The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  Two minutes later he saw them—tiny white wakes, 80° to starboard, 30 miles away. A tight circle of ships, with a carrier in the middle. And she looked in perfect shape. The last message from the dive bombers said the carrier they hit was “burning furiously”; so this must be a different one. No burning ship could recover that fast.

  Speeding up alongside Lieutenant Tomonaga, Hashimoto pointed to the ships, then dropped back to his regular position. Tomonaga swung sharply southeast, and at 2:32 ordered his planes to form up for attack.

  They broke into two groups, planning to hit from both sides. They would make their approach together; then Tomonaga would take the port side, Hashimoto the starboard. Like a pair of tongs, they would grab the carrier squarely between them. If she tried to turn from one group, the other would get her.

  About ten miles out the U.S. fighters struck. Roaring down from above, they made a pass, got one of Tomonaga’s section. Then Lieutenant Mori’s six Zeros tore into the Americans, and a wild melee developed. But at last the torpedo planes slipped through, and they swept toward the carrier from her port side astern.

  At 2:40 all the ships in the screen opened up. It was much worse than Hashimoto expected—machine guns, pompoms, 5-inchers, everything. He hunched low, feeling like a man leaving a warm house in the winter, stepping out into driving sleet. Shrapnel clattered on his wings—the way the hail used to do on a zinc roof back home.

  The carrier veered hard to the right, and Hashimoto suddenly found himself on her port side, instead of her starboard as planned. It was even worse for Tomonaga. He was now left well astern. His formation broke up, with the planes trying singly to get into some sort of firing position. The cruisers and destroyers ripped into them.

  For Hashimoto it was the wrong side, but he decided to make a run anyhow. He’d never get a better shot than this. He turned and headed for the carrier. The rest of his group moved into position. On they came, flying a loose V formation 150 feet above the water. The carrier’s port side—ablaze with gunfire—lay directly ahead. At 800 yards Hashimoto released… .

  CAPTAIN Buckmaster watched the streaks of white foam race toward the Yorktown—and yearned for just a little more steam. At Coral Sea he had dodged other Japanese torpedoes—manipulating his 19,000 tons of steel with a grace that filled the crew with admiration—but then he had 30 knots to work with. Now he had only 19, and that was quite different. Still, he managed to dodge the first two streaks.

  As the planes dropped, they veered away close alongside the ship. Watching from his searchlight platform, Signalman Martin wondered about the two flickering orange lights he could see in the rear cockpit. Suddenly he realized this was machine gun fire. He ducked behind a canvas wind screen and felt entirely different about the war. Bombs and torpedoes were impersonal, but this strafing was aimed at him. For the first time he felt really angry with the Japanese.

  There were angry Japanese too. After dropping, one plane turned and flew along the Yorktown’s port side not 50 yards from the ship. As it went by, the rear-seat man stood up in his cockpit and shook his fist in defiance. The plane disintegrated in a hail of fire—everybody claimed it. For Gunner’s Mate Jefferson Vick it was “the only time I smiled during the battle.”

  At 2:44 another streak of white foam appeared in the water, this time heading directly for the port side, just forward of amidships. Standing on the port catwalk, Yeoman Joseph Adams watched it come right at him. He grabbed a door and braced himself.

  The jolt was appalling. Like a cat shaking a rat, like shaking out a rug—the men searched their peacetime memories for something similar … and found nothing to compare. Paint flew off the deck and into their faces; the catwalk rolled up like fencing; fuel oil gushed out; a yellow haze settled over the port side.

  For 30 seconds Captain Buckmaster felt they just might pull through. The ship was listing 6° to port, but she still had headway. In damage control, CWT George Vavrek talked over his headphones, telling the men in the forward generator room where to transfer oil to correct the list.

  Then a second torpedo hit—killing the man Vavrek was talking to … killing everybody in the generator room … knocking out all power, communications, even emergency lighting. The rudder jammed at 15° to port; a mushroom of gray-white smoke billowed up; the Yorktown stopped, listing 17° to port.

  A sickening feeling came over Ensign Walter Beckham as he watched from the cruiser Portland. All antiaircraft guns were firing; 5-inch bursts blackened the sky; tracers crisscrossed in crazy patterns. Even the cruiser’s 8-inch batteries were firing, in hopes that the splash would bring somebody down. The noise and clouds of smoke were bewildering, and there was something terrifying about those planes—the way they hung there in spite of all efforts to blot them out. Nothing worked, and they swept in “looking like some giant birds who were not to be foiled in their search for prey.”

  More planes kept coming. The Astoria’s gunners were again yelling like wild men. On the Benham a sailor named Lytells loaded 54 5-inch projectiles in a minute and 45 seconds—and each shell weighed 57 pounds. A 20 mm. crew on the Russell kept firing even after another destroyer fouled the range; skipper Roy Hartwig had to throw his tin hat at the gun to stop it. When the Portland’s 8-inchers let go, Marine Captain Donohoo—still recovering from the mumps—was knocked clear out of his bunk. Mumps or no, he rushed topside to his station. On the Hughes Signalman Houle no longer wondered what the hell he was doing here. He now stood on a corner of the bridge, blazing away with a Thompson .45 submachine gun.

  Occasionally they got one. There was the plane that never had a chance to make a run at all. As it broke through the screen, a freak shot (probably from the Pensacola) struck its torpedo. A blinding flash, and it simply vanished. Another made its drop, pulled across the Yorktown’s bow, and headed straight for the Vincennes. Captain F. L. Riefkohl saw it just in time, put his rudder hard right. Riddled from gunfire, the plane crashed 50 yards off the cruiser’s bow, catapulting the pilot out of his cockpit. Still another—crowded out of position during its run—circled wide to the left and tried again. Second time around, it also opened up on the destroyer Batch, which happened to be in its line of sight. The Batch replied with everything it had; the plane disintegrated into the sea.

  The U.S. fighters were there too, braving their own fleet’s fire in a desperate effort to ward off the blow. Planes from the Enterprise and Hornet pitched in, but the greatest contribution came from the Yorktown herself. Even as the alarm sounded, she began launching the ten fighters refueling on deck; she was still at it when the Japanese began their final runs. Eighth and last man off was Ensign Milton Tootle, Jr., who had been on carrier duty just six days. Making his first nontraining flight, Tootle took off, turned hard left, tangled with a Japanese plane, shot it down, got hit himself by “friendly” fire, baled out, took a swim and was picked up by the Anderson—all within 15 minutes.

  While the battle raged above, the men deep inside the ships waited and listened and sweated it out. In the glow of red battle lights, the members of Repair II on the Pensacola crouched in the darkened mess hall. They could feel the ship lurch heavily as the torpedoes slammed into the Yorktown—but at the time no one knew what had happened. Wondering—and not being able to shoot back—often made it harder to be below decks than above.

  In the engine room of the Astoria Lieutenant Commander John Hayes developed a sort of ascending scale, based on the sound of gunfire, that he felt kept him pretty well informed. The dull boom of the 5-inchers meant “Maybe they’re not after us”; the surging rhythm of the 1.1 mounts meant “Here they come”; the steady, angry clatter of the 50-caliber machine guns meant “Hit the floor plates!” Now he heard it all at once.

  Then silence. As quickly as the Japanese appeared, they were gone again. At 2:52 the Portland was the last ship to cease fire—just 12 minutes after she was the first to open up. It was incredible that it all happened so quickly—and equally incredible that it all seemed so long. The men slumpe
d by their guns in exhaustion. The elation of battle vanished; now there was utter weariness. Tears, too, as the gunners looked over at the Yorktown. She lay there, listing more than 20° now, wallowing in the gentle swell.

  They had only one consolation. They had made the enemy pay a stiff price. Most were sure that none of the Japanese planes escaped.

  “HEAD for the bow!” Lieutenant Hashimoto yelled as his torpedo sped on its way. Petty Officer Takahashi dropped even lower and skidded across the sea directly in front of the U.S. carrier. They drew little fire; Hashimoto thought the antiaircraft guns just couldn’t get down that low.

  “Did we get a hit?” Takahashi called. Hashimoto turned, but saw no sign of an explosion for a long, long time. Then suddenly a great geyser shot up so high he could see it clearly from the far side of the carrier. Without really meaning to, he let out a yelp of joy.

  But his joy was interrupted. Looking around, he caught sight of CPO Nakane’s plane and was horrified to see it still had its torpedo. Nakane was the “orphan” from the Akagi—maybe he was confused—but nothing excused this. “You fool,” Hashimoto said to himself, “what did you come here for anyhow?”

  He yanked back his canopy, attracted the attention of Nakane’s rear-seat man, and pointed violently at the torpedo. The rear-seat man waved—yes, he understood—and jettisoned it into the sea. Hashimoto could only curse harder than ever.

  Now he was back at the rendezvous point, waiting for Lieutenant Tomonaga’s section to join up, but none of them ever appeared. Perhaps they were thrown off by the carrier’s last-second maneuvering; perhaps Tomonaga took impossible risks. After all, he did know he could never get home on one gas tank. In any case, he and his five planes were gone.

  But all five of Hashimoto’s planes came through, and so did three of Lieutenant Mori’s six fighters, and together they limped back toward the Hiryu, three of the torpedo planes too badly riddled ever to fly again. But they had done their job. Hashimoto was absolutely certain he got a different carrier from the one hit by the dive bombers. As he neared home, he radioed ahead the glad tidings: “Two certain torpedo hits on an Enterprise class carrier. Not the same one as reported bombed.”

  WATCHING the Enterprise and Hornet untouched on the horizon was too much for Seaman Ed Forbes. “When are those two over there going to get into the fight?” he asked aloud to anyone who would listen. It was small of him and he knew it, but he was scared. As a gunner on the Anderson, desperately trying to protect the Yorktown, all he wanted at the moment was another big target to attract the Japs’ attention.

  Certainly the Yorktown had taken her share. Five minutes after the attack the clinometer on the bridge showed she was listing 26°. Captain Buckmaster checked below over the sound-powered phone, but heard only bad news. Lieutenant Commander Delaney reported from the engine room that all fires were out—no hope for any power. The auxiliary generator snapped on, but with all circuits out, it made no difference. Lieutenant Commander Aldrich, down in central station, said that without power there was no way he could pump, counterflood, shift fuel, or do anything else to correct the list. On the bridge, it looked as though the Yorktown might roll over.

  Captain Buckmaster paced up and down in agony for several minutes. To no one in particular, he remarked aloud that he hated to give the order to abandon ship. The officers standing around gaped at him mutely. It was one of those moments that give true meaning to the loneliness of command.

  Finally he said there was nothing else to do—they must abandon. The Yorktown seemed doomed, and as he later put it, “I didn’t see any sense in drowning 2,000 men just to stick with the ship.”

  At 2:55 the order went out—by flag hoist to the screen, by word of mouth and sound-powered phone to the men below. From the engine room, the sick bay, the repair stations, the message center a stream of men stumbled through darkened passageways, up oil-slick ladders, working their way clumsily topside.

  The list, the darkness, the oil all made it difficult. No abandon-ship drill was ever like this. In the confusion most of the men ignored or forgot the usual procedures. The rough log was left on the bridge. The code room personnel left the safe open, code books and secret message files lying around. The airmen were just as hurried: some 70 sets of air contact codes lay scattered about the squadron ready rooms.

  Down in the sick bay the doctors and corpsmen worked with flashlights, trying to get some 50-60 wounded men to the flight deck. Nothing was tougher than carrying those stretchers up the swinging, ladders, across the oil-smeared deck plates. In the operating room the senior medical officer Captain W. D. Davis and his chief surgeon Lieutenant Commander French continued treating a wounded sailor. No one even told them the ship was being abandoned.

  Hundreds of men milled around the flight deck, not knowing, quite what to do. Some waited patiently at their regular stations by the motor launches—forgetting there was no power to lower the boats. Others were throwing life rafts overboard—sometimes still bundled together. Some walked sadly up and down the slanting deck, heart-heavy at the thought of leaving the ship. Others laughed and joked, and if the laughter seemed a little forced—well, everybody understood that.

  Not that there weren’t sour notes. One commander—obviously in a state of shock, his face dirty and tear-streaked—found out that Radioman James Patterson was in the last SBD that landed before the attack. “You led them here!” he screamed, trying to hit Patterson.

  Now it was after 3:00. The destroyers moved in reassuringly close, and the men finally began to go. Commander Ralph Arnold knew just how to do it; he had talked with survivors from the Lexington. He carried a knife, took some gloves, and he was especially careful to keep on his shoes: when picked up, he’d have something to wear.

  Most of the crew were more like Machinist’s Mate George Bateman. He carefully arranged a neat pile on the deck consisting of his shoes, shirt, gloves, hat and flashlight. Gradually, in fact, pairs of shoes lined the whole deck, all meticulously placed with the toes pointing out.

  At first a trickle, soon a steady stream of men were pouring down the starboard side. Dozens of knotted ropes hung from the rails, and Lieutenant William Crenshaw felt this would be the perfect time to use the knowledge he gained at the Naval Academy on climbing and descending ropes. One should go down carefully hand over hand, the instructor said, but when Crenshaw tried it, he plummeted straight down into the sea. The difference between this rope and the one at Annapolis was oil—it was everywhere, making a good grip next to impossible.

  Others had the same trouble. Worth Hare burned his hands sliding down. Seaman Melvin Frantz was making it all right; then the man above slipped, came down on Frantz’s shoulders, and they both plunged into the sea. Boatswain C. E. Briggs lost his grip too, and felt it took forever to come to the surface. He forgot he had given his life jacket away and was wearing shoes, sweater, pistol, two clips of ammunition, plus all his regular clothing. The wonder was he ever came up at all.

  Occasionally a man did it right. Yeoman William Lancaster put on a turtleneck sweater, tightened his life jacket, and carefully lowered himself down one of the lines. When he reached the end, he did not let go. To his own great surprise, he stopped, held on to the line, and instinctively stuck his foot down to test the temperature of the water.

  Some added a dash all their own. Commander “Jug” Ray went down clenching his inevitable brier pipe. Chief Radioman Grew gave his famous waxed mustache a farewell twirl. A young fireman asked Radio Electrician Bennett’s permission to dive from the flight deck—he had wanted to do it ever since coming on board. Permission granted.

  For the swimmers there was now a new hazard. The oil from the ripped port side had worked around to starboard, making a thick film that gradually spread out from the ship. Men retched and vomited as they struggled toward the clear water farther off. Watching from the flight deck, it reminded Yeoman Adams of a large group of turtles or crawfish swimming in a half-dried pond of mud and muck.

  The nons
wimmers posed a special problem. The more knowledgeable men gave up their own life jackets to help, but few took as decisive action as Radioman Patterson. As he pushed away from the ship, a sailor grabbed his shoulder, saying he couldn’t swim. Patterson gave the man a 30-second course in dogpaddling—not a word wasted—and the two moved off together.

  Another special problem was the sailor trapped when the torpedo struck and curled up the port catwalk. The wire mesh pinned him against the side of the Yorktown in his own private prison. It was on the low side of the ship, “leading to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities if she rolled over. His buddies worked on anyhow, trying to pry him out. They finally succeeded, but all the time he was there he kept begging his friends to leave him and save themselves.

  Down in the operating room, Captain Davis and Lieutenant Commander French still worked over their wounded man, oblivious of everything else. Finally finished, Davis went out and called for a corpsman to move the patient. Nobody answered the call. He asked some sailor with a walkie-talkie where the corpsman was.

  “Oh,” explained the sailor, “they passed the word some time ago for all hands to abandon ship.” He added he was about to leave himself.

  Davis and French carried their man to the flight deck; then Davis went down to check again. He looked around and called, but couldn’t hear anyone. Finally satisfied, he climbed back to the deck.

  By now most of the swimmers, boats and rafts were all clear of the Yorktown. Looking around, Davis couldn’t see anyone else still aboard—just a vast, empty stretch of flight deck. He hung his gun on the lifeline and like so many before him, carefully placed his shoes at the edge of the deck. Then he inflated his life jacket and climbed down a rope ladder into the sea, feeling sure he was the last man off.

  Captain Buckmaster watched him go, as did his executive officer Dixie Kiefer. Both men were standing on the starboard wing of the bridge—Buckmaster waiting to play out the old tradition that the captain be the last to leave his ship. Now it was Kiefer’s turn to go. He swung over the side and started down a line toward the water. But he had burned his hands earlier and, like so many others, he lost his grip. Falling, he caromed off the ship’s armor belt, breaking his ankle in the process. It took more than that to stop the ebullient Kiefer; he bobbed to the surface and swam for the rescue ships in the distance.