposed bringing the light carriers down from the Aleutians and reinforcing their small air groups with cruiser and battleship floatplanes. With luck, he said, they might inflict enough punishment on the American carriers to reduce the risk of a surface engagement. Captain Kuroshima proposed throwing all available surface units against Midway atoll, in hopes of knocking out the runways and destroying the islands’ defenses.

  Yamamoto and Ugaki listened to these desperate ploys, but rejected them with increasing vehemence. They were likely only to multiply the losses the Combined Fleet had already suffered. Inevitably, the officers turned to shogi metaphors. “You ought to know,” Yamamoto scolded Watanabe, “that of all naval tactics, firing one’s guns at an island is considered the most stupid.” He added: “In shogi too much fighting causes all-out defeat. One can lose everything.” Ugaki agreed, observing that the staff officers “ought to have known the absurdity of attacking a fortress with a fleet!”

  Yamamoto sealed his decision to withdraw with a bald statement: “This battle is almost coming to an end.”

  Watanabe, chastened, left the bridge and returned with a draft order calling for a general retreat. Yamamoto glanced at it and gave his approval. “DesOpOrd #161” was radioed to all commands at 2:55 a.m.:

  (1) The Midway Operation is cancelled.

  (2) The Main Body will assemble the Midway Invasion Force and the First Carrier Striking Force (less Hiryu and her escorts), and the combined forces will carry out refueling during the morning of 6 June at position 33ºN, 1700 E.

  (3) The Screening Force, Hiryu and her escorts and Nisshin will proceed to the above position.

  (4) The Transport Group will proceed westward out of range of Midway-based planes.

  One of the officers on Yamato’s bridge, with tears streaming freely down his face, asked what would become of Akagi. She was immobilized and burning. She could not be towed nor travel under her own power. No one on the Yamato was yet aware that the Kaga and Soryu had been scuttled, and the prospect of firing Japanese torpedoes into the flagship of Kido Butai was terrible to contemplate. Captain Kuroshima exclaimed, “We cannot sink the Emperor’s warships with the Emperor’s own torpedoes!” His passionate outcry silenced the bridge, Watanabe recalled, as “virtually all the members of Yamamoto’s staff choked and stopped breathing.” Yamamoto, a former skipper of the Akagi, was not unmoved. But there was no other alternative, he quietly replied; to allow her to fall into enemy hands was unacceptable. He added: “I was once the captain of the Akagi, and it is with heartfelt regret that I must order that she be sunk. I will apologize to the Emperor for the sinking of Akagi by our own torpedoes.”

  The message went out to Nagumo at 3:50 a.m.; Nagumo relayed the order to the destroyers standing by the Akagi. The torpedo specialists wept at the order, but carried it out. Four destroyers fired on the Akagi, tearing out her bowels, while the crews shouted: “Akagi banzai!” At 4:55 a.m., just as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, the former flagship of Kido Butai went under. “Gradually, our once magnificent ship began to tilt over and sank very slowly,” Lieutenant Hiroshi Suzuki recalled. “After the carrier was completely submerged underwater there was a very big explosion, and Akagi was gone.”

  The Hiryu had kept pace with the rest of Nagumo’s force until about 10 p.m., when she had gone dead in the water. She continued to burn furiously, surrounded by destroyers that played their hoses over the flames to little apparent effect. At midnight, a powerful explosion rocked the ship and reignited the fires on her hangar deck. “Half of the deck was completely burned away,” said Ensign Maruyama, “and because the edges remained, it looked like a huge casket. Also, in the pockets along the flight deck there were charred bodies of the men who had manned the machine guns. They were hit by the blast from the bombs. All around me I could smell burned flesh. However, what surprised me most was a big wall that was standing upright in front of the bridge area. When I looked more carefully at it, I realized this wall was actually part of the front elevator.”

  Shortly after midnight, Captain Tomeo Kaku ordered abandon ship, but the process unfolded at a stately, ceremonial pace. Eight hundred men assembled amidships, and stood to attention as Admiral Yamaguchi gave an emotional speech. The crew faced west, toward the Imperial Palace, and gave three “Banzais.” The battle ensign and admiral’s flag were lowered to the sounds of Kimigayo. Then the men began dropping down lines into the sea, where they would be picked up by the destroyer Makigumo.

  Yamaguchi and Kaku resolved to go down with the ship. Several other officers begged to join them, but Yamaguchi ordered them away, declaring, “Young men must leave the ship. This is my order.” To Captain Kaku, the admiral said, “There is such a beautiful moon tonight. Shall we watch it as we sink?” As the other men left the ship, they waved farewell with their caps. The destroyer Makagumo fired two torpedoes into the ship, and then left the scene.

  Incredibly, however, the Hiryu refused to go down. On the morning of the 5th, she was still afloat, and still emitting a long column of smoke. She had dozens of survivors aboard, including members of the engine-room gang who had made an improbable escape from the lower reaches of the burning vessel to reach the flight deck. At last, a few minutes after 9 a.m., the ship went down and the sea closed over her. Thirty-four survivors escaped in a cutter and were later picked up by the Americans.

  WITH HIS BLEAK PRONOUNCEMENT on the bridge of the Yamato—“This battle is almost coming to an end”—Yamamoto had resigned himself to the inevitable. The Combined Fleet, divided into half a dozen tactical groups that were hundreds or even thousands of miles apart, sped westward in headlong retreat.

  Dispossessed of air cover, the fleeing Japanese fleet units could expect to be pursued and assailed by enemy aircraft, and their overriding concern was to escape without further losses. The most vulnerable were the four cruisers of Admiral Kurita’s Cruiser Division 7, as they had drawn to within fifty nautical miles of Midway before receiving Yamamoto’s order to reverse course and make good their escape. At 2:15 a.m. on June 5, they were sighted and tracked by an American submarine, the Tambor. Shortly thereafter, the submarine was in turn spotted by lookouts on the cruiser Kumano. The reported contact threw the Japanese column into confusion. Kumano signaled a starboard turn to avoid a torpedo attack, but the third cruiser in the column, the Mikuma, turned too sharply and collided with her sister, the Mogami.

  Both ships exceeded 13,000 tons, and were traveling at better than 25-knot speed; the forces brought into play by the collision were spectacular and catastrophic. Mogami’s bow caved in, and was folded over at right angles to the port side, all the way back to the No. 1 turret. The damage shortened the hull by a full 40 feet. Somehow her engineers were able to get her underway at much-reduced speed. Mikuma trailed oil from a ruptured fuel tank, but her wounds were far more manageable. Two destroyers, Arashio and Asashio, were left behind to escort the damaged cruisers while the rest of Kurita’s force surged ahead.

  At dawn on the 5th, the cripples were still within air-striking range of Midway. A PBY flew overhead and reported the contact as “two battleships” on a heading of 264 degrees. The cruisers were subjected to heavy air attack from the remaining squadrons at Midway, including six SBD Dauntless dive-bombers and six SB2U Vindicators of VMSB-241, and later a squadron of eight army B-17s. None of these attacks scored a hit, but one of the Vindicators, damaged by antiaircraft fire, crash-dived on the Mikuma and struck a glancing blow on the ship’s rear turret. Mikuma survived and limped westward.

  Task Force 16 stayed close to Midway on June 5, in case a new Japanese attack on the atoll developed. Spruance did not receive definite confirmation that the Japanese were in general retreat until late morning, and by that time the Enterprise and Hornet were socked in by fog,
and flight operations were suspended. A few minutes after 3 p.m., both flight decks began launching more than fifty SBD dive-bombers to attack the fleeing stragglers at long range—more than 250 miles. They flew over a tremendous oil slick marking the spot of Hiryu’s sinking, and soon thereafter sighted a lone Japanese destroyer. That ship, the little 2,000-ton Tanikaze, had already been attacked by four Midway-based B-17s, whose bombs had (as usual) missed. She now endured the concentrated attentions of four different squadrons of SBDs—VB-3, VB-6, VS-6, and VS-5. With her speed dialed up to 30 knots, the Tanikaze went into a “snake dance”—hard astarboard, hard port, hard astarboard—and the whitewater columns of near misses towered over her on either side. Twenty-year-old Signalman Masashi Shibata leaned out of a window on the bridge and watched the Dauntlesses as they rolled into their dives. He shouted: “Enemy bomber right!” or “Enemy bomber left!” The skipper, Commander Motoi Katsumi, relayed instructions to the helmsman. Near misses killed several of her crew, but the Tanikaze somehow managed to avoid taking a single direct hit. Later, after sunset, she was attacked by five more B-17s from Midway. Altogether, she dodged some ninety bombs, one of the most extraordinary escapes in the entire war. The Enterprise and Hornet SBDs turned back in failing light to follow their carriers’ “YE” homing beacons home.

  On June 6, the third and final day of the Battle of Midway, Spruance resolved to make a last, all-out attempt to finish off the Mogami and Mikuma. At daybreak, Task Force 16 launched eighteen Dauntlesses to fly long search missions to the west; at 6:45 a.m., one such plane discovered the two damaged cruisers and two accompanying destroyers. The American flight decks began launching a large strike under the command of Stanhope Ring. They overtook the quartet of surface ships at 9:30 a.m. and launched a series of heavy dive-bombing attacks. With no Zeros in the air to oppose them, they took their time, circling and setting up their dives with painstaking care, and descending in small groups. Mogami was hit with two 500-pound bombs that caused her main gun turrets to collapse into her scoutplane hangar deck. Mikuma was hit at least five times and suffered two near misses, bringing her to a dead stop. She was set afire and devastated by secondary explosions belowdecks. Looking down from overhead, an American TBD radio-gunner compared her to “a huge bathtub, full of scrap iron and junk.” Mogami parted ways with her doomed sister, and eventually made her way back to Japan. Mikuma sank at dusk on the 6th, taking most of her crew of 888 down with her.