The Battle of Midway (48 page)

In addition to Torpedo Eight, two other American torpedo squadrons attacked the Kid
ō
Butai that morning—those from the
Enterprise
and
Yorktown. They
fared little better. The attacks by Torpedo Six (from
Enterprise)
and Torpedo Three (from
Yorktown
) were equally heroic and equally tragic. For years it has been assumed that this terrible slaughter was redeemed by the fact that the sacrifice of these planes and pilots brought the Japanese fighter cover down to their level and thereby cleared the path for the American dive-bombers. That turns out to be true, but it was not the full measure of their contribution.

The pilots of Torpedo Squadron Eight pose on the deck of the USS
Hornet.
George Gay, the only survivor of the attack on June 4, is kneeling in the center of the front row. (U.S. Naval Institute)

At around 8:30, when Waldron and his fifteen planes flew away from Ring’s air group, they flew toward the southwest. Earlier that morning Waldron had calculated a course of 240 degrees to the enemy target, which was simply an extrapolation of the enemy’s course based on Lieutenant Ady’s initial report. Since taking off from the
Hornet
at 7:55 that morning (his plane was the last one to lift off), Waldron and his squadron had flown a westward course below Ring for twenty minutes or so before making the turn southward. As a result, the relative-motion problem had changed. Now Waldron
had to fly a few degrees more to the south to make up for his westward reach. He took the lead, heading southwest on a course of 234 degrees.
¹

The planes of Torpedo Eight flew in two sections, with Waldron leading the first section of eight, flying in four two-plane groups, and Lieutenant James C. Owens leading the second section of seven planes. Owens led the squadron’s second section because when the
Hornet
had departed Norfolk back in March, the squadron’s executive officer, Harold Larsen, had stayed behind to accept delivery of the new TBF Avengers. Now Larsen was at Pearl Harbor, frustrated by the fact that not only had he arrived in Hawaii too late to board the
Hornet
in time for its sortie, he had not been chosen to be one of the six Avenger pilots to fly out to Midway. Consequently he did not participate in the attack on the Kid
ō
Butai that morning, though his nonselection probably saved his life. Now Owens, who had been the backup quarterback on the USC football team before the war, flew in his place. Unlike Larsen, who was the squadron’s enforcer and therefore unpopular, Owens had a quiet confidence that the other pilots appreciated and admired.
²

The weather was good and “visibility was excellent,” with only a few broken clouds at 1,500 feet and light winds of no more than eight knots. Though Waldron was sure he was at last going in the right direction, he had no clear idea of the precise location of the enemy (despite his frequent assertion that he had a sixth sense about such things). After about a half hour, therefore, he ordered his eight-plane section to fan out in a scouting line. His rookie pilots did so, but soon they were spread out so wide that Waldron had to signal them to close back in. Just as he did so, he saw black smoke on the horizon to his right. He turned toward it and soon saw that it came from ships—many ships. George Gay, flying “tail end Charlie” as the squadron’s navigator, saw them too. The first ship he recognized was a large carrier, then two more, then another, and then more ships “all over the damned ocean.” Waldron had found the Kid
ō
Butai. He tried to call the sighting into Ring—”Stanhope from Johnny One … Stanhope from Johnny One.” Despite getting no response, he left his radio on, very likely in the hope that someone would pick up the radio chatter and use it to locate the target.
³

On the flag bridge of the
Akagi
, Nagumo already knew that yet another group of American planes was headed his way. Petty Officer Amari, still hovering in the vicinity of Task Force 16 in
Tone
’s number 4 scout plane, had spotted torpedo bombers en route and reported their approach. For Nagumo, it was unwelcome news. The last of the surviving American planes from Midway had only recently departed, and his carriers were busy recovering Tomonaga’s force returning from Midway and striking those planes down to the hangar deck to be rearmed and refueled. No doubt, Nagumo hoped for a period of relative quiet to complete that process. After the last of Tomonaga’s planes landed, at 9:17, Nagumo ordered the Kid
ō
Butai to turn to the northeast to close the range to the American carrier group.
*
One minute later, Nagumo’s big cruisers
Tone
and
Chikuma
spouted plumes of black smoke in order to alert the flagship to the approach of Waldron’s squadron. Here was yet another attack by the so far inept but obviously determined Americans. The
Kaga
launched six more fighters to join the eighteen that were already in the air, and twenty-four Zeros headed out to intercept Waldron’s fifteen plodding Devastators.
⁴

Waldron had no good options. He could not attack according to doctrine, for there were no dive-bombers for him to cooperate with. He could not circle and wait for them, because even if the bombers responded to his call and found the Kid
ō
Butai, by then the Zeros would have shot down all his planes—unless the Devastators ran out of fuel first. There was really only one option. Waldron went on the radio and announced: “We will go in. We won’t turn back. Former strategy [of a coordinated attack] cannot be used. We will attack. Good luck.” Back in formation now, the pilots of the fifteen torpedo planes closed in tighter and began to drop down to attack level. At their cruising speed of 110 knots, the run-in to the drop site must have seemed like an eternity. The four big carriers turned away from them, toward the west, to present a narrower target and to compel the attackers
to fly a longer distance to get an angle on the bow. Waldron had picked out the southernmost carrier as the initial target. After the formation turned, however, he shifted to another carrier that was slightly closer. Though at least one pilot believed it was the
Kaga
, it was in fact the
S
ō
ry
ū
.
Long before the Americans got within range of either ship, at about eight miles out, the Zeros were on them.
⁵

The Zeros attacked from above and behind, starting with the lead plane and working their way back in the formation. “Zeros were coming in from all angles and both sides at once,” Gay recalled. “They would come in from abeam, pass each other just over our heads, and turn around to make another attack.” Some, after making one pass, performed an acrobatic vertical loop to come in behind the next plane in the formation. “Watch those fighters!” Waldron barked out over the open radio, perhaps intending the remark for his backseat radioman/gunner, Horace Dobbs. Dobbs and the other gunners swiveled their twin .30-caliber machine guns and fired at the Zeros as they flashed past. Instead of jinking and sliding to try to throw off the enemy fighters, Waldron and the other Devastator pilots held a steady course to achieve a good torpedo drop and to provide their gunners with a stable firing platform. Waldron called his gunner on the intercom to ask, “How am I doing, Dobbs?” Because Waldron still had his radio on, the question was heard throughout the squadron, and by at least one radioman in Ring’s air group eighty miles to the north.
⁶

Boring in from above, the Zero pilots used their machine-gun tracers, which one pilot described as “thin whips of light,” to get the range. Then they fired their 20 mm cannon for the kill. The sturdy Devastators could absorb a lot of machine-gun fire, but the cannon shells were fatal. One Devastator went down, then another. The American rear-seat gunners were firing, too, and Waldron thought he saw a Zero crash into the sea as well. “See that splash?” Waldron called out. “I’d give a million to know who done that!” But there were too many Zeros, and they were too fast for the backseat gunners. One by one, the skilled Japanese pilots sent the slow and level-flying torpedo bombers spinning into the sea. “My two wing men are going in the water,” Waldron reported to no one in particular. It was his last broadcast. Hit by several cannon shells, his plane “burst into flames.” George Gay saw
it dive for the sea, and he reported later that he saw Waldron throw back the canopy and stand up in the cockpit, putting one leg out onto the wing just as his plane “hit the water and disappeared.”
⁷

Those few Devastators that were left continued on to the target. At one of their training sessions the week before, Waldron had passed out a mimeographed sheet he had typed up himself. It is quoted here in its entirety:

Just a word to let you know I feel we are all ready. We have had a very short time to train, and we have worked under the most severe difficulties. But we have truly done the best humanly possible. I actually believe that under these conditions we are the best in the world. My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don’t and worst comes to worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make the final run-in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with us all. Good luck, happy landings, and give ‘em hell.
⁸

Now worst had indeed come to worst and the skipper was gone, but true to his spirit the remaining Devastators continued on, lining up on the
S
ō
ry
ū
, which now made a radical turn to starboard to throw off the attackers. It seemed unlikely, however, that any of the American planes would get close enough to drop what Waldron had always called “the pickle.”

Gay was the last in line and so far had been spared, but now he too came under attack. On his intercom he heard his gunner, Robert K. “Bob” Huntington, call out, “They got me,” and, glancing back, saw Huntington slumped in his seat. No longer needing to maintain a steady firing platform for Huntington, Gay began to jink and slide all over the place. He also went to full throttle (“balls to the wall,” as he put it), as fast as the lumbering Devastator could go. It wasn’t fast enough. Bullets thudded into the armor plate of his cockpit seat, others clanked into the plane’s fuselage; one hit him in the left arm. It seemed to him that “there were at least thirty Zeros” in the air, and only three Devastators still flying.
⁹

Soon there was only one. Gay flew on alone, and decided that the time had come to drop his “pickle.” He “punched the torpedo release button,”
but nothing happened. The Japanese bullets had wrecked his electrical system. So he shifted hands on the control stick and reached for the manual release. When he pulled it, the cable came out in his hands. The torpedo may have dropped—or not; he didn’t know. In any case, it was time to get out of there. He flew low over the
S
ō
ry
ū
s
deck and banked left out over the stern. The Zeros had pulled off him when he entered the envelope of the ship’s antiaircraft fire, but now they were back—and he was the only target. A 20 mm cannon shell punched though his engine and set it on fire. Gay cut the fuel switch to prevent an explosion and prepared to ditch. As he glided down for a water landing, his right wing touched first, and his plane ground looped on the surface. Shaken but still conscious, Gay unstrapped his shoulder harness and prepared to get out as the cockpit filled with water. He struggled with the canopy and feared the heavy plane would take him down before he could extricate himself. Finally able to scramble out, he checked on Huntington, but he appeared to be dead, and in any case Gay couldn’t get him out of his harness. Gay swam away from the plane before it sucked him down.
¹⁰