The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (36 page)

More important, it worked. Despite the darkness and the range, the four Catalinas, led by Lieutenant William L. Richards, actually found Tanaka’s “Transport Group.” At about 1:00 a.m. Richards saw “what appeared to be [an] endless line of Japanese ships” silhouetted against a bright full moon. He told his crew, “Drop that damn thing and let’s get the hell out of here.” They did, and even scored a hit—the first of the battle—on the small tanker
Akebono Maru
. The Japanese antiaircraft guns opened up, and, in the words of one witness, “it was like the fourth of July with tracers coming through the plane.” The PBYs escaped without significant damage, though the pilots had trouble staying awake during the long flight back to Midway. “One of us would fly the plane,” a crewmember recalled, “and the other would whack him in the face to keep him awake.” Their torpedo strike had killed eleven men and wounded thirteen more, though the damage to the tanker was limited. One Japanese officer concluded that the torpedo’s warhead had failed to detonate (not unusual with the Mark 13 torpedo), for the
Akebono Maru
stayed a float and even managed to maintain her place in the convoy.
³⁰

These air attacks on Tanaka proved that the Americans now knew of the approach of the Japanese. Since there seemed little reason to maintain radio silence any longer, Kondō reported the attacks to Yamamoto. The commander in chief, however, did not pass the information on to Nagumo. For one thing, Yamamoto was maintaining radio silence so that the Americans would not be aware of him. Moreover, he very likely assumed that Nagumo was paying attention and had heard the report himself. As it happened, Nagumo had not, and he remained unaware that the Americans were alerted, or that they had already dispatched two air strikes to contest the approach of the transport force. Even had he known, it is not clear it would have made any difference. After all, the American air attacks had proved fruitless. The various elements of the Japanese armada remained essentially unharmed, and they continued to close in on Midway in accordance with the operational timetable drafted by Combined Fleet back in April. At noon on June 3, the Kidō Butai, still enshrouded by the convenient weather front, altered its course from east to southeast and increased speed to 26 knots to close on its predetermined launching point for a dawn strike the next morning. For their part, the American carriers at Point Luck moved westward at an easy fourteen knots in anticipation of an imminent sighting by the patrol planes from Midway. The real battle was yet to be joined.
³¹

The American forces at Point Luck operated two hours ahead of the clocks on Midway. The ships of the Kidō Butai were still on Tokyo time, their clocks twenty-one hours ahead. Nevertheless, as all the clocks moved toward midnight on the ships on both sides that cleaved the waters of the Pacific Ocean, officers and enlisted men prepared for the changing of the watch: in the engine room, in the radio shack, on the topside lookout, and on the bridge. It was a ritual that had taken place a hundred thousand times before, and would a hundred thousand times again. By tradition, the man coming to assume the watch arrives early. On the bridge, he familiarizes himself with the ship’s course and speed and all other pieces of pertinent information. When he feels he has a firm grasp of the circumstances, he salutes the officer of the deck and pronounces the words that make him responsible for the ship over the next four hours: “I relieve you, sir.” His watch will last until 4:00 that morning when another officer will appear to take his place, but for now, at this moment, he is driving the ship. The night slips silently past. With the ship blacked out and all but invisible, it seems to exist in a world of its own. Of course, it is actually part of a complex pattern that stretches over half of the central Pacific, with more than 150 ships—carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, transports, supply vessels, and submarines—each moving at its own speed toward its destiny.

In military time, 2400 became 0001 as a new day began. To the Japanese, operating on Tokyo time, it was now June 5, but for the Americans, it was now officially June 4,1942.

*
After the raid, one Japanese Zero pilot attempted to land his crippled plane on a nearby island. His wheels stuck in the spongy tundra, and the abrupt landing broke his neck. The plane, however, was barely damaged, and five weeks later it was recovered by Americans and sent back to the States, where it was repaired and flight-tested. That helped American aircraft designers assess its strengths and weaknesses.

*
There is some uncertainty concerning the identification of Kondō’s and Tanaka’s units. Some students of the battle assume that Sweeny’s B-17s struck at the same force that Reid had reported that morning. However, the makeup of each force, as well as the Japanese battle reports, suggest that while Reid saw Kondō’s “Invasion Force,” which included two battleships
(Kongo
and
Hiei
) as well as four heavy cruisers (“Six large vessels in column”), Sweeny’s B-17s actually struck at the “Transport Force” guarded by one light cruiser and ten destroyers.

11

Nagumo’s Dilemma
(4:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.)

I
t was still full dark at 4:00 a.m. (local time) on June 4 when a bugle on Nagumo’s flagship
Akagi
called the crew to battle stations.
*
The fog had dissipated, though there was a low cloud cover over the Kidō Butai, and the seas were choppy. It was not ideal flying weather, but better than it had been for days. Was this a good omen? The strike force for the air attack on Midway was scheduled to begin launching a half hour later, at 4:30, in order to be over the target just after dawn. The air crews and maintenance crews had been at work since 2:45, servicing the Aichi Type 99 dive-bombers (Vals) and Nakajima Type 97 carrier attack planes (Kates). For this mission, instead of a torpedo, the Kates would each carry an 800 kg (1,760-pound) bomb. The planes had been manhandled onto the elevators and lifted up to the flight deck; some were already being warmed up by the flight crews, and the roar of engines could be heard throughout the ship as the men assumed their battle stations. The carriers turned away from each other to open the box-shaped formation, so that all four carriers could launch simultaneously without the planes getting into one another’s way.
¹

Altogether, Nagumo had some 225 combat aircraft on his four carriers, plus two more for reconnaissance. The four carriers also had twenty-one additional Zeros among them, earmarked to become the garrison squadron for Midway after it was occupied. Not all of those fighters could be used to augment the strike force or even to defend the Kidō Butai, since only about half of their pilots were carrier qualified. Still, adding those twenty-one Zeros gave Nagumo a theoretical total of 248 airplanes—a hundred fewer than he had used to attack Pearl Harbor back in December, but Midway was a less imposing target. Nor could Nagumo send all of those planes to strike Midway at once, for not only was it essential to keep back a number of fighters as CAP to protect the task force, there was Yamamoto’s requirement that Nagumo retain half of his attack planes—and his best pilots—for a strike against American surface forces, just in case. These factors contributed to Nagumo’s decision to send a strike force of 108 airplanes, thirty-six of each type—dive-bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters—for the attack on Midway.
²

The first to take off that morning were eleven Zero fighters that would fly CAP over the task force. Immediately afterward, the strike force began to launch from all four carriers at once. There were no catapults on Japanese carriers, and the planes needed at least 27 knots of relative wind speed over the deck in order to launch. With the ships of the Kidō Butai steaming into the wind and the engines of the airplanes roaring, the air operations officer gave a signal to the flight-deck officer to launch. Crewmen pulled the chocks out from under the wheels, and the first plane surged toward the bow. The lightweight Zeros needed the shortest takeoff space and could get airborne in as little as 230 feet; the bombers, and especially the bigger Kate attack planes, needed more. Soon the planes were launching quickly, roaring past the tiny island amidships and lifting off every fifteen to twenty seconds, while members of the deck crew cheered and waved their caps.

Lieutenant Tomonaga Joichi led the Japanese morning attack on Midway Atoll on June 4. He was a last-minute replacement for Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, who suffered an attack of appendicitis. (U.S. Naval Institute)

Rather than send full deck loads from two of the four carriers, Japanese doctrine called for partial strikes from each of them. The carriers of CarDiv (
Akagi
and
Kaga)
each contributed eighteen Val dive-bombers, keeping their torpedo planes in reserve on the hangar deck; the carriers of CarDiv 2
(Hiryū
and
Sōryū)
sent up eighteen Kate attack planes, keeping their dive-bombers on board. Each carrier also contributed nine Zeros to protect the attack force and to strafe the Midway airfield. The combined strike force of seventy-two attack planes and thirty-six fighters was led by Lieutenant Tomonaga Joichi, the handsome, baby-faced air commander on the
Hiryū
. Tomonaga was a veteran of the war in China but was participating in his first mission against the Americans. He was a last-minute replacement for Fuchida Mitsuo, the air commander on the
Akagi
and the man who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor. During the Pacific transit, Fuchida had suffered a severe attack of appendicitis. He begged the doctor to postpone the surgery so that he could take part in the battle, but the doctor had insisted on operating immediately, and on the morning of June 4, Fuchida was still recovering. He managed to struggle into his uniform and report to the bridge in time to see the planes depart. The planes circled over the Kidō Butai until all of them joined the formation, and then, with the eastern sky turning from full dark to a pinkish gray, they flew off toward the southeast.
³

No sooner had the last plane lifted off than the loudspeaker on the
Akagi
blared out an order to “prepare second attack wave.” On the brightly lit hangar decks, workers began to arm the next cadre of planes with ship-killing ordnance. On the
Akagi
and
Kaga
, the big Kate torpedo bombers were armed with the seventeen-foot-long Type 91 torpedoes. Brought up from the magazine by elevators, the big torpedoes were placed onto hand trucks and manhandled across the crowded hangar deck to each plane. Then they had to be jacked up manually and attached to special brackets under each plane. On the
Hiryū
and
Sōryū
, the dive-bombers were armed with 551-pound armor-piercing bombs. Thus armed and fueled, the planes remained on the hangar decks. That way, Nagumo’s carriers could keep their flight decks clear for the rotating CAP and for the return of the strike force. By 5:00 a.m., with the rim of the rising sun appearing over the eastern horizon, the second wave of fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes was poised and ready in the hangars, awaiting news of any American surface forces that might be in the area.
⁴

The Aichi E13A “Jake” floatplane, carried on the stern of Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers, was used primarily for reconnaissance. The delayed launch of one of these planes on June 4 played a key role in the ensuing battle. (U.S. Naval Institute)

The Japanese conducted an air search that morning, though for a strike force operating deep in enemy waters, the search was somewhat slapdash. Perhaps because the op plan confidently proclaimed that the American carriers would remain in Pearl Harbor until after the strike on Midway, this dawn air search was largely pro forma. The Japanese often used their Kate attack planes (minus the torpedo) for search missions. This time Nagumo intended to rely primarily on the floatplanes from his escort ships. The Aichi E13A “Jakes,” which boasted huge pontoons nearly as large as the fuselage, had a longer range than combat aircraft (nearly 1,300 miles) and were specifically designed for the reconnaissance mission. Though Nagumo did send two Kates to search what he considered the most important quadrant—due south, the direction from which the American carriers would come, if they came at all—he relied on five floatplanes, carried on the sterns of his battleships and cruisers for the rest—a total of seven search planes altogether. (By comparison, not quite a month before, on May 7 in the Coral Sea, Fletcher had launched ten search planes, and Hara twelve; they had still failed to find each other.) Nagumo’s rather cavalier search betrayed his assumption that things would proceed pretty much as scripted.
⁵

One way to envision the search that Nagumo ordered that morning is to imagine the Kidō Butai as at the center of a clock face, with each hour of the clock comprising a sector of the search. Because the ships of the Kidō Butai had come from the northwest (about 10:30 on our imaginary clock), and because other units of the Imperial Japanese Navy were behind them, there was no reason to search in that direction. The air search, therefore, would cover the quadrants
east
of the Kidō Butai from roughly 1:00 o’clock (almost due north) to 6:00 o’clock (due south). Each search plane would fly three hundred miles out along its prescribed path, fly sixty miles counterclockwise, then fly back again. As noted above, Nagumo assigned the two Kates to the most important quadrants—at 5:00 and 6:00 o’clock; he assigned the shorter-ranged float plane from the battleship
Haruna
to the least likely quadrant—to the north at 1:00 o’clock. The other quadrants, from 2:00 to 4:00 o’clock, were the responsibility of four float planes from the heavy cruisers
Chikuma
and Tone.
⁶

Piloting a floatplane off the back of a cruiser was a lot like being shot from a cannon. Lacking a runway to build up speed, the planes were propelled off the ship with an explosive charge. Upon returning, they used their pontoons to land in the water, then they taxied up to the leeward side of the ship and were winched aboard by crane. On the morning of June 4, the cruiser
Tone
had trouble launching her floatplanes. Various reasons have been advanced to explain it—delayed orders, problems with the launching system, trouble on the plane itself, or perhaps all three. Whatever the cause, the first of
Tone’s
float planes did not launch until 4:45, and the second (officially the number 4 search plane) did not get away until 5:00 a.m. Curiously, the captain of the
Tone
, Okada Tametsugu, did not send a message to Nagumo reporting this tardy launch. And unlike the American PBYs from Midway that conducted their searches at 1,000 feet, the Japanese search planes flew near 5,000 feet in order to cover the broad swath of ocean assigned to them. At that altitude, even moderate cloud cover might conceal whole fleets of enemy ships, and
Chikuma’s
number 5 aircraft flew right past the Americans and saw nothing.