Though none of them knew it, the Hiryū had already sunk, going down without any further assistance from either American bombs or Japanese torpedoes shortly after 9:00 that morning, less than twenty minutes after the last sighting had been called in. Stanhope Ring was bound on another “flight to nowhere.”*
The Americans flew low in a long scouting line to ensure that they did not miss the target. When they reached the reported coordinates at twilight, around 6:00 p.m., “the enemy was nowhere in sight.” Grimly determined, Ring pressed on. At 6:20, he spotted a single vessel, initially identified as a light cruiser but which was in fact the destroyer Tanikaze bound on the same mission he was: to find and sink the Hiryū. Ring led his air group past the Tanikaze, looking for bigger game. After flying more than three hundred miles and seeing nothing, Ring decided to go back and sink that light cruiser. It was the first enemy ship he had seen since the battle began, and he was not going back this time without striking a blow. He reported the sighting to both Shumway and Short, and since neither of them had found a target either, all sixty-five American dive-bombers prepared to attack the hapless Tanikaze. Her captain, Commander Katsumi Tomoi, may have wondered what he had done to merit such attention.16
Katsumi had been skeptical of his assignment from the outset. When ordered to return to the Hiryū, rescue her crew, and then sink her, he considered the mission “suicidal.” Now he announced to the crew on the ship’s loudspeaker that they “should be prepared to die with dignity.” At the same time, however, he was determined to make the best defense he could. He ordered lookouts to lean out the bridge windows, facing almost straight up, and to report the flight path of each approaching American bomber. They would call out, “Dive-bombers approaching from aft starboard!” and Katsumi would order the helmsman: “Port helm. Full speed.” When another dove from the port side, he reversed helm. “I never saw a ship go through such radical maneuvers at such high speed,” Ring later wrote.17
In the gathering darkness, the American dive-bomber pilots jostled among themselves to attack this one lone destroyer. One by one, sixty-five American dive-bombers plunged down to release their bombs, and they pressed the attack to the limit—the lookout on the Tanikaze later recalled that the bombers dove so low he could see the pilots’ goggles and white scarves. In spite of that, all the American bombs missed. Whether it was the small size of the target, the gathering darkness, or Katsumi’s maneuvers, not a single bomb hit home.* Lieutenant Abbie Tucker of Ruff Johnson’s squadron managed a near miss that damaged the Tanikaze’s hull near the waterline, but that was it. Moreover, Sam Adams, perhaps still in his blue pajamas, was shot down by antiair fire. He and his backseat gunner, Joseph Karrol, were never found. Because Adams was an especially popular member of Short’s VS-5, this loss significantly dampened the mood on the return trip. Johnny Nielsen thought, “We might better have lost a cruiser than lost Sam.”18
Returning low on gas after a very long flight, the pilots now had to find the carriers in the dark, and most of them had never attempted a night landing, even in training. At 7:30, worried that the pilots didn’t have time to look for the task force, and knowing they would be low on gas, Spruance ordered both carriers to turn on their big 36-inch searchlights, pointing them straight up like beacons despite the danger of attracting the attention of Japanese submarines. The searchlights were turned off at 8:00, but the Enterprise kept her sidelights burning for another two and a half hours.* As a result, Adams was the only pilot who failed to return, though in the dark some of the pilots landed on the wrong carrier. Only after the strike force was back aboard did Spruance learn that several of the planes from Hornet had flown off with 1,000-pound bombs despite his orders to carry 500-pounders. He said nothing at the time, but the news added to a lengthening list of concerns he had about the Hornet’s performance in the battle, and about Mitscher’s capacity for command.19
This time, instead of heading east during the night hours, away from the enemy, Spruance ordered the task force to maintain a westerly course, though he did so at a reduced speed, both to avoid running into Japanese battleships in the dark and to conserve fuel. Then he went to bed.20
While Spruance slept, Lieutenant Commander Tanabe Yahachi on the Japanese submarine I-168 was heading northward on the surface toward a set of coordinates that Nagumo had forwarded to him. Early that morning, the Chikumas number 4 floatplane had reported a Yorkfown-class carrier “listing to starboard and drifting,” and with the surviving Japanese surface ships now in full retreat, only Tanabe’s sub was close enough to respond. Concealed by darkness, Tanabe and the I-168 stayed on the surface under diesel power, both to save the batteries and to make better speed. Just before 4:00 a.m., only minutes before dawn on June 6, Tanabe identified the looming shadow of a big carrier, apparently under tow and surrounded by a screen of five destroyers, and as the eastern sky began to lighten, he submerged.
Buckmaster had ordered the evacuation of the Yorktown thirty-six hours earlier because it had seemed to him that she was about to capsize, which would have trapped the whole crew of nearly three thousand men under the water. Fletcher had ordered the destroyer Hughes to stay by the abandoned flattop on the night of June 4 and to sink her if there was any chance that the enemy might capture her. But she was still afloat on June 5, and during the day the minesweeper Vireo, ordered there from French Frigate Shoals by Nimitz, took her under tow. The big flattop, riding low in the water and somewhat down by the bow, was a lot of dead weight for the Vireo. In addition, the Yorktown’s rudder was jammed hard over so that she yawed badly; it was almost like towing her sideways. Consequently, during the night of June 5—6, there was little progress eastward.21
By then, Buckmaster had decided that since the Yorktown appeared to have stabilized, he would take a volunteer crew back aboard to try to salvage her. He called for volunteers from her former crew members who were with him on the Astoria and, ranging up alongside the destroyers Benham and Balch, solicited more volunteers. Those who raised their hands—twenty-nine officers and 141 enlisted men—were transferred to the destroyer Hammann by breeches buoy. Early on June 6, the Hammann closed on the Yorktown so that the volunteers could make their way back on board the ship that they had abandoned two days before. The big flattop was still canted over at a 26-degree angle, and a few fires were still burning, including the one in the rag storage area forward. But it was the quiet that was most disturbing. The big ship was “dark, dead, and silent” as the volunteers came aboard. Machinist Lew Williams experienced “an eerie, unearthly dream-like feeling” as he made his way through the ship. It soon passed as he and the others got to work.22
Using electric power and steam pressure supplied by the Hammann, which was tied up alongside, the volunteers suppressed the last of the fires and corrected some of the list with counterflooding. They cut away anything they could from the lower (port) side to reduce weight, and the Yorktown slowly began to right herself, listing now at only 22 degrees. By noon, Buckmaster and his hardworking volunteers began to believe that they were on their way to saving the ship. Fletcher had informed Nimitz that the Yorktown was “badly damaged and dead in the water,” but also that, unless Nimitz directed otherwise, he planned to “protect and salvage” his flagship. Nimitz agreed, and he informed Fletcher that he was sending tugs and salvage officers to the scene.23
By the time Fletcher got that message, it was already too late. At noon, the crew on the Hammann passed food over to the salvage crew, and many of the volunteers took a break to eat. It was a warm, calm day, with “a glassy sea with perfect visibility” and some of the men sat on the deck to eat. Then at 1:30, first one sailor, and then others, spotted the white wakes of torpedoes heading toward them. Tanabe had somehow managed to work his way through the screen of five destroyers to loose a spread of four Type 95 torpedoes from 1,200 yards. The Yorktown s klaxon sounded general quarters, and gunners manning the antiaircraft guns aimed their weapons at the head of the wakes, hoping to detonate the torpedoes prema
turely.24
It was to no avail. The first torpedo hit the Yorktown near the bow, and the big ship shuddered. Seconds later another slammed into the destroyer Hammann tied up alongside. A third torpedo hit the Yorktown astern near frame 95, and a fourth missed astern. The Hammann was literally cut in half. Many in her crew were killed outright, knocked unconscious, or blown into the sea by the impact. The Hammann began to sink almost immediately, while on her stern men assigned to the depth-charge racks worked frantically to ensure that the safety forks were inserted into the canisters so that when the stern did sink, the charges would not explode. Their effort remained vivid to one witness sixty years later. “I can still see them,” William Burford recalled, “working on the depth charges on the stern … trying to put them on safety.” But there was not enough time, and the stern of the Hammann went down with at least some of her depth charges still set in the active mode. As the destroyer’s hull plunged downward, the depth charges began to go off, the big explosions damaging the hull of the Yorktown further and killing scores of men flailing in the water nearby.25
One of those men was the Yorktown’s gunnery officer, Commander Ernest J. Davis, who had been blown over the side of the carrier by the impact of the torpedo. He had grabbed a rope and was in the act of climbing back aboard the Yorktown when the depth charges went off. Only his lower torso was still submerged, which allowed him to survive, though he sustained a number of internal injuries. The concussion in the water was so great that the gold watch he had in his pocket was flattened to “the thickness of a silver dollar against his thigh.” Others, fully immersed in the water, were less fortunate. One witness recalled seeing the heads of swimming survivors simply disappear after the depth-charge explosion. One minute there were scores of swimmers in the water, and then “they were all gone.”26
For the second time in three days, Buckmaster ordered abandon ship. The tug Vireo cut the towing cable and came alongside to collect the survivors (plus sixteen bodies) from the Yorktown. Even then, however, Buckmaster wondered if the big ship could be saved. The torpedoes had blasted holes in the Yorktown’s starboard side so that while she now lay very low in the water, her list was less pronounced—only about 17 degrees. But the big ship continued to settle lower and lower in the water, until at two minutes before 5:00 a.m. on June 7, as Buckmaster saluted from a nearby destroyer, she disappeared.27
While Buckmaster and his volunteer crew sought to save the Yorktown, Spruance and the pilots of Task Force 16 were seeking to complete the destruction of the Japanese armada—or as much of it as was still within range. Just past dawn on June 6, while Tanabe was studying the silhouette of the Yorktown through his periscope, Spruance sent eighteen scout bombers from the Enterprise to conduct a search to the westward. At 6:45, Ensign William D. Carter sighted what he thought was a battleship or battlecruiser and a cruiser screened by three destroyers 128 miles away and heading west at a leisurely ten knots. It was the crippled Mogami and the Mikuma with two (not three) destroyers, looking like a battleship and a cruiser because one was forty feet longer than the other. Carter told his radioman, Oral “Slim” Moore, to send the message “Sighted one CA [cruiser] and one CB [battlecruiser]” But Moore had never heard of a “CB” and over the intercom it sounded like “CV” [carrier], so that’s what he sent. Spruance did not react at once. Having dispatched his planes on a wild goose chase the day before, he wanted to make sure of the target this time. Rather than order an immediate launch, he directed floatplanes from two of the cruisers in his screen (Minneapolis and New Orleans) to verify the contact and stay in the area, so that they could guide the strike to the target, which they could do because of their long-range capability.28
At 7:30, with the float planes still en route to the sighting, Ensign Roy Gee, whose flying skills had drawn Mitscher’s ire back in March during the Hornet’s shakedown cruise, flew over the Enterprise and dropped a beanbag on the deck. The attached note accurately reported two cruisers and two destroyers 133 miles to the southwest. Though this was a confirmation of the same group reported earlier, Spruance now wondered if there were two groups of enemy ships out there, one of them with a carrier. He decided to hedge his bets, ordering Hornet to launch her air group at once, but keeping the planes of the Enterprise back as a reserve, as Fletcher had done two days before, on the morning of June 4. The Hornet began launching at 8:00 a.m.
It was Stan Ring’s third opportunity to strike the enemy, and he was grimly determined that this time nothing should go wrong. He led eleven planes of VB-8 under Ruff Johnson and fourteen from VS-8 under Walt Rodee. Mitscher sent along eight Wildcats to strafe the target and to suppress antiaircraft fire. As Ring’s formation circled the Hornet and prepared to depart, the Enterprise was busy recovering planes from the morning search. From their pilots, Spruance learned that the sighting had involved a battleship, not a carrier, and, fearful that Ring might ignore the battleship and waste time seeking a nonexistent carrier, he authorized a radio message to tell him: “Target may be a battleship instead of a carrier. Attack.”29
Ring took his air group westward, and an hour later, at 9:30, Ruff Johnson was the first to spot the Mogami and Mikuma, plus their two destroyers. He reported the sighting to Ring: “Stanhope from Robert, Enemy below on port bow.” Apparently, the Japanese were monitoring the same radio frequency, for soon afterward an unidentified radioman came on the circuit, speaking in “a very oriental tone,” to say, “Stanhope from Robert, Return to base.” It fooled no one, and Ring led his air group around to the east to attack out of the sun. At last, Ring had an opportunity to strike at a major element of the enemy fleet.30
The fourteen planes of Walt Rodee’s Scouting Eight dove on the Mogami, while the eight planes of Johnson’s Bombing Eight attacked the Mikuma, which most of the pilots reported as a battleship. Rodee’s bombers scored two hits. One bomb landed squarely on top of Mogami’s turret number five, blowing off the roof and killing every man inside, and another hit the cruiser astern. Neither hit was fatal, however, in part because Captain Soji had jettisoned all his torpedoes, and there were no secondary explosions. The Mikuma escaped altogether. Ruff Johnson himself scored a near miss (a “paint scraper” as he called it) on the Mikuma, but no one scored a direct hit, and the heavy antiair fire claimed two of the American pilots. Ensign Don Adams landed a 500-pound bomb on the destroyer Asashio, and the Wildcat pilots strafed both destroyers and cruisers.
On the whole, the strike was disappointing. Thirty-three planes had attacked two cruisers, one of them already crippled, and two destroyers, and failed to sink any of them. The already-damaged Mogami had been hit twice but continued to steam at better than 20 knots. Captain Sakiyama reported only “light damage” to the Mikuma. All four ships continued to steam southward, seeking to get inside the 700-mile radius from Wake Island and the protection of land-based air cover. Even at 28 knots, however, it would take them another twenty hours to get there, and there were still eight hours of daylight left.31
As the Hornet planes were attacking, the Enterprise was launching a second strike of thirty-one more bombers, escorted by twelve Wildcats—forty-three planes in all, with Wally Short in command. In case there was a carrier out there after all, Spruance decided at the last minute to send along his last three torpedo planes as well. He worried about risking them; they were the last three operational torpedo bombers in the Pacific Fleet. He told Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert Laub, who commanded the section, that he was not to attack unless the dive-bombers and fighters had completely suppressed enemy antiaircraft fire. “If there is one single gun firing out there,” he instructed Laub, “under no circumstances are you to attack. Turn around and bring your torpedoes home. I am not going to lose another torpedo plane if I can help it. Do you understand?”32
The forty-six planes from Enterprise were aloft by noon. The bombers climbed to 22,500 feet, with the three torpedo planes behind and below them at 1,500 feet. En route to the target, Johnny Nielsen saw a small motor boat, leaving “
a tiny white wake, that was heading eastward in the direction of San Francisco.” It may have been the cutter from the Hiryū containing the last of the survivors from that ship, though why it would be heading east was a mystery.33
Soon after that, the pilots spotted a trail of oil on the surface that led off to the southwest, and they followed it to the two cruisers. By now the Mogami had worked her way back up to 28 knots, and both cruisers were trying desperately to get within the envelope of air cover from Wake. The American bombers flew past them for thirty miles to be sure there was neither a carrier nor a battleship in the area. Jim Gray took his Wildcat down to 10,000 feet to look over the cruisers, and noting that one was shorter than the other, he concluded, correctly, that they were the “battleship and cruiser” that had been reported earlier, and he radioed Short to that effect.
All formality was dispensed with as Shumway and Short prepared to attack. “Wally, this is Dave,” Shumway radioed. “I’ll take the cruiser to the northeast.” Short replied that he would take “the other one.” The Americans dove at nearly 90 degrees, and although there was heavy antiair fire, all the flak exploded well behind them. The pilots got two more hits on the Mogami and devastated the “battleship” Mikuma with five bombs. Johnny Nielsen watched as one bomb went down the smoke stack and detonated. “That stack just lifted up off the deck,” Neilsen recalled, “tumbled over in the air, splashed into the water, and disappeared.” White steam gushed up through the black smoke. The Mikuma slowed and then stopped, burning furiously. The almost giddy mood of the American pilots was evident in the recorded message traffic. “Tojo, you Son-of-a-Bitch,” said one, “send out the rest and we’ll get those, too.”34
Even as this strike by the planes from the Enterprise was in progress, Spruance authorized the Hornet air group to rearm and go out again. In effect, he was tag-teaming the Mogami and Mikuma, with the two carriers taking turns. This time, however, Stanhope Ring did not go along with the Hornet air group. The radio on his plane was not working, and Mitscher used that as a reason to hold him back. Ring could have flown another plane had Mitscher deemed it useful. Instead, as Ring recalled it, “Capt. Mitscher decided … that I should not accompany the final attack group which was being readied for takeoff.” Perhaps Mitscher had finally concluded that Ring was not a particular asset.35
The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) Page 38
