FIFTEEN

“I Wish I Had Just One More Bomb”

Tony Schneider was beginning to doubt that he would ever be rescued. He and his gunner spent a second long, cold night drifting in the swells of the Pacific in their little life raft. Glenn Holden’s lacerated head was bruised and swollen. The hunger pains gnawing at Tony’s midsection were beginning to make him think of opening the canned pemmican. At least the sharks had not returned. The morning sun on June 6 brought warmth to their third day adrift, and Tony held on to his hope. “I heard the engines of planes going out to search that morning,” he said. “I looked and looked but I just couldn’t see them.”¹

He hoped the Midway PBY would return later along the same route. The winds had picked up a bit by midday, and the swells were increasing. Sometime after noon, Schneider and Holden heard the distant sounds of engines again. The PBY that had passed them in the morning was on his way back to Midway, and now he flew closer to their raft. The Bombing Six aviators stuck their oars into their bright white parachute and held it aloft like a giant flag.

This time they were in luck. The pilot of the big Catalina seaplane was Lieutenant (j.g.) August A. “Al” Barthes from Biloxi, Mississippi. The VP-23 patrol crew spotted the white parachute on the ocean below and dropped down low to investigate. Barthes had his crew toss a smoke bomb to mark their spot and to judge the wind direction. Then he circled, landed into the wind, and taxied toward the downed aviators. Tony noted that the American flying boat crew had guns trained on them. “They didn’t know whether I was a friend or not,” he said.

Barthes and his crew stowed their guns once they realized they had found American aviators. Tony was badly dehydrated. He had still been holding off on drinking his single container of water. In spite of his dire thirst, his first desire was to cure his nicotine fit. He had no matches on his raft, and the salt water had ruined his lighter. “Camel used to have a line in their advertising: ‘I’d walk a mile for a Camel,’” Tony recalled. At the moment, he could only think: I’d row a mile for a Camel! If I could have picked up that smoke bomb with the little flame coming out of it, I’d have lit one of my cigarettes!

Holden and Schneider maneuvered their raft beside one of the PBY’s side blisters and were helped inside, where they were offered something to drink for the first time in some fifty-two hours. Lieutenant Barthes lifted back off for Midway with two very appreciative Enterprise airmen. They were the second-to-last survivors of Bombing Six to be rescued of those who were part of the Midway carrier strikes.

• • •

Roy Gee of VB-8 woke around 0500 on Enterprise. He hopped out of the bunk, washed up a little, and slipped into his flight suit. He then hurried to the wardroom for breakfast, where he encountered an atmosphere similar to the one in Hornet’s wardroom the previous morning: Many missing pilots would never again sit in the empty chairs.²

Task Force 16 held a westward course during the night. By 0500, it was more than 350 miles northwest of Midway. Admiral Spruance, hoping to further pound the retiring Japanese fleet, ordered Enterprise’s air group to launch a search. Sixteen SBDs departed at dawn, including the five Hornet refugees who had landed after dark. They were to search a western semicircle out to two hundred miles before returning. About an hour into their flight, the mixed Enterprise/Yorktown/Hornet pilots made contact.

Ensign Gee spotted two capital warships with two escorting destroyers on a southwesterly course. Remaining safely out of AA range, he dictated a message for Don Canfield to transmit to Task Force 16. Canfield, however, failed to get a confirmation that their transmission had been received. Gee decided to hurry back to the task force to make his report.³

One of Gee’s squadron mates, Doug Carter, did manage to get off a contact report. Radioman Slim Moore attempted to report in code at 0645 that the search teams had found a battleship, a cruiser, and three destroyers steaming due west at ten knots. Moore’s garbled transmission, however, was misunderstood to report one carrier and five destroyers roughly 128 miles southwest of Task Force 16. Admiral Spruance directed Curtiss SOC floatplanes from the cruisers New Orleans and Minneapolis to clarify this report.⁴

Roy Gee arrived over Enterprise at 0730 and dropped a beanbag message with more accurate information. His report of two cruisers and two destroyers placed the enemy ships about 133 miles away from TF-16. Spruance was thus left believing he was dealing with two enemy ship groups. Gee was recovered by Hornet at 0815 and reported to Captain Mitscher on the bridge. Afterward, he was informed upon returning to his own VB-8 ready room that he would not be flying any more that day. Lieutenant (j.g.) Jimmy Forbes of Scouting Eight was also recovered by Hornet, but Lieutenant Whitney of VS-8 and Lieutenant Vose of VB-8 landed on Enterprise again.

Pete Mitscher’s Hornet, not involved in the morning search efforts, was first to launch a strike group beginning at 0757. Commander Stan Ring in the CHAG Dauntless led the procession, along with eleven SBDs of Bombing Eight under Lieutenant Abbie Tucker, fourteen SBDs of Scouting Eight under Lieutenant Gus Widhelm, and eight escorting VF-8 Wildcats led by Lieutenant Warren W. Ford.

In his VS-8 pilot briefing, Widhelm declared, “I’m going to drive my bomb right down the smokestack of the biggest cruiser we find.”⁵

Widhelm’s VS-8 group included two orphans. Bill Christie of Scouting Five had been fully integrated, but Clarence Vammen of VB-6 was under orders to return to his own Enterprise following the attack. Eight of the Hornet SBDs carried five-hundred-pound bombs, while the rest toted the more potent thousand-pounders. The Sea Hag took the lead, and began a slow climb toward fifteen thousand feet.⁶

Enterprise recovered her morning strike group shortly after the Hornet group’s departure. After Gee’s corrected report was blinkered to Admiral Spruance, Enterprise radioed Commander Ring at 0850: “Target may be battleship instead of carrier. Attack!”⁷

Morning Strike on Mikuma, Mogami Hornet First Group: June 6, 1942
BOMBING EIGHT (VB-8) DIVISION (12 SBDS WITH CHAG)
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. Alfred Bland Tucker III	ARM1c Champ T. Stuart
Ens. Frank E. Christofferson	ARM2c Barkley V. Poorman
Ens. Don Dee Adams	ARM2c John B. Broughton Jr.
Lt. John Joseph Lynch	ARM1c Wilbur L. Woods
Ens. Arthur Caldwell Cason Jr.	ARM3c Alfred D. Wells
Ens. Clayton Evan Fisher	ARM3c George E. Ferguson
Lt. (jg) Fred Leeson Bates	ARM1c Clyde S. Montensen
Ens. Joe Wiley King	ARM3c Thomas M. Walsh
SECOND DIVISION
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. Cdr. Robert Ruffin Johnson	ACRM Joseph G. McCoy
Ens. Philip Farnsworth Grant	ARM2c Robert H. Rider
Ens. James Austin Riner Jr.	ARM2c Floyd Dell Kilmer
CHAG PLANE
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Cdr. Stanhope Cotton Ring	ARM2c Arthur M. Parker
SCOUTING EIGHT (VS-8) DIVISION (14 SBDS)
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. William John Widhelm	ARM1c George D. Stokely
Ens. Donald Kirkpatrick	ARM2c Richard Thomas Woodson
Ens. Don “T” Griswold*	ARM1c Kenneth Cecil Bunch*
Lt. (jg) William Francis Christie (VS-5)	ARM1c Alvin Arthur Sobel
Lt. (jg) Ralph B. Hovind	ARM3c Charles B. Lufburrow
Ens. Helmuth Ernest Hoerner	ARM3c David T. Manus
Lt. (jg) Ivan Lee Swope	ARM2c Harmon L. Brendle
Ens. Paul Edmond Tepas	ARM3c Moley J. Boutwell
SECOND DIVISION
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. Edgar Erwin Stebbins	ARM2c Ervin R. Hillhouse
Ens. Philip James Rusk	ARM2c John H. Honeycutt
Ens. Benjamin Tappan Jr.	ARM3c Earnest Ray Johnston
Lt. Ben Moore Jr.	ARM2c Richard Cusack McEwen
Ens. Stanley Robert Holm	ARM2c James H. Black Jr.
Ens. Clarence Earl Vammen Jr.* (VS-6)	AMM1c Milton Wayne Clark*
Fighting Eight (VF-8): 8 F4Fs under Lt. Warren W. Ford

*Shot down and killed.

Scouting Eight composition compiled by Mark E. Horan.

The confusing contact reports mentioning a possible carrier and a second Japanese warship force were straightened out in due time. The Hornet strike group was actually facing only one nearby force of ships, the cruisers Mogami and Mikuma and their escorting destroyers Arashio and Asashio. Mikuma had been mistakenly reported as a battleship, since her sister ship Mogami appeared smaller due to her crumpled bow from her collison the previous day.⁸

The SOC search planes from New Orleans monitored the four enemy warships and helped guide Ring’s strike group into the target area. Ruff Johnson of VB-8 spotted the Mikuma and Mogami force at 0930. The flight doctrine of the day was to use “first name” calls to contact other squadron and division leaders. Johnson thus called over the voice radio, “Stanhope from Robert, enemy below on port bow.”⁹

Ring, uncertain that this force truly included a battleship, flew several miles beyond the vessels in search of another group of warships. When he decided that this group was his target, the CHAG circled his Hornet formation around to make a second approach out of the sun. They commenced their attack at 0950, with VS-8 pushing over on Mogami.¹⁰

Scouting Eight’s long wait to draw blood finally came to an end. Gus Widhelm’s pilots witnessed him follow through on his promise of making a hit, as his load landed squarely amidships just behind the smokestack. His bomb exploded on Mogami’s aircraft deck, sparking fires in the torpedo room. Lieutenant Ben Moore’s big bomb smashed through the roof of turret number five, killing its crew. Bill Christie had plenty of time to pick a target before making his dive through intense AA fire. He felt that his bomb made a direct hit amidships. Mogami’s crew had fortunately jettisoned their torpedoes following their June 5 collision with Mikuma, and the crew was able to contain the resulting fires within an hour.¹¹

The antiaircraft fire was heavy over the Japanese warships, despite efforts made by Lieutenant Warren Ford’s fighters to strafe their decks. The Japanese gunners hit several Hornet dive-bombers and brought down two from Widhelm’s group. Ensign Don Griswold’s 8-S-12 was struck, trailed heavy smoke, and was seen to splash down into the ocean. He and his radioman/gunner, ARM1c Kenneth Bunch, were both killed. Clay Fisher had heard Griswold tell another squadron pilot he had a premonition he was going to die on that flight. Another shell hit Vammen’s 6-S-1, which had been flown by Earl Gallaher on the June 4 carrier strikes. Vammen’s dive-bomber disintegrated instantly, killing him and his veteran gunner, AMM1c Milton Clark.¹²

Ensign Lefty Hoerner from Ilion, New York, was among the Scouting Eight pilots making their first combat attack. As he plunged down on Mogami, he realized in his excitement that he had forgotten to employ his wing flaps to slow his descent. Hoerner hastily reached for the lever but grabbed the wrong one, lowering his wheels. He overshot the cruiser and suddenly found himself approaching one of her escorting destroyers. This time he found the bomb release and made his drop. “I went back to the ship feeling pretty bad,” Hoerner said. “I was sure I was going to catch hell.” His squadron mates, however, were all complimentary of Hoerner’s result, as they told him how his bomb had exploded squarely on the afterdeck of a destroyer. Japanese reports would confirm that Asashio was struck squarely in the stern by a five-hundred-pound bomb during the Hornet Air Group’s first strike.¹³

Ray Johnston called off the altitude during Ben Tappan’s dive on Mogami, and saw his pilot land “a paint scraper” on the cruiser’s port bow. Abbie Tucker’s ten VB-8 planes concentrated on Mikuma. Ensign Phil Grant, in the excitement of the moment, accidentally dropped his bomb before diving, leaving only nine planes with payloads. Lieutenant Tucker missed Mikuma’s starboard bow by no more than fifty feet, while his wingman, Frank Christofferson, missed by a wider mark. Tucker’s other wingman, Don Adams, attacked a screening destroyer and was credited with a direct hit with his five-hundred-pound bomb.¹⁴

John Lynch’s section also attacked Mikuma. He, Arthur Cason, and Clay Fisher achieved nothing better than near misses. The next three pilots—Fred Bates, Joe King, and skipper Ruff Johnson—managed two more paint scrapers. Ensign Jim Riner, the last of VB-8 still toting a bomb, completed Hornet’s attack by landing his ordnance within seventy-five feet of the heavy cruiser’s starboard bow.

Hornet’s strikers had finally made their mark at Midway, plastering both heavy cruisers and damaging the destroyer Asashio with direct hits. “In executing our dive-bombing attack, everyone did much better than he had the day before, when buck fever probably had us,” said Ring.¹⁵

The CHAG detoured about twenty-five miles to the southward on the way back to Hornet to look for other ships. They began landing on Hornet at 1035, having lost only two of their number. Captain Mitscher had his deck crews begin to immediately refuel and rearm the SBDs for a follow-up strike. “When I returned aboard after about three hours flying, it developed that the radio in my plane was not functioning properly,” said Ring. “Hornet had not received my report of attacking the enemy; nor had I received their dispatches requesting information as to the latitude and longitude of the group attacked. Captain Mitscher decided, therefore, that I should not accompany the final attack group which was being readied for takeoff.”¹⁶

Afternoon Strike on Mikuma, Mogami Enterprise Group: June 6, 1942
SCOUTING FIVE (VS-5) DIVISION
PLANE	PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
6-S-7	Lt. Wallace Clark Short Jr.	ACRM John W. Trott
6-S-8	Lt. Harlan Rockey Dickson	ARM2c Joseph Michael Lynch
6-S-9	Ens. Carl Herman Horenburger	ARM3c Lynn Raymond Forshee
6-S-10	Lt. John Ludwig Neilsen	ACRM Walter Dean Straub
6-S-11	Lt. (jg) Nels Luther Alvin Berger	ACRM Otis Albert Phelps
6-S-12	Lt. (jg) David Render Berry	ARM2c Earnest Alwyn Clegg
6-S-15	Ens. Benjamin Gifford Preston	ARM1c Harold R. Cowden
SCOUTING SIX (VS-6) DIVISION
PLANE	PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
6-S-16	Lt. (jg) Frank Anthony Patriarca	ACRM Jack Richard Badgley
6-S-2	Ens. Reid Wentworth Stone	RM1c William Hart Bergin
6-S-11	Ens. Richard Alonzo Jaccard	RM3c Porter William Pixley
6-S-7	Lt. (jg) Norman Jack Kleiss	ARM3c John Warren Snowden
6-S-17	Ens. Vernon Larsen Micheel	RM3c John Dewey Dance
6-S-18	Ens. James Campbell Dexter	RM3c Donald Laurence Hoff
6-S-9	Ens. Eldor Ernst Rodenburg*	Sea2c Thomas James Bruce*
BOMBING THREE (VB-3) STRIKE FORCE
PLANE	PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
3-B-3	Lt. DeWitt Wood Shumway	ARM1c Ray Edgar Coons
3-B-14	Ens. Robert Martin Elder	ARM3c Leslie Alan Till
3-B-6	Ens. Milford Austin Merrill	ARM3c Jack Alvin Shropshire
3-B-4	Ens. Robert Keith Campbell	ARM3c Frederick Paul Bergeron
3-B-5	Ens. Alden Wilbur Hanson	ARM3c Joseph Vernon Godfrey
SECOND DIVISION, VB-3
PLANE	PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
3-B-7	Lt. (jg) Gordon Alvin Sherwood	ARM2c Harman Donald Bennett
3-B-8	Ens. Roy Maurice Isaman	ARM3c Sidney Kay Weaver
SECOND DIVISION, VB-3
PLANE	PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
3-B-9	Ens. Bunyan Randolph Cooner	ARM2c Clarence E. Zimmershead
3-B-10	Lt. Harold Sydney Bottomley Jr.	AMM2c David Frederick Johnson
6-B-10	Ens. Charles Smith Lane	ARM2c Jack Charles Henning
BOMBING SIX (VB-6) DIVISION
PLANE	PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
6-B-1	Lt. Lloyd Addison Smith	AMM2c Herman Hull Caruthers
6-B-16	Lt. (jg) Edward Lee Anderson	ARM1c Walter George Chocalousek
6-B-2	Ens. Don Lelo Ely	AOM3c Harold Llewellyn Jones
6-B-10	Lt. Harvey Peter Lanham	ARM1c Edward Joseph Garaudy
6-B-17	Ens. Harry Warren Liffner	AMM3c Milo L. Kimberlin
VB-8	Lt. James Everett Vose Jr.	ARM2c Joseph Yewonishon
VS-8	Lt. Laurens Adin Whitney	ARM2c Angus D. Gilles
Fighting Six (VF-6): 12 F4Fs under Lt. James Seton Gray Jr.
Torpedo Six (VT-6): 3 TBDs under Lt. (jg) Robert Edward Laub

*Forced to abort mission.

Hornet’s aviators had finally delivered a sting to their enemy, and now those in Enterprise’s ragtag squadrons were eager to get in their licks as well. Admiral Spruance ordered off an Enterprise strike group at 1045, just minutes after Hornet’s first strike group had returned to Task Force 16.

Lieutenant Wally Short of VS-5 would lead the strike as the senior uninjured aviator on Enterprise. He had thirty-two dive-bombers available from a mix of six squadrons. Short would also lead a division of seven VS-5 Yorktown crews, while Lieutenant Frank Patriarca would lead a second division of his eight remaining VS-6 SBDs. Lieutenant Dave Shumway had two five-plane divisions of Bombing Three. Bombing Six’s exec, Lieutenant Lloyd Smith, had five planes loaded with thousand-pound bombs, as were most of the other SBDs. Finally, the two remaining Hornet orphans—Moe Vose and Laurens Whitney—were launched, with orders to return to their own ship after the strike.

Ed Garaudy, gunner for Harvey Lanham, became a reluctant volunteer to photograph this mission. The ship’s intelligence officer went from plane to plane before takeoff, trying to get someone to take an aerial camera to get some pictures. “I agreed to take it with the stipulation that it would go over the side if we were attacked by fighters,” Garaudy said.¹⁷

Bob Benson of Bombing Three had flown the morning search in his 3-B-6. When word came that another strike group was being launched, Bud Merrill took over his aircraft, flying with Jack Shropshire as a replacement gunner for his own wounded Dallas Bergeron. Benson went below for lunch, but his gunner, Fred Bergeron, was detained by Bob Campbell.¹⁸

Campbell’s regular gunner, Horace Craig, had fallen ill and was scratched from the regular rotation. Campbell, hoping to grab a quick replacement radioman, was waving freshly made ham sandwiches. “I’ll give you these if you’ll fly with me,” he propositioned Fred Bergeron.

“I don’t think your wife knows what kind of man you are, enticing a nineteen-year-old kid to go on a dangerous mission with you for a ham sandwich,” Bergeron chided. Truth be told, he preferred the real ham sandwich over the SPAM he would have received in the mess hall. “He wouldn’t even have had to offer that, because I had had a lot of fun flying with him.”

Norm West’s finicky VS-6 bomber was unable to launch, leaving Short with thirty-one SBDs airborne. Rodey Rodenburg was once again robbed of bombing Japanese warships on this flight, just as he had been on June 4. As he reached fourteen thousand feet while climbing outbound from Enterprise, Rodenburg heard gunner Thomas Bruce groaning. He realized that his plane’s oxygen system had failed and that Bruce had passed out as the plane reached high altitude. He quickly dropped his altitude and aborted his flight.¹⁹

This time the Enterprise bombers were accompanied by twelve Wildcat fighters led by Lieutenant Jim Gray. Admiral Spruance decided at the last minute to also include his surviving Devastators of VT-6 on the attack. The admiral held a hasty conference with CEAG Wade McClusky and the senior surviving Torpedo Six pilot, Lieutenant (j.g.) Bob Laub. “I am not going to lose another torpedo plane if I can help it,” Spruance told Laub. If any accurate antiaircraft fire was encountered, VT-6 was to turn around and bring their torpedoes back home. Laub launched in company with two wingmen, Chief Aviation Pilot Harry Mueller and Ensign Jamie S. Morris. Laub had grounded the squadron’s other June 4 survivors, as he had ample volunteers for this mission.²⁰

Lieutenant Short received orders via radio at 1057 to seek out and destroy a battleship suspected to be forty miles farther beyond the Mikuma and Mogami force. He led his SBDs up to 22,500 feet while making gentle S-turns to allow Bob Laub’s TBDs to catch up. Ensign Carl Horenburger, one of Short’s VS-5 wingmen, struggled to reach high altitude with his thousand-pound bomb load. Gunner Lynn Forshee recalled during the outbound flight that another rear seat man with a small voice was chattering to his pilot, oblivious to the fact that he was not using the ICS intercom but was instead broadcasting his every word. “Someone finally went on the air and told him to shut up,” Forshee said.²¹

By noon, Johnny Neilsen of VS-5 spotted two large oil slicks trailing from the damaged Japanese ships. The visibility was perfect from seventeen thousand feet. The thin, white, feathery lines of the enemy warships’ wakes were perfect guides for the SBD crews. Neilsen saw that much of the cruisers’ antiaircraft fire was bursting a quarter mile behind their SBDs. He noted wingmen Dave Berry and Rockey Dickson tight on his wings and then glanced at his oxygen gauge. His pressure was running down. As he waited to attack, the pressure kept dropping, and he found it difficult to breathe.²²

Wally Short led his flight thirty miles beyond the cruiser in search of the mysterious battleship. He found nothing but empty ocean, and then turned to head back to attack the Mogami and Mikuma group. Johnny Neilsen’s oxygen supply was finally exhausted and he began to feel light-headed. He motioned to Dickson to stay with him, and dived down to ten thousand feet, where there was enough oxygen to breathe without a mask.²³

Pat Patriarca, leading VS-6, was ready to dive. His planes had been circling overhead while the Japanese peppered away at them with AA. On board Enterprise, Spruance’s staff listened impatiently to the radio chatter between the little groups of dive-bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes. Jim Gray of VF-6, believing that one of the two heavy cruisers was a battleship, radioed, “Let’s go! The BB is in the rear of the formation.”²⁴

Enterprise bluntly radioed Short at 1235: “Expedite attack and return.”

Dave Shumway finally called, “Wally, this is Dave. I’ll take the cruiser to the northeast.”²⁵

“We’ll take the other one,” Short replied. “Where is the rest of our attack group?”

“We are right behind you; get going!” called back Lloyd Smith.²⁶

“Smith from Wally. What the hell are you doing over here?” Short was under the impression that Smith’s VB-6 should be following Shumway’s VB-3 group down on the other cruiser.

Short finally radioed that he was pushing over on the rear cruiser, Mikuma. He became impatient as he entered his dive with some VS-6 pilots who were not following quickly enough. “Our objective is rear ship,” Short called. “Step on it! Are we going to attack or not?” As VB-3’s Charlie Lane remembered, “Finally, after much cussing over the air, our attack began.”²⁷

Short was first to dive. Torpedo Six pilot Jamie Morris believed that Short made a perfect drop for a direct hit. Two planes back, Carl Horenburger rolled to the left and plunged into his dive on Mikuma. Gunner Lynn Forshee, bracing himself for the pain in his ears from the pullout, saw their bomb land right behind the stack amidships, and told Horenburger they had made a good one.²⁸

Johnny Neilsen witnessed Rockey Dickson’s bomb appear to drop right down the cruiser’s stack and blow it over the side. Dusty Kleiss, fourth of Patriarca’s VS-6 pilots to dive, was equally certain that he landed his bomb right near the stack. He felt that his squadron’s five planes scored three direct hits on the cruiser. One of the VS-6 pilots attacked a destroyer and managed a near miss within fifty feet.²⁹

Some individual pilots opted to dive on the less damaged “light cruiser,” actually Mogami. Shumway circled Bombing Three while the two scouting squadrons and VB-6 made their dives. “I saw four hits on the big cruiser and she turned into a flaming, burning hulk,” said Al Hanson of VB-3. Short felt that his Scouting Five alone tagged Mikuma with five hits and two close misses.³⁰

Lloyd Smith’s VB-6 division pushed over with its two orphaned Hornet SBDs in company. Don Ely, who had been deprived of making the attacks on the previous two days, was eager for the kill. “Conditions were ideal for this attack,” Ely said. “All my flight training resulted into one shot, and it’d better be good.”³¹

Gunner Lew Jones, normally assigned to Arthur Rausch, had been tapped to fly with Ely on this strike. They dived from sixteen thousand feet. At thirty-five hundred feet, Jones yelled, “Mark!” Ely then dropped and pulled out as Jones shouted, “Get right down on the water!” His rookie pilot responded by flying a mere fifty feet above the ocean to avoid AA fire from the two destroyers. Jones looked back and saw Ely’s bomb hit near the fantail of the ship. Ely was consumed after that with dodging the waterspouts from exploding shells for the next mile.³²

Gunner Ed Garaudy could feel the flak rocking his SBD. As Lanham made his dive on Mogami, Garaudy could see that the cruiser had been hit badly at the stern, and that some personnel were going over the side. Ill prepared as a photographer, he dutifully snapped pictures of the damaged Japanese cruisers in hopes that the image quality would please the intelligence gang.³³

Lieutenant Shumway pushed over with VB-3 to join the pounding of Mikuma. Replacement gunner Fred Bergeron used his twin .30s to shoot up the heavy cruiser as Bob Campbell pulled out of his dive. Right behind Campbell, Ensign Hanson felt that his own bomb was a direct hit amidships. Gordon Sherwood followed with his second division of VB-3. Flying the tail-end Charlie spot, Charlie Lane saw intense flak coming toward his plane. He yanked back hard on the stick after his drop with both hands and thought, I’ll never make it. As he roared out low on the water, Lane blurted into his radio, “That scared hell out of me. I thought we weren’t going to pull out!”³⁴

Lane’s gunner, Jack Henning, thought that the pilot landed their bomb squarely on the cruiser’s fantail. Shumway estimated that Bombing Three added another four direct hits and five near misses to the score. Only one of his ten pilots, Roy Isaman, did not dive on Mikuma. The other cruiser, Mogami, appeared undamaged to him, so Isaman braved the heavy AA fire alone and was seen by other aviators to score a direct hit aft.³⁵

Mogami was hit by two bombs that caused medium damage, while at least five bombs from Wally Short’s collective squadrons struck the luckless Mikuma. Two loads tore through her port after engine room, while two others ripped into her starboard forward engine room. Another big bomb exploded atop Mikuma’s number three turret, sending shrapnel tearing through her bridge structure and killing her skipper, Captain Shakao Sakiyama. Heavily damaged, Mikuma lost power and drifted to a halt. Her executive officer passed the word to abandon ship, and the destroyer Arashio moved in to help remove survivors.³⁶

Back on board the Task Force 16 ships, cheers erupted as excited radio transmissions from the pilots crackled over the loudspeakers in a frenzy of shouts. “Look at that son of a bitch burn!” . . . “Hit the son of a bitch again!” . . . “Your bomb really hit them on the fantail. Boy, that’s swell!” . . . “These Japs are as easy as shooting ducks in a rain barrel. . . .” “Gee, I wish I had just one more bomb. . . .” “Tojo, you son of a bitch, send out the rest and we’ll get those, too!”³⁷

Bob Elder soaked in the scene of the dive-bombers’ handiwork before departing. Mikuma and Mogami had absorbed tremendous damage, with superstructures battered and guns drooping in the water. Dusty Kleiss from VS-6 later wrote, “Our target [was] a complete mass of wreckage, dead in the water and burning from stem to stern.” To Moe Vose of VB-8, flying with the Enterprise group, the cruiser pounding “was a good day’s work.”³⁸

Adhering to Admiral Spruance’s orders, Bob Laub kept his VT-6 Devastators out of harm’s way due to the heavy AA fire. “We only got close enough to draw a little antiaircraft fire once in a while but not close enough that they could hit us,” said Ron Graetz, rear gunner for CAP Harry Mueller. “We just sat there and watched those SBDs pound the hell out of them. When we turned to head back to the ship, that cruiser looked like a big bathtub full of junk.”

Hornet had already started launching a second attack group at 1330 as Enterprise’s jubilant aviators made their way back to Task Force 16. This group comprised twenty-four Dauntlesses, all that were flyable with two exceptions: The Sea Hag SBD was grounded due to faulty radio gear, and Ensign Stan Holm’s VS-8 Dauntless had sustained AA fire damage during the morning strike. Three of the recently returned Hornet dive-bombers that had made the morning scout mission from Enterprise helped to round out the afternoon strike.

Scouting Five’s Bill Christie and six VS-8 pilots would be making their second attack of the day. Ben Tappan and four others of Scouting Eight were given a rest to let some of their squadron mates—Jimmy Forbes, Bill Woodman, Al Wood, and Harold White—fly the second strike. “There were just not enough planes left in our squadron to go around, so we rotated the aircrews,” said Tappan’s gunner, Ray Johnston.

Afternoon Strike on Mikuma, Mogami Hornet Afternoon Group: June 6, 1942
BOMBING EIGHT (VB-8) DIVISION (12 SBDS)
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. Alfred Bland Tucker III	ARM1c Champ T. Stuart
Ens. Don Dee Adams	ARM2c John B. Broughton Jr.
Ens. Joe Wiley King	ARM3c Thomas M. Walsh
Lt. John Joseph Lynch	ARM1c Wilbur L. Woods
Ens. Clayton Evan Fisher	ARM3c George E. Ferguson
Ens. Henry John Nickerson	ARM1c Elmer Edwin Jackson
SECOND DIVISION, VB-8
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. (jg) Fred Leeson Bates	ARM1c Clyde S. Montensen
Ens. James Clark Barrett	ARM3c William H. Berthold
Ens. Gus George Bebas	RM3c Alfred W. Ringressy Jr.
Ens. Frank E. Christofferson	ARM2c Barkley V. Poorman
Ens. Robert Pershing Friesz	ARM1c Clarence C. Kiley
Ens. James Austin Riner Jr.	ARM2c Floyd Dell Kilmer
SCOUTING EIGHT (VS-8) DIVISION (13 SBDS; ONE ABORTED)
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. Cdr. Walter Fred Rodee	ACRM John Lenzy Clanton
Ens. Paul Edmond Tepas	ARM3c Moley J. Boutwell
Lt. Ben Moore Jr.	ARM2c Richard Cusack McEwen
Lt. (jg) William Francis Christie (VS-5)	ARM1c Alvin Arthur Sobel
Lt. (jg) Henry Martin McDowell (VS-5)	ARM2c Eugene Clay Strickland
Lt. (jg) Jimmy McMillan Forbes	ARM3c Ronald H. Arenth
SECOND DIVISION, VS-8
PILOT	REAR SEAT GUNNER
Lt. William John Widhelm	ARM1c George D. Stokely
Lt. (jg) Ralph B. Hovind	ARM3c Charles B. Lufburrow
Lt. (jg) Albert Harold Wood	ARM3c John Louis Tereskerz
Ens. Hellmuth Ernest Hoerner	ARM3c David T. Manus
Lt. Edgar Erwin Stebbins	ARM2c Ervin R. Hillhouse
Ens. Harold White	ARM3c John Stephen Urban
Ens. William E. Woodman	ARM2c Gerald S. McAffe

Scouting Eight composition is courtesy of the research of Mark E. Horan.

Walt Rodee—who had missed the morning strike—took command, heading a dozen VS-8 planes and another dozen VB-8 SBDs under Lieutenant Abbie Tucker. Eight Bombing Eight crews from the morning strike group were joined by four fresh aircrews. All were loaded with thousand-pound bombs. Rodee’s flight departed at 1345, although one plane was forced to abort the mission with engine problems. The distance to Mikuma and Mogami’s force had been narrowed to only ninety miles. With good visibility, Air Group Eight soon had both their carrier force visible far astern and the smoke from the Japanese ships ahead in the distance.³⁹

Don Kirkpatrick, whose SBD had suffered minor AA damage during Hornet’s morning strike, remained in VS-8’s ready room. His gunner, Dick Woodson, mentioned to a buddy how it had hurt to wear a helmet for so long in the air. “What’s all that blood?” his friend asked. Woodson took his helmet off, got some pliers, and pulled a half-inch piece of shrapnel from under his left ear. The young gunner never reported the injury, knowing that there was another flight to be made that he did not want to miss.⁴⁰

Enterprise’s force appeared overhead shortly after the departure of Hornet’s strike group. At 1415, the Big E’s aircraft were recovered with the exception of three planes. Two, piloted by Moe Vose and Laurens Whitney, landed back on their own Hornet. Lloyd Smith, the XO of Bombing Six, spent nearly an hour flying around before he was able to land. Only one gear leg of his landing gear would let down due to AA fire that had damaged his hydraulic system. Once Smith finally got the second wheel down, Enterprise had respotted her flight deck, forcing him to seek refuge on Hornet.⁴¹

Hornet’s strike group was eager for more action. Her pilots had listened to the lively commentary over the radio from the mixed Enterprise/Yorktown strike group. Ralph Hovind of VS-8 heard one of Bombing Three’s pilots joyfully singing a popular song of the day, “Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat,” in the midst of attack.⁴²

Rodee’s SBDs struck at Mikuma and Mogami around 1445, attacking both cruisers and their two accompanying destroyers. Mikuma was dead in the water, her crew in the process of abandoning ship. Fire had cooked off some of her remaining torpedoes, ripping apart her upper works shortly before the third wave of American SBDs arrived. Hundreds of sailors were still trapped on Mikuma as Hornet’s new strike pushed over. Hundreds more bobbed helplessly in the ocean as the Japanese destroyers tried to fight back.⁴³

Rodee toggled his big bomb toward Mikuma and a destroyer alongside her, and then strafed the other destroyer with 20mm fire. Bill Christie, making his second cruiser attack of the day, judged that his bomb struck Mogami’s after section. “Two bombing runs, two hits,” Christie said. For him, it felt good and made up for missing out on the carriers two days prior. His squadron mate, Hank McDowell, claimed a direct hit on Mikuma while making his first attack at Midway.⁴⁴

Ensign Harold White was credited with landing a direct hit with his thousand-pound bomb. Gus Widhelm of VS-8 dived on a destroyer and ran the length of the ship, spraying it with bullets. He turned and repeated the process as George Stokely in his rear seat joined in the shooting. The destroyer’s AA fire finally damaged Widhelm’s Dauntless during their third pass. He shouted to Stokely to prepare for a water landing as their engine sputtered, but he found his rear seat man to be fully engaged in shooting up Japanese shipping.⁴⁵

John Tereskerz, flying as gunner for Lieutenant (j.g.) Al Wood, had orders to photograph the strike. Carrying a K-20 Fairchild aerial camera, which was manually operated by pulling the trigger to make a photo and cocking the right handle forward to wind the film, Tereskerz snapped pictures of the burning cruisers in the distance as Wood pulled out of his dive and flew away. He was surprised months later to see some of the photographs he had taken on June 6 printed in an issue of Life magazine about Midway.⁴⁶

Abbie Tucker led his first section of Bombing Eight down on Mikuma. He and Don Adams missed, but Joe King made a direct hit on Mikuma’s starboard bow, just inside the waterway. John Lynch, unhappy with his poor bombing of Tanikaze the previous day, allowed his sight to be fully filled with Mikuma before making his drop. This time he scored a solid hit. Many of VB-8’s other pilots opted to attack Mogami, which they still believed to be a “light cruiser” due to her crumpled bow. Henry Nickerson was seen to make a hit on the stern of Mogami, while Fred Bates and Clark Barrett missed fifty feet astern.⁴⁷

Next in was Gus Bebas, a twenty-eight-year-old Chicagoan making his third Midway flight, who landed a paint scraper on the starboard quarter of Mogami. Frank Christofferson followed with a miss, and Robert Friesz made a direct hit on her forecastle, port side near the waterway. Two of the remaining pilots took on the Japanese destroyers. Jim Riner landed his big bomb fifty feet from Asashio. Clay Fisher saw more than two hundred survivors bobbing in the water as VB-8 prepared to dive. He selected Arashio, which was in a shallow turn and increasing its speed.⁴⁸

He made an easy glide bombing run and dropped from about fifteen hundred feet. Gunner George Ferguson shouted that their bomb was a direct hit on her stern. Fisher’s thousand-pounder actually landed close astern of Arashio, causing considerable damage and killing thirty-seven survivors clustered on her stern.

Yet both Arashio and Asashio would survive their damage from the three SBD attacks. They limped off to the west with the battered Mogami, which was still under way. Mogami had taken one more thousand-pound bomb, while Mikuma was plastered with as many as six additional big bomb explosions. Some 240 Mikuma survivors were rescued before the other three Japanese ships struggled toward Wake Island. More than 650 of Mikuma’s officers and men had perished due to the dive-bombing attacks.

When Hornet’s air group returned, Bill Christie and Hank McDowell were eager to rejoin Wally Short and their other squadron mates flying off Enterprise. To his disappointment, Christie was told that he could do more good on Hornet, so that was that. Gus Widhelm managed to land his battle-damaged SBD safely, then made his way to the bridge to report to Captain Marc Mitscher. The pilot was eager to make another strike against the cruisers, but Mitscher waved him off. “Gus, you’re intoxicated with battle,” he said.⁴⁹

• • •

In all, 112 sorties were flown against Mikuma and Mogami, of which eighty-one were by SBDs. They claimed twenty bomb hits on the two cruisers in exchange for one SBD shot down. Mogami took five bombs and barely limped back to Truk. She would be out of action for two years. Her sister, Mikuma, was decimated. When she finally rolled over on her port side and sank after dark on June 6, she was the first Japanese cruiser to be lost in the Pacific War.⁵⁰

Johnny Neilsen, last of the mixed Enterprise group to land, was told to report to Admiral Spruance when he reached the ready room. He found Dave Shumway and Wally Short already in conversation with the admiral and his chief of staff, Captain Miles Browning. Neilsen insisted that his target was a heavy cruiser, although Shumway had reported the larger cruiser as a battleship.⁵¹

The staff was not pleased that Enterprise’s strike had failed to return with any telltale photos of the ships they had attacked. When Harvey Lanham had landed, one of the intelligence officers ran up to his SBD and grabbed the aerial camera from rear gunner Ed Garaudy. “I found out later that the film was blank,” Garaudy said. “Apparently the lens had fogged over at high altitude!”⁵²

Spruance decided to end the debate by sending a VS-6 photo plane to document the Japanese ships and their damage. Assistant LSO Cleo Dobson took off at 1553 in company with Bud Kroeger. In Dobson’s rear seat was chief photographer J. A. Mihalovic, while Kroeger carried movie cameraman Al Brick from Movietown News to film the cruiser.

Dobson found Mikuma “in a very bad condition.” Bodies littered the deck as he flew within a hundred feet. He estimated as many as five hundred Japanese sailors were in the water as he swept in low for Chief Mihalovic to snap photos of the devastated heavy cruiser. Dobson had been ordered to strafe the cruisers after taking his pictures. “[The sailors] were waving at me and I just couldn’t do it!” he told squadron mate Dusty Kleiss back on board ship. In his diary that night, Dobson wrote, “After flying over those poor devils in the water I was chicken-hearted and couldn’t make myself open up on them.”⁵³

Dobson’s efforts to approach Mogami and her destroyers for photos was met by AA fire, so he gave up on that effort. He and Kroeger finally turned back for home, and within two hours of this photo flight, Mikuma would roll over and sink. The two Enterprise SBDs landed at 1907, and Spruance called them up to the bridge. The admiral wanted to finally determine whether the air groups had indeed hit a battleship. Dobson was asked what kind of ship the larger one was. “Sir, I don’t know, but it was a hell of a big one,” he said.

Spruance was further irritated that Dobson had not taken his ship identification cards aloft with him, yet Chief Mihalovic saved the group from further trouble by announcing that he had snapped some fantastic photos. Once his images were developed in the Enterprise photo lab that night, the scenes of destruction on board Mikuma left no doubt that the Americans had pounded a Mogami-class cruiser and not a battleship.⁵⁴

While the third Task Force 16 flight had been airborne, the Japanese submarine I-168 had slipped up on the battle-damaged Yorktown and fired torpedoes. The destroyer Hammann, alongside the carrier, was broken in two and she sank almost immediately with a heavy loss of life. The damage control crews on Yorktown were evacuated once again.

Enterprise changed course to the northwest to rendezvous with the fleet oilers the following morning. The pursuit was over, and the Battle of Midway was thus effectively ended. The Big E’s aviators gulped down coffee and sandwiches while congratulating one another on another successful strike. That night, Scouting Five gunner Lynn Forshee went to work making squadron insignia patches for his fellow fliers.⁵⁵

The bombing squadrons were a mess at the end of the day. In Bombing Six, Dick Best was permanently sidelined with his illness. His only veteran pilots still on board were Bud Kroeger, Harvey Lanham, Andy Anderson, and Arthur Rausch. The only four other pilots available for any further action—Lew Hopkins, Steve Hogan, Don Ely, and Harry Liffner—each had less than two months of experience with the squadron.

On Hornet, Clay Fisher found it depressing to eat in the wardroom with all the empty chairs around the Torpedo Eight and Fighting Eight tables. “After having flown all five of the attack missions launched from the Hornet and logging seventeen combat hours, I was emotionally drained and physically tired,” Fisher said.⁵⁶

Dusty Kleiss wrote a letter to his girlfriend, Jean, back in California before he turned in. “I’m okay but am tired to the dickens,” he scribbled. Kleiss, of course, could not relate what had happened at Midway, but he offered her a hint. “I’ve had more than my share of luck and Tojo is most unhappy about it all.”⁵⁷

Some of the airmen had a good grasp of just what they had accomplished at Midway. “I believe that the Jap losses were so great,” Ed Anderson confided in his diary, “that this will be a turning point in our favor for a final victory.”⁵⁸