U.S. Navy carrier-based pilots are briefed aboard the USS Enterprise for a mission.
The excellent military historian Sir John Keegan referred to the Battle of Midway as “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.” After it, the balance of sea power and sea-borne air power in the Pacific theater of the war shifted dramatically from the Japanese to the Americans. It was unquestionably the most important naval battle of the campaign. Occurring between 4 and 7 June 1942, just six months after the Japanese attack on American ships and facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, American forces wrought irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet in the worst naval defeat that nation had experienced in 350 years.
In their planning and preparation for the battle, the Japanese were seeking to destroy the American fleet as a strategic power in the Pacific and in so doing, achieve a free hand for themselves in furthering their stated determination to develop their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the means to their own total domination of the Pacific region. Their Midway plan called for luring the fleet aircraft carriers of the U.S. Navy into a trap and occupying Midway Island as a prime factor in extending a Japanese defensive perimeter, following the American attack led by Lt Col. Jimmy Doolittle on Tokyo in April 1942. In that raid sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers took off from the U.S. aircraft carrier Hornet to bomb targets in the Japanese capitol and other cities. While doing little meaningful damage, the raid dealt an extreme psychological blow to the Japanese people and military leadership, underscoring the significant gap in the defences of their home islands.
American codebreakers, however, were able to intercept vital aspects of the Midway plan, the date and location of the intended attack, enabling the U.S. Navy to establish an ambush of its own.
In the battle, four of the six Japanese fleet aircraft carriers that had participated in the raid on Pearl Harbor, the Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu, were sunk, as was a heavy cruiser. American losses included one carrier, the USS Yorktown, and one destroyer.
The Battle of Midway not only turned the tide of the Pacific war; but with the attrition in manpower and equipment suffered by the Japanese in their Solomon Islands campaign, and their inability to maintain the necessary pace in replacing their warship and pilot losses after Midway, these key factors and America’s ability to keep increasing her wartime industrial output and pilot training sealed Japan’s fate in the remainder of the conflict.
“There set out, slowly, for a Different World. At four, on winter mornings, different legs … You can’t break eggs without making an omelette—that’s what they tell the eggs.”
—from A War by Randall Jarrell
In the evening of 3 June 1942, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Hornet (CV-8) was steaming towards a large force of Japanese warships near the Pacific island of Midway. Earlier that day, a small force of U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress bombers based on Midway had attacked some of these warships of the Japanese task force, setting fire to two of them. Now the pilots of Torpedo Squadron Eight were gathering in their ready room aboard the Hornet to learn about the plan of attack they would take part in when the two opposing forces met. As the briefing began, their Lt Commander John Waldron handed out mimeographed copies of his final message to them ahead of what would become known as the Battle of Midway: “Just a word to let you know that I feel we are all ready. We have had a very short time to train and we have worked under the most severe difficulties. But we have truly done the best humanly possible. I actually believe that under these conditions we are the best in the world. My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don’t, and the worst comes to the worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make a final run-in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with us all. Good luck, happy landings, and give ’em hell.”
top: Final assembly of Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers at El Segundo, California plant; centre: U.S. Navy Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet; above: A poster recognizing the contribution of ‘Rosie the Riveter’, the women war workers of America in WW2; below: A Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter ready for take-off from a U.S. Navy carrier in WW2.
A letter to his wife from Commander Waldron: “Dear Adelaide, There is not a bit of news that I can tell you now except that I am well. I have yours and the children’s pictures here with me all the time and I think of you most of the time.
“I believe that we will be in battle very soon. I wish we were there today. But, as we are up to the very eve of serious business, I wish to record to you that I am feeling fine. My own morale is excellent, and from my continued observation of the squadron, their morale is excellent also. You may rest assured that I will go in with the expectation of coming back in good shape. If I do not come back, you and the little girls can know that this squadron struck for the highest objective in Naval warfare—to sink the enemy. “I hope this letter will not scare you, and, of course, if I have a chance to write another to be mailed at the same time as this, then of course I shall do so.
“I love you and the children very dearly and I long to be with you. But, I could not be happy ashore at this time. My place is here with the fight. I could not be happy otherwise. I know you wish me luck and I believe I will have it.
“You know, Adelaide, in this business of the torpedo attack, I acknowledge we must have a break. I believe that I have the experience, and enough Sioux in me, to profit by and recognize the break when it comes, and it will come.
“God bless you, dear. You are a wonderful wife and mother. Kiss and love the little girls for me and be of good cheer. “Love to all from Daddy and Johnny.”
And from pilot Pete Creasy, Jr: “Honey, if anything happens to me, I wish you would keep on visiting the folks, for they love you just as much as they would if you were one of their own kids. And by all means, don’t become an old maid. Find someone else and make a happy home. Don’t be worrying about me and I will be trying to write more often.”
A signal was flashed to Hornet early in the morning of 4 June 1942 about an attack by four U.S. Navy PBY Catalina flying boat patrol bombers. The Catalinas had struck at enemy warships southwest of Midway. In the next two hours ‘General Quarters’ was sounded in Hornet and the pilots of Torpedo Eight again filed into their ready room. There they waited, some dozing off in the big leather chairs, while the men in charge, Admiral Marc Mitcsher and the ship’s captain Charles Mason, awaited confirmation of the enemy fleet’s exact position. They had to be certain the distance between the U.S. carriers and the enemy fleet would be short enough to give the American pilots a safe fuel margin in the operation.
At 6 a.m. the pilots were released to the wardroom for breakfast and shortly after their meal General Quarters was sounded again and on arriving back in the ready room they learned that Midway was under attack by Japanese aircraft. One of the TBD Devastator pilots of Torpedo Eight, Ensign George Gay, recalled: “There was a real commotion as we hauled out our plotting boards, helmets, goggles, gloves, pistols, hunting knives and all our other gear. We took down the flight information.
“We had only six of our planes on the flight deck as there was no more room. And since we were to be alone anyhow, we were the last to be launched. The skipper had tried in vain to get us fighter protection. He even tried to get one fighter to go with us, or even to get one fighter plane and one of us would fly it even though we had never been up in one, but he could not swing it. The Group Commander and the Captain felt that the SBDs needed more assitance than we did. They had caught hell in the Coral Sea [battle] and the torpedo planes had been lucky. However, the torpedo planes had made the hits in the Coral Sea, so the Japs were going to be looking for us.
Manpower moving a Douglas dive-bomber on the flight deck of a U.S. Navy fleet aircraft carrier in WW2.
“The TBD could not climb anywhere near as high as the dive-bombers needed to go, and the Group Commander and the fighter boys did not want us at two levels up there. “Under these conditions, Commander Waldron reasoned, our best bet was to be right on the water so the Zeros could not get under us. Since it was obvious that we would be late getting away, with nine of our planes still to be brought up from the hangar deck for launching, the problem would be overtaking to form a coordinated attack.
“As I went up to the flight deck, I ducked into a first aid station, got a tourniquet and put it in my pocket. As I got to the edge of the island I met the skipper coming down from the bridge. ‘I’m glad I caught you’, he said. ‘I’ve been trying to convince them the Japs will not be going towards Midway—especially if they find out we are here. The Group Commander is going to take the whole bunch down there. I’m going more to the north and maybe by the time they come north and find them, we can catch up and all go in together. Don’t think I’m lost. Just track me, so if anything happens to me, the boys can count on you to bring them back.’
“Each of us would be tracking, and the others all knew how to do it, but it would be my job since I was Navigation Officer. That is also the reason why I was the last man in the formation. It gave me more room to navigate instead of flying formation so closely.
“At a little before 0900 the planes started taking off, and it was 0915 when the signal man motioned me forward to the take-off position. He only had me move forward enough so that I could unfold my wings, and so I began my take-off with the tail of my plane still sitting on the number three elevator. I had more than enough room on deck in front of me to take off, and I noticed as I came back by the ship that the planes that were to follow me were being moved further up the deck with the hope of being able to bring the rest of the torpedo planes of Squadron Eight up the elevator from the hangar deck so they could get in take-off position.
“The rest of Torpedo Eight got off after what seemed to be an eternity; then we all joined up and headed away from our fleet.
“After an uneasy and uneventful hour, the skipper’s voice broke radio silence” ‘There’s a fighter on our tail.’ What he saw proved to be a Jap scout plane flying at about 1,000 feet. It flew on past us, but I knew, and I’m sure the others did, that he had seen us and reported to the Jap Navy that there were carrier planes approaching.
“We had been flying long enough now to find something, and I could almost see the wheels going around in Waldron’s head. He did exactly what I had expected. He put the first section into a scouting line. Each of the eight planes was to move out into a line even with the skipper’s wing tips. We had never done this before, only talked about it, and in spite of the warnings and dire threats, the fellows got too much distance between the planes. I knew immediately that this was wrong, as the planes on each end were nearly out of sight. The basic idea is OK, so that you can scan more ocean, but this was ridiculous. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, no! Those guys will catch hell when we get back.’
“The skipper was upset, and he gave the join-up signal forcefully. We had just gotten together when smoke columns appeared on the horizon. In less time than it takes to tell, it became obvious that the old Indian had taken us straight to the Japs as we could fly.
top: An DBD dive-bomber passing the battleship USS Washington. The carrier USS Lexington is in the background; below: A spectacular accident in which a TBM-3E Avenger torpedo bomber splinters the flight deck of the USS Philippine Sea in an attempted landing; above: building Douglas SBD dive-bombers at El Segundo in southern California.
above: A Kingfisher is catapulted off on an observation flight from the battleship USS Texas; below: Young naval trainees at the Bainbridge, Maryland training school in the Second World War.
“The first capital ship I recognized as a carrier—the Soryu. Then I made out the Kaga and the Akagi. There was another carrier further on, and screening ships all over the damned ocean. The smoke was from what looked like a battleship, and the carriers were landing planes. The small carrier off on the horizon had smoke coming out of her also. My first thought was, ‘Oh, Christ! We’re late!’ The skipper gave the signal for us to spread out to bracket the biggest carrier for an attack, and that was when the Zeros swarmed all over us.
“Since we had flown straight to the enemy fleet, while everyone else was looking for them, there was no one else for their air cover to worry about.
“Seeing immediately that the Zeros had us cold, the skipper signalled for us to join back together for mutual protection. We had not moved far apart, so we were back together almost immediately. The skipper broke radio silence again: ‘We will go in. We won’t turn back. Former strategy cannot be used. We will attack. Good luck.’
“I have never questioned the skipper’s judgement or decisions. As it turned out, it didn’t make any difference anyhow. We had run into a virtual trap, but we still had to do something to disrupt their landing planes, so he took us right in. We had calculated our fuel to be very short, even insufficient to get us back to the Hornet, but this was not considered suicidal by any of us. We thought we had a fighting chance, and maybe after we dropped our fish we could make it to Midway. Things then started happening really fast.
“I cannot tell you the sequence in which the planes went down. Everything was happening at once, but I was consciously seeing it all. At least one plane blew up, and each would hit the water and seem to disappear. Zeros were coming in from all angles and from both sides at once. They would come in from abeam, pass each other just over our heads, and turn around to make another attack. It was evident that they were trying to get our lead planes first. The planes of Torpedo Eight were falling at irregular intervals. Some were on fire and some did a half-roll and crashed on their backs, completely out of control. Machine-gun bullets ripped my armour plate a number of times. As they rose above it, the bullets would go over my shoulder into the instrument panel and the windshield.
“Waldron was shot down very early. His plane burst into flames, and I saw him stand up to get out of the fire. He put his right leg outside the cockpit, and then hit the water and disappeared. His radioman, Dobbs, didn’t have a chance. When we had been leaving Pearl Harbor, Dobbs had orders back to the States to teach radio. But he had chosen to delay that assignment and stay with us.
“Much too early, it seemed, Bob Huntington [George Gay’s radioman/gunner] said, ‘They got me!’ ‘Are you hurt bad?’ I asked. I looked back and Bob was slumped down almost out of sight. ‘Can you move?’ I asked. He said no more.
“It was while I was looking back at Bob that the plane to my left must have been shot down, because when I looked forward again it was not there. I think that was the only plane I did not actually see get hit.
“We were right on the water at full throttle and wide open, which was about 180 knots. Anyone slamming into the sea had no chance of survival—at that speed the water is just like cement. That is why I was so sure that they were all dead.
“It’s hard to explain, but I think Bob being put out of action so soon was one of the things that saved me. I no longer had to fly straight and level for him to shoot, so I started dodging. I even pulled up a few times, and took some shots at Zeros as they would go by. I am positive I hit one, knocking plexiglas out of his canopy. I may have scared him, but I certainly did not hurt him personally, or even damage his plane much.
“The armour-plate bucket seat was another thing that worked well for me. I could feel, as well as hear and sometimes see, those tracer bullets. They would clunk into the airplane or clank against that armoured seat, and I had to exercise considerable control over when to kick the rudder.
“About this time I felt something hit my arm and felt it to see what it was. There was a hole in my sleeve and I got blood on my hand. I felt closer, and there was a lump under the skin of my arm. I squeezed the lump, just as you would pop a pimple, and a bullet popped out. I remember thinking, ‘Well, what do you know—a souvenir.’ I was too busy to put it into my pocket. So I put the bullet in my mouth, blood and all, thinking, ‘What the hell—it’s my blood.’
“We were now in a position, those of us still left, to turn west again to intercept the ship we had chosen to attack, but the Zeros were still intent on not letting us through, and our planes kept falling all around me. We were on the ship’s starboard side, or to the right and ahead of our target, and as we closed range the big carrier began to turn towards us. I knew immediately from what the skipper had said so often in his lectures, that if she got into a good turn she could not straighten out right away, and I was glad that she had committed herself. At that moment there were only two planes left of our squadron besides my own. One was almost directly ahead of me, but off a bit to my left. I skidded to the left and avoided more 20mm slugs just in time to pull my nose up and fire at another Zero as he got in front of me. I only had one .30 caliber gun, and although I knew I hit this Zero also, it did little damage. When I turned back to the right, the plane that had been directly ahead of me was gone, and the other one was out of control.
“My target, which I think was the Kaga, was now in a hard turn to starboard and I was going towards her forward port quarter. I figured that by the time a torpedo could travel the distance it should be in the water, the ship should be broadside. I aimed about one-quarter of the ship’s length ahead of her bow, and reached out with my left hand to pull back the throttle. It had been calculated that we should be at about eighty knots when we dropped these things, so I had to slow down.
“I had just got hold of the throttle when something hit the back of my hand and it hurt like hell. My hand didn’t seem to be working right, so I had to pull the throttle back mostly with my thumb. You can well imagine that I was not being exactly neat about all this; I was simply trying to do what I had come out to do. When I figured that I had things about as good as I was going to get them, I punched the torpedo release button. Nothing happened.
above: Ensign George Gay, a TBD Devastator pilot of Torpedo Squadron Eight; below: Treating a wounded airman at sea.
“‘Damn those tracers’ I thought. ‘They’ve goofed up my electrical release and I’m getting inside my range.’ I had been told that the ideal drop was 1,000 yards range, eighty knots speed and eighty feet or so of altitude. But by the time I got the control stick between my knees and put my left hand on top of it to fly the plane, and reached across to pull the cable release with my good right hand, I was in to about 850 yards. The cable, or mechanical release, came out of the instrument panel on the left side, designed to be pulled with the left hand, but those damned Zeros had messed up my program. My left hand did not work. It was awkward and I almost lost control of the plane trying to pull out that cable by the roots. I can’t honestly say I got rid of that torpedo. It felt like it. I had never done it before so I couldn’t be sure, and with the plane pitching like a bronco, I had to be content with trying my best.
“God, but that ship looked big! I remember thinking. ‘Why in the hell doesn’t the Hornet look that big when I’m trying to land on her?’
“I remember that I did not want to fly out over the starboard side and let all those gunners have a chance at me, so I headed out over the stern.
“I thought, ‘I could crash into all this and make one great big mess, maybe even get myself a whole carrier, but I’m feeling passably good, and my plane is still flying, so the hell with that—I’ll keep going. Maybe I’ll get another crack at them and do more damage in the long run.’
“Flying as low as I could, I went between a couple of cruisers and out past the destroyers. If you have ever seen movies of this sort of thing, you may wonder how anything could get through all that gunfire. I am alive to tell you that it can be done. I think my plane was hit a few times …
“The Zeros had broken off me when I got into ack-ack, but they had no trouble going around to meet me on the other side. A 20mm cannon slug hit my left rudder pedal just outside my little toe, blew the pedal apart and knocked a hole in the firewall. This set the engine on fire, and it was burning my left leg through that hole.
“When the rudder pedal went, the control wire to the ailerons and the rudder went with it. I [still] had the elevators, so I could pull the nose up. Reaching over with my right hand, I cut the switch. That was also on the left side. I was able to hold the nose up and slow down to almost a decent ditching speed.
“Most airplanes will level out if you turn them loose, especially if they are properly trimmed. Mine was almost making it, but I was crosswind, so the right wing hit first. This slammed me into the water in a cartwheel fashion and banged the hood shut over me before it twisted the frame and jammed the hood tight.
“As I unbuckled, water was rising to my waist. The nose of the plane was down, so I turned around and sat on the instrument panel while trying to get that hood open. It wouldn’t budge. When that water got up to my armpits and started lapping at my chin, I got scared—and I mean really scared. I knew the plane would dive as soon as it lost buoyancy and I didn’t want to drown in there. I panicked, stood up and busted my way out.
“The Zeros were diving and shooting at me but my first thought now was of Bob Huntington, I was almost positive he was dead. I think he took at least one of those cannon slugs right in the chest, but I thought that the water might revive him and I had to try and help him. I got back to him just as the plane took that dive, and I went down with it trying to unbuckle his straps and get him out.
“The beautiful water exploded into a deep red, and I lost sight of everything. What I had seen confirmed my opinion of his condition and I had to let Bob go. The tail took a gentle swipe at me as if to say goodbye and I came up choking. I lost the bullet from my mouth and as I watched it sink in that blue, clear water, I grabbed for it but missed. Zeros were still strafing me and I ducked under a couple of times as those thwacking slugs came close. As I came up for air once, I bumped my head on my life raft out of the plane.”
George Gay was the only member of Torpedo Eight to survive their attack that day. With his wits and luck, he evaded capture by the ships of the enemy fleet that drove past him as he floated near them, his head covered by a thin black seat cushion that had emerged from his sinking plane, along with a four-man life raft. That entire afternoon, in the presence of the Japanese warships, he “rode” that uninflated raft like a horse, concealing it and himself from his foes, having to wait until nightfall to inflate it.
From his vantage point, he watched the destruction of three great carriers of the enemy fleet, by the dive-bombers of Hornet and the other U.S. flattops. After about thirty hours in the water, Gay was saved when he was sighted by a PBY crew who landed nearby to pick him up.
He was flown to Midway and later to Pearl Harbor where a doctor examined him and noted that the ensign had lost roughly a pound an hour in body weight during his time in the sea. While recovering, George Gay was visited in his hospital room by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The admiral had a more than casual interest in the ensign’s account of what he had observed in the course of his amazing adventure. Gay later received the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart.