TWELVE
Max Leslie was eager to make his poststrike report to Admiral Fletcher. He could only hope that his fuel would outlast the time it was taking to clear Tom Cheek’s inverted fighter from Yorktown’s flight deck.
Leslie had no inkling of a bigger problem that was beginning to develop. Yorktown’s radar had picked up an unidentified flight of aircraft, closing from thirty-two miles out. The orbiting Wildcat CAPs were vectored out to intercept what proved to be a Japanese air strike that had been launched from Hiryu to cripple the American carriers.
Admiral Nagumo’s carrier fleet had moved quickly to strike back at the U.S. flattops. Just twenty minutes after his flagship Akagi was wrecked, Nagumo had transferred his command staff to the light cruiser Nagara. Hiryu’s air group had assembled two dozen strike planes on her flight deck a half hour after McClusky and Leslie’s SBDs had departed. She dispatched eighteen Type 99 Val dive-bombers with six Zero escorts, all led by Lieutenant Michio Kobayashi. En route to the American task force, Lieutenant Yasuhiro Shigematsu’s Zeros had tangled with Charlie Ware’s Scouting Six planes. Two of the Japanese fighters had been crippled enough to turn back. As the noon hour approached, Kobayashi’s Vals were closing in on Yorktown’s Task Force 17. Hiryu, in the meantime, readied a second strike group of Kate torpedo planes to follow up on what the first strikers could accomplish.
Lieutenant Commander Leslie was settling into the groove. He was making a good approach when Yorktown’s command staff made the call to shut down operations again. Kobayashi’s dive-bombers were expected at any moment, thus necessitating full task force defense against aerial attack. As 3-B-1 dropped low with its hook extended and wheel lowered, LSO Norwood “Soupy” Campbell waved his paddles frantically at Leslie to abort his landing.
The skipper’s wingman, Lefty Holmberg, unaware of the looming Japanese strike, was baffled by the LSO’s rebuff. The skipper is an expert pilot. And he is in a good approach position to land. What’s wrong? Holmberg hurriedly took over his spot but was also given a frantic wave-off by Lieutenant Campbell. The reason soon became apparent. “Get clear!” Yorktown radioed. “We’re being attacked!”1
Holmberg turned out of the landing circle just as Yorktown’s antiaircraft batteries began firing. His SBD was jarred by flak bursts as he joined Leslie in speeding away from the formation. To add to his problems, Holmberg noticed that one of his wheels, which had been lowered for landing, failed to retract due to his shot-up hydraulic system.2
Bud Merrill was also preparing to land when the warning was announced. The antiaircraft batteries started firing as he hurriedly cleared the scene. In the ensuing aerial fights over Task Force 17, several of the SBDs Merrill joined with were engaged by VF-6 Wildcats that came in with guns blazing. One Wildcat pilot turned away only after Syd Bottomley yelled, “Can’t you see these stars?” Ensign Charlie Lane heard Bottomley holler at an Enterprise fighter, “Knock it off, you bastard! This is us down here!”3
Oley Hanson spotted a Japanese plane coming in for an overhead run against an SBD. A Grumman Wildcat was close on its tail, and the F4F pilot quickly hammered the Japanese aircraft into the ocean. Ensign Bob Elder dived for the wave tops between the warships, as friendly gunfire erupted on both sides of him. “I went straight down the center with all hell breaking loose,” he said.4
In contrast to the Coral Sea carrier battle one month prior, the Dauntless was not intentionally deployed to intercept enemy strike planes at Midway. The allotment of fighter planes had been increased and the F4F pilots tore into the Hiryu group as it moved in on Yorktown. Task force gunners helped account for other planes, but at least seven Val dive-bombers made it in to drop their bombs on Yorktown at 1210. One Val was hit by AA fire and exploded into three pieces, although his bomb tumbled free and exploded on contact with Yorktown’s flight deck, blowing a twelve-foot hole in the surface.
Scouting Five’s seven operable SBDs were on the hangar deck, and the explosion sent shrapnel ripping through them. One Dauntless was fully fueled and carrying a thousand-pound bomb, but an alert hangar deck officer quickly extinguished the blaze with the sprinkler system. Below deck, Tex Conatser and his remaining VS-5 pilots had retired to their ready room. He was standing at the chalkboard, writing out the afternoon schedule, when the first bomb hit about thirty-five feet aft of Scouting Five’s ready room. The blast knocked Conatser flat on his butt, and threw other pilots from their chairs. The lights went out, and the ready room filled with smoke. Squadron yeoman Bud Neister, manning the battle phones in the room, told the aviators to cover their mouths with handkerchiefs and to lie down on the deck.5
A second Val bomber, similarly blasted apart, managed to land its load close enough to Yorktown’s stern to send bomb splinters ripping into the carrier. Another 250-kilogram armor-piercing bomb ripped through the flight deck and exploded deep enough in the ship to disrupt Yorktown’s engineering spaces. A third bomb fell through the forward elevator, created additional damage, and sparked serious fires. The three direct hits caused extensive damage to Yorktown, knocked her dead in the water, and filled the ship with black smoke and raging fires.
Conatser and his junior pilots abandoned their smoke-filled ready room once the attack was over and headed for the flight deck. They passed through a casualty station en route, climbing over dead and injured men, as well as severed body parts. Ensign John Bridgers made his way to the hangar deck to check on his SBD, finding it parked directly below the spot where a bomb had exploded on the flight deck. “All the fabric on the control sections of rudder, ailerons, and horizontal stabilizers had been shredded,” he said. He realized his chance to take part in the historic Battle of Midway was very likely relegated to a sideline role.6
Jim Patterson of Bombing Six was confronted by a Yorktown officer, his face dirty, and wearing a partially burned life jacket. The man was obviously in a state of shock. “You led them here!” the officer screamed upon finding that Patterson was in the last SBD from the strike group to land. He tried to hit Patterson but Ensign Goldsmith managed to pull the shocked officer away from his gunner.7
Enterprise and Hornet, about twenty miles away, were untouched, and they were able to land the rest of their aircraft. Bombing Three was ordered to land aboard Enterprise to await developments. Another straggler from Yorktown’s carrier strike was the VF-3 Wildcat piloted by Ensign Daniel C. Sheedy, who came in with one wheel collapsed. Sheedy, wounded in the ankle and shoulder, skidded his plane to the right as he landed on Hornet, and his one good set of landing gear collapsed. The F4F’s forward machine guns erupted in automatic fire when the wingtip slapped the deck. Twenty sailors were wounded and five men were killed, including the son of an admiral.8
Lieutenant George Ellenburg of Bombing Eight, still grounded from flying, had gone topside to watch the aerial dogfights with his binoculars when he was caught in Sheedy’s machine-gun fire. Clay Fisher was shocked moments later when an enlisted man from the squadron rushed into the VB-8 ready room carrying a pair of bloody binoculars, saying, “Lieutenant Ellenburg has just been killed!” Fisher was relieved, however, to see Ellenburg stride through the door, holding a compress against his forehead with blood streaming down his face and onto his shirt. Ellenburg’s nonlethal lacerations had been caused by metal fragments from the island structure when it was hit by bullets.9
Dave Shumway and VB-3 saw that Yorktown was too damaged for landings. They shifted to Enterprise, and the first to land on her were Paul Schlegel and Ozzie Wiseman, at 1237 and 1238. During the next half hour, the Enterprise LSO brought on board thirteen more SBDs of Bombing Three, as well as six Wildcats from VF-3.
Bob Elder watched from above as Enterprise’s flight deck was quickly jammed with refugee aircraft crowding back toward the crash barriers. The carrier’s elevators were in the process of moving planes down below as Elder approached, but LSO Robin Lindsey skillfully coached the VB-3 ensign down onto the first arresting cable.10
Max Leslie and Lefty Holmberg sighted the Devastator of Chief Bill Esders bobbing in the Pacific below as they approached Task Force 17. Holmberg dropped a float light to mark the downed TBD, and the destroyer Hammann effected their rescue.11
Meanwhile, Leslie and Holmberg headed for Enterprise. Earl Gallaher in the rear of Leslie’s plane spotted another ditched aircraft about ten miles away, likely Mac McCarthy’s SBD. The two bombers circled the downed crew while a destroyer was called to pick up the aviators. Leslie dropped a beanbag on the forecastle of the nearest destroyer regarding the survivors in the water, then relocated the downed plane and flew back over Hammann. This time Gallagher sent a searchlight message to the destroyermen to help direct them to the downed VS-6 crew.12
Leslie and Holmberg circled the boat until Hammann had brought the men aboard; then the pilots headed for the Big E again, dangerously low on fuel. Holmberg had leaned out his engine in order to save gas, but his situation was becoming critical. They opted to ditch beside nearby cruiser Astoria, the same ship that had signaled, “Good luck and a safe return,” to them five hours before.13
Leslie directed Holmberg to land first. His fuel was lower and one of his wheels was already extended. Holmberg ditched his 3-B-2 right alongside Astoria at 1342. The sudden impact slammed his head into the instrument panel, narrowly missing the telescopic bombsight. Gunner George LaPlant retrieved their rubber raft and inflated it on the port wing. Holmberg stepped out onto the wing in ankle-deep water and joined LaPlant in their raft. The Dauntless sank within moments—followed by their raft. Holmberg assumed the rubber boat had been punctured by Japanese AA fire.14
Holmberg was still wearing his leather jacket and .45-caliber pistol as he treaded water for several minutes. The number two motor whaleboat from Astoria chugged over and quickly retrieved him and LaPlant. Two minutes later, Max Leslie set his B-1 down in the ocean alongside Astoria at 1348. Gallagher felt that Leslie’s water landing was perfect, as good as any seaplane could do. As he scrambled out of his rear compartment, he noted that his skipper was still seated in the cockpit, apparently slumped over his controls. Gallagher, assuming that Leslie had been knocked out, reached in and grabbed his shoulder. He was surprised to find the squadron commander fully alert, methodically going through the process of flicking every button on the instrument panel to the off position before clearing his sinking plane.15
Leslie, Holmberg, and their gunners would remain on board Astoria until June 12, thereby turning over effective command of VB-3 at Midway to Dave Shumway. The last surviving plane of Yorktown’s carrier strike was the TBD of machinist Harry Corl. He also ran out of fuel and ditched near Task Force 16. His gunner, Lloyd Childers, was dazed from blood loss from his three bullet wounds when their 3-T-3 hit the ocean. His pilot grabbed his Mae West and helped him escape their sinking TBD.16
A whaleboat from the destroyer Monaghan quickly rescued Corl and Childers from the ocean. As Childers was pulled into the boat, a doctor forced ingested seawater from his stomach. On board Monaghan, he was placed on the wardroom table to receive plasma and attention for his bullet wounds. The doctor told VT-3’s sole surviving radioman later that he would have been dead in another thirty minutes without medical help.17
• • •
Lieutenant Earl Gallaher tried to comfort his VS-6 pilots during their poststrike briefing. “The boys who came back felt badly about the empty seats in the ready room, but we all knew that we had made the Japanese pay dearly for them,” he said.18
Mike Micheel found the mood to be bittersweet. The men were energized by the damage they had inflicted on the Japanese carriers. His roommate, Bill Pittman, talked excitedly about how his gunner, Adkins, had shot down a fighter while holding up a broken machine gun. Yet there was also great tension over those who did not make it back. Four ACTG new boys were missing, plus J. Q. Roberts, who had gone through basic training at St. Louis with Micheel. Even three of the old guys had failed to return.
Gallaher and Lieutenant Patriarca, the acting flight officer, went over the plans for a follow-up strike. “I want to go,” Micheel announced. “I don’t want to stay on the ship.” He assumed that the most experienced pilots would go first, but Patriarca explained, “If your airplane is flying, you go.”
Fine with me, Micheel thought.
Dave Shumway, acting commander of Yorktown’s VB-3, had fifteen planes of his squadron for a follow-up strike. He found the Big E’s ready rooms crammed with the ragtag remnants of VB-6 and VS-6. He and nine of his pilots had previously served on board Enterprise during the Doolittle Raid, so the ship was quite familiar to them. It was even more of a homecoming for Bud Merrill, Oley Hanson, and Bob Campbell—who had also flown as part of Scouting Six as loaner pilots for the Wake and Marcus Island strikes.
Charlie Lane, bombless on the first strike, hoped for another chance. Shumway’s new acting XO, Syd Bottomley, grabbed a peanut-butter sandwich brought in by the stewards to feed the hungry pilots. “I will always remember how dry my mouth was after all that excitement,” said Bottomley, “and how I tried to swallow that peanut butter in pain!”19
Joe Godfrey and other rear gunners felt the carrier strike had been their baptism under fire. “I remember how eager we all had been before takeoff on that first combat mission,” Godfrey said. He had found that the “serious business” of war quickly molded boys into men “in a matter of about three hours.” Don Hoff felt a deep sense of loss for his Scouting Six comrades he had gone to radio school with. In the heat of the moment, however, he realized there was nothing he could do about it. We have to carry on, Hoff thought. We still have a job to do out here.20
Jim Murray was not with the radiomen who had gathered in the radio shack to wait for word on their next mission. He remained with his skipper’s SBD on the hangar deck, and begged sandwiches and coffee from willing shipmates who were eager to hear more about the damage inflicted upon the Japanese carriers. He encountered VB-6 radioman Ed Anderson while in the hangar. Anderson related their successful attack on Kaga and their fight with the Zeros en route home. Murray, after hearing of the losses they suffered, silently hoped that some of their downed fellow airmen would be recovered from the Pacific by search-and-rescue efforts.21
• • •
Oley Hanson noted that many of his comrades were grumbling about the various personal effects they had lost aboard Yorktown. The only things he regretted losing were the diaries he had written during various combats. “I couldn’t complain too loudly, because it was supposed to be against the rules to have any kind of diary that might conceivably fall into the hands of the Japanese,” Hanson said.22
The Japanese were sending out their own follow-up strike from the undamaged Hiryu as the American aviators prepared to attack again. Reports from Nagumo’s scout planes indicated that the Americans had three carriers. By 1300, further confirmation was reported to Hiryu’s command staff from the interrogations of captured Torpedo Three pilot Wesley Osmus, who had revealed the Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet by name while under torture. The second strike group launched from Hiryu at 1331, consisting of ten Kate torpedo planes under Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga and six Zero fighters under Lieutenant Shigeru Mori.23
Yorktown’s damage-control crews fought hard during the two hours following her bomb wreckage and finally managed to get her back under way. By 1430 she was making fifteen knots, but the cruiser Pensacola’s radar had already picked up Hiryu’s inbound strike group. The American carriers scrambled to launch additional Wildcat fighters to intercept this latest threat, but there was insufficient time to launch any of their SBDs.
The bombing attack had destroyed many of Yorktown’s remaining Dauntlesses on the hangar deck. Lieutenant Tex Conatser found that only his SBD and one other were flyable. He consulted with Air Officer Murr Arnold, asking that he and John Bridgers—whom he considered one of his choice pupils—be allowed to launch. Arnold, however, replied that their launch was impractical at the moment.24
The CAP accounted for some of the Hiryu strikers, but at least six of the Kates made it in close enough to effect good torpedo drops. Captain Buckmaster, with his carrier struggling to make nineteen knots, was unable to dodge all of them, and two torpedoes slammed into Yorktown’s port side around 1444. Yorktown’s rudder was jammed, and her power was knocked out once again, plunging the ship into darkness.
The torpedo explosions were violent. Tex Conatser, Ray Miligi, and Bill Roberts had gone down to rest in Conatser’s stateroom, since their ready room was out of service. “When the first torpedo hit, it raised me a foot off my bunk,” said Conatser. “It knocked Ray Miligi onto the deck and roughed up Bill Roberts, too.” Another pilot, John Bridgers, had heard that many of the men wounded or killed during the earlier bombing attack had been standing upright. Now he and others in a compartment near the island structure lay prone on the deck to avoid shrapnel. Bridgers was lifted more than a foot off the deck when one of the torpedoes exploded. I now know what a torpedo hit feels like, he thought.25
Ensign Bob Gibson, another VS-5 rookie pilot, had ridden out the bombing attack in the ready room, then retired to officers’ country to rest while the firefighters did their work. As fires were raging, the damage-control men started throwing mattresses overboard to avoid further blazes. Gibson, still wearing his Mae West life jacket, was stretched out on his mattressless bunk when the torpedoes hit. “They shook the ship radically, like a baby rattle,” he said. As the lights went out and smoke filled his stateroom, Gibson tried to leap from his bunk. His Mae West, however, became hopelessly tangled in the coil springs, leaving him feeling like Don Quixote fighting the windmill as he tried to wrestle free from the springs.26
Yorktown orphan pilot George Goldsmith had gone to the hangar deck to inspect his aircraft following the bombing attack. Amazed at the jolt created by the exploding torpedoes, Goldsmith felt the hits shake the ship like a cat shaking a rat.27
The ship’s list increased dramatically, and Captain Buckmaster feared that his carrier might capsize. He ordered the engine rooms secured and directed the men to come topside and don their life jackets. Flight operations from CV-5 were over for the dozens of VS-5, VB-3, and VB-6 Dauntless aircrews on board, who were now contemplating their chances of survival.
• • •
Lieutenant Sam Adams of Scouting Five helped avenge his ship’s wounds by finding the source of her suffering. Wally Short’s search group, launched at 1130, had flown out three hundred miles with five-hundred-pound bombs. Contact was made at almost the same moment that Yorktown collected two torpedo hits from Hiryu’s strike group.
Luck seemed to be with Adams and his wingman, Lieutenant Rockey Dickson. Adams had received good news that morning in the form of a dispatch from home announcing that his wife had just delivered a baby. “The news really set him up,” said fellow VS-5 pilot Dave Berry, an academy classmate of Adams’s.28
Lieutenant Adams had seen nothing until about halfway back toward home; then suddenly he spotted the white wakes of ships on the ocean surface below and led Dickson down for a closer look. Adams made out ten ships, all heading north. He had ARM1c Joe Karrol carefully send out the contact report in dots and dashes to reach the fleet. Fifteen minutes after his first sighting, he radioed a contact report: “One CV, two BB, three CA, four DD, thirty-one-fifteen north, one seventy-nine-oh-five west, course 000, speed fifteen.” Hiryu at this time was only 110 miles northwest of Yorktown.29
Adams ordered his radioman to send the same report by code key, but Karrol was occupied. “Just a minute, Mr. Adams,” he called. “I have a Zero back here to take care of first.”30
Adams, considered by many of his peers to be the best pilot of VS-5, calmly set up his plane in order to give Karrol a clean shot at their opponent. Karrol and Dickson’s gunner, ARM2c Joseph Lynch, poured lead into the Zero and believed that they sent it down in flames. Only then did Sam Adams continue to send his contact report via keying. Adams and Dickson carefully monitored Hiryu’s force for another half hour before turning for home with just enough fuel to make it.
• • •
Admiral Fletcher had transferred his flag to the cruiser Astoria once Yorktown had first gone dead in the water after her bomb damage. Captain Buckmaster now found his carrier dead in the water once again from her two torpedo hits, vulnerable to further enemy attacks, and in danger of rolling over from her heavy list. At 1455, he passed the word, “Abandon ship,” in order to prevent more loss of lives.
More than two dozen Dauntless airmen, pilots, and gunners still on board Yorktown were now caught in the abandon-ship process. From Bombing Three, this included a handful of rear gunners and the two junior pilots who had not been assigned to the morning strike—ensigns Jack Rugen and Raymond Reynolds. Tex Conatser, with his ten remaining VS-5 pilots (Bridgers, Miligi, Jerry Richey, Spike Conzett, Richard Wolfe, Ray Kline, Leif Larsen, Blackie Ammen, Bob Gibson, and Larry Comer), and the two Enterprise refugee crews (Roberts, Goldsmith, and their gunners) proceeded to the hangar deck. They removed some of the rubber rafts from the SBDs and prepared to go over the side. Conatser, wary of burning his hands while sliding down the lines, made sure he found a knotted line before proceeding toward the ocean below. He dropped their plane’s life raft to his gunner and then climbed down.31
Conatser found that many of the men in the water were without life jackets, although plenty had been available. He and his gunner, who were wearing their Mae Wests, turned their rafts over to four swimmers without jackets. Conatser bobbed in the ocean for several minutes and then was pulled aboard another raft with men from his squadron. His group was brought on board the destroyer Balch within an hour.
Still on board Yorktown, John Bridgers was trying to decide when he would follow his comrades into the water. He retrieved his Mae West life jacket from the ready room and stood topside on the flight deck watching the abandon-ship process, secretly hoping someone would change his mind about the whole affair. Captain Buckmaster, making an inspection tour, ordered the young ensign overboard. The captain was less than pleased when he encountered Bridgers again moments later. “Son, I thought I told you to get off this ship,” Buckmaster said. “Now get moving!”32
Bridgers climbed down a line into the ocean. He helped tow an injured sailor to a life raft crowded with mess attendants and a British officer, Commander Michael B. Laing—who had been on the carrier as an observer. Bridgers tried swimming toward a distant destroyer, but his clothing and shoes slowed his progress. Sometime later, the exhausted aviator—having ditched his size-fourteen AA footwear—was finally hauled on board another destroyer.33
Radioman John Iacovazzi of Scouting Five swam to the destroyer Benson. “Being that I had a flight suit on and a firearm with no identification, they must have thought I was an officer,” said Iacovazzi, “so I got to take a shower right away.” Ensign Bob Gibson forgot to lock his feet as he slid down a line toward the water and burned his hands in the process. Then he was unable to swim away from the carrier due to waves that kept forcing him back against the hull. Gibson tried diving underwater to swim past the oily surface, but was continually carried back. Commander Murr Arnold finally helped haul the exhausted pilot onto a life raft, where they were picked up by the destroyer Balch.34
Bill Roberts from Enterprise’s VB-6 searched his SBD on the hangar deck before abandoning ship, retrieving his life raft and camera. He then met up with a Yorktown sailor who proposed that they share the two-man rubber raft. The sailor went down a line first and Roberts tossed the raft down. He lost his grip fifteen feet above the ocean and fell, still wearing his leather flight jacket and carrying his .45 pistol and camera. Roberts struggled to the surface, only to find that the Yorktown sailor and his SBD’s raft were not to be seen. He swam to a nearby life raft, happy to be wearing his Mae West, and hung on until he was rescued.35
George Goldsmith and gunner Jim Patterson also retrieved the two-man raft from their VB-6 Dauntless. They moved to the fantail, pulled the inflation toggle, tossed it into the sea below, and prepared to jump after it. “As it hit the water, it shriveled up into nothingness,” said Patterson. They realized the raft had been shot full of holes during the fighter attacks. Goldsmith was forced to paddle through the oily water wearing his Mae West. When Patterson climbed down a line and dropped into the ocean, he was met immediately by a large steward’s mate, who cried out, “Don’t leave me, boss! I can’t swim!” Patterson offered a quick course on dog-paddling to the frantic young man and they set off, with the steward’s mate paddling with one hand and gripping Patterson’s shoulder with the other. Both men were rescued by a boat from the destroyer Balch.36
The four VB-6 airmen from the Big E and the remaining Yorktown Dauntless aviators were all retrieved from the water by Task Force 17 screening vessels. Goldsmith, exhausted from a long time in the water, fell asleep in the officers’ wardroom under a table where Balch doctors were tending to the wounded.37