The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  Nagumo himself was less than 700 miles from Midway, girding for his final dash. At 6:07 A.M. Captain Masanao Oto’s five oilers dropped astern. The carriers inched up to 12 knots. No more right now—it was folly to go any deeper into patrol plane range than necessary during daylight hours. But by 3:00 P.M. the Admiral had to make his move if he was going to launch tomorrow at dawn. The engine room telegraphs rang, and the First Carrier Striking Force leaped forward at 24 knots.

  Down in the Akagi’s engine room Commander Yoshibumi Tanbo watched the great turbines respond. How he loved that place. He even took his meals there—rice balls with pickled plums amid the hot oil and pounding machinery. Topside, working parties were rigging stacked hammocks and coils of rope to protect the most exposed equipment from flying shrapnel. Overhead there were still plenty of clouds, but the weather was steadily improving, and at 7:30 Admiral Kusaka stood on the bridge watching the last rays of a magnificent Pacific sunset.

  A crash of gunfire shattered the evening calm—the escorting cruiser Tone began blazing away with her antiaircraft batteries. Three fighters roared off from the Akagi to investigate, and the whole task force scanned the sky. At 7:40 the Tone’s blinker explained she had spotted about ten enemy planes, but then lost them. Fourteen minutes later the Akagi’s fighters returned after a fruitless search. Clearly some lookout was getting the jitters.

  Not so the fliers. The months of solid victory had built that rarest kind of confidence—the faith that lets a man rest easily the night before a battle. The Kaga’s pilots turned in early, and when the air officer Commander Amagai checked a little later, they were all fast asleep. On the Soryu Juzo Mori inspected his bomber one last time, then went to bed as usual with his mother’s picture by the pillow.

  By midnight the Striking Force was less than 340 miles from Midway—about 110 from the launching point. At 2:30 A.M. on the 4th a lookout on the Akagi sounded another alert—a “light” from an enemy plane on the starboard beam. Another flurry of excitement; another false alarm. It wasn’t the first time in history a sailor had been fooled by a star.

  Admiral Nagumo knew better. The halfhearted Americans weren’t about to cause any trouble at this point. Later they might be goaded into action. His intelligence estimate explained it nicely: “Although the enemy lacks the will to fight, it is likely that he will counter attack if our occupation operations progress satisfactorily.”

  “LOGAN, I just know I can get them,” Massie Hughes urged in his deep Southern drawl as he talked with Commander Ramsey in the Midway command post dugout. It was around 3:00 A.M.; word had come through that the PBYs had hit the Japanese force hard; and now Hughes wanted to take some more PBYs and finish them off. He was a real fighter—an aggressive little middleweight boxer from Alabama—and sitting still was always hard for him.

  Ramsey was gently discouraging. It was now clear that this was only the Transport Group, that the Sunday punch was coming from the carriers hidden under those clouds to the northwest. He explained all this, but still it was difficult; they were only a few years apart at Annapolis, and he didn’t want to make it a question of rank. But he remained firm, and beyond tactical grounds there was another reason: Ramsey wanted Hughes to take over if anything happened to himself during the coming attack. He didn’t want to risk killing the next-in-line chasing a group of transports.

  Not that Ramsey didn’t appreciate the difficulty of just waiting. “I feel like a June bride,” he remarked. “I know it’s going to happen, but I don’t know what it will be like.”

  They all felt the same. It was a tense night, for everything was turning out exactly as the intelligence boys had said— first the raid on Dutch Harbor … then the invasion force discovered to the southwest … now, according to the same script, they’d really get it in the morning from that big force of carriers.

  Intelligence said they’d be coming in on a 320° bearing; so it was a serious group of PBY pilots who studied their patrol sector assignments that evening. When. Lieutenant Howard Ady of Squadron 23 checked the blackboard at the Sand Island BOQ, he saw he drew 315°. That meant he’d be flying out on 322½°, back on 307½°. As far as he was concerned, he was “elected.”

  After briefing, the usual bull session. Squadron 23 had a great collection of talkers, and tonight there was an extra treat: John Ford, the distinguished movie director, was on hand. In an imaginative stroke, Nimitz had sent him out to film whatever might happen. Now he was in the middle of everything, exasperating the supply people but delighting everyone with his tremendous enthusiasm. Far into the night he helped ease the tension with tales of glamorous Hollywood.

  “Oh, my God—now I’ve got a movie-ite!” was Captain Simard’s somewhat quaint reaction when Ford first appeared, but he too was soon won over, and now the problem was where to put this celebrity and still keep him alive. Simard finally decided the best place would be the upper part of the main powerhouse on Sand Island. It was relatively well protected and at the same time offered a superb vantage point. From there Ford could take his movies and at the same time give the underground command post a useful running account of what was going on.

  This solved, Captain Simard’s preparations were practically over. Everything had been done that could be done—even a touching talk to the navy yeomen and pharmacist’s mates chosen to make the last stand. With great feeling in his voice, Simard wished them all “good-bye and good luck.”

  Nearly everyone now seemed resigned to “another Wake Island”—that base’s capture remained a bitter memory. The officers removed their insignia to keep Japanese snipers from picking them off. In the harbor the PT boat crews prepared to make the landings as expensive as possible. One of the squadron’s officers had always refused to buy GI insurance; that afternoon he asked for the full $10,000 worth. Sorry, he was told, no forms available.

  The Marines were grimly determined. Captain McGlashan carefully burned most of the remaining classified documents. The men in the gun positions swapped chilling bits of scuttlebutt—the Japs had a marvelous new landing barge that could drop a gate right over the reef … the big blow would be a night gas attack. Carlson’s Raiders busily armed themselves with a new weapon—the 14-inch screwdriver that was part of a PT boat’s standard equipment. As one of the Raiders explained, it was “good for the ribs, if you know what I mean.”

  One and all, they continued working on Midway’s defenses to the end. On Sand Island men were still placing the last mines on the northwest beach in the early evening twilight. At Eastern, “Barbed Wire Bob” Hommel anchored his last concertinas offshore after dark. Private Joseph E. Love, normally relegated to garbage collection and the gooney bird burial detail, found himself stringing telephone lines until nearly midnight.

  It was after 12:00 when Colonel Shannon and Captain McGlashan finished one last tour of inspection and trudged back to the command post. McGlashan was satisfied: he felt that come what may, the Marine garrison had done all it could.

  The fliers were ready too. During the evening Colonel Kimes called a meeting of all the personnel in Marine Air Group 22. “This is it, boys,” he said, and not knowing how things would turn out, he simply told them, “Give it all you’ve got, and good luck to you all.”

  The fighter pilots in Squadron VMF-221 would need all the luck they could get. The seven F4Fs seemed so pitifully few, the 16 Brewster Buffaloes so hopelessly obsolete. Major Red Parks, the squadron commander, knew how long the odds were. Normally he was an aggressive, intelligent extrovert, not too concerned with psychology or the vulnerabilities of mankind. He would rather slit his throat than admit to anything that might be construed as longing for solace. Tonight was different. As he sat with his executive officer Captain Kirk Armistead in the Eastern Island snack bar, he seemed very serious and disturbed. Armistead tried to cheer him up, saying something like, “By this time tomorrow, it’ll all be behind us.”

  “Yeah,” Parks gloomily nodded, “for those of you who get through it.”

  The outl
ook wasn’t much brighter for the dive bomber pilots in Squadron VMSB-241. During the evening Major Henderson called them together and gave them a few of his thoughts. He said he knew how poor the equipment was; the flight tomorrow would be strictly a voluntary proposition. However, he was taking off as soon as the enemy fleet was within range, and the others could follow him if they wished. Henderson was like a father to most of the squadron, and there was little doubt what they’d do.

  “Sleep in your clothes tonight,” Captain Richard Fleming, one of the pilots, told his rear-seat man Corporal Eugene T. Card. “They may come in at any time, so be ready to turn out.”

  Card was ready. He had gone over his machine gun once again. He checked and rechecked the radio frequencies and various dial settings. He even stocked the plane with cans of corned beef and pineapple juice in case they were forced down at sea. Now if only the Japs would attack or go away—anything, as long as they did something.

  The young Navy pilots “on loan” from Torpedo 8 were ready too. During the day they kept posted on the various sightings and strikes; they knew their turn would soon be coming up. But Ensign Bert Earnest felt he had a good omen. Walking alongside the Eastern Island runway just after dark, he found a two-dollar bill. He carefully tucked it in his wallet, hoping that any powers it had would help bring him through.

  The B-26 crews remained utterly casual. Probably nobody is less informed than an Army flier at a Navy base (unless it’s a Navy flier at an Army base), and these men were no exceptions. Lieutenant Muri had yet to learn of any enemy sighting, still had only the haziest idea why he was at Midway. That evening as he and his crew sat beside their plane, a Marine private wandered by who knew just as little. The private was happy, said he was about to go Stateside on leave, and demonstrated a “gooney-bird dance” which he planned to introduce back home. The crew laughed and clapped, agreed that it would soon be all the rage. They hadn’t a worry in the world.

  By the end of the day, seven more B-17s had arrived from Hawaii—a final “gift” from Admiral Nimitz. Altogether, some 120 planes now jammed the base, along with 11 PT boats, 5 tanks, 8 mortars, 14 shore-defense guns, 32 antiaircraft guns, and 3,632 defenders. For two tiny islets in mid-Pacific—one two miles long, the other about a mile—it all added up to quite a show. Midway, as one Marine put it, “looked like an asparagus patch.”

  Even so, they felt very much alone. In some cases the defenders were warned they were strictly on their own; in others they just assumed it. Only a few knew there was any chance for help from the outside. One of these exceptions was Ensign Jacoby, Logan Ramsey’s aide in the command post. Jacoby wasn’t making the big decisions, but he listened a lot, and nothing intrigued him more than the talk about Point Luck.

  FOR Admiral Fletcher on the Yorktown, it just didn’t add up right. Ensign Jack Reid’s contact report, intercepted by the carriers, clearly said “Main Body,” yet it was the wrong direction. According to Nimitz’s briefing, the carriers should be coming down from the northwest, and certainly the intelligence had been right so far about everything else— Dutch Harbor was hit exactly on schedule.

  “That is not repeat not the enemy striking force,” warned a radio message that soon arrived direct from Nimitz, ending all doubts on the matter. CINCPAC’s signal went on to stress that only the Invasion Force had so far been sighted, that the carriers would still strike from the northwest tomorrow.

  Task Forces 16 and 17 continued marking time, cruising slowly north under gray, broken clouds. On the carriers the fliers went over their planes, checked the firing circuits, cleaned their charts and plotting boards for tomorrow’s data. The fighter pilots saw that their guns were loaded bullet by bullet. The bomber and torpedo pilots once again went over their signaling and firing procedures with their rear-seat men. No relationship was closer—and none more of a life-and-death matter—than the teamwork between these two. The crew captains fussed over the planes, and when there was nothing more to be done, polished them one more time. Woe to the mechanic on the Yorktown whose maintenance work didn’t come up to Leading Chief V. J. Feigenbutz’s standards. The old chief had a passion for Bombing Squadron 3 and a volcanic vocabulary to express it.

  All afternoon Fletcher and his staff waited for word that Nagumo had been sighted, but nothing ever came. At 7:50 P.M. he changed course to the southwest. This would take him to a point about 200 miles north of Midway at dawn. Assuming Nagumo was still following the script, the U.S. carriers would be in perfect position for launching a surprise attack on the Japanese flank.

  The ships steamed on into the night, dark forms cutting a calm, moonlit Pacific. If the battened ports and hatches suggested inactivity, that was deceptive, for there was plenty going on. It has been said that running a carrier for an air group was a little like running a hotel for a crowd of conventioneers, and this was never truer than the night before a major strike.

  On the Enterprise the supply officer, Commander Charles Fox, faced a hundred extra problems feeding and servicing the ship. Tomorrow, most of his men would be at battle stations far from their regular jobs—the day’s needs must be met in advance. Spares and plane parts were brought up from below; battle rations prepared and packaged. In the kitchen the cooks turned out stacks of sandwiches, and no less than 10,000 spiced ginger cookies.

  The fliers themselves had little to do but wait … and think about tomorrow. There was no single, dominant mood. Every man had his own private mixture of feelings. For Ensign Charles Lane, a young but experienced dive bomber pilot on the Yorktown, it was not a feeling of fear exactly, but apprehension and regret that he might not return. On the Enterprise Lieutenant Bill Roberts felt a strange sense of excitement. It was the element of trapping the Japanese, he thought, that made this time so different. Ensign Thomas J. Wood on the Hornet bubbled with high spirits. Like the rest of the ship’s pilots, he knew nothing of combat, had never even had a chance to learn about fear. He was young, aggressive, and boasted to anyone who would listen that he personally would sink the Akagi.

  The dive bomber pilots, at least, shared one thing in common. They were ready. They had trained months for this, worked hard, now felt prepared to give a really decent account of themselves. The new men, in particular, yearned to go out and show what they could do.

  Not so, some of the older torpedo pilots. They had been around too long to be carried away by the excitement. By now they had been in enough scrapes to know that even the finest spirit can’t make up for poor equipment. And they knew these TBDs were death traps—the 100-knot speed, the slow rate of climb, the wretched torpedoes.

  None knew the truth better than Lieutenant Commander Massey, skipper of the Yorktown’s Torpedo 3. Lem Massey was a shambling, lovable character who enjoyed good company and went out of his way to find it. Tonight he recruited a couple of nonfliers in the squadron and brought them into his cabin. Bringing out a bottle of scotch (illegal but not unknown on carriers), he told them how long the odds were against the squadron. He probably shouldn’t be talking this way, he said, but he just had to share his gloom with someone. When they went out tomorrow, he didn’t see how they’d ever get back.

  Another man who knew about” these torpedo planes was John Udell Lane on the Enterprise. He was a rear-seat man in Torpedo 6, and he too had a premonition of what tomorrow offered. Visiting a friend’s compartment, he talked long and sadly of his home in Illinois. Putting on a favorite record of soprano Miliza Korjus, he moodily played it over and over again.

  Against this almost bittersweet mood of resignation, the blazing spirit of the Hornet’s brand-new Torpedo Squadron 8 seemed all the more striking. Lieutenant Commander John Waldron was a hard-driving taskmaster with a fierce passion for getting at the enemy. Whenever the big day came, he was determined to be ready. He drilled his men mercilessly, ran their legs off, fought for extra equipment—anything to win. “If we run out of gas,” he once remarked, “we’ll piss in the tanks.”

  He also knew how to blow off steam. The squa
dron parties that he and his wife Adelaide gave in Norfolk were famous. Then he put aside his toughness, royally entertained the young ensigns, and sometimes allowed a deep streak of tenderness to shine through. There was the night when he took Ensigns Jim Cook and Corwin Morgan to a darkened room where his children were sleeping: “Cookie, you and Morgan look in this room. Did you ever see such pretty little girls?”

  The following morning he’d be all business again, pounding away at his tactical theories. They were often unorthodox. Ensign George Gay considered him “foxy”; Waldron himself lightly referred to his extra intuition, thanks to a streak of Sioux blood. In any case, he hammered home his ideas till, as Gay put it, “We could almost look at the back of Commander Waldron’s head and know what he was thinking.”

  His men griped a lot—no one else had to work that hard —but they believed in him completely. Soon they were a compact, closely knit, team as fiery and determined as their skipper. They ran laps around the flight deck and did group calisthenics, while the other fliers hooted and loafed. They tucked knives in their belts, wore shoulder holsters, and didn’t give a damn about the taunts of “Circus” and “Mexican Panchos.”

  And all the time they worked. There wasn’t much chance to fly, but no squadron ever spent more hours in the ready room. Waldron was a fanatic on detail, and he’d go over the smallest point again and again. Like a schoolteacher, he’d toss sharp, unexpected questions at any pilot who seemed to be daydreaming.

  This night of June 3 the briefing stressed one of the skipper’s favorite subjects: the proper angle of attack on a hard-turning target. As usual he was all business, but when the meeting broke up, he turned almost shy as he handed out a final mimeographed message along with his plan of attack:

  Just a word to let you know I feel we are all ready. We have had a very short time to train and we have worked under the most severe difficulties. But we have truly done the best humanly possible. I actually believe that under these conditions we are the best in the world. My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don’t, and the worst comes to worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make a final run in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with us all. Good luck, happy landings and give ‘em hell.