The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (74 page)

46
. Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 329; Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 139.

47
. Spruance to Nimitz, June 5, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:89; Spruance to Nimitz, June 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at
www.mid way42.org/reports.html
). See also Buell,
Quiet Warrior
, 140; and Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 277.

Chapter 16

1
. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6,”
ONI Review
5 (May 1947), available online at
www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/
Nagumo; Prange interview with Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully,
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 342–43.

2
. Prange interview of Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 352–53.

3
. Nagumo After-Action Report, 9; Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 349–50; Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 330–32; Walter Lord,
Incredible Victory
(New York: Harper-Collins, 1967), 250.

4
. Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 351–52.

5
. Prange interview with Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Robert E. Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1971), 332–34; Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 344–45.

6
. The orders intended for Kurita’s CruDiv7 were sent first to CruDiv8. This may have been a simple error in transmission, but Watanabe admitted in a postwar interview that he was deliberately slow in forwarding the orders to retreat. Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 344; Prange interview of Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.

7
. Robert Schultz and James Shell, “Strange Fortune,”
World War II
, May/June 2010, 61–62; War Diary, Third War Patrol, USS
Tambor
(SS-198), Office of Naval Records and History (also available at
www.hnsa.org/doc/subreports.htm
).

8
. War Diary, Third War Patrol, USS
Tambor
(SS-198), Office of Naval Records and History.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 345–47.

11
. Ibid., 346–48.

12
. Ibid., 362–63.

13
. Ibid., 361.

14
. Prange interview with McClusky (June 30, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also John B. Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 285.

15
. Ibid.; Robert J. Cressman et al.,
“A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942
(Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 149.

16
. Shumway’s Report of Action, June 10, 1942, and the Report of Bombing Squadron Five, June 7, 1942, both in Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at
www.midway42.org/reports.html
); Bruce R. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,”
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings
125, no. 8 (August 1999), 33.

17
. Katsumi is quoted by the
Tanikaze’s
lookout, Masashi Shibato, in Clayton E. Fisher,
Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior
(Denver: Outskirts, Inc., 2009), 96; Ring is quoted in Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 33.

18
. Fisher,
Hooked
, 97; Stuart D. Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway
(Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 127.

19
. One plane ditched in the water near the task force, but its crew was recovered. Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 365; Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 34.

20
. Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 151.

21
. Samuel Eliot Morison,
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II
, vol. 4,
Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August 1942
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1949), 153–54; Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 288.

22
. Interview of Francis Fabian (Feb. 6, 2009), 17–18, NWC; Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 361; Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 153. Samuel Eliot Morison is critical of Buckmaster for prematurely ordering abandon ship and for not attempting a salvage operation sooner, though such judgments are easy enough to make after the fact. Morison,
Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions
, 153–54.

23
. Fletcher to Nimitz, and Nimitz to Fletcher, both June 5, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8; Joseph M. Worthington oral history (June 7, 1972) U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 185.

24
. Worthington oral history (June 7, 1972), 186; interview of William P. Burford by Prange (Aug. 18, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 20.

25
. The
Hammann’s
captain, Commander Arnold E. True, reported that “all depth charges had been set on safe when
Hammann
went alongside
Yorktown”
and he speculated that the subsequent underwater explosion may have been caused by one of the
Hammann’s
torpedoes being set off by the initial explosion. Another possibility is that, in anticipation of imminent antisubmarine efforts, the depthcharge officer, Ensign C. C. Elmes, pulled the safety forks when the torpedo wakes were first spotted but did not have time to replace them all after the
Hammann
was hit. See CDR True to Nimitz, June 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at
www.midway42.org/reports.html
); interview of William P. Burford by Prange (Aug. 18, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 20; Fabian interview (Feb. 6, 2009), NWC, 20; Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 157.

26
. Ernest Eller oral history (Aug. 25, 1977) U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 542; Jeff Nesmith,
No Higher Honor: The U.S.S. Yorktown at the Battle of Midway
(Atlanta: Longstreet, 1999), 253.

27
. Fletcher to Nimitz, June 7, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:118; Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 161.

28
. Interview of Oral Moore in Ronald W. Russell,
Veterans’ Biographies
(San Francisco, 2007). I am grateful to Ron Russell for sharing this information. See also Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 367; Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 290.

29
. Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 154.

30
. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 34.

31
. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 34; Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 155; Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 369.

32
. Quoted in Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 155.

33
. Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 128–29; Enclosure C, Action Report, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, June 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.

34
. Message traffic is from Action Reports, reel 3.

35
. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 35.

36
. Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 162.

37
. Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 129–30.

38
. Cressman et al.,
Glorious Page
, 162–63.

39
. Worthington oral history (June 7, 1972), 202–4. Spruance’s remarks are from his foreword to the American edition of Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya,
Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955).

Epilogue

1
. In addition to four carriers, the Japanese also lost the
Mikuma
, which sank not long after she was photographed by Lieutenant Junior Grade Dobson on June 6. The
Mogami
, on the other hand, survived. Though she was hit by five bombs, her captain’s decision to jettison her torpedoes almost certainly saved her. Repaired at Truk, she returned to Japan, where her two rear turrets were removed and replaced with a short flight deck that could carry eleven reconnaissance planes. She finally sank in Surigao Strait during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 25, 1944.

2
. Robert Theobald, “Memorandum for Whom it May Concern,”July 2,1942, NHHC, King Papers, Series I, box 2.

3
. FDR to Stalin, June 6, 1942, quoted in Robert E. Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
, rev. ed. (New York: Enigma Books, 2001), 455.

4
. King to Marshall, June 25, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, series I, box 2.

5
. MacArthur to Joint Chiefs, June 8, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, 1:557; FDR Memorandum, July 16, 1942, quoted in Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 473.