The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  They jettisoned their bombs on the reef, hoping this would be interpreted as a friendly gesture—but it almost had the opposite effect. It was one of Colonel Shannon’s favorite theories that the invasion force would begin operations by blasting a hole in the reef, and this certainly looked like it. A few scattered bursts of AA fire nicked three of the planes; then some sharp eyes detected the familiar dumpy silhouette of the SBD.

  Lieutenant Stan Ruehlow, leading Fighting 8 back toward the Hornet, wasn’t about to try Midway. It was an easy hop—and he knew the squadron could never make it to the ship—but that big column of smoke over the atoll just looked too dangerous. It could mean almost anything—even that the invasion was on.

  Far better to play it safe and get as close to the Hornet as possible. His radio wasn’t working, and the YE-ZB homing device was on the blink, but if he got close enough, maybe the ship could somehow catch his call.

  So they all flew on. The minutes passed, the tanks drained lower, and finally the first fighter fell. Then a second. Ruehlow watched them go one after another—some singles, some pairs—till finally there was only the skipper Pat Mitchell, Ensign Dick Gray and himself left. Then Mitchell and Gray went too.

  Now Ruehlow was all alone. In a few minutes he’d be down anyway; so deciding there was strength in numbers, he pulled around and slapped heavily into the sea near Mitchell and Gray. By 11:00 A.M. all the planes of Fighting 8 were gone.

  There was only one consolation. About half an hour earlier Ruehlow had looked to the north and seen in the distance what he had spent all morning searching for: the Japanese fleet. As frustrating as it must have been to find them only now—when Fighting 8’s tanks were almost dry—it was “a beautiful sight” to see those three carriers burning.

  Five other American spectators had a much closer view. Tony Schneider of Bombing 6 now knew all too well that he had run out of gas over the Japanese, not the U.S. fleet. Gliding down as far away as he could, he watched the dive bombers strike. He was proud of the boys and chagrined at himself that he hadn’t done a better job of managing his fuel. His glide finally carried him to a dead-stick landing beyond the sight of the Japanese. But he was close enough to see the smoke and sometimes, he thought, hear the highly satisfying sound of explosions in the distance.

  Three other Americans were less fortunate. A pilot and his gunner from Scouting 6 were fished out of the water by the Japanese destroyer Makigumo, and a young ensign from Torpedo 3 was picked up by the Arashi. Little is known about what followed, but it could not have been very pleasant. By now Nagumo’s hopes and ships were shattered; chances are that the interrogation was less than polite. In any case, the men began to talk.

  There was still one other American witness left. Peeping from beneath the black cushion that bobbed harmlessly amid the floating debris, Ensign George Gay of Torpedo 8 was very much alive and free.

  Until the dive bombers came, he spent most of his time watching a nearby carrier with almost clinical interest. It was engaged in landing Zero fighters, and Gay carefully noted that the approaches were made from far and high (about 1,000-1,500 feet altitude) and coming in from straight astern. The landing intervals were longer than the American, but he was most impressed by the arresting gear.

  His studies were somewhat interrupted when a screening cruiser passed within 500 yards of him. She didn’t see him, and he continued his observations.

  Then the dive bombers arrived. Gay watched these too with professional interest, and they never looked better. The SBDs seemed to dive faster and lower than he had ever seen them do in practice. He found himself cheering and hollering with every hit

  CAPTAIN Ryusaku Yanagimoto fought to get the Soryu under control. Three hits had knocked out the voice tubes, the bridge telephones, the engine room telegraph—there was no way to give orders at all.

  Although badly burned, Commander Ohara took over the fire-fighting job. With the bridge communications out, he went down a deck to the air command post, hoping it might be easier to operate from here. No use—all the fire mains were out. He retreated down to the flight deck, where he finally fainted from his burns. At this point he either fell or was blown over the side of the ship. When he came to, he was in the water. A pharmacist’s mate was swimming alongside him, slapping his face to keep him from fainting again and drowning.

  By 10:40 both engines had stopped and the whole ship was in flames. The fire reached the torpedo storage room, and the blast almost tore the Soryu apart. At 10:45 a badly injured Captain Yanagimoto shouted orders to abandon ship.

  When the order came, CPO Mori was with the rest of the pilots from the ready room, jammed into a small corner of the boat deck below the bridge. They were so tightly packed together they couldn’t even raise their arms. As still more men crammed in, they began climbing on each other’s shoulders to make more room. All the time the flames crept closer.

  Somebody tried to lower a cutter; it stuck in the davits, one end dropping. Soon many of the men were jumping. Mori himself hung on; the distance down just looked too far. Finally he noticed that the long Pacific swell occasionally brought the sea within safer reach. Timing himself carefully, he leaped clear of the deck and grabbed the fall of an empty davit, hoping to lower himself into the water. But nothing was attached to the other end of the line; it simply shot through the pulley, and Mori plummeted straight down.

  He bobbed to the surface and cleared the ship. Next instant a boat, loosened from somewhere, plunged into the water nearby. It landed upside down, but Mori helped some men right it, and he baled it out with his flying boot. They all climbed in and began paddling away. This proved a slow business, for they only had one oar.

  CWO Otawa didn’t even have that, as he treaded water some distance away. But he had something else, maybe better. In the pocket of his flight jacket he still carried his lucky talisman from the Narita Shrine near Tokyo.

  He continued swimming—alone yet not alone. Every, time the swell lifted him up, he could look “downhill” and see hundreds of heads dotting the water all around. In the distance he could see the Soryu, and farther off the burning Kaga.

  The fire was now so hot on the Kaga that Commander Amagai could no longer hang on at the air command post. No one was around to give any orders, so on his own initiative he led a working party to a lower deck to try and organize the fire-fighting.

  Huge explosions were ripping through the side of the ship, hurling out men and chunks of planes like projectiles. Amagai couldn’t reach the hangar deck, where the fire was worst, but it looked like an inferno.

  Indeed it was. Hearing shouts that the hangar deck was on fire, CWO Morinaga had rushed there right after the bombing, but the situation was already hopeless. None of the fire mains was working. In desperation Morinaga organized a bucket brigade, using the latrines alongside the deck. The results were as pitiful as might be expected. Then he tried throwing “combustibles” overboard—but on a carrier almost everything is combustible. The fires and explosions steadily spread, finally cornering him on a small open deck right under the bridge.

  Above, everything was in flames. Below, he still had a chance if he could only get down to the next deck. The ladder was red-hot, but there was a cutter lashed to the side of the ship. The canvas lashing was taut, but he clutched at it and lowered himself by his fingers. Painfully he worked his way down the outside of the boat, finally swinging onto the deck below. He still wonders how he did it.

  At last he was safe for a moment—better than that, with friends. Commander Amagai was here, along with many of the other pilots. The Kaga’s air officer had given up any hope of stopping the fire; he was now mainly concerned with saving his pilots for some better day. He heard no orders to abandon ship, but what difference did it make? On his own initiative he told his men, “Jump into the sea.”

  Moringaga yanked off his summer flying suit, his flight boots, even his senim bari. Stripped to his shorts, he leaped out as far as he could. A few of the new conscripts said they d
idn’t know how to swim, but Amagai had them jump anyhow—it was better than staying here. Only the assistant air officer Lieutenant Ogawa didn’t go. He was just too badly hurt by one of the first bomb hits. He said good-bye to Amagai and hobbled back toward the fire.

  In the water Amagai pulled away from the ship, using a stately breast stroke that was rather out of keeping with his reputation as one of Nagumo’s more dashing airmen. He was none too soon. He looked back and could see the paint on the Kaga’s starboard side was starting to burn. Ahead in the distance, he noticed for the first time that the Akagi was on fire too.

  “Anybody who isn’t working, get below!” Commander Masuda shouted above the general confusion on the Akagi’s bridge. The fire was bad enough without a lot of bystanders in the way. Commander Fuchida, still too weak from appendicitis to be of much use, went down to the ready room. So did a thoroughly shaken Teiichi Makishima, who had stopped taking his newsreel shots.

  But the ready room was no place to be. Already jammed with burn cases, it quickly filled with smoke and heat, driving both Fuchida and Makishima back to the air command post Clearly the fire was spreading fast.

  No one knew it better than the Akagi’s damage control officer Commander Dobashi. He strung out his hoses, but the power was out and the pumps didn’t work. He tried flooding the ammunition storage rooms, but the valves were too badly damaged in the all-important after areas. In helpless rage he buckled on his samurai sword; if he could do nothing else, he’d at least go down in the ancient tradition.

  On the bridge the Akagi’s navigator, Commander Miura, found it impossible to steer the ship. The bomb that landed by the fantail jammed her rudder 20° to port, and her speed was falling off. She was going around in circles. He rang the telegraph to stop engines, but nothing happened. Since the voice tube and phones were all out, he finally sent a man below to find out what was wrong.

  The machinery was all right, but it turned out that every man in the starboard engine room was dead—suffocated by fire sucked down through the exhaust system. The engines themselves were still running in eerie fashion, completely unattended.

  Miura did the only thing he could do. With his rudder jammed and half the engineers gone, at 10:42 he shut off the boilers and stopped the ship.

  As the Akagi lost headway, the flames roared forward. At 10:43 Zero parked right below the bridge caught fire, and the blaze quickly spread to the bridge itself. Flames licked into the windows, and the heat was unbearable.

  It was clear to Admiral Kusaka that the Akagi could no longer serve as flagship. She couldn’t steer; the fires were spreading; the radio was out, and it was impossible to direct the battle, by semaphores and signal flags from a burning bridge. He urged Admiral Nagumo to transfer to some other ship.

  “It’s not time yet,” Nagumo muttered, standing transfixed near the compass.

  Captain Aoki came over. Tears in his eyes, he begged, “Leave the Akagi to me; you must shift the flag.”

  Nagumo still refused.

  It was too much for the pragmatic Kusaka. The samurai spirit was all very well, but a burning flagship was no place to run a fleet. “You are Commander in Chief of the First Carrier Striking Force as well as the Akagi,” he scolded the Admiral. “It’s your duty to carry on the battle… .”

  A long silence; then with a barely perceptible nod, Nagumo agreed to go.

  No time to lose. The destroyer Nowaki was hovering close by; they would go there. Kusaka had a signalman semaphore the decision and ordered her to send a boat. At the same time, he told the flag secretary Commander Nishibayashi to scout around, find the best way out of this furnace. Nishibayashi soon came running back: all the passages below were on fire.

  The only escape was by window. At 10:46 they opened one on the leeward side, tossed out a couple of lines, and began to leave that way. Nagumo went first. An expert in judo, he landed lightly on the flight deck. Kusaka went next, using the other line. Plump and anything but agile, it was too much for him. He lost his grip and fell heavily to the deck, spraining both ankles.

  At the moment, he didn’t even notice it. Ammunition was exploding, bullets were flying about, and worst of all, he had lost his left shoe. It flew off as he landed, ending up on a part of the deck that was burning. Would it hurt more trying to retrieve it, or running after the others over a red-hot deck with one shoe off?

  He hesitated interminable seconds while the rest of the staff—now waiting on the anchor deck—yelled at him to hurry up. In the end he dashed after them … half-running, half-hopping, burning his foot as expected.

  The Nowaki’s launch was alongside, and they all piled in. But instead of going to the destroyer, they headed for the light cruiser Nagara. She had also come up, was bigger and much better equipped. But wherever they went, it couldn’t remove the sting. As they shoved off from the blazing Akagi— every second wracked by some new explosion—Commander Chuichi Yoshioka felt as if he’d left his heart behind.

  At 11:30 the Nagara dropped her Jacob’s ladder, and Nagumo climbed aboard with his staff. They were met on the quarterdeck by Rear Admiral Susumu Kimura, who commanded Destroyer Squadron 10 and used the cruiser as his flagship.

  “Kimura, do you think the Nagara could tow the Akagi?” were Nagumo’s first words.

  “It may be difficult,” Kimura replied, choosing his words tactfully, “in view of the actual circumstances of the Akagi.”

  Kusaka went immediately to the bridge to break out a vice admiral’s flag for Nagumo. It turned out there was none on board, so he took the flag Kimura flew as a rear admiral. It looked the same except for a red strip across the bottom. This was ripped off, and the remains hoisted to the yardarm. The effect was a bit tattered, but certainly no worse than the fleet.

  ADMIRAL Isoroku Yamamoto was apparently feeling much better. Under the weather the day before, he had his usual breakfast this morning—boiled rice, miso soup, eggs and dried fish. His touch of vanity seemed to be thriving too. Most of the staff were dressed in fatigues or their regular blues (a few dandies wore British-type shorts), but the Commander in Chief—along with his chief of staff and Captain Takayanagi—was resplendent in starched whites. Yamamoto even wore his gloves.

  Now he stood on the navigation bridge of the great Yamato, receiving reports, searching the seas, casually watching the 18 ships of the Main Body. It was just 7:00 A.M. and they were steaming along some 450 miles behind Nagumo’s carriers.

  So far there was not much excitement. Nagumo was still operating under radio silence, and on the Yamato they only knew what they could pick up by monitoring the planes. They learned that a PBY had found the carriers … that Tomonaga wanted a second strike … that the Midway-based planes were attacking. And at 7:28 they heard the Tone’s No. 4 plane report that U.S. ships were already on the scene.

  Considering that all their planning had been based on completely the opposite assumption, the Admiral and his staff adjusted to the new situation with surprising ease. Far from being alarmed, they were delighted. If the American fleet was already out, they’d polish it off that much sooner. And when the Tone’s plane reported “what appears to be a carrier,” they grew even more excited. Captain Kuroshima assured everyone that Nagumo had a reserve wave of torpedo planes with just this contingency in view.

  “It all turned out just as we wanted,” thought Commander Watanabe of the operations staff. Nothing that happened during the next two hours changed his opinion. By now, Nagumo had opened up his radio, and while he was in direct touch with Yamamoto only twice, the gist was completely reassuring: he had taken many blows; he had suffered no damage; he was hot after the enemy fleet.

  Then, just before 10:30, an unexpected message came up from the radio room. Watanabe caught it over the voice tube —there was nothing formal about it—just something monitored over the air that the radio room thought the bridge should know right away. A hurried voice reported, “The Akagi is on fire!” Watanabe rushed to the battle command post and passed the word directly t
o Admiral Yamamoto. The Admiral asked Captain Kuroshima whether it might not be wise to confirm that the carriers had actually launched their torpedo strike at the U.S. fleet. If this hadn’t been done, it could mean trouble.

  No need to do that, said Kuroshima. Of course the attack had been launched. It was all in his plan.

  More traffic was monitored—a fire on the Kaga, on the Soryu too. Still, Yamamoto’s staff refused to get too worried. No reason to suppose the damage was serious … ships were bound to get hit in action … the Hiryu was going strong … the real battle was just beginning.

  At 10:50 the Yamato’s communications officer hurried up to the bridge, handed a new message to Yamamoto’s signal officer Commander Wada. He took a look, silently gave it to the chief of staff, Admiral Ugaki. He also looked and just as silently handed it to the Commander in Chief.

  It was from Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe on the Tone. Second in command of the Striking Force, he had automatically taken over while Nagumo was shifting his flag to the Nagara. Abe pulled no punches:

  Fires are raging aboard the Kaga, Soryu, and Akagi resulting from attacks carried out by land-based and carrier-based attack planes. We plan to have the Hiryu engage the enemy carriers. In the meantime, we are temporarily retiring to the north, and assembling our forces… .

  Yamamoto handed it back without a word. He seemed stunned. Searching his face for some kind of clue, Yeoman Noda felt it was utterly “frozen”—not even an eyebrow moved.

  AT THE same time that Admiral Abe radioed the Commander in Chief, he also sent a message to Admiral Yamaguchi On the Hiryu, now almost out of sight to the north. “Attack enemy carriers,” he ordered.

  Yamaguchi didn’t need to be told. That was what he had wanted to do all morning. After taking one look at the billowing smoke far astern, he had already given the orders. He simply blinkered back to Abe: “All our planes are taking off now for the purpose of destroying the enemy carriers.”