Ghost Carrier: They Died to Fight Another Day (7 page)

USS LISCOME BAY
, RADAR ROOM

The freckle-faced eighteen-year-old radarman, Bobby Cannon, had just started his early morning shift. It was 0400 hours and he was still wiping sleep from his eyes when the formation appeared on his circular, green PPI radarscope. Massive wasn’t the right word. No, Bobby thought, as he felt an ominous feeling creep into his body,
gigantic
was more like it.

“Jesus,” Bobby whispered to himself as a swarm of green dots bearing southeast covered the upper left quadrant of his radarscope.

“Sir! Sir!” Bobby turned around and shouted to the Officer on Duty, “I’ve got twelve to sixteen ships 121,000 yards to the northwest bearing forty degrees.”

Lon Turner, the fire control officer that morning, rushed to the scope to confirm. His horrified face reflected in the glass as he counted, “sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Speed?”

“Twenty two knots, sir. They’re on a heading straight for us.”

“Friend or Foe?”

“Too far out for SG, sir.”

“Okay. We’re not taking any chances.”

Turner grabbed the receiver that was the direct line to the Captain on the bridge. “Captain Wiltsie, we’ve got a large battle group sixty nautical miles to the northwest heading in our direction. Sea going radar has not identified, but we believe the battle group to be Japanese.”

The bridge personnel launched into action as the Captain shouted, “Sound General Quarters. Alert Admiral Mullinnix. They’ve probably got us pinged on their radar already. Let’s pray to God we get our planes in the air before they do.”

Steaming toward American task force 52.13 was none other than the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Fifth Fleet 2nd Carrier Division led by the now legendary Princeton educated Japanese
Hero of Midway
, Vice Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi. After that decisive naval triumph where he personally directed the destruction of American Carrier Task Force 16 consisting of the
Yorktown, Enterprise,
and
Hornet,
he was elevated to Vice Admiral. He now commanded a much larger mobile naval attack force. While the expanded Japanese First Fleet patrolled the west coast of the United States choking off any American rebuilding efforts, Yamaguchi’s forces prowled the Central Pacific on search and destroy missions. Task force 52.13, directly in their crosshairs, could not be in a worse spot in the entire ocean.

JAPANESE CARRIER
HIRYU

Vice Admiral Yamaguchi peered out past the flight deck from the bridge of the formidable Carrier
Hiryu,
his hands clasped behind his back. The
Hiryu
was among the largest carriers afloat. Its displacement was 17,600 metric tons, nearly 10,000 metric tons larger than the
Liscome
Bay.
Its length was over 746 feet, more than 200 feet longer than
Liscome.
But its real superiority was its striking power. The
Hiryu
carried 64 aircraft, a combination of Zeros, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers. The
Liscome
carried just 28 planes, a combination of Wildcat fighters and Avenger torpedo bombers. Even with sister escort carriers
Corregidor
and
Coral
Sea,
carrying the same complement of planes,
Liscome’s
battle group was no match for Yamaguchi’s fast attack force.

Sailing along side the
Hiryu
were sister carrier
Soryu
with 63 planes and the even larger fleet carrier
Akagi.
The
Akagi,
more than 855 feet long, carried 66 aircraft with another 25 in reserve.

Admiral Yamaguchi in dark navy blue battle uniform with lapels adorned by two embroidered gold stars wore a gold braid over his left shoulder. His cap also dark navy blue was crowned by a center Japanese naval insignia. Small in stature but imposing in military bearing, Yamaguchi lived strictly by the Bushido code, the traditional samurai code of honor that dictated men should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic. What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. He was hot-tempered, aggressive to a fault, and a man who valued honor as the ultimate virtue. His decisive victory at Midway elevated him to God-like status among subordinates in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Ten silent naval officers and
Hiryu’s
Captain, Tomeo Kaku, surrounded the Vice Admiral on the bridge. All were surveying flight deck operations.

“How long till deployment, Captain Kaku?” Yamaguchi asked in Japanese to the nearby officer.

“Ten minutes, Admiral. The enemy escort task force was identified only five minutes ago.”

Yamaguchi turned and glared at the Captain who reacted with an apologetic bow. “Our first attack must overwhelm and render them impotent unable to counter strike.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Captain Kaku continued, “In the first wave, as you ordered, we are launching twenty torpedo bombers, six fighter escorts, and five dive bombers.
Soryu
is launching the same configuration.”

“I want to move up the launch of the second wave attack from
Akagi
to ten minutes behind the first.”

“I will make certain they receive the revised launch order, Admiral.”

Yamaguchi nodded as Kaku moved closer to him for a private conversation.

“Sir, about your orders to the bombers to avoid heavy damage to their carriers…”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Admiral, sir, it is simply our superior firepower could sink all three of their light carriers destroying the heart of battle group.”

Yamaguchi looked at him a moment. “Yes, Captain Kaku, what you say is entirely correct. Do not underestimate, however, the preference for death over dishonor to the Americans. They will surrender their carriers, and it will be a greater blow than if we had sent them all to the bottom of the sea.”

A phone rang near the back of the bridge. An officer picked up the shipboard telephone receiver, listened a moment, then shouted. “First attack squadron ready for take off, Admiral.

Yamaguchi barked, “Launch all strike force aircraft.”

At that moment more than 62 Japanese attack force planes began to launch from the flight decks of
Hiryu
and
Soryu
.

Wildcats and Avengers launched from the
Liscome
were already in the air. The planes on
Corregidor
(CVE-58)
and
Coral
Sea (CVE- 57)
were five minutes behind them. Pilots of the American planes had no idea they were on a collision course with the overwhelming number of Yamaguchi’s strike aircraft.

The Wildcats flew above the low flying Avenger torpedo bombers providing a screen. Wildcat lead pilot, Tug Sunderland, twenty years old, former crop duster out of Topeka, Kansas, spotted numerous black dots at ten o’clock silhouetted against the northwestern clouds ten minutes into his sortie from
Liscome
.

“Jesus,” he said, immediately realizing his force was outnumbered at least two to one. Sunderland knew his squad’s only chance was to employ the Wildcat’s best fighting tactic against the more agile zeros – attack them head on.

The Wildcat, heavier and less maneuverable than the Japanese Zero, had six wing mounted .50 caliber machine guns, which could deliver 200 rounds in a four second burst. The 5,500 pound Zero, faster and lighter than the Wildcat, had two 7.7mm machine guns and two 20mm cannons. Its vulnerability was its three wing and fuselage fuel tanks and it’s unprotected glass pilot canopy.

Sunderland, knowing his squad had lost the element of surprise, readied for a slugfest. Attacking head on into the Japanese squadron at 600 mph would be a high stakes game of chicken with no one wanting to flinch.

“Squadron leader to base, numerous enemy aircraft inbound. We’re gonna need some help up here.” On the flagship Admiral Mullinnix had already ordered all perimeter ships as well as the three carriers to man their Bofors 40mm and Oerlikon 20mm anti aircraft guns. Every available man was on the line.

Pilot Sunderland had radioed his squad the attack plan and all planes bore down head on for the kill. As the American pilots made their move, the Zeros broke off as expected into steep climbing maneuvers to get above the American formation. Sunderland and his squad opened up with their .50 caliber wing machine guns. Sunderland shattered the right wing of one of the evading Zeros. His bullets burst the interior fuel tank of the Zero, and the entire plane blew up in a blinding white flash. Sunderland shielded his eyes a moment, then saw debris careening past his canopy, including the Zero’s engine, which was still spinning and turning. Smaller pieces of debris bounced off his prop and right wing, but his Wildcat remained flyable. Fellow pilots had similar albeit less spectacular kills on the exposed underbelly of other Zeros, sending them crashing into the sea.

With the Wildcats engaged, the Avengers had lost their fighter screen. Even still they doggedly continued forward battling through the remaining Japanese planes. If they could reach the enemy task force, their deadly accurate 2216-pound, Mark 13 torpedo bombs could wreak considerable havoc.

Eight Avengers were able to squeeze past the first Japanese formation, but six miles distant from the
Hiryu,
they slammed head on into the second overwhelming wave of escort fighter Zeros, which had just lifted off from the
Akagi.
The American pilots had no chance. Two and three Zeros simultaneously attacked each Avenger in an epic mismatch that destroyed all eight remaining bombers in less than seven minutes. There were no American survivors.

With Sunderland’s squadron tied up in aerial combat, this unfortunately allowed a great number of Japanese torpedo and dive bombers to slip past and bear down on the American task group. Their overwhelming numbers simply could not be stopped.

USS
MISSISSIPPI

On the only battleship left in Task Force 52.13,
Mississippi
Gunner Patrick “Patty” Murphy, 19, former alter boy and only son of Fiona and Sean of South Boston, MA, agonized. His finger twitched on the trigger. This was his first Naval battle and his shirt was already soaked through with sweat. As his body trembled, he whispered a silent prayer as he readied for the onslaught of enemy bombers. Alarms rang out from all ships in the battle group. This would be close-in fighting. The ship’s big guns would be ineffective for anti aircraft combat as they were designed to hurl projectiles at enemy ships twenty miles away. Admiral Yamaguchi’s fleet steered clear of their range circling the American task force at 50 nautical miles.

A lookout on the
Mississippi
shouted, “They’re coming in low!” Then Murphy saw them. It was a formation of ten B5N “Kate” torpedo bombers scraping the surface of the waves three miles out coming in “low and slow” directly at him. Murphy could see they had their landing gear down and flaps up. This was a Japanese tactic for more precise targeting. Murphy, along with the line of other gunners on the starboard side, unleashed an intense wall of AA fire into the attackers. The noise was deafening.

Five of the “Kates” instantly peeled off to the east, maintaining low altitude while the other five dropped their payloads and climbed skyward.

At 0521 hours five 2,000 pound torpedo bombs slammed into the starboard side of the
USS
Mississippi.
One would have been sufficient to neutralize her. Five spread carnage on a scale rivaling the explosions on the
West Virginia
sunk by nine torpedoes at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Mutilated blackened bodies were blown 1500 yards from the ship into flaming oil slicks in the sea as the 10,000 pounds of torpedo bombs detonated in sickening succession. The last image Murphy witnessed before his incineration was the red tip of the Mark 91 torpedo slamming into the side of the ship thirty feet below his 20mm gun.

Watching the exploding
Mississippi
from the bridge of the
Liscome,
Mullinnix, anguished, had to look away. The battleship became completely engulfed in a white and orange fireball. No outline of the ship remained visible. The raging inferno of twisted iron and molten metal sank beneath the waves in under two minutes. The Admiral shouted to the Communications officer, “Any word from our squadron?”

“Negative, Admiral, we lost radio contact with Commander Sunderland five minutes ago.”

“What about our torpedo bombers?”

“Not a word, sir.”

Mullinnix slammed his hand down on the map table as the battle continued to rage around him. Ship to ship radio transmissions conveyed the desperation. Shouts, screams, and explosions pierced the air. Hundreds of men were dying horrible deaths all around him.

Turning to the west from the bridge, Mullinnix could see the twisted heap of the disabled cruiser
Baltimore
burning and sinking stern first. Only it’s bow number “68” remained above water. The ship had taken three direct torpedo hits in its bomb bay from the Kates.
Coral Sea’s
gunners destroyed two of the swooping dive bombers. One, skidding across the carrier’s deck in flames, took out two of their reserve Wildcat fighters and all three aircraft tumbled into the sea.

As Mullinnix watched the
Baltimore’s
bow number finally slip below the sea, a second formidable wave of enemy planes arrived. Twenty-one devastating Japanese “Val” D3A dive bombers each fitted with a single 500 pound bomb filled the sky. At this point in the Pacific war, the “Vals” had sunk more allied warships than any other axis aircraft, and now they were zeroing in on the American task force’s
Gridley
class destroyer
USS
Maury.
The ship has been fitted with radar fire control two years earlier. Vals, pounded left and right, were burning and crashing into the sea. But the number of enemy aircraft was simply too great. Three D3As were able to slip past the
Maury’s
radar accurate guns to drop three 500 pound bombs dead center on her deck. She blew up in a blinding flash, causing Mullinnix and the other officers on the
Liscome
bridge to shield their eyes.