The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History)

by Craig L. Symonds

  While Gray led his fighters back toward the Enterprise, Lindsey’s Devastator pilots, like Waldron’s, flew low and slow toward the Kidō Butai without fighter cover. The pilots of Torpedo Six, however, had three advantages that Waldron’s men did not. The first was that Lindsey’s pilots were mostly experienced veterans, having participated in several previous missions. They also benefited from the fact that when they flew in from the south, the Japanese Zeros were a dozen miles away, north and east of the Kidō Butai, finishing off the last of Waldron’s planes, and it took them several crucial minutes to hurry back southward to fend off this new attack. Most important of all, however, was that many of the Zero pilots had used up much of their 20 mm cannon shells in smashing Waldron’s squadron. Each Zero carried only sixty rounds of this heavy ammunition, and once it was gone, they had only their light (7.7 mm) machine guns.

  The arriving Zeros found Ely’s section first. Using the tactics that had worked so well against Waldron, they scissored back and forth over the Americans, making side runs in pairs. One of the surviving American pilots recalled that the Zeros attacked “from overhead and rear,” but that the attacks “were not pressed home in face of free gun fire” from the American backseat gunners. Nevertheless, one by one, the American torpedo planes began smoking and headed for the water. One exploded spectacularly when a 20 mm cannon shell detonated its torpedo. Soon, only two of Ely’s seven planes were still aloft. Those two got close enough to drop their torpedoes, and despite heavy damage they turned and headed for home. The Zeros let them go and turned on Lindsey’s section. By now, few of the Zeros had any 20 mm cannon shells left, and they had to rely on their machine guns. The American Devastators were struck again and again, and four of them, including Lindsey’s, succumbed, but the American gunners were firing too and claimed at least one Zero. The three Devastators that survived this onslaught successfully launched their torpedoes. For all that effort and sacrifice, however, none of the American torpedoes found its mark. By 10:15, the five planes that had survived the strike, all of them shot through with dozens of 7.7 mm rounds, headed back for the Enterprise.22

  Four of them made it; one of them was so riddled with bullet holes that the air crews simply pushed it over the side the next day. A fifth plane, that of Machinist Albert W. Winchell, an enlisted pilot, and his backseat gunner, Aviation Radioman Third Class Douglas M. Cossett, didn’t get back at all. Their engine began to labor and vibrate, and Winchell realized he was losing power. He elected to land in the water. The two men scrambled into their little raft. Like Mitchell and the fighter pilots of VF-8, they battled sharks, sunburn, dehydration, and starvation while waiting to be found. For the first few days, whenever a distant plane flew past without sighting them, Winchell would shake his fist and say, “All right you bastards, see if I buy you a drink at the O Club.” Soon it wasn’t funny any more. After twelve days, they saw a submarine and signaled frantically until they saw that it was Japanese. Then they stopped waving and sat quietly in their raft, waiting to see what the sub would do. It came near and stopped. Members of its crew came out on deck to look at them for a few moments, then, apparently deciding that the Americans were not valuable enough to capture, and not worth shooting, they went below. The sub turned and moved away. After seventeen days of surviving on rainwater and an albatross that they had managed to catch and eat raw, they were picked up on June 21 by a PBY that had spotted their orange raft.23

  Once again, Nagumo’s Zeros had fought off a determined and courageous attack by American torpedo bombers, and once again the Americans had scored no hits. Nagumo may have been more relieved than exultant. He still had to rotate his CAP, refuel and resupply the Zeros with 20 mm ammunition, and complete the rearming of his strike force. But instead of a respite, there came another attack by yet another American torpedo squadron. This time it was twelve Devastators from the Yorktown under Lieutenant Commander Lance “Lem” Massey.

  After ordering Spruance to attack at 6:07 that morning, Fletcher had continued steaming eastward with the Yorktown task force until he recovered the ten planes of the morning search. He had hoped that by then the patrolling PBYs might have found the two missing carriers of the Kidō Butai, but there was still no word beyond Ady’s initial sighting of “two carriers and two battleships.” Nimitz had received a number of combat reports from the Midway planes that had attacked the Kidō Butai; none of them had indicated that there were more than two enemy carriers at the target location, and, as a result, the information that all four Japanese carriers were operating together never reached the task force commanders. Even now, as Fletcher steamed toward the known target to close the range, he anticipated that at any moment a new sighting report would locate those two missing carriers. His course brought him to within 160 miles of the estimated position of the “two carriers and two battleships” of the initial sighting, and by 8:30, he decided he could wait no longer. He would hold back Wally Short’s scouting squadron (VS-5, formerly VB-5) in case a late report located the missing flattops, but he would send his other bombing squadron, Max Leslie’s VB-3, and all the torpedo planes, plus a fighter escort, to attack the two carriers that had been sighted.24

  To calculate a course to the target, Fletcher depended heavily on his staff air officer, Commander Murr E. Arnold, a 1923 Academy graduate who had previously commanded the bombing squadron on Yorktown, and who had been central to all the operations in the Coral Sea, including the battle of May 7—8. By now, Fletcher and Arnold had developed a close friendship and mutual confidence. In collaboration with Pete Pederson, the Yorktown’s air group commander (CYAG), Arnold calculated a course of 230 to the enemy. More important, he and Pederson sat down with all four of the squadron commanders to discuss it. Arnold and Pederson told the pilots that if they arrived at the coordinates and didn’t find the enemy, it might mean that the Kidō Butai had turned north. Under those circumstances, they suggested, they should probably turn to the northeast. This, of course, was exactly right, but equally important was the fact that all the participants had a chance to talk it over fully beforehand. Pederson recalled that “they all agreed that this made good sense.”25

  Equally important was the decision by Fletcher and Buckmaster that morning to employ a “normal departure” rather than the deferred departure that Miles Browning had imposed on the carriers of Task Force 16. In a normal departure, the slower and most heavily laden planes launched first and proceeded immediately toward the target while the lighter and faster planes launched afterward and caught up with the others in a “running rendezvous.” Consequently, the Dauntless dive-bombers of Leslie’s VB-3, each carrying a 1,000-pound bomb, went first, followed in the same deck load by the Devastators of Lance “Lem” Massey’s VT-3. Leslie’s bombers were to circle for only fifteen minutes before heading off toward the target; Massey’s torpedo planes were not to circle at all but to proceed with the mission as soon as they formed up. The speedy Wildcat fighters were launched in the second deck load and caught up with the attack planes en route. Because of this, there was a minimum of circling and waiting, and the entire air group successfully executed a running rendezvous on the way to the target.

  Finally, the Yorktown’s air attack differed from those of the other two carriers in the role assigned to the escorting fighter planes. The fighters of VF-3 were commanded by Lieutenant Commander John S. “Jimmy” Thach. Like most Academy grads, Thach had acquired his nickname during plebe summer. Thach’s older brother James had graduated from the Academy in 1923, the same year that John became a plebe. The upperclassman who introduced the new plebe to the customs of the institution insisted on calling him Jimmy—his brother’s nickname—perhaps as a reminder that he was nothing special. Like most Academy nicknames, it stuck. Jimmy Thach was a thoughtful and creative fighter pilot. Just before the war, he had developed an innovative defense maneuver for fighters flying in groups of four. He called it the “beam defense position,” though it subsequently became universally known as the Thach weave. Thach had
commanded VF-3 on the Saratoga until she was torpedoed in January and sent stateside for repairs. His squadron was then transferred to the Lexington until she was sunk in the Coral Sea. Now he and his squadron were on the Yorktown. A superstitious person might have worried about that track record, but Thach was a confident pilot with a “sunny disposition.”26

  Like his Naval Academy classmate Pat Mitchell on the Hornet, Thach thought that his fighters should go with the torpedo planes. But unlike John Waldron, who had lobbied hard for fighter cover, Lem Massey, the commander of VT-3, demurred. Because the Zeros were likely to be high, he proposed that the fighters go with the dive-bombers. No, no, said Leslie, the dive-bomber commander, the fighters should go with the torpedo planes because they were more vulnerable. Amused by this Alphonse-and-Gaston routine, Thach said, “How about letting me decide it?” Both Massey and Leslie said that was fine with them, but as it happened none of them got the final say. Instead, it was Pete Pederson, the CYAG, who made the decision.27

  In his official report on the Battle of the Coral Sea, Pederson had recommended that in future engagements the escorting fighters “should take position up sun from, and at least 5—6,000 feet above the torpedo planes. From this position,” he wrote, “they can readily observe any attack coming in and can dive down and break it up.” At Midway, Pederson took his own advice and ordered that Thach’s Wildcat fighters should fly in between the high-flying bombers and the low-flying Devastators at 5,000 to 6,000 feet. That way Thach would be high enough to dive down on any Zeros that attacked the torpedo planes, but not so high as to be out of touch with them. It also meant that Thach’s planes didn’t have to burn all that fuel climbing to 20,000 feet. As a result of collaborative decision making, battle experience, and efficient execution, the Yorktown air group was the only one that arrived over the target in a timely fashion and effected a coordinated attack without any argument, insubordination, or error.28

  Jimmy Thach in the cockpit of his Wildcat. Thach was a creative tactical innovator, but with only six Wildcats, he was unable to protect the lumbering Devastators of Lem Massey’s VT-3. (U.S. Naval Institute)

  The planes of the Yorktown air group flew almost directly to the Kidō Butai and found it in just over an hour, at about 10:00 a.m. Massey’s low-flying Devastators saw the Japanese first, led to the target by the black smoke generated by the Japanese cruisers. Massey led his squadron from 2,500 feet down to 150 feet as he prepared to make his torpedo run. Two and a half miles above him, Max Leslie, leading the dive-bombers, called him on the radio to ask if he was ready to start a coordinated attack. Massey replied that he was. Almost at once, however, Massey reported “frantically” that he was under attack by enemy fighters. As a result, in the end there was no coordinated attack, for, as one Devastator pilot put it, “We were forced to go in on our own attack as soon as possible to prevent all of the torpedo planes from being shot down.”29

  By now, despite all their success, some of the Zero pilots must have felt a bit whipsawed. Having fought off one American attack from the northeast, then another from the south, here was yet another from the northeast. And not only were many of the Zero pilots nearly out of the 20 mm ammunition, they were now facing new attackers that had a fighter escort.

  That fighter escort consisted of only six Wildcats. Of the eighteen Wildcats on the Yorktown, Fletcher had kept six for CAP and reserved another six to accompany Wally Short’s VS-5 for the attack on the two “missing” carriers if and when they were located. That decision annoyed Jimmy Thach; his defensive weave pattern could be executed only when his fighters maneuvered in groups of four. He complained to Arnold that six was not divisible by four. Arnold told him that the decision had come from the flag bridge. Thach, disappointed, was nonetheless determined to do the best he could. When his fighters caught up with Massey’s torpedo bombers en route to the target, he signaled Warrant Officer Tom Cheek to position his two-plane section just behind the torpedo bombers while Thach himself, with a four-plane section, flew above them at about 5,500 feet.30

  Thach first saw the outer screen of the Kidō Butai about ten miles out. Colored shell bursts began to explode around him—directional signals from the screening warships to guide the Zeros to the new target. And soon enough, they came. Thach tried to count them and figured “there were around twenty.” In fact, there were more than twice that number. By now, Nagumo’s four carriers had launched every Zero they had, including the reserves, a total of forty-two. Because Thach’s Wildcats had launched last rather than first, and because they had flown at 5,500 feet instead of 20,000 feet, they arrived with enough fuel in their tanks to engage in aerial combat. But there was not a lot six Wildcats could do against forty-two Zeros.

  The Japanese pilots attacked both the torpedo planes and the escorting fighters. Ensign Edgar Bassett, occupying the trailing spot in Thach’s fourplane formation, was attacked from below, and his plane fell smoking into the sea. Bassett never got out of the cockpit. Other Zeros “were streaming in right past us and into the torpedo planes,” Thach recalled. “The air was like a bee hive.” He found he could not seize the initiative against such overwhelming numbers. Though his mission was to protect the torpedo planes, it was all he could do to defend himself from the swarming Zeros. Because only one of his surviving wingmen was familiar with his “beam defense maneuver,” Thach had to improvise. When a Zero came up behind them, he led his three surviving planes in a sharp right turn, which forced the Zero pilot to attempt a side shot. Then, as the Zero followed him through the turn, Thach turned sharply left. As the swift Zero flew past them, it gave Thach a shot at him from behind. After a long burst from Thach’s .50-caliber machine guns, the Zero exploded and went down. Despite their agility, and the deadliness of their 20 mm cannons, the poorly armored Zeros succumbed quickly when they were hit.31

  Nonetheless, the Zeros had the numbers, and they savaged Massey’s torpedo bombers just as they had Waldron’s and Lindsay’s. Massey’s plane was one of the first to be taken out. “It just exploded,” Thach recalled. Machinist Harry Corl, flying a Devastator in Massey’s section, remembered that it “went down in flames with no hope of anybody surviving.” The steadily decreasing number of torpedo planes tried to hold a straight course to give their own gunners, who were firing continuously, a steady platform. The value of having fighter cover was not that the Wildcats fended off the Zeros but rather that they occupied some of the Zeros that might otherwise have focused exclusively on the Devastators. Somewhat bitterly, Thach wrote in his after-action report that “six F4F-4 airplanes cannot prevent 20 or 30 Japanese VF from shooting down our slow torpedo planes.”32

  Thach’s 21-year-old wingman, “Ram” Dibb, was the only pilot in the squadron to whom Thach had explained the principles of his “beam defense maneuver.” Before flying out that day, they had agreed to try it if circumstances allowed. In the midst of the air battle, Thach heard Dibb call out, “There’s a Zero on my tail! Get him off!” Dibb and Thach were flying side by side but widely separated, and in accordance with the plan, they turned toward each other. As they closed on one another, Thach ducked under Dibb’s plane to come up face-to-face with the onrushing Zero. The two planes sped toward each other at a combined 500 miles per hour. “I was really angry,” Thach remembered later. “I probably should have decided to duck under this Zero, but I lost my temper a little bit, and decided I’m going to keep my fire going into him and he’s going to pull out.” As the two planes flashed past each other, only feet apart, flames began spouting from the Zero, and Thach watched it fall away into the sea.33

  The five planes of Massey’s squadron that survived this onslaught dropped their torpedoes, turned, and headed for home, seeking cloud cover to hide from the relentless Zeros. Wilhelm Esders recalled that the Zeros “continued to make passes at us” for more than twenty miles before they finally gave up the pursuit and returned to the Kidō Butai. Esders planned to use his YE homing system to plot a course for the Yorktown, and asked his backseat radiom
an/gunner, Aviation Radioman Second Class Robert B. Brazier, to change the radio coils so he could activate the system. Brazier had been hit three times and had bullets through both legs and one in his back. He replied weakly that he didn’t think he could do it. Several minutes later, however, Brazier called Esders on the intercom to report that he had changed the coils. Because of that, Esders was able to get a signal from Yorktown and he headed for home. As he approached the task force, however, he saw that the Yorktown was herself under air attack (it was 12:40 by now), and, virtually out of gas, he had to ditch in the water about ten miles away. He managed to get Braziers out of the cockpit and into the raft, but Braziers’ wounds were too serious for him to survive such rough handling; he died in the raft. A Japanese dive-bomber returning from his attack on the Yorktown flew past and turned back for a second look. Esders ducked under the water and waited for the inevitable strafing. But instead, Lieutenant Junior Grade Art Brassfield, flying CAP over Task Force 17, came to the rescue, shooting down the Val dive-bomber, his fourth of the day. Esders was picked up the next day by the destroyer Hammann.34

  Of the forty-one Devastator torpedo planes launched from three American aircraft carriers that morning, only four made it back to their carriers, and one of those was so badly damaged as to be of no further service. Three more ditched in the water trying to make it back to the carriers, though their crews were later rescued. Despite those horrific losses, not a single torpedo struck home. Indeed, since 7:00 that morning, the Americans had hurled a total of ninety-four airplanes at the Kidō Butai in eight separate and uncoordinated attacks, and not a single bomb or torpedo had found its mark. The Japanese had shot down most of those planes and sent the rest fleeing. Nagumo had still not managed to get the planes of his own strike force up onto the flight deck for launch. To do so, all he needed was a short respite.