At this point he learned. As the little squadron turned toward the carrier, all the ships in the screen opened up. Zeros swarmed around, and as one of the pilots put it, “With no place to land, these characters were really hopped up.” A shell burst in the wing of one plane; shrapnel smashed through the nose of another, sending the bombardier sprawling. Yet the B-17s had a way of coming through. Shaking off the fighters, they thundered in, dropped their bombs, and burst clear on the other side still intact. One of them, unable to release on the carrier, dropped instead on an unsuspecting destroyer.
Untried, a year or so out of school, it was a weird experience for most of the men. A dozen disconnected impressions raced through their minds: the sudden fright … how busy they were … the overwhelming thirst when it was all over—and then not being able to swallow a drop of water.
For those lucky or unlucky enough to peer outside, the sight was breath-taking. Major Blakey was fascinated by the way the shells and small-arms fire whipped the sea like an angry storm. All of a sudden some splashes shot up far bigger than the rest. “My Lord,” Blakey thought, “those are really big shells.” It never occurred to him that still another group of B-17s, completely unknown to himself, was bombing the Japanese fleet from a point directly above.
But it was so. The Midway-based planes were back on the job. First, Colonel Sweeney arrived at 5:30 with a group of four. The carrier below looked finished; so he settled on a heavy cruiser. Then Carl Wuertele turned up with two more B-17s from Midway. The carrier was still burning, but he took it anyhow, while his wingman picked a battleship. They were the ones who were causing the commotion when Major Blakey appeared on the scene.
Meanwhile Stebbins had arrived with the Hornet’s dive bombers. He too decided the carrier was through and went instead for two ships in the screen … one of them the same target Sweeney was bombing.
Mass confusion, but by now it didn’t matter. The strike was a picnic. Attacked from all sides—the Zeros finally used up—the Japanese had little left to put up a fight. When the American fliers finally headed home, their estimates matched the rosy glow of the Pacific sunset. Bombing 8 claimed three hits on a battleship, two on a cruiser. The B-17s were just as confident—hits on the burning carrier, a battleship, a cruiser; a destroyer sunk; plus an assortment of lethal near-misses.
CAPTAIN Michiso Tsutsumi, executive officer of the battleship Haruna, watched two dive bombers hurtle down toward the bridge. One of them looked as if it would never pull out—Tsutsumi could see the pilot’s face clearly. Then at the last second it zoomed safely away, still so low that its trailing antenna caught that of the Haruna.
Somehow the bombs missed, landing with huge explosions just astern. For the next hour much of the fleet endured the same thing: 5:30, dive bombers on the Tone … 5:46, B-17s on the Haruna … 5:40, dive bombers on the Chikuma … 6:15, B-17s on the Hiryu… .
It seemed to go on forever. But finally at 6:32 some weary yeoman on the Chikuma’s bridge noted that the last of the attackers were retiring, and the fleet had a chance to take stock. Incredibly, none of the ships had been hit by these final blows. The near-miss off the Haruna’s stern bent a few plates and jammed the main battery range finder, but repairs would be easy. The only other damage came when one of those low-flying B-17s strafed the Hiryu’s shattered flight deck, knocking out an antiaircraft battery and killing several gunners.
One antiaircraft gun, more or less, made little difference to the Hiryu now. Captain Kaku knew his only hope was to get clear of the battle area. Once beyond range of the U.S. planes, maybe the ship could lick her wounds and somehow make it back to Japan. The phone still worked, and Kaku called his chief engineer, Commander Kunizo Aiso. He urged the chief to keep giving him 30 knots.
Aiso was optimistic. The master control room was in good shape, and the flash fire in Engine Room No. 4 was out. He couldn’t get to the other three engine rooms—all hatches were blocked—but he could call them, and they said everything still was running. Their chief complaint seemed to be the fumes and smoke that steadily poured through the air ducts.
Soon they all noticed something else. Engine rooms were always hot, but now it was far hotter than usual … far hotter than it ought to be. In No. 4 Ensign Mandai looked up at the steel overhead and noticed that the white paint was starting to melt. It began dripping down on the engineers as they worked, burning them, causing little fires to flare up in the machinery. As the paint disappeared from the overhead, the bare steel began to glow. Finally it was bright red. Nobody mentioned it, but every man in the room knew they were now trapped beneath the fires raging above.
A few hundred yards off the burning carrier, the battleship Kirishima plowed along in the gathering dusk. She had been ordered to stand by for towing in case the Hiryu closed down her engines. As night fell, it became an increasingly unpleasant assignment. The fires on the Hiryu blazed up from time to time, offering a perfect beacon for enemy submarines. Finally the battleship’s skipper Captain Iwabuchi radioed Nagumo, describing the situation, pointing out the danger to his ship.
At 6:37 Nagumo radioed back the welcome word to break off and rejoin the Nagara. The Kirishima turned northwest, and as she slowly drew off, her executive officer Captain Honda thoughtfully looked back at the Hiryu. She stood black against the evening sky, fires twinkling in every port. From a distance the little pinpoints of flame reminded him of lanterns—hundreds of them—strung to mark some happier occasion at home.
LOOKING back at the Yorktown, listing heavily and silhouetted alone in the twilight, Commander Hartwig could barely stand the sight. For two years his destroyer Russell had been the carrier’s guard ship. He felt almost a part of her. Now he was steaming away. With the survivors rescued, Admiral Fletcher had ordered the ships in the screen to head east and join up with Admiral Spruance. Orders were orders, but it wasn’t easy to leave that sagging, lonely hulk. One thought, paraphrased from Hamlet, kept running through Hartwig’s mind: “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew her well.”
There were many others who felt, as they left the scene, that “it didn’t seem right” to abandon the Yorktown. She was holding her own—the fires were contained, her list was no greater—and the Portland stood rigged to give her a tow. But there were other factors too, and Frank Jack Fletcher had to consider them all. It was getting dark … Japanese snoopers were about … Yamamoto’s heavy ships were somewhere … enemy subs might turn up … a task force guarding a derelict carrier made an ideal target.
Once again war turned into a matter of “groping around.” Fletcher weighed his chances, finally decided the odds were too dangerous. At 5:38 he issued his orders sending everybody east. For the next 35 minutes the Yorktown wallowed alone in the dusk; then at 6:13 new orders went out, detaching the destroyer Hughes to stand by her.
The rest of Task Force 17 continued on toward Spruance, who was just recovering his planes from the afternoon strike. Once again anxious faces turned skyward, counting the SBDs, searching for signs of damage or casualties. But this time there was much less tension than during the morning attack. The radio had seen to that. No one who listened could miss the note of jubilation as the pilots talked back and forth: “Hey, they’re throwing everything at us except the kitchen sink … oops, here comes the kitchen sink.”
Still, the Japanese had given some of them a bad time. Besides the three planes lost, several were badly damaged. Three Zeros teamed up on Lieutenant Shumway, wounding his gunner and smashing the right side of his plane. He managed to get it home, but it was certainly ready for the junk heap. Ensigns Cooner and Merrill had much the same experience.
Earl Gallaher, leading the Enterprise group, had a different kind of problem, but the way he felt, he would have traded it for Zeros. Pulling out from his dive, he started up an old back injury, and now the pain was killing him. He couldn’t even reach down to drop his landing hook. Yet he couldn’t come in without it, nor could he land in the water. With his back this way, he’d never get out of the cockpit
.
He turned the lead over to his wing man and let everyone else land while he kept trying to get the hook down. There was no easy way, and in desperation he reached over anyhow. He got it, all right, but almost passed out from the pain. Finally set, he bounced down to a shaky landing at 6:34; the last of the Enterprise group was home.
EVERYTHING was falling apart on Admiral Nagumo’s temporary flagship Nagara. The Admiral had drifted back to his destroyer days and talked vaguely of night torpedo attacks. His chief of staff Kusaka was in agony with his badly sprained ankles. He finally retired to a small cabin at the stern, where a medical officer tried to give him first aid. (“But you are a dentist,” complained Kusaka. “I know,” the man said cheerfully, “but a dentist is really a doctor.”)
Most of the time Kusaka lay on a cot, but occasionally he was needed on the bridge. Then a sailor would carry him there piggyback. It was a ludicrous sight, somehow symbolizing the helpless plight of Nagumo’s whole fleet.
Far to the rear, Admiral Yamamoto sensed the chaos. In the small operations room on the Yamato’s bridge, he worked with his staff on plans to save the day.
He had taken the first step at 12:20, 90 minutes after learning of the debacle. At that time he radioed a crisp set of instructions to the rest of the fleet. The transports were to retire temporarily. The submarines were to take position on a line to the west. Admiral Kakuta was to leave the Aleutians and hurry south with the light carriers Ryujo and Junyo. No need to give any orders to Admiral Kondo; he was already racing north with his battleships, the carrier Zuiho, in fact, everything he had. Yamamoto himself was churning east through a dense fog, bringing the mighty Yamato, two other battleships and the carrier Hosho.
With any luck these various units, including four small carriers, would converge on Nagumo within a day or so. Kondo was especially promising. Only 300 miles away, he should arrive by 3:00 next morning.
Built around the Hiryu and the hard-hitting Yamaguchi, this makeshift fleet could, Yamamoto hoped, still take care of the U.S. Navy. But there remained Midway, the original objective. With the greater part of the Imperial Combined Fleet now steaming into range, could the Americans turn the base into an “unsinkable carrier”? Captain Kuroshima, “the God of Operations,” thought so. He persuaded Yamamoto that the base must be neutralized, even at the expense of some of the gathering strength. The Admiral agreed, and at 1:10 P.M. radioed Admiral Kondo, “The Invasion Force will assign a portion of its force to shell and destroy enemy air bases on AF. The occupation of AF and AO are temporarily postponed.”
The Aleutian phase (AO) was soon revived, but Midway remained tabled, at least until Kondo could soften up the place. That should come soon enough. He was sending the cruisers Kumano, Suzuya, Mikuma and Mogami to do the job. They were the newest, fastest heavy cruisers in the Japanese Navy, perfect for the assignment. With Admiral Takeo Kurita commanding, they raced northeast at 32 knots.
A good start, but planning would be a lot easier if they knew a little more about conditions on Midway. Nagumo had yet to send a single message describing the morning raid. Of course, the man had his problems, but Combined Fleet really needed to know. At 4:55 a new message was fired off, needling Nagumo for some sort of progress report. It was never even acknowledged, perhaps because it arrived at a most inconvenient time: The U.S. dive bombers were just swooping down on the Hiryu.
Yamamoto remained unaware. He had heard nothing directly from Nagumo since 11:30 A.M.—almost six hours ago. He restlessly wandered to the front of the bridge, absent-mindedly raised his binoculars and peered east—as though that could possibly do any good.
The ax fell at 5:30.
“Hiryu burning as a result of bomb hits,” Nagumo radioed. Yamamoto sank down heavily on a chair in the center of the battle command post. He said nothing. Lost in his own private thoughts, for minutes he sat motionless as a rock.
On the Nagara Admiral Nagumo continued to tinker with the idea of a night surface engagement. His scheme at the moment was to retire west, then reverse course in the dark and catch the Americans by surprise. Studying Nagumo’s expression, Commander Yoshioka thought the old sea dog looked cheerful for the first time since morning.
Then at 6:30 the Chikuma blinkered a message which blasted every hope: “The No. 2 plane of this ship sighted 4 enemy carriers, 6 cruisers, and 15 destroyers in position 30 miles east of the burning and listing enemy carrier at 5:13. This enemy force was westward bound… .”
That changed everything. Previously Nagumo had assumed the Americans were badly hurt too. Now it appeared he had knocked out only one carrier, that four others were steaming straight for him. An old-fashioned sea battle was one thing, but neither Nagumo nor his staff had any appetite for this sort of aerial avalanche.
Nor did they doubt the news. Stunned by the unexpected American assault, they were now ready to believe anything. Nobody even bothered to double-check. Had they done so, they might have been far more skeptical. The information was based on two supposedly separate sightings by the Chikuma’s plane—but the second “sighting” was clearly the pilot trying to correct and amplify his original flash.
But Nagumo’s officers were no longer in a mood to analyze contact reports. Their only reaction was to run for it. At 7:05 the remnants of the Striking Force turned tail and fled northwest.
Admiral Yamamoto sensed there might be a morale problem. He had been shocked himself by these stunning blows, but resiliency was one of the Admiral’s fighting qualities. Soon he was ready to jump into the fight, but he wasn’t so sure about his unit commanders. Maybe they needed something to buck them up until he could get there and take over himself. At 7:15 he radioed all commands:
The enemy fleet, which has practically been destroyed, is retiring to the east.
Combined Fleet units in the vicinity are preparing to pursue the remnants and at the same time, to occupy AF.
The Main Body is scheduled to reach 32° 08’ N, 175° 45’ E at 0300 on the 5th. Course 90°; speed 20.
The First Carrier Striking Force, Invasion Force (less Cruiser Division 7) and Submarine Force will immediately contact and destroy the enemy.
Admiral Nagumo must have found it bitterly ironical: at the same moment he received another message reporting that the Soryu had gone down.
All afternoon she had smoldered away, racked by occasional explosions, while the stand-by destroyers circled helplessly about. Toward sunset the fires died down enough to send Chief Petty Officer Abe aboard in an attempt to rescue Captain Yanagimoto. Abe was a Navy wrestling champion, and his orders were to bring Yanagimoto off by force. But the Captain refused to budge, and Abe couldn’t bring himself to lay hands on his skipper. He returned from the carrier in tears and alone.
The Soryu wallowed lower in the water. On the Makigumo, standing by, somebody began singing the Japanese national anthem “Kimigayo.” Others took it up. As the strains pealed out over the water, the Soryu’s stern dipped under, her bow rose high—paused for a second—and at 7:13 she was gone.
Twelve minutes later it was the Kaga’s turn. She had been drifting all afternoon, while a small bucket brigade remained aboard fighting the flames. It was a hopeless battle, and around sunset the destroyer Hagikaze sent a cutter over to get the men off. They merely sent it back for a hand pump. The cutter went over again, this time with a written order for the men to return. They now obeyed, but it was hard. As one old warrant officer climbed aboard the Hagikaze, he kept looking back at his burning ship. Tears streamed down his cheeks, even running down his beautifully trimmed mustache. Shortly afterward two mighty explosions ripped the dusk, and at 7:25 the Kaga too was gone.
At this same moment a few miles away, Captain Aoki of the Akagi summoned all hands to the anchor deck. Hope was gone for saving the carrier, and now Aoki praised the men’s courage, bade them farewell, and ordered all to abandon ship. The destroyers Nowaki and Arashi moved near, and at 8:00 a flotilla of small boats began transferring the survivors.
&nbs
p; A message was sent to Admiral Nagumo, asking permission to scuttle her. Nagumo never answered, but Yamamoto did. The Commander in Chief monitored the request and at 10:25 radioed a brief order not to sink the ship. Partly it was Yamatomo’s fighting spirit, but partly it was sentiment too. The Akagi was a great favorite of his—in younger days he had served on her for years—now he was determined to tow her back if he could.
The Akagi’s navigator Commander Miura got Yamamoto’s message on the Nowaki, where he was directing the rescue operations. He quickly took a launch over to the Akagi, found Captain Aoki waiting to go down with his command (some say tied to the anchor). Miura was a great talker, and he used all his art now. Instead of mournful pleading—which might have been expected—he scolded Aoki, told him he was making a nuisance of himself, above all pointed to Yamamoto’s order not to scuttle the ship. It would be far more useful, Miura observed, to come over to the Nowaki, and help save her.
Aoki remained utterly dispirited (he would for the rest of his life), but he nodded and dropped down into the Nowaki’s launch. The party shoved off, leaving behind the black, silent Akagi—now truly abandoned—lying helpless in the moonlit sea.
A few scattered swimmers remained—combat air patrol pilots who had run out of gas, occasional crewmen from the three carriers. All afternoon and into the evening destroyers scurried about, picking them up: Raita Ogawa, the Zero pilot from the Akagi, treading water in his life jacket … Tatsuya Otawa from the Soryu, hugging a piece of timber … Takayoshi Morinaga of the Kaga, clinging to a floating hammock … a handful of others. At first there was a good deal of shouting to attract attention, but as evening drew near the cries grew thinner. At last all was silent; the darkened destroyers ended their search and rushed northwest to rejoin the fleet.