Abbreviations Used in Notes
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Action Reports |
U.S. Navy Action and Operational Reports from World War II, Pacific Theater, PART I: CINCPAC (16 microfilm reels), Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America |
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AHC |
American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie |
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BOMRT |
“The Battle of Midway Roundtable,” a website for Midway veterans, at http://www.midway42.org/ |
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FDRL |
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Archives, Hyde Park, New York |
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NHHC |
Operational Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. |
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NMPW |
National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas |
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NWC |
U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island |
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UMD |
Maryland Room, Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland |
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USNA |
U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland |
Introduction
1. Several Midway veterans make the case for divine intervention, among them Bryan Crisman, who was the disbursing officer on the USS Yorktown, and Stanford Linzey, who wrote a book entitled God Was at Midway: The Sinking of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) and the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (San Diego, CA: Black Forest, 1996). See also Ronald W. Russell, No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 172.
2. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Anthony Briggs (London: Penguin, 2006), 1098.
Chapter 1
1. Frank DeLorenzo, “Admiral Nimitz Arrives at Pearl Harbor,” BOMRT; E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 16.
2. DeLorenzo, “Admiral Nimitz Arrives”; Potter, Nimitz, 16.
3. Joseph Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 1:223; 1905 Lucky Bag, USNA; Potter, Nimitz, 156.
4. Potter, Nimitz, 16; John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 45.
5. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1941 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1941), 1; Bruce Catton, The War Lords of Washington (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948), 9–12.
6. George H. Lobdell, “Frank Knox,” in American Secretaries of the Navy, ed. Paolo E. Coletta (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980), 2:677–81; Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953–54), 2:718 (diary entry of Sept. 9, 1939); Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper, 1948), 323–24.
7. Lobdell, “Frank Knox,”682; Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, Nomination of William Franklin Knox: Hearings before the Committee on Naval Affairs, United States Senate on the Nomination of William Franklin Knox to be Secretary of the Navy, 76th Cong., 3rd sess., 1940, 42; Ickes, Secret Diary, 2:717; “Attack Upon Pearl Harbor,” 77th Cong., 2nd sess., 1942, S. Doc. 159, 20. See also Knox’s sycophantic letters to FDR in 1940 in President’s Secretary’s file, box 62, FDRL.
8. Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 111, Floyd Thorn interview (Aug. 14, 2000), NMPW.
9. Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987; reprint Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 171; Robert William Love, Jr., “Ernest Joseph King,” in The Chiefs of Naval Operations, ed. Robert William Love, Jr. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980), 139–40, Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: Norton, 1952), 350–51.
10. B. Mitchell Simpson, “Harold Raynsford Stark,” in Love, Chiefs of Naval Operations, 131, 119–20; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 1, The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939–May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), 41. Stark’s memos to FDR, signed “Betty,” are in the President’s Secretary’s Files, FDRL, box 62. Stark subsequently went to England as commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe. The memo making King both CominCh and CNO is dated March 12, 1942, and is in the King Papers, Series I, box 1. It is also printed in Buell, Master of Sea Power as Appendix 4.
11. Potter, Nimitz, 9; King’s comment about Nimitz is quoted in Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 356.
12. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1890).
13. Norman Jack (Dusty) Kleiss to the author, July 31, 2009.
14. Potter, Nimitz, 62, 122–34.
15. Ibid., 135–61.
16. Kimmel’s plan for the employment of the carriers is in the “Briefed Estimate,” Dec. 10, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:13; Stark’s order is Stark to Kimmel, Dec. 15, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:49–50; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 23.
17. Stark to Pye, and Pye to Stark, both Dec. 22, 1941, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, 72; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 31; Edward Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 106.
18. Stark to Pye, Dec. 27, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, 120; Knox to Kimmel, Jan. 9, 1941, Kimmel Papers, AHC, box 2; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 39, 45. Circumstantial evidence suggests that that FDR may have subsequently blocked Pye’s appointment to command the South Pacific.
19. The officer who likened Nimitz’s arrival to opening a window in a stuffy room was Raymond Spruance in an interview with Gordon Prange (Sept. 5, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
20. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 6.
21. Edward P. Stafford, The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise (New York: Random House, 1962; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002), 23–24. Citations are to the Naval Institute Press edition.
22. Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991); Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy (1940), 27–33.
23. Stark to Knox, Nov. 12, 1940, original in FDRL; also available online at http://www.docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box4/a48b01.html.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945, part 15, 1505. The text of Rainbow 5 is in Steven T. Ross, ed., American War Plans, 1919–1941 (New York: Garland, 1992), 5:100.
27. Knox to ALNAV (all Navy personnel), Dec. 7, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, 5; Joel Ira Holwitt, “Execute against Japan”: The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009).
28. Buford Rowland and William B. Boyd, U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II (Washington, DC: Bureau of Ordnance, 1953), 90; Thomas Wildenberg and Norman Polmar, Ship Killer: A History of the American Torpedo (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 102 ff. See also Robert Gannon, Hellions of the Deep: The Development of American Torpedoes in World War II (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 75–76, 89.
29. Nimitz to Mrs. Nimitz, Dec. 28, 1941, and Jan. 29, 1942, both in Nimitz Diary #1 (serial letters from Nimitz to his wife), NHHC.
Chapter 2
1. The number of planes carried by the Kidō Butai is from Mark R. Peattie, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 152. John B. Lundstrom offers the slightly lower figure of 387 airplanes for the Kidō Butai in Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 151. A total of 360 aircraft were assigned to the Pearl Harbor strike, but there were ten aborts; in addition, the Japanese launched two “Jake” floatplanes, though they did not participate in the attack. I am grateful to Richard Frank, Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, and Lee Pennington for their help with this chapter.
2. The “feminine delicacy” observation is from Matsunaga Keisuke, who is quoted by Hiroyuki Agawa in The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 131, 139. The “recent scholar” is Sadao Adasa, in From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 275. The American officer was Edwin T. Layton, from his oral history (May 30, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully discuss Yamamoto’s personality in Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 22–23, Yamamoto’s involvement with carrier aircraft is from Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 182–84.
3. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 139.
4. Ibid., 124.
5. Ibid., 95–96, 118; Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 36–37; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 3, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931–April 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 13.
6. The text of the “Fundamental Principles”: is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/144app01.html. See also Spector, Eagle against the Sun, 42.
7. Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 164–66, 194–97.
8. Yamamoto is quoted in Peattie, Sunburst, 83. See also Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 46–52.
9. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 13.
10. Yamamoto to Admiral Shimada, Sept. 4, 1939, quoted in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, eds., The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1993), 114; Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 13, 124, 186; Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chihaya (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 6. To some extent, the Imperial Japanese Navy acquiesced to the pact with Germany in exchange for assurances that it would get an increase in steel allocation in the budget. In effect, therefore, national policy was subordinated to service ambitions. See Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 243.
11. Yamamoto to Navy Minister Oikawa, Jan. 7, 1941, quoted in Goldstein and Dillon, Pearl Harbor Papers, 115; Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 238; Peattie, Sunburst, 83; Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 192.
12. H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 28–30.
13. Atsushi Oi, “The Japanese Navy in 1941,” in The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2004), 16; Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 127, 195.
14. Peattie, Sunburst, 76.
15. Jisaburo Ozawa, “Outline Development of Tactics and Organization of the Japanese Carrier Air Force,” in Goldstein and Dillon, Pacific War Papers, 78–79; Peattie, Sunburst, 149, 151.
16. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 264; Gordon Prange interview of Genda (Sept. 5, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Ugaki, Fading Victory, 13 (diary entry of Oct. 22, 1941).
17. The quotation is from Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa and is quoted by Hiroyuki Agawa in The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 191.
18. Yamamoto to Navy Minister Oikawa, Jan. 7, 1941, quoted in Goldstein and Dillon, Pearl Harbor Papers, 116; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 14–15.
19. Masataka Chihaya, “Concerning the Construction of Japanese Warships,” in Goldstein and Dillon, Pacific War Papers, 86.
20. The “modern expert” is Mark Peattie, in Sunburst, 100. See also Oi, “The Japanese Navy in 1941,” 22–23.
21. Peattie, Sunburst, 166; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 89; Agawa, Yamamoto, 202; Oi, “The Japanese Navy in 1941,”12.
22. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 130; John Campbell, Naval Weapons of World War Two (London: Conway Maritime, 1985); Peattie, Sunburst, 95. The Kate was also used as a level bomber against land targets when it carried a heavy (1,760–pound) explosive (fragmentation) bomb whose purpose was to suppress antiaircraft fire from a surface target. Such bombs wrecked the superstructure of the USS Arizona in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
23. Peattie, Sunburst, 91–92; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 78; and Spector, Eagle against the Sun, 46–47.
24. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 256; Oi, “The Japanese Navy in 1941,” 25.
25. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 455 (Appendix 1).
26. Oi, “The Japanese Navy in 1941,” 23; Peattie, Sunburst, 133–34; Lundstrom, First Team, 455–56.
27. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 48 (diary entry of Dec. 9, 1941). The notion that Nagumo ought to have attacked the U.S. oil-tank farm on Oahu is mostly hindsight. The tank farm was not part of the initial target list, and even if Nagumo had launched a third strike, its purpose would most likely have been to mop up elements of the fleet that remained afloat.
28. Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney, Battleship: The Loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse (London: Lane, 1977).
Chapter 3
1. Steve Wiper, Yorktown Class Carriers (Tucson, AZ: Classic Warships, 2000); Robert Cressman et al., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 202. I am grateful to Bert Kinzey and to Ronald W. Russell for their help with this chapter.
2. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 100.
3. Thomas Wildenberg, All the Factors of Victory: Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves and the Origins of Carrier Airpower (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003), 155.
4. William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), 50–55. The quotation is from 52.
5. Ibid., 14.
6. The “modern scholar” is John B. Lundstrom in Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 21; 1902 Lucky Bag, USNA; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 3, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931–April 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 211n.
7. Noel Gayler oral history (Feb. 15, 2002), 4, Naval Historical Foundation.
8. Stephen D. Regan, In Bitter Tempest: The Biography of Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994), viii; 1906 Lucky Bag, USNA. The critic was Lieutenant Richard Best, in an interview (Aug. 11, 1995), 30, NMPW.
9. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 53.
10. J.J. Clark, with Clark G. Reynolds, Carrier Admiral (New York: McKay, 1967), 78; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 55.
11. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 51.
12. Harold L. Buell, Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive-Bomber Pilot’s Epic Story of the Carrier Battles (New York: Orion Books, 1991); Barrett Tillman, The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976); Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 206.
13. The quotations are from ENS Clayton Fisher, who flew in VB-8, “The SBD in Combat,” BOMRT, available at http://www.midway42.org/fisher-sbd.htm, See also Buell, Dauntless Helldivers, 61.
14. The pilot was Max Leslie, skipper of VB-3 on Yorktown, in Leslie to Smith, Dec. 15, 1964, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. Bill Burch made the same analogy. See Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktowns Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 86.
15. N. J. “Dusty” Kleiss, “Remembrance of a Rear-Seater,” BOMRT, posted April 27, 2007, http://www.midway42.org/vets-kleiss.html; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 16; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 209.
16. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 25; Frederick Mears, Carrier Combat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1944), 22; Clayton E. Fisher, “Officer and Enlisted Airmen,” BOMRT, The Roundtable Forum, issue 2010–15, April 10, 2010.
17. John S. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 1:231; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 18.
18. John Campbell, Naval Weapons of World War Two (London: Conway Maritime, 1985), 206; Mears, Carrier Combat, xv.
19. Captain P. R. White, USN, June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.
20. Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikoshi, with Martin Caidin, Zero! The Story of the Japanese Navy Air Force, 1937–1945 (London: Cassell, 1957).
21. Barrett Tillman, Wildcat:The F4F in WWII, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990); William Wolf, Victory Roll! The American Fighter Pilot and Aircraft in World War II (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Books, 2001), 38; John S. Thach oral history (Aug. 26, 1942); Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 209.
22. Edward P. Stafford, The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002), 46, 54; Lundstrom, First Team, 63.
23. Lundstrom, First Team, 55–56.
24. Mears, Carrier Combat, 18.
25. The statistics are from Lundstrom, First Team, Appendix 6, “List of U.S. Navy Fighter Pilots,” 490–95; Stephen Jurika oral history (Dec. 3, 1975), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 1:171. Buell, in Dauntless Helldivers (28–29) tells the story of one American flight instructor who was chastised for being too tough in his standards.
26. Buell, Dauntless Helldivers, 27.
27. Mears, Carrier Combat, 20; Clayton E. Fisher, Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior (Denver: Outskirts, 2009), 27.
28. Wolf, Victory Roll, 21–24.
29. Mears, Carrier Combat, 25. See also Lundstrom, First Team, 490–95.
30. Paolo E. Coletta, Bald Eagle: Admiral Marc A. Mitscher and U.S. Naval Aviation (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997), 107; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 10; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 31.
Chapter 4
1. The quotation is from King to Frank Knox, Feb. 8, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1. Curtin’s concerns are reflected in a memo from Casey to King, Jan. 26, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1. See also Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: Norton, 1952), 373; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 3, Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931–April 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 259–60; John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 56–57; and Stephen D. Regan, In Bitter Tempest: The Biography of Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994), 85.
2. Nimitz to King, and King to Nimitz, both dated Jan. 5, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:139–40.
3. King to Nimitz, Jan. 20, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:179; Running Summary, Jan. 21 and 23, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:158, 183. See John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 59–62.
4. Edward P. Stafford, The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise (Annapolis, MD: Naval institute Press, 2002), 44; William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), 89.
5. Fletcher’s op order, dated Jan. 25, 1942, is in Action Reports, reel 2. See also Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 65–67.
6. Lundstrom, First Team, 78; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 65–67; Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktowns Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 25–26.
7. Pederson to Buckmaster, Feb. 5, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 27.
8. Lundstrom, First Team, 79; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 27. Jocko Clark later criticized Fletcher for not spending more time to search for the downed pilots. J. J. Clark, with Clark G. Reynolds, Carrier Admiral (New York: David McKay, 1967), 85.
9. Lundstrom, First Team, 78–80; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 29.
10. Lundstrom, First Team, 65–66; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 13.
11. Stafford, Big E, 49.
12. Lundstrom, First Team, 66.
13. Halsey to Nimitz, Feb. 7, 1942, Action Reports, reel 1.
14. Stafford, Big E, 47–50; Lundstrom, First Team, 67–69.
15. Stafford, Big E, 50.
16. Stafford, Big E, 51; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 27.
17. Stafford, Big E, 51–52.
18. McCluskey to CEAG, and Massey to CEAG, both Feb. 2, 1942, and Halsey to Nimitz, Feb. 9, 1942, all in Action Reports, reel 1; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 92; Stafford, The Big E, 51–54; Morison, Rising Sun, 262–63.
19. Best to CEAG, Feb. 2, 1942, Action Reports, reel 1; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 28.
20. Stafford, The Big E, 56–57; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 93.
21. Stafford, The Big E, 56–57.
22. Murray to Halsey, Feb. 2, 1942, Action Reports, reel 1; Halsey to Brown, Feb. 7, 1942, Map room files, FDRL, box 41; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 94; Stafford, Big E, 58; Lundstrom, First Team, 74. Gaido tried to keep his identity a secret, but Halsey found out who he was and promoted him on the spot to aviation machinist’s mate first class. Gaido was subsequently captured by the Japanese during the Battle of Midway and executed. See chapter 15.
23. Lundstrom, First Team, 75.
24. Halsey to Nimitz, Feb. 9, 1942, Action Reports, reel 1; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 96; Stafford, Big E, 58–59.
25. Fletcher to Nimitz, Feb. 9, 1942, Action Reports, reel 1.
26. King to Nimitz, Jan. 27, 1942, Nimitz to King, Jan. 29 and 31, 1942, and King to Nimitz, Feb. 15, 1942, all in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:204–6.
27. Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy, eds., FDR’s Fireside Chats (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 209; King to FDR, March 5, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2; Running Summary, Feb. 9 and Feb. 11, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:211, 213.
28. Brown’s operation order for the Rabaul raid is in the Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:541–42; Brown’s report to Nimitz that he was withdrawing due to an “acute fuel shortage” is COMTASKFOR 11 (Brown) to CINCPAC (Nimitz), Feb. 20, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:250. See also H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 56.
29. Brown to Nimitz, Feb. 20, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:250; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 21.
30. Louis Brown, A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives (Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics, 1999).
31. Steve Ewing and John B. Lundstom, Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O’Hare (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 127.
32. Ewing and Lundstrom, Fateful Rendezvous, 130–31;Lundstrom, First Team, 101–4, 106, 107.
33. Lundstrom, First Team, 104–5.
34. John S. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 1:284.
35. Brown to Nimitz, Feb. 20 and 23, 1942; Nimitz to Task Force Commanders, Feb. 25, 1942; Brown to Nimitz, Feb. 26, 27, and 28, 1942; and Nimitz to King, Feb. 28, 1942, all in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:253, 255, 256, 257; Morison, Rising Sun, 267.
36. Running Summary, Feb. 12, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:214; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 97–98.
37. Nimitz to Halsey, Feb. 25, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:543; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 98; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NWPW, 30; Lundstrom, First Team, 117–19.
38. On March 18, FDR wrote Churchill: “Australia must be held and, as I telegraphed you, we are willing to do that. India must be held and you must do that.” FDR to Churchill, March 18, 1942, in Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence, ed. Francis Loewenheim et al. (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975), 268–69.
39. King to Leary, Feb. 12, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1; King to FDR, Feb. 12, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1. See also John Costello, The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (New York: Rawson, Wade, 1981; reprint New York: Harper Perennial, 2002), 203. Nimitz had suggested Pye for the job, but FDR vetoed the idea.
40. King to Leary and Leary to King, Feb. 17, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1.
41. Nimitz’s remarks about securing Australia are in a “Briefed Estimate of the Situation,” Feb. 5, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:233; Nimitz’s reply to King’s proposal to maintain two carriers in the south is Nimitz to King, Feb. 25, 1942, and King’s reply dated Feb. 26, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:256, 545.
42. Running Summary, Feb. 26, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:246.
43. King to Nimitz, and Brown to Nimitz, both Feb. 26, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, 8:242, 244, 255.
44. Lundstrom, First Team, 124–27.
45. Running Summary, Feb. 23 and 25, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:243–44, 245; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 37–38; Morison, Rising Sun, 387–89; Lundstrom, First Team, 131; Roosevelt to Churchill, March 17, 1942, in Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, ed. Warren F. Kimball (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1:415–16.
46. Nimitz to King, March 23, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:548; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 96; Running Summary, March 11, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:267. Captain James M. Steele replaced McCormick as the keeper of the Running Summary in April.
47. Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 74–76.
Chapter 5
1. H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 15; John J. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 124.
2. H. P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 436.
3. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 96.
4. Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 171–72, 246–50.
5. Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 213, 225; Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 250–52, 281.
6. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 27.
7. Prange interview of Watanabe Yasuji (Sept. 25, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 43–44; Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 107; Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 294; Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chi-haya (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 68 (diary entry of Jan. 5, 1942).
8. Quoted in Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 79; Prange interview of Watanabe (Feb. 3–4, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
9. Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978), 108–9.
10. Mark R. Peattie, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 67–70.
11. Dull, Battle History, 109–10.
12. Donald MacIntyre, Fighting Admiral: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Somerville, G.C.B., G.B.E, D.S.O (London: Evans Brothers, 1961), 179.
13. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 485; Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 184–86; Inoue Shigeyoshi, “A New Theory on the Armament Plan,” Jan. 1941, quoted in Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 224–25.
14. Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 61, 64–65; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 32.
15. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 294–95; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 32–37.
16. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 264; Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 90–91. According to Lieutenant Commander Ishiguro Susumu, Yamaguchi’s communications officer, Yamaguchi was eager to attack again and was angry when Nagumo ignored him. Ishiguro interview, Goldstein Collection, Prange Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh, box 21, folder 37. I am grateful to Jon Parshall for bringing this interview to my attention.
17. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 62 (diary entry of Dec. 25, 1941); Yamamoto to Navy Minister Oikawa, Jan. 7, 1941, quoted in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, eds., The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Washington, DC: Brassey’s 1993), 117.
18. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 75 (diary entry of Jan. 14, 1942); Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 28.
19. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 109–21; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 33.
20. Craig L. Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 206–7.
21. Ibid.
22. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 51; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, chapter 2.
23. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 48–51; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 81–82.
24. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 284; Hugh Bicheno, Midway (London: Cassel, 2001), 73–77.
25. The substance of this argument comes from interviews of Miyo by Robert E. Barde (January, 1966), in Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1971), 32–33, and of Watanabe by Gordon Prange (Feb. 3–4, 1966 and Sept. 25, 1964), in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 295–96; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 68–71; and Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 82–85.
26. Prange interviews of Watanabe (Feb. 3–4, 1966) and (Sept. 25, 1964), both in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
27. Prange interview of Watanabe (Feb. 3–4, 1966), and Miyo (May 6, 1966), both in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 72.
28. Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 76.
29. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 37–38.
Chapter 6
1. Theodore Taylor, The Magnificent Mitscher (New York: Norton, 1954; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 20–21. Citations are to the Naval Institute Press edition.
2. Ibid., 20–27; 1910 Lucky Bag, USNA.
3. Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 30; Paolo E. Coletta, Bald Eagle: Admiral Marc A. Mitscher and U.S. Naval Aviation (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997), 18.
4. Mitscher to Frances Mitscher, Aug. 17, 1917, Mitscher Papers, NHHC.
5. Coletta, Bald Eagle, 16, 25–30; Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 63–66.
6. Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 78.
7. Mitscher to Frances Mitscher, Aug. 17, 1942, Mitscher Papers, NHHC; Bernard M. Stern (1974), 47, and Stephen Jurika (April 1, 1976), 1:492–3, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
8. The shipmate was Tookies Bright; the 18-year-old helmsman was Richard Nowatski. Both are quoted in Coletta, Bald Eagle, 91, 108. The exchange with Gee is in Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 110–11.
9. Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 112.
10. D. B. Duncan to King, Feb. 4, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1. At the end of Duncan’s report, King scrawled the comment: “Excellent, K.”
11. Duane Schultz, The Doolittle Raid (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 5–10.
12. Ibid., 17.
13. King to FDR, March 5, 1942, King Papers, Series I, box 1, NHHC. The document is also printed as Appendix V in Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 532.
14. Buell, Master of Sea Power, 532; Lowell Thomas and Edward Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 158.
15. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, with Carroll V. Glines, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 28–34; Thomas and Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography, 13–45; Schultz, The Doolittle Raid, 25.
16. Doolittle and Gaines, I Could Never, 98; Dik Alan Daso, Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003), 18–21; Schultz, Doolittle Raid, 31–32.
17. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 12.
18. Henry Miller (May 23, 1973), 1:30–32; and James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 10, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
19. Henry Miller oral history (May 23, 1973), 33.
20. Richard Cole interview (Aug. 8, 2000), NMPW, 27.
21. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), USNA, 20. This story is repeated in virtually every Doolittle biography, but Doolittle seems to have told it first to Carroll V. Glines, who included it in his book Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964), 53–54.
22. Nimitz to Mrs. Nimitz, March 22, 1942, Nimitz Diary #1, NHHC; William F. Halsey, with J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), 101.
23. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug.3, 1987), 15–16.
24. Prange et al., Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw Hill, 1982), 111; James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 22.
25. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 31. The Japanese routinely kept all their planes on the hangar deck, bringing them up only for launching. That was one reason why they carried fewer planes on their carriers.
26. Henry Miller oral history (May 23, 1973), 1:37; and James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 27. Mitscher to Nimitz, April 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
27. Clayton Fisher, “Officer and Enlisted Airmen,” The Roundtable Forum, April 24, 2010; Stephen Jurika oral history (March 17, 1976), 1:457; Henry Miller oral history (May 23, 1973), 1:43; James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 23, 1978), 15.
28. Richard E. Cole interview (Aug. 8, 2000), 36, NMPW; Mitscher to Nimitz, April 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
29. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 23.
30. Ibid.; Thomas and Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography, 178–79; Doolittle and Gaines, I Could Never, 4.
31. Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 101.
32. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 148; interview of Gilbert Martin and Paul McKay (Sept. 2000), NMPW, 181.
33. Thomas and Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography, 181.
34. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 19, and Stephen Jurika oral history (March 17, 1976), 1:470–71.
35. Doolittle to Arnold, June 5, 1942, available at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar; Doolittle and Glines, I Could Never, 8; James H. Macia interview (July 21, 2000), NMPW.
36. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 6.
37. Ibid.; Doolittle and Glines, I Could Never, 8–9.
38. Quentin Reynolds, The Amazing Mr. Doolittle: A Biography of Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953), 209–12; Doolittle and Glines, I Could Never, 10–11.
39. The propaganda is quoted in Glines, Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders, 337; Watanabe’s statement is from an interview by Gordon Prange (Sept. 25, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
Chapter 7
1. Two excellent general summaries of the code-breaking wars in early 1942 are Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), and John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), Also essential are the memoirs of W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979), and Edwin T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: Morrow, 1985). I am indebted to William Price and Rear Admiral Donald “Mac” Showers, USN (Ret.) for their help with this chapter.
2. Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 210–14; Layton, And I Was There, 29; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 13; David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
3. Layton, And I Was There, 32.
4. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 3; Layton, And I Was There, 33; Ronald W. Russell, No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 38; Joseph J. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 5.
5. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 6.
6. John Winton, Ultra in the Pacific: How Breaking Japanese Codes and Ciphers Affected Naval Operations against Japan 1941–45 (London: Cooper, 1993), 6.
7. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 104.
8. Ibid., 99.
9. Edward Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 137; Frederick D. Parker, A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1993), 16.
10. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 16; William Price, “Why There Was a Battle of Midway,” lecture presented at the U.S. Navy Memorial, Washington, DC, June 4, 2009.
11. Lewin, American Magic, 55. The example of how “east” might be encrypted is borrowed from Russell, No Right to Win, 28–30.
12. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 131; the decrypted message (050202) is from the Layton Papers, NWC, box 26, folder 4. See also Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 60.
13. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 54
14. Interview of Rear Admiral Donald “Mac” Showers by the author (May 4, 2010); Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 110–17, 126. Some of those who worked with Rochefort in the “dungeon” were subsequently angered by the popular portrayal of him as weirdly eccentric, though Rochefort himself later remarked, “If you desire to be a real cryptanalyst, being a little nuts helps.” Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 13.
15. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 34; Layton oral history (May 31, 1970), 124–25.
16. Parker, Priceless Advantage, 16–17; Layton, And I Was There, 259.
17. Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), 167.
18. King to Nimitz, May 4, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:431; Layton oral history (May 30, 1971), 14–15.
19. Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), 79.
20. Parker, Priceless Advantage, 19, 22. MacArthur in particular was skeptical of the conclusions offered by the cryptanalysts and preferred to rely on “hard” intelligence gleaned by scout planes and submarines.
21. Ibid., 108; Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 26; Rochefort oral history (Sept. 21, 1969), 145.
22. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 65; Parker, Priceless Advantage, 18, 20; John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 120–22.
23. Layton oral history (May 30 and 31, 1970), 108, 120; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 72; author interview of Donald Showers (May 4, 2010).
24. Parker, Priceless Advantage, 25; Frederick C. Sherman, Combat Command: The American Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War (New York: Dutton, 1950), 92; Nimitz to King, April 9, 1942; Running Summary, April 18, 1942 (italics in original); and King to Nimitz, April 18, 1942, all in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:501–5.
25. Traffic Intelligence Summary, Combat Intelligence Unit, Fourteenth Naval District (April 22, 1942), 3:154; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 72.
26. Nimitz to King, April 17, 1942, Nimitz Papers, Operational Archives, NHHC, box 1:514.
27. Layton, And I Was There, 367–68; Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 300; Layton oral history (May 31, 1970), 137; Parker, Priceless Advantage, 18.
28. Rochefort oral history (Sept. 21, 1969), 174–75.
29. “Estimate of the Situation,” April 22, 1942, and Nimitz to Fitch, April 19, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:375, 516, 518–19. See also Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 124–26.
30. Fletcher to Leary (copy King), March 29, 1942, and King to Fletcher, March 30, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:322; Joseph M. Worthington (June 7, 1972), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 193 (Worthington was commanding officer of the USS Benham);Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 24–25.
31. King to Nimitz, April 24, 1942, and Running Summary, April 24, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:409, 411; “Minutes of Conversation between CominCh and CinCPac, Saturday, April 25, 1942,” King Papers, NHHC, Series II, box 10; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 126–27. By coincidence, April 29th was also Fletcher’s birthday—he turned 57.
32. Lewin, American Magic, 92.
33. E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 68–69.
Chapter 8
1. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 136.
2. Richard W. Bates, The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1 to May 11 Inclusive, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Analysis (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1947), 7–12; Prange interview of Genda Minoru (Sept. 5, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
3. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 61–63. See also chapter 9.
4. Nimitz to Fletcher, April 22, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:399.
5. John B. Lundstrom, “A Failure of Radio Intelligence: An Episode in the Battle of the Coral Sea,” Cryptologia 7, no. 2 (1983), 115.
6. Nimitz to King, Feb. 25, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:545; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 141.
7. Richard W. Bates, in the semiofficial study The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1 to May 11 Inclusive, 1942, insisted that by sending Takagi and Hara around the eastern end of the Solomon Islands, they were seeking a “Cannae”—a double envelopment—of American forces in the Coral Sea and concluded that Fletcher was irresponsible to let Hara get in behind him. John Lundstrom, however, points out that the initial objective of the Japanese end run was an attack on the Australian air bases. Bates, Battle of the Coral Sea; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 137–40. See also H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 87.
8. John B. Lundstrom, The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941–June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 98; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 208.
9. Bates, Battle of the Coral Sea, 32; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 145.
10. In his postwar memoir, the captain of the Lexington, Frederic “Ted” Sherman, called Fletcher’s decision to withhold fighter support for the attack force a “serious mistake.” Had Hara’s carriers been within range, it might well have proved so. Sherman, Combat Command: The American Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War (New York: Dutton, 1950), 93.
11. One reason the Okinoshima survived was that the American bombs were armed with impact fuses, so that, while the ship suffered significant topside damage, no bombs penetrated to her vital engineering spaces. Nimitz to King, June 17, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, p. 3; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August, 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949), 25–26; Lundstom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 146, 149; Bates, Battle of the Coral Sea, 36; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 217–18.
12. Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktowns Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 70.
13. Nimitz to King, June 17, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, p. 3; Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978), 120; Lundstrom, “Failure of Radio Intelligence,” 113.
14. Nimitz to Fletcher, May 5, 1942, CinCPac message file, Nimitz Papers, Operational Archives, NHHC, box 1:422. See Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, 103–4, as well as Lundstrom, “Failure in Radio Intelligence,” 108–10, 115; and Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 234–35.
15. Neilson is quoted in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 73–74; John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 193.
16. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 165; Lundstrom, First Team, 194–96. Fletcher is quoted in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 77.
17. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 165.
18. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 74.
19. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 176–77; Lundstrom, First Team, 191; Dull, A Battle History, 124.
20. Lundstrom, First Team, 200; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 78.
21. Both Burch and Taylor are quoted in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 76–77.
22. Office of Naval Intelligence, Combat Narrative: The Battle of the Coral Sea (Washington, DC: Office of Naval Intelligence, United States Navy, 1943), 15–16; Lundstrom, First Team, 199, 205; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 169; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 79, James H. Belote and William M. Belote, Titans of the Seas: The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces during World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 76; Sherman, Combat Command, 100.
23. The conversation was remembered by Taylor and is recorded in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 80.
24. For the rest of this life, Biard (who died in 2010) insisted that Fletcher missed a great opportunity by not listening to him. It is possible that Biard’s assertions found their way to Washington and contributed to Admiral King’s growing unease about Fletcher’s aggressiveness. Author’s interview of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers (May 4, 2010). See also Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 78, 167–68, 170–71.
25. Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, 76–77; Lundstrom, First Team, 212.
26. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 176–77; Sherman, Combat Command, 102; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 82; Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 28.
27. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 176–77; Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, 77. In his memoir, Sherman insisted that postwar evidence proved that the Japanese carriers had been just where he claimed they were—only thirty miles away—and this proved that Fletcher should have ordered a night surface attack. In fact, postwar evidence places those carriers about a hundred miles to the east, in which case a night surface attack would have been futile and probably dangerous. Sherman, Combat Command, 102.
28. Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chihaya (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 128 (diary entry of May 18, 1942). Burch is quoted in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 80.
29. The official Navy reports credit the sighting by Smith without mentioning Dixon, though Dixon’s postwar testimony makes it clear that he, too, played a crucial role. Buckmaster to Nimitz, May 25, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, p. 3; Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, 78; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 84–85.
30. Pederson to Buckmaster, May 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Dull, Battle History, 126; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Action, May 1942–August, 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949), 47–48; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 87.
31. Burch and Short are quoted in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 87–88; Office of Naval Intelligence, Battle of the Coral Sea, 24–25.
32. Pederson to Buckmaster, May 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2. American torpedo plane pilots reported dropping nine torpedoes and making four hits. See Office of Naval Intelligence, Battle of the Coral Sea, 23. Taylor’s quotation is in Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 86.
33. Noel Gayler oral history (Feb. 15, 2002), Naval Historical Foundation, 6; Morison, Coral Sea, 49–51.
34. Sherman, Combat Command, 31.
35. Ibid., 109–10.
36. Buckmaster to Nimitz, May 25, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, pp. 7, 40.
37. Frederick D. Parker, A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battle of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1993), 29–30.
38. Ronald Russell, “Sam Laser in Sky Control,” transcript available at BOMRT, http://www.midway42.org/vets-laser.html.
39. Sherman, Combat Command, 111, 114; Buckmaster to Nimitz, May 25, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, p. 10; Paul Stroop oral history (Sept. 13, 1969), 144, U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA; Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 30.
40. Sherman, Combat Command, 115; Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 31.
41. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 96.
42. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 128 (diary entry of May 18, 1942).
43. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 96, 100; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 194.
44. Sherman, Combat Command, 117; Walter Lord, Incredible Victory (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 11; Ugaki, Fading Victory, 122 (diary entry of May 7, 1942).
Chapter 9
1. Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 302; Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chihaya (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 118 (diary entry of May 1, 1942).
2. RADM Ko Nagasawa, quoted in Robert E. Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1972), 43; Ugaki, Fading Victory, 118 (diary entry of May 1, 1942); Sanematsu to Lord, Jan. 22, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
3. The Japanese observer at the war game was Chihaya Masataka, who wrote an analysis of the Imperial Japanese Navy a few years later. He is quoted in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, eds., The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1993), 348. See also Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 91–92; and Office of Naval Intelligence, The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway: A Translation, OPNAV P32–1002, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 2.
4. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 96; Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 303; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 61–62.
5. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 119, 120 (diary entry of May 4, 1942).
6. Gordon Prange interview with Watanbe Yasuji (Oct. 6, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Gordon Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 35. Yamamoto is quoted in John Deane Potter, Admiral of the Pacific: The Life of Yamamoto (London: Heinemann, 1965), 44.
7. The “knowledgeable scholars” are Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 62–63.
8. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 120 (diary entry of May 5, 1942). Turret no. 5 on Hyūga was removed, the barbette roofed over, and antiaircraft guns were put there. I am indebted to John Lundstrom for this information.
9. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 305; Ugaki, Fading Victory, 123–24 (diary entry of May 7, 1942).
10. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 125 (diary entry of May 10, 1942).
11. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 127 (diary entry of May 17, 1942).
12. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 66.
13. Ibid., 64–65.
14. Frederick D. Parker, A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1993), 43–45; CINCPAC Intelligence Briefs, OP-20G File (May 10, 1942), Special Collections, Nimitz Library, USNA, 75.
15. Joseph Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 203, and Thomas Dyer oral history (Sept. 14, 1983), 241, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA; author’s interview of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers (May 4, 2010). The list of known designators (060710) is in the Layton Papers, NWC, box 26, folder 4.
16. Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 203. See John B. Lundstrom, The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941–June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976).
17. Traffic Intelligence Summaries, Combat Intelligence Unit, Fourteenth Naval District (July 16 1941—June 30 1942), Special Collections, Nimitz Library, USNA, 3:326; King to Nimitz, May 15, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:468.
18. Nimitz to King, May 16, 1942, and the Running Summary, May 16, 1942, are both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:471, 482; King to Nimitz, May 15, 1942, is also in the Nimitz Papers, but in box 8, unnumbered page, date-time group 152130.
19. Nimitz to Halsey, May 17, 1942, and King to Spenavo, May 18, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:491, 492.
20. King to Nimitz, May 17 and 18, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:490, 492.
21. Nimitz to King, May 17 and May 21, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:488, 490.
22. The summary of air strength on Midway is from the Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:505. Spruance’s handwritten note shows 115 airplanes on Midway: Spruance Papers, NWC, box 2, folder 4. See Appendix C.
23. There has been a lot of discussion about who came up with the idea for the bogus message. The account here relies heavily on RADM “Mac” Showers, who recalls the conversation between Rochefort and Holmes that took place as they were standing next to his desk in the Dungeon. See W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 90; Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 211; and Dyer oral history (Sept. 14, 1983), 241.
24. The message (Com 14, 200050) is in Edwin Layton’s handwritten journal, May 20, 1942, Layton Papers, NWV, box 29, folder 3. William Price asserts that the man who discovered the key intercept was Yeoman Second Class William Tremblay who worked at Belconnen, though others recall that the initial discovery took place in “the Dungeon” at Hypo. What is clear is that both units played an important role in the final decryption of the messages. Willam Price interview (May 4, 2010). See also Russell, No Right to Win, 30–33.
25. See the list of decrypts in Appendix III of Edwin Layton’s unpublished manuscript, “The Role of Radio Intelligence in the American-Japanese War” (which he submitted in September of 1942), in Layton Papers, NWC, box 15, folder 1. Interview of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers by the author (May 4, 2010); Henry F. Schorreck, “The Role of COMINT in the Battle of Midway,” Cryptologic Spectrum 5, no. 3 (Summer 1975), 3–11; “Estimate of the Situation” (May 26, 1942), Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:544. Rochefort’s words are from his oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 219.
26. Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 217–19. See also the Traffic Intelligence Summaries, 3:381.
27. David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), 569–70.
28. “Estimate of the Situation” (May 26, 1942), Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:516, 520.
29. E. B. Potter, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), 84.
30. Ibid., 118; Gordon Prange interview of Spruance (Sept. 5, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; C. J. Moore interview (Nov. 28, 1966) in Spruance Papers, NWC, box 2, series 4, folder 1; John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 225.
31. Quoted in Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 122.
32. Ashford to Walter Lord, Feb. 26, 1966, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; Potter, Bull Halsey, 78.
33. Nimitz to Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor, May 28, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8, no page, date-time group 280233.
34. Potter, Bull Halsey, 79; Nimitz to Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor, May 28, 1942, and Fletcher to Nimitz, May 11, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8, no page number, date-time group 280233 and 092102; E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 85.
35. Craig L. Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 202.
36. Nimitz to King, May 10, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8, no page number, date-time group 092219.
37. King to Fletcher, March 30, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:322; King to Dudley Pound, May 21, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2; King to Nimitz, May 11, 1942, and Fletcher to Nimitz, May 15, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC., box 1:468, 469. See Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, 68–70; and Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 116–17.
38. Fletcher to Nimitz, May 28, carbon copy in King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2; Potter, Nimitz, 86.
39. Nimitz to King, May 29, 1942, King Papers NHHC, Series I, box 2.
40. Examples of King’s use of the phrase are in King to J. H. Ingram, March 14, 1942, and King to Freeman, March 17, 1942, both in King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2. Nimitz’s use of it (italics mine) is in Nimitz to King, May 29, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2.
41. Nimitz to Commander Striking Forces, May 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, pp. 1, 6. See also Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., “Clear Purpose, Comprehensive Execution: Raymond Ames Spruance (1886–1969),” in Nineteen-Gun Salute: Case Studies of Operational, Strategic, and Diplomatic Naval Leadership during the 20th and Early 21st Centuries, ed. John B. Hattendorf and Bruce A. Elleman (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2010), 52.
42. Nimitz to Spruance, May 28, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8/280105.
43. Interview of Captain John W. “Jack” Crawford, USN (Ret.) by the author (May 5, 2004).
44. Nimtiz’s visit is discussed in a questionnaire completed by LT Clarence E. Aldrich, in Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
Chapter 10
1. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 90–91.
2. Beardall to King, Jan. 12, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1; King Secret File, Feb. 1, 1942, Gruening to Ickes, Feb. 14, 1942, and Ickes to FDR, Feb. 18, 1942, all in King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2.
3. Nimitz to Theobald, May20, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, 1:496.
4. Marshall and King Memo, April 16, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2; Nimitz to King, May 20, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:496.
5. Robert Theobald, “Memorandum for Whom it May Concern,” July 2, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2, p. 8 (hereafter Theobald Memorandum); Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August, 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949), 170.
6. Theobald Memorandum, 9; interview of VADM William D. Houser by the author (May 5, 2004).
7. Morison, Coral Sea, 175–76; Gordon Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 153.
8. J. W. Reeves to King, June 13, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2; Theobald Memorandum, 4.
9. Theobald Memorandum, 11.
10. Ibid., 11–12.
11. J. W. Reeves to King, June 13, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series, I, box 2. In a handwritten comment on this message, King wrote: “The basic trouble was that CTF8 [Theobald] did not set up a Joint Air Command until about 20 June.”
12. Morison, Coral Sea, 178.
13. It was Commander Miyo who proposed Operation K at the April 5 conference with the Naval General Staff in Tokyo. See Robert E. Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1972), 41–42, 41n.
14. Alec Hudson, “Rendezvous,” Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 2 and 9, 1941, quotation from the Aug. 9 issue, 32; Steve Horn, The Second Attack on Pearl Harbor: Operation K and Other Japanese Attempts to Bomb America in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 73–74.
15. Horn, Second Attack on Pearl Harbor, 65–90.
16. Edward T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, “And I was there”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: Morrow, 1985), 374.
17. The Hypo intercepts are in the Layton Papers, NWC, box 26, folder 5.
18. Horn, Second Attack on Pearl Harbor, 175–77.
19. Prange interviews with Watanabe (Sept. 26 and Oct. 6, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 42, 45–46.
20. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955; repr., 1992), 155; Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 145.
21. Nimitz to Midway garrison, June 2, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:550. The “criminal waste” passage is from John S. McCain to “Frog” Low, March 14, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2. See also King to Marshall, March 19, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 2.
22. Prange et al., Miracleat Midway, 160–61.
23. Ibid., 162–63.
24. Ibid.
25. The details of the sighting come from a letter from Reid to Gordon Prange dated Dec. 10, 1966. It is cited in Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 162–64. See also Potter, Nimitz, 91; Symonds, Decision at Sea, 225.
26. Layton to Walter Lord, Feb. 10, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 17; Nimitz to Mrs. Nimitz, June 2, 1942, Nimitz Diary # 1, NHHC; Layton, And I was There, 436; Potter, Nimitz, 92.
27. Quoted in Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 170.
28. Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 173.
29. Dick Knott, “Night Torpedo Attack,” Naval Aviation News, June 1982, 10–13; Gerald Astor, Wings of Gold: The U.S. Naval Air Campaign in World War II (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 87–88; and Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 174–76.
30. James C. Boyden to Walter Lord, Jan., 24, 1966, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; Lieutenant Junior Grade Douglas Davis interview (Oct. 1, 2000), NMPW; and Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktowns Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 106.
31. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 236.
Chapter 11
1. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 75; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 123.
2. The numbers used here are from Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 90–91.
3. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 184–85.
4. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 185. The discovery that the Japanese did not bring the second strike force onto the flight deck is a particular contribution of Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, who were the first to combine an analysis of Japanese carrier doctrine with the battle photos of the Kidö Butai to conclude that the decks of the four Japanese carriers were largely bare throughout the morning. They note that “at no time during the morning prior to 1000 was the reserve strike force ever spotted on the flight decks.” (Shattered Sword, 131.) Another important contribution is the time-motion study, based on interviews of Japanese crewmen, done by Dallas Isom to determine both the process and the time needed to arm (and rearm) the Japanese planes. See Dallas Woodbury Isom, Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 116–28.
5. Thomas Wildenberg, “Midway: Sheer Luck or Better Doctrine?” Naval War College Review 58 (Winter 2005):121–35, In his after-action report, Nagumo acknowledged that, “under such weather conditions, it is believed that the number of recco planes should be increased.” See “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6,” ONI Review 5 (May 1947), available on line at ibiblio.org/hyper-war/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/Nagumo/. See also Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 146–48.
6. Craig L. Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 228–29.
7. Douglas C. Davis interview (Oct. 1, 2000), NMPW.
8. Fletcher to Nimitz, June 14, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
9. “Pertinent Extracts from Communications Logs Relative to Midway Attack,” Action Reports, reel 2; Fletcher to S. E. Morison, Dec. 1, 1947, Fletcher Papers, AHC, box 1; interview of Howard P. Ady by Walter Lord (April 9, 1966), Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
10. Communications Log Relative to Midway Attack, Action Reports, reel 2; James R. Ogden oral history (March 16, 1982), 76–77, U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
11. Interview with John F. Carey by Gordon Prange (July 1, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Robert J. Cressman et al., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 62; statement of Captain John F. Carey, USMC, June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Kirk Armistead to Walter Lord, Feb. 15, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
12. Statement of Captain John F. Carey, USMC, June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 62.
13. Statement of Captain John F. Carey, and statement of Capt. P. R. White, both June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. The story of Kurz and the “stiff shots” is from Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 64.
14. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 237–43.
15. Fletcher to Nimitz, June 14, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 134–35; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 242. John Lundstrom notes that Spruance did not acknowledge Fletcher’s order and that Fletcher had to send a follow-up message fifteen minutes later. By then, Spruance was already heading toward the southwest (Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 242). Interestingly, Spruance does not mention getting this order from Fletcher in his own after-action report (Spruance to Nimitz, June 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.) In 1947, when Samuel Eliot Morison asked both Fletcher and Spruance who had commanded the combined American carrier task forces at this time, both men replied that it was Fletcher. “I ordered Spruance to attack,” Fletcher wrote, “but as we were well separated he was left to select his own point option.” Curiously, however, Task Force 16 did not set a point option. Fletcher to Morison, Dec. 1, 1947, Fletcher Papers, AHC, box 1.
16. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 37–38.
17. Clark Reynolds, “The Truth About Miles Browning,” in Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 214–15; Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW; Gordon Prange interview of Spruance (Sept. 5, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
18. Communications Log Relative to the Battle of Midway, Action Reports, reel 2.
19. Kimes to Nimitz, June 7, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Nimitz to King, June 4, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8, no page number, date-time group 042007; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 301–2.
20. Gordon Prange, with Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 206; Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 156; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 149.
21. Albert K. Earnest and Harry Ferrier, “Avengers at Midway,” Foundation 17, no. 2 (Spring 1996), 1–7; Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 6–10.
22. Willard Robinson interview (July 20, 2003), NMPW.
23. Ibid.; Albert Earnest interview (July 20, 2003), NMPW; Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 61, 121; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 70.
24. The details of Earnest’s saga come from interviews conducted by Robert Mrazek in February 2006. See Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 122–23, 142–145.
25. Recollections of Frank Melo, as told to Charles Lowe, Lowe Diary, BOMRT; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 152; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 72–73. Fuchida Mitsuo recalled that one of the B-26 bombers tried to crash into the Akagi, but Fuchida very likely conflated Jim Muri’s plane, which flew very low over the Akagi’s deck, with that of First Lieutenant Herbert Mayes, which cartwheeled into the sea after being shot down. I am grateful to Jon Parshall for his insights about this particular attack.
26. Nagumo’s chief of staff was RADM Kusaka Ryünosuke, who made these remarks in an interview with Gordon Prange (no date), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 153.
27. Dallas Isom describes the rearming process in detail in Midway Inquest, 124–28; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 157.
28. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6” ; Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 148. It was Fuchida who sustained for so long the notion that the delay in launching Tone’s search plane no. 4 was a piece of horrible luck that doomed the Japanese at Midway. Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully have suggested that his motive was to imply that the Japanese defeat at Midway was a fluke of timing and circumstance rather than the product of doctrinal error or command failure. See Parshall and Tully (Shattered Sword, 132, 159, 161), who render Amari’s first name as Hiroshi.
29. Credit for figuring out this irony belongs to Dallas Isom, “The Battle of Midway: Why the Japanese Lost,” Naval War College Review 53, no. 3 (Summer 2000), 68–70. Isom makes the same point in Midway Inquest, 114–16.
30. Kusaka’s recollection is taken from a questionnaire he completed for Gordon Prange in 1966, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. In that same document, Kusaka asserts that “it was not before 0500 [8:00 a.m.] that the said report reached our ears.” Based partly on this, Prange and Isom both argue that the message probably did not reach the bridge on the Akagi until 8:00. Isom in particular makes a strong case that Nagumo did not learn of the sighting until 8:00 and concludes that this was why Nagumo could not get his strike launched until after 10:20. Parshall and Tully argue for the 7:45 time, citing not only the Japanese message log but also the intercept by Station Hypo. Isom suggests that the 7:47 notation in the Hypo log was added after the fact to comport with the reconstructed Japanese message log. See Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 217; Isom, Midway Inquest, 133–37; and Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 159–60. See also Isom’s article “Battle of Midway.”
31. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6”; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 162.
32. Isom, Midway Inquest, 158–59; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 155.
33. R. D. Heinl, Jr., Marines at Midway (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, U.S. Marine Corps, 1948), 34–35.
34. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 79; Statement of Captain R. L. Blain, USMC., no date, Action Reports, reel 3.
35. Second Lt. George Lumpkin, USMC, quoted in Heinl, Marines at Midway, 38.
36. Interview of Kusaka by Gordon Prange (1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6”; Kusaka questionnaire, 1966, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
37. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 264.
38. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 165–66; interview of Kusaka by Gordon Prange (1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also the discussion of the impact of doctrine on operational decisions in Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 404–5.
Chapter 12
1. The young officer was LT James James E. Vose, who was interviewed by Barrett Tillman in June 1973 and quoted in Tillman, The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 66, The sailor on the Enterprise was Alvin Kernan, in The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 73.
2. Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 18–20; Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 71–75.
3. Peter C. Smith treats Ring more positively in Midway: Dauntless Victory; Fresh Perspectives on America’s Seminal Naval Victory of World War II (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2007), 59–60, though most of the supportive comments about him come from Ring’s superiors. Barrett Tillman tells the story of Ring grounding pilots for refusing to come to attention in Wildcat: The F4F in WW II, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 50. Ring’s insistence that the Hornet pilots remain on duty at Ewa Field is from E. T. Stover and Clark G. Reynolds, The Saga of Smokey Stover (Charleston, SC: Tradd Street, 1978), 29.
4. Troy Guillory interview (March 14, 1983), 33, by Bowen Weisheit, in Weisheit, “The Battle of Midway: Transcripts of Recorded Interviews,” Nimitz Library, USNA (hereafter Weisheit, “Transcripts”); Clay Fisher and Roy Gee are quoted in Ronald W. Russell, No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 128–29; J. E. McInerny interview (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 41. The story of Ring’s navigational error is in a letter from K. B. White to Bill Vickery, which was read aloud at a BOMRT event in 2003. See Russell, No Right to Win, 129. See also Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 73–74.
5. George Gay, among several others, asserted that few of the pilots slept on June 3. Gay also reported that five of the pilots of VT-8 had not made a single carrier landing until they reached the Pacific. George Gay, Sole Survivor: The Battle of Midway and Its Effect on His Life (Naples, FL: Naples Ad/Graphics, 1979), 64. The “one-eyed sandwich” is described by LT Jim Gray in “Decision at Midway,” BOMRT, www.midway42.org/aa-reports/vf-b.html. Interview of Troy Guillory (March 14, 1983), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 4; Tillman, Wildcat, 50.
6. Gay, Sole Survivor, 115; Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 105–6, 110–11; Clayton E. Fisher, Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior (Denver: Outskirts, 2009), 76–77; interview of Ben Tappan (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 39–40; Roy P. Gee, “Remembering Midway,” BOMRT (2003), www.midway42. org/vets-gee.html.
7. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 142.
8. Interview of S. G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 16–17.
9. George Gay interview (no date), World War II Interviews, Operational Archives, NHHC, box 11; Gay, Sole Survivor, 59; Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 13–14, 86–87; Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 64–67. Kernan quotes Waldron’s letter to his nephew on p. 68.
10. Interview of Ben Talbot, Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 8; Lundstrom, First Team, 324.
11. Interview of S. G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 17–18; Waldron’s effort to get a single fighter to fly with his squadron is in Gay, Sole Survivor, 115.
12. “Pertinent Extracts from Communications Logs Relative to Midway Attack,” Action Reports, reel 2; John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 245–46. With Browning as his chief of staff, Halsey had used a deferred departure in his attacks in the Marshalls and Wake. Fletcher had used a normal departure in the Coral Sea.
13. Lewis Hopkins interview, NMPW, 17; Gee, “Remembering Midway.”
14. Frederick Mears, Carrier Combat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran, 1944), 18; Interview of Walt Rodee (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 2; Stanhope Ring, letter of March 28, 1946, in Bruce R. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 125, no. 8 (August 1999), 31; interview of Ben Tappan (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 46.
15. The fuel use numbers come from the interview of J. E. McInerny (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 24, 37; Smith, Midway, Dauntless Victory, 75; Bowen P. Weisheit, The Last Flight of Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Junior, USNR, Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942 (Baltimore: Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Jr., Memorial Foundation, 1993), 5; interview of S G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 17; interview of LT James E. Vose by Barrett Tillman (June 1973), quoted in Tillman, Dauntless Dive Bomber, 68.
16. Mitscher to Nimitz, June 13, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3, also available at www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/mid5.htm. The most telling piece of evidence that the Hornet’s air group flew a course of 265 is that Walt Rodee, commander of the scouting squadron (and later an admiral), wrote the course down in his log book. Still, not all of the contemporary testimony points to a course of 265. Ring’s wingman, Clayton Fisher, remained adamant that they flew a course of 240. See Fisher, Hooked, 80–81, and Russell, No Right to Win, 134, 140.
17. John Lundstrom asserts that Mitscher made a deliberate decision “to go after the supposed second, trailing group of two Japanese carriers” in part because he was “contemptuous of the lack of aviation expertise of Fletcher and Spruance.” Posting to BOMRT, July 30, 2009. I am grateful to John Lundstrom for our conversations about this enigmatic event.
18. Nimitz to Commander Striking Force, May 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3, p. 3. The passage from Jurika’s intelligence briefing is from the diary of E. T. “Smokey” Stover, Stover and Reynolds, Saga of Smokey Stover, 29 (entry of June 7). Fletcher’s message to Spruance is quoted in Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 248. The Ring letter of March 28, 1946, is in Bruce R. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 125, no. 8 (August 1999), 31. It is interesting that both Mitscher and Ring employed the passive voice in their statements: Mitscher noted that the course “was calculated” and Ring notes that departure “was taken.” Of course the passive voice was (and is) common in Navy documents, where special requests are worded: “It is requested that.…”
19. Gay, Sole Survivor, 116. In his memoir, Gay has Waldron telling him that he was planning to go “more to the north.” This comports with Mitscher’s report, which has Ring flying to the southwest and Waldron heading off to the north to find the Kidö Butai. Very likely, however, Gay relied on Mitscher’s report to assist his memory thirty-seven years after the fact and adjusted the language of the remembered conversation to fit the report.
20. Interview of Troy Guillory (March 14, 1983), 28, 23; and Ben Tappan (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts.” The last response from Waldron is rendered here as a combination of what Tappan and Guillory recalled.
21. Interview of J. E. McInerny (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 7; Weisheit, Last Flight, 17–18.
22. Interview of S. G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 24. See also Mrazek, Dawn Like Thunder, 132.
23. Interview of J. E. McInerny (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 11, 13.
24. Enclosure (H) to Hornet Serial 0018 dated June 13, 1942, by Leroy Quillen, radioman/gunner for Ensign K. B. White, in VB-8, Action Reports, reel 2. Quillen remembered the initial call as “Johnny One to Johnny Two,” but others recalled it as “Stanhope from Johnny One,” which is more logical under the circumstances.
25. 1926 Lucky Bag, USNA; Gee, “Remembering Midway,” 4; interview of Troy Guillory (March 14, 1983), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 26; Robert Johnson to Walter Lord, Feb. 21, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 17.
26. Gee, “Remembering Midway”; Ring letter of March 28, 1946, in Linder, “Lost Letter,” 32. Clay Fisher, Ring’s designated wingman, sought to stay with him, but Ring had sent him to deliver a visual message to Rodee, and after VS-6 turned, Risher was unable to find Ring again. See Fisher, Hooked, 80.
27. Weisheit, Last Flight, 28–29.
28. Interview of S. G. Mitchell (1981), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 10–11.
29. “Battle of Midway, Rescues Performed by PBY’s,” PBY Memorial Association Newsletter 41, May 2002; interview of Jerry Crawford (Aug. 28, 1984), Weisheit, “Transcripts,” 7.
Chapter 13
1. George Gay recalled later how the moon was centered in the middle of his cowling during the flight, and, based on that and the position of the moon that day, Bowen Wiesheit subsequently calculated that he was flying a course of 234 degrees. See George Gay, Sole Survivor: The Battle of Midway and Its Effects on His Life (Naples, FL: Naples Ad/Graphics, 1979), 117; Bowen P. Weisheit, The Last Flight of Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Junior, USNA, Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942 (Baltimore: Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Jr., Memorial Foundation, 1993), 14. Weisheit’s “plot of moon bearings” on June 4, 1942, is on p. 69.
2. On Larsen, see Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 25–31; on Owens, see Gay, Sole Survivor, 97.
3. “Memorandum for the Commander in Chief,” June 7, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Gay, Sole Survivor, 119.
4. Robert J. Cressman et al., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway,4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 91; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 205.
5. Gay, Sole Survivor, 119; “Memorandum for the Commander in Chief,” Action Reports, reel 2; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 207.
6. Gay, Sole Survivor, 120–21. Waldron’s radio broadcasts were overheard by ARM3/c Leroy Quillen of VB-8 and reported in “Enclosure (H) to Hornet Serial 0018 dated June 13, 1942,” in Action Reports, reel 2.
7. Frederick Mears, Carrier Combat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1944), xiv; “Enclosure (H) to Hornet Serial 0018 dated June 13, 1942,” in Action Reports, reel 2; Gay, Sole Survivor, 121.
8. Gay, Sole Survivor, 108.
9. Ibid., 121,125.
10. Ibid., 125, 128–29; “George Gay’s Fisheye View of Midway,” Naval Aviation News 64, no. 6 (June 1982), 18–21.
11. Gay, Sole Survivor, 128–29. Gay later claimed that he remained in the middle of the Kidö Butai during the ensuing battle. Time-motion studies by Parshall and Tully and by Dallas Isom have suggested that this was unlikely.
12. 1927 Lucky Bag, USNA; Robert E. Barde interview of Wade McClusky (June 30, 1966), quoted in Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971), 176; Clarence Wade McClusky, “The Midway Story,” unpublished manuscript in the Gordon Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See Also Edward P. Stafford, The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002), 78.
13. Interview of Clarence Wade McClusky (June 30, 1966) by Gordon Prange, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
14. I am grateful to John Lundstrom for helping me unravel this launch sequence.
15. Gray to McClusky, June 8, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; McClusky, “Midway Story”; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 86–87.
16. Gray’s recollection of Browning’s instructions is from remarks Gray made at a 1988 Midway symposium and are quoted by Alvin Kernan in The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 137; the discussion between Gray and Ely is in CAPT James S. Gray, “Decision at Midway,” USNA Museum, also available as part of the BOMRT archive at www.midway42.org/aa-reports/vf-6.html.
17. Gray, “Decision at Midway.”
18. Ibid.
19. Laub to McClusky, June 4, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.
20. The fellow pilot was Dick Best in an interview with Walter Lord (April 13, 1966), in Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
21. Ibid.; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 94–95; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 213. Gray’s remarks were made at a 1988 conference in Pensacola and are quoted in Kernan, Unknown Battle of Midway, 138. Gray’s radio report is quoted in John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 256–57.
22. Laub to McClusky, June 4, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 179.
23. Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 183–87.
24. See the various naval messages from Midway to CINCPAC, plus CINCPAC to Task Force Commanders, all dated June 4 from 8:20 a.m. to 11:01 a.m., in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8. As late as the afternoon of June 5, Midway was still reporting to Nimitz, “Our patrols have seen only two carriers.” By then, however, there were no carriers, since all four had been sunk. I thank John Lundstrom for directing my attention to these messages.
25. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 249–50. Pederson is quoted on p. 249.
26. Steve Ewing and John B. Lundstrom, Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O’Hare (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 93; 1927 Lucky Bag, USNA,
27. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 230–31, U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
28. Pederson to Buckmaster, May 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 249; Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 340.
29. Esders was very specific in noting that he sighted the smoke of the Kidö Butai at 9:33, though Machinist Harry Corl, in his report, said it was at 10:00 a.m. Since LCDR Shumway also put the sighting at 10:00, and claims he called Massey at 10:20, the later time is probably more accurate. The reports of Esders and Corl are available at the BOMRT website: www.midway42.org/aa-reports/vt3-esders.pdf and www.midway42.org/aa-reports/vt3-corl.pdf. The radio exchange between Max Leslie and Lem Massey is in Shumway’s squadron report, June 10, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. The Devastator pilot was Esders, quoted in Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktowns Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 113.
30. Commanding Officer Yorktown Air Wing (Pederson), June 14, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
31. Lundstrom, First Team, 351–56; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 223–25.
32. John S. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 1:245–46, U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA; Machinist Harry Corl Report, June 15, 1942, available at www.midway42.org/aa-reports/vt3-corl.pdf; correspondence of Lloyd Childers to BOMRT, Nov. 8, 2004.
33. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 1:248; Lundstrom, First Team, 355.
34. Report W. G. Esders, June 6, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.
Chapter 14
1. Nimitz to King, June 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. Also available at www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/mid1.htm.
2. 1927 Lucky Bag, USNA.
3. William H. Brockman, Jr., “U.S.S. Nautilus, Narrative of 4 June 1942,” Action Reports, reel 3. Hereafter “Nautilus Narrative.” Also available at www.hnsa.org/doc/subreports.htm.
4. Ibid.
5. John Campbell, Naval Weapons of World War Two (London: Conway Maritime, 1985), 89.
6. Roy S. Benson (executive officer of Nautilus) Questionnaire, n.d., Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; John F. Davidson oral history (Sept. 4, 1985), 196, and Slade Cutter oral history (June 17, 1985), 297, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
7. Roy S. Benson Questionnaire, n.d., Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; “Nautilus Narrative.”
8. “Nautilus Narrative”; Roy S. Benson oral history (March 18, 1980), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 185.
9. “Nautilus Narrative.” Brockman gives the time here as 9:00 a.m., but it was more likely around 8:30.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. This is compiled from the action reports by McClusky, Gallaher, and Best. It is evident that Gallaher and Best collaborated on their reports, for not only do they agree in every particular, they also used identical language to do so. See Action Reports, reel 3, also available at www.cv6.org/ship/logs/action19420604.htm.
13. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 39–40; Lew Hopkins interview (Jan. 15, 2004), NMPW, 17.
14. Clarence Wade McClusky, “The Midway Story,” unpublished manuscript in the Gordon Prange collection, UMD, box 17.
15. Gordon Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw-Hill,1982), 260; Best to Walter Lord, Jan. 27, 1966, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
16. Prange et al., Miracle at Midway, 259–60.
17. Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 42.
18. Murray to Nimitz (via Spruance), June 13, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. Also available at www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/mid1.htm.
19. Gallaher to Walter Lord, Feb. 26, 1967, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; Penland After-Action Report, Jun 10, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. Italics added. Also available at www.cv6.org/ship/logs/action19420604-vb6.htm. Both carriers turned to the northwest as McClusky approached, which put Kaga slightly ahead of Akagi. See schematic in Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 222.
20. Best to Walter Lord, Jan. 27, 1966, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; Dick Best Action Report, June 6, 1942, 3 (also available at www.cv6.org/ship/logs/action19420604-vb6.htm); James T. Murray to Walter Lord, Feb. 26, 1967, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
21. Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 41–42; Best to Walter Lord, Jan. 27, 1966, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
22. John S. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 251.
23. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 233–34.
24. Ibid., 234–35.
25. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 252; Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 17; Norman (Dusty) Kleiss, BOMRT, Sept. 3, 2010; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 250. Subsequently, Jon Parshall estimated that, including the small 100-pound bombs, a total of twelve bombs probably hit the Kaga. BOMRT, Aug. 25, 2010, www.midway42.org/Backissues/2010–28.htm.
26. Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 19.
27. Ibid., 42.
28. Best to Walter Lord, Jan. 27, 1966, Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
29. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 253–55, 257.
30. Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 42.
31. Leslie to Murray, June 10, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.midway42.org/reports.html).
32. Leslie to Smith, Dec. 15, 1964, in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 264.
33. Ibid.
34. Leslie to Smith, Dec. 15, 1964, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 264.
35. Ibid., 259.
Chapter 15
1. The death throes of the three carriers are described in detail in Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully in Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), chaps. 14 and 15. See also Robert Cressman et al., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 104–5.
2. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 261–62, 268–69.
3. Ibid., 263.
4. Ibid., 264, 267.
5. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 114–15; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 292–93.
6. Buckmaster to Nimitz, June 18, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/mid7.htm); Stuart Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktown’s Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 118.
7. Ibid.
8. The message traffic is from Enclosure C of Action Report, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet (Nimitz), June 28, 1942, Action Reports microfilm, reel 3.
9. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 119.
10. Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 35; John S. Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 1:267.
11. Enclosure C of Nimitz’s Action Report, June 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.
12. Jeff Nesmith, No Higher Honor: The U.S.S. Yorktown at the Battle of Midway (Atlanta: Longstreet, 1999), 210–14; Leslie to Smith, Dec. 15, 1964, Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
13. Buckmaster to Nimitz, June 18, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.
14. Ibid.; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 116–17.
15. Interview of Richard S. Brown by Ronald W. Russell (March 15, 2007), BOMRT; Buck-master to Nimitz, June 18, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Robert E. Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971), 301.
16. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 122.
17. Buckmaster to Nimitz, June 18, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3; Nesmith, No Higher Honor, 220–22; Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 289–90.
18. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 122; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 128.
19. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 267.
20. Ibid., 285; Peter C. Smith, Midway: Dauntless Victory; Fresh Perspectives on America’s Seminal Naval Victory of World War II (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2007), 185–86.
21. Yamamoto’s comment is from an interview of Kuroshima Kameto by Robert E. Barde, quoted in Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 285.
22. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 193.
23. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 121; Spruance to Nimitz, June 8,1942, Spruance Papers, NWC, box 2, folder 4.
24. John Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 1:269; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 130. Tootle was subsequently picked up by the destroyer Anderson. Ensign George Hopper’s flight was even shorter. The last of the eight Wildcat pilots to take off, he had barely cleared the Yorktown s bow when he was hit by 20 mm cannon fire from a Zero.
25. John Thach oral history (Nov. 6, 1970), 1:268; Craig L. Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 254–55; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 314. Thach did not know he had shot down Tomonaga’s plane until it was revealed to him by historian John Lundstrom in 1974. Thach also thought that Tomonaga’s torpedo hit the Yorktown, but a careful study by Parshall and Tully showed that it missed.
26. It was author Jeff Nesmith who learned the identity of the Japanese flyer who shook his fist at the Yorktown. Nesmith, No Higher Honor, 226.
27. Author’s interview of Captain John “Jack” Crawford (May 5, 2004); Buckmaster to Nimitz, June 18, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. That the two torpedoes created a single large hole was discovered only after the war when Navy divers explored the wreckage.
28. Nesmith, No Higher Honor, 232; John Crawford interview (May 5, 2004); Ronald Russell, “A Reunion in the Water,” Veteran’s Biographies (June 2006), BOMRT, www.midway42.org/vets-newberg.html; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 125.
29. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway & Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 275; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 135. As it turned out, two injured men were left aboard ship and were found when the Yorktown was reboarded the next day.
30. William H. Brockman, Jr., “U.S.S. Nautilus, Narrative of 4 June 1942,” Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at issuu.com/hnsa/docs/ss-168_nautilus?mode=a_p).
31. Ibid.; Roy S. Benson oral history (March 18, 1980), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 189; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 302–3.
32. Ibid.; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 141. The Kaga was not scuttled until 7:25 p.m.
33. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6,” ONI Review 5 (May 1947), available online at www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/Nagumo; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 323.
34. Gallaher to Murray, and Leslie to Murray, both June 10, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3. In the end, only twenty-four planes flew to the target, because one of the planes of Gallaher’s section had engine trouble and had to return. Leslie was picked up and taken to Fletcher’s new flagship, the cruiser Astoria.
35. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW; Wade McClusky interview (June 30, 1966), Gordon Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
36. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrie Admiral, 270–73.
37. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 117,123,127; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942—August 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949, repr., 1975, 136. John Lundstrom notes that Adams’s report came in “almost to the minute when the Yorktown was torpedoed.” Lundstrom, First Team, 411.
38. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 136. Buell attributes the communications failure to poor staff work. See Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 138–39.
39. Gallaher to Murray, June 10, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.midway42.org/reports.html); Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York: Little. Brown, 2008), 166–67.
40. Thach oral history (Nov. 6 1970), 1:278–79.
41. Gordon Prange interview of Richard Best (May 15, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
42. Gallaher to Walter Lord, Feb. 26, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
43. Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 44; Best to Lord, Jan. 27, 1966, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.
44. Gallaher to Walter Lord, Feb. 26, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 326–29.
45. Mitscher to Nimitz, June 13, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.midway42.org/reports.html).
46. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 329; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 139.
47. Spruance to Nimitz, June 5, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:89; Spruance to Nimitz, June 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.mid way42.org/reports.html). See also Buell, Quiet Warrior, 140; and Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 277.
Chapter 16
1. “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6,” ONI Review 5 (May 1947), available online at www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/ Nagumo; Prange interview with Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 342–43.
2. Prange interview of Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 352–53.
3. Nagumo After-Action Report, 9; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 349–50; Barde, “Battle of Midway,” 330–32; Walter Lord, Incredible Victory (New York: Harper-Collins, 1967), 250.
4. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 351–52.
5. Prange interview with Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Robert E. Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1971), 332–34; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 344–45.
6. The orders intended for Kurita’s CruDiv7 were sent first to CruDiv8. This may have been a simple error in transmission, but Watanabe admitted in a postwar interview that he was deliberately slow in forwarding the orders to retreat. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 344; Prange interview of Watanabe (Nov. 24, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
7. Robert Schultz and James Shell, “Strange Fortune,” World War II, May/June 2010, 61–62; War Diary, Third War Patrol, USS Tambor (SS-198), Office of Naval Records and History (also available at www.hnsa.org/doc/subreports.htm).
8. War Diary, Third War Patrol, USS Tambor (SS-198), Office of Naval Records and History.
9. Ibid.
10. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 345–47.
11. Ibid., 346–48.
12. Ibid., 362–63.
13. Ibid., 361.
14. Prange interview with McClusky (June 30, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 285.
15. Ibid.; Robert J. Cressman et al., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990), 149.
16. Shumway’s Report of Action, June 10, 1942, and the Report of Bombing Squadron Five, June 7, 1942, both in Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.midway42.org/reports.html); Bruce R. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 125, no. 8 (August 1999), 33.
17. Katsumi is quoted by the Tanikaze’s lookout, Masashi Shibato, in Clayton E. Fisher, Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior (Denver: Outskirts, Inc., 2009), 96; Ring is quoted in Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 33.
18. Fisher, Hooked, 97; Stuart D. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000), 127.
19. One plane ditched in the water near the task force, but its crew was recovered. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 365; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 34.
20. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 151.
21. Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August 1942 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949), 153–54; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 288.
22. Interview of Francis Fabian (Feb. 6, 2009), 17–18, NWC; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 361; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 153. Samuel Eliot Morison is critical of Buckmaster for prematurely ordering abandon ship and for not attempting a salvage operation sooner, though such judgments are easy enough to make after the fact. Morison, Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, 153–54.
23. Fletcher to Nimitz, and Nimitz to Fletcher, both June 5, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8; Joseph M. Worthington oral history (June 7, 1972) U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 185.
24. Worthington oral history (June 7, 1972), 186; interview of William P. Burford by Prange (Aug. 18, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 20.
25. The Hammann’s captain, Commander Arnold E. True, reported that “all depth charges had been set on safe when Hammann went alongside Yorktown” and he speculated that the subsequent underwater explosion may have been caused by one of the Hammann’s torpedoes being set off by the initial explosion. Another possibility is that, in anticipation of imminent antisubmarine efforts, the depthcharge officer, Ensign C. C. Elmes, pulled the safety forks when the torpedo wakes were first spotted but did not have time to replace them all after the Hammann was hit. See CDR True to Nimitz, June 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3 (also available at www.midway42.org/reports.html); interview of William P. Burford by Prange (Aug. 18, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 20; Fabian interview (Feb. 6, 2009), NWC, 20; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 157.
26. Ernest Eller oral history (Aug. 25, 1977) U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 542; Jeff Nesmith, No Higher Honor: The U.S.S. Yorktown at the Battle of Midway (Atlanta: Longstreet, 1999), 253.
27. Fletcher to Nimitz, June 7, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:118; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 161.
28. Interview of Oral Moore in Ronald W. Russell, Veterans’ Biographies (San Francisco, 2007). I am grateful to Ron Russell for sharing this information. See also Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 367; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 290.
29. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 154.
30. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 34.
31. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 34; Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 155; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 369.
32. Quoted in Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 155.
33. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 128–29; Enclosure C, Action Report, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, June 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 3.
34. Message traffic is from Action Reports, reel 3.
35. Linder, “Lost Letter of Midway,” 35.
36. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 162.
37. Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 129–30.
38. Cressman et al., Glorious Page, 162–63.
39. Worthington oral history (June 7, 1972), 202–4. Spruance’s remarks are from his foreword to the American edition of Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955).
Epilogue
1. In addition to four carriers, the Japanese also lost the Mikuma, which sank not long after she was photographed by Lieutenant Junior Grade Dobson on June 6. The Mogami, on the other hand, survived. Though she was hit by five bombs, her captain’s decision to jettison her torpedoes almost certainly saved her. Repaired at Truk, she returned to Japan, where her two rear turrets were removed and replaced with a short flight deck that could carry eleven reconnaissance planes. She finally sank in Surigao Strait during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 25, 1944.
2. Robert Theobald, “Memorandum for Whom it May Concern,”July 2,1942, NHHC, King Papers, Series I, box 2.
3. FDR to Stalin, June 6, 1942, quoted in Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, rev. ed. (New York: Enigma Books, 2001), 455.
4. King to Marshall, June 25, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, series I, box 2.
5. MacArthur to Joint Chiefs, June 8, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, 1:557; FDR Memorandum, July 16, 1942, quoted in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 473.
6. King to Marshall and Marshall to King, both June 26, 1942, and King to Nimitz, June 25, 1942, all in King Papers, NHHC, series I, box 2. See also Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 207–8.
7. Prange interview of Genda (Nov. 28, 1949), Prange Papers, UMD, box 19.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
Though the historical significance of the Battle of Midway was evident almost from the moment of the battle, there have been a number of milestone studies in the seventy years since that have further illuminated the story. The declassification of intelligence files in the 1960s and ’70s exposed the crucial role of code breaking in the Pacific War, and especially at Midway, and thereby added a whole new perspective to the understanding of what happened there. Memoirs by Edwin Layton, Jasper Holmes, and others spawned a cottage industry in rewriting the history of the Battle of Midway. The story about how the cryptanalysts at Hypo duped the Japanese into revealing the meaning of “AF” became a classic and is now part of every account of the battle. Indeed, in many cases there has been a tendency to exaggerate the level of detail that was gleaned by the cryptanalysts, and to suggest that the Americans had a full blueprint of the Japanese plan for the Midway operation. Such a suggestion is a disservice to the American operational commanders, for as important as code breaking was to eventual victory, the decision makers did not have a complete copy of the enemy’s playbook in their hands and therefore had to make a number of crucial decisions based on other factors (see appendix E).
Another critical element of the struggle that was long overlooked was the Japanese side of the story. The logs of the Japanese ships and other primary-source materials went down with the carriers of the Kidō Butai. In addition, most Western scholars did not read Japanese and relied on translated documents and memoirs to flesh out the Japanese side of the narrative. Both Walter Lord and Gordon Prange conducted a number of interviews with Japanese survivors of the battle (often using intermediaries) and incorporated their views in their excellent histories. But among the sources in translation, the most influential was a memoir by Mitsuo Fuchida (with Masatake Okumiya) published in America as Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955). Fuchida, a naval aviator who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor, was also to have led the air attack on Midway, and would have done so but for an untimely attack of appendicitis. Because of that, he was instead an interested and knowledgeable spectator on the bridge of the flagship Akagi during the battle. Because of the dearth of Japanese sources, and because of the persuasiveness of Fuchida’s firsthand account, it had a tremendous influence on Western narratives of the battle. Alas, as Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully demonstrate in their book Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), Fuchida had an agenda of his own, which was to suggest just how close the Japanese had come to delivering a coup de grâce against the Americans, and as a result, not everything in his book can be taken at face value. Parshall has charged that “it is doubtful that any one person has had a more deleterious long-term impact on the study of the Pacific War than Mitsuo Fuchida.” (Parshall, “Reflecting on Fuchida, or ‘A Tale of Three Whoppers,’” Naval War College Review 63, no. 2 (Spring 2010) 127–38.) Whatever the merits of that statement, Parshall and Tully made an immeasurable contribution to the historiography of the Battle of Midway by delving into the Japanese accounts and analyzing the battle from the perspective of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Another individual who helped illuminate the Japanese side of the story is Dallas Woodbury Isom in his 2007 book Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). An attorney, Isom conducted his investigation like a trial lawyer (hence the title) and renders a “not guilty” verdict for Vice Admiral Nagumo, who is blamed by many in both Japan and America for poor leadership decisions at Midway. Isom concludes that Nagumo’s decisions were entirely logical on the morning of June 4, and that the principal blame for Japanese failure belongs to Yamamoto.
The official sources for the Battle of Midway are voluminous, but two are especially important. The first is the secret and confidential naval message traffic between Ernest King and Chester Nimitz, and between Nimitz and his commanders. It is included in the papers of FADM Chester W. Nimitz in the Operational Archives at the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. These messages, along with a “Running Summary” of daily events kept by Nimitz’s staff, and occasional “Situation Reports,” were all bound together in a series of eight thick volumes. These volumes make up boxes 1–8 of the Nimitz Papers. Volume 1 covers the period between December 7, 1941, and the end of June 1942; volume 8 is a collection of messages pertinent to the Battle of Midway and duplicates some of the material in volume 1. Over the years, scholars have often referred to this source as the “Gray Book” (even though the binding is navy blue) and cited it that way in their footnotes. In 2010, the American Naval Records Society scanned these volumes and made them available electronically at http://www.ibiblio.org/anrs/graybook.html. This version was not available as I prepared this book. I therefore cited these letters and documents as part of the FADM Chester W. Nimitz Papers. In the footnotes, I indicate author, recipient, date, and the box number (there is one volume in each box) and page number where the letter may be found. In Volume 8, the page numbers begin at 500 and then stop at 550. Then, after several hundred unnumbered pages, the numbers begin again at 1. For messages on the unnumbered pages, I cited the date/time group—a six-digit code in which the first two numbers indicate the date and the last four the time (in twenty-four-hour military time).
The other official source of special note is the microfilmed collection of after-action reports from combatants in the field. Throughout the war, every unit commander was required to submit a postaction report. This included not only the fleet and ship commanders but squadron commanders as well. These were collected and microfilmed after the war, and the entire sixteen-reel collection is available from University Microfilms. Most of the reports from the Battle of Midway are on reel 3. This source is largely complete, with one notable exception. One of the great mysteries of the Battle of Midway is what happened to the after-action reports of the air group commander and the squadron commanders on the USS Hornet for the action on June 4. Marc Mitscher submitted various enclosures with his own report (a list of casualties, recommendations for awards, etc.) but the only squadron commander report was the one from John S. “Jimmy” Thach (VF-3) who flew off the Yorktown, not the Hornet, on June 4. The requirement to produce such reports makes it extraordinary that none of the other squadron commanders, nor the CHAG (commander, Hornetair group) submitted a report. For a discussion of this, see appendix F.
In constructing the combat narratives for this book, I relied heavily on the oral histories and interviews of the participants. Such accounts are often rich with detail, but of course they are also subject to fading (or enhanced) memory. No doubt a few of the survivors were like Tolstoy’s Nikolai Rostov in War and Peace, who “set out with every intention of describing exactly what had occurred, but imperceptibly, unconsciously, and inevitably, he drifted into falsehood” (Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Anthony Briggs [New York: Penguin, 1005], 257). As one veteran of the battle wrote candidly to Walter Lord in 1967: “The more I think about what happened, the less I am sure about what happened” (V L. Micheel to Walter Lord, March 2, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18). Still, by including the widest possible number of such personal memories, and using a historian’s judgment about which ones to trust, a kind of pointillist image eventually emerges. In reconstructing the Battle of Midway, and the six months preceding it, I occasionally privileged oral memory over the documentary record. This is particularly true of the so-called Flight to Nowhere on June 4, where the collective memories of the participants conflict dramatically with the official published record. As noted above, a fuller discussion of this is in appendix F.
There are five collections of interviews and oral histories that are particularly rich. The most extensive and detailed interviews are those that were conducted as part of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Oral History Program, run for many years by Paul Stilwell. Bound copies of these are available at a few sites; the ones I used are in the Special Collections of the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy, and they are listed below. Another source is the collection of nine interviews conducted by Major Bowen Weisheit, a retired Marine officer and aeronautical specialist whose friend, Ensign C. Markland Kelly, was killed in the battle. In seeking to learn how and why his friend Kelly lost his life, Weisheit sought to unravel that long-standing mystery. His interviews of the surviving members of VF-8 proved crucial in helping to expose the history of the Hornet air group on June 4. A valuable and underutilized source of oral histories is the Archive at the National Museum of the Pacific War (NMPW) in Fredericksburg, Texas, and these, too, are listed below. Both Walter Lord and Gordon Prange conducted their own interviews while working on their histories of the battle. These are not listed individually below but can be found in their respective collections at the Navy History and Heritage Command at the Washington Navy Yard (Lord), and the Maryland Room at the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland (Prange). Finally, Stuart D. Ludlum conducted many interviews with veterans from USS Yorktown and included them in his book They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktown’s Air Group Five (Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000).
All history is the product of human action, and biographies of the major players can offer invaluable insight into their motivations. Between them, Thomas B. Buell and E. B. “Ned” Potter wrote biographies of four of the principal decision makers at Midway. In the interest of full disclosure, I need to report that both men were personal friends. I served with Tom Buell when we were both in the Navy, and a few years ago I undertook to complete a project he had begun just before he died, the result of which is my book Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Ned Potter was a colleague and friend in the History Department at the Naval Academy for more than twenty years. Buell wrote Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980) and The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), both excellent books. Potter’s Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976) is a model of the historian’s art, save for the frustrating fact that in lieu of footnotes Potter appended short paragraphs summarizing the sources of information for each chapter. Potter is also the author of the best book on William Halsey, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), though Halsey’s own autobiography (with J. Bryan III), Admiral Halsey’s Story(New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), is not to be missed. Frank Jack Fletcher, long dismissed as a secondary figure in the American victory, did not get his proper due until John B. Lundstrom’s detailed and authoritative Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006). On the Japanese side, Hiroyuki Agawa’s biography of Yamamoto (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969), which was distributed in the United States by Harper & Row as The Reluctant Admiral (1979), is especially noteworthy.
The Internet has made available, at the click of a mouse, a wide variety of sources that scholars and students would otherwise have to travel long distances to read. Many veterans as well as students of the Battle of Midway are contributors to the website “The Battle of Midway Roundtable” (http://www.midway42.org), founded by William Price and now run by Ronald W. Russell, both of them knowledgeable and authoritative students of the battle in their own right. On this website, veterans and students of the battle share questions and recollections with one another. Many of these firsthand accounts are as fresh today as when they were first recalled, or for that matter, when their narrators participated in the most consequential naval battle of the twentieth century.
In addition, the following sites are also valuable: “Naval History and Heritage Command,” at http://www.history.navy.mil/; and “HyperWar,” at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar. These contain many of the original after-action reports (some in facsimile format) and other original and secondary sources. When possible, notes indicate both the archival source and also the Internet address for the online source.