Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (46 page)

It was the Catalinas from VP-44 that discovered the Japanese on the morning of June 3, 1942. At 8:43 a.m. Ens. James Lyle discovered the Japanese minesweeping force about 600 miles southwest of Midway. Forty minutes later Ens. Jack Reid radioed his famous “Main body!” sighting followed up with a later report of eleven ships 700 miles west of the island, heading east. The pilot was convinced he’d found the strike force, but Nimitz was not; in fact, it was the invasion force. Still, nine B-17s from Midway launched at noon, and at 4:40 p.m. they attacked the Japanese Second Fleet Transport Group. Though no hits were scored, they did shake the Japanese up. If Midway was the point of an inverted triangle, Nagumo’s carriers were at the top left corner, about 500 miles to the northwest of the island. Due east some 400 miles, on the top right corner of the triangle were the American carriers.

First blood was drawn early in the morning of June 4 when a flight of Catalinas hit the oiler
Akebono Maru
with a Mk 13 aerial torpedo. At 4:30 a.m., with the element of surprise lost, Admiral Nagumo’s first strike against Midway came off the decks of
Akagi
,
Kaga
,
Hiryu
, and
Soryu
. Four squadrons of bombers with fighter escorts, the 108-plane package was picked up on radar at 5:35. By 6 a.m. everything on Midway that could fly was airborne—the bombers heading away to safety and the Marines from VMF-221 (Fighting Falcons) turning in to attack.

If the Grumman Wildcats were outclassed by the Japanese fighter, then the Brewster Buffalo was hopelessly overmatched. The Zero was at least 1,000 pounds lighter and could outclimb either American fighter by over 1,000 feet per minute. Though the Wildcat and Zero both spit out about 15 pounds of shells per three-second burst, they were outnumbered about five to one and quickly overwhelmed. Still, the Marines shot down four bombers and three fighters and put the attackers on the defensive as they approached Midway. Anti-aircraft fire took out another thirty or so aircraft and damaged most of the rest, so it was no wonder that the mission commander, Lt. Joichi Tomonaga, immediately called for a second strike.
^*
At about 7:15 a.m. Nagumo ordered his reserve squadrons armed with contact fragmentation bombs for a final mission to neutralize the island’s defenses.

As this was happening the USAAF B-26s and VT-8 Avenger detachment found the Japanese carriers. It was five of these six planes, led by Lt. Langdon K. Fieberling, that Harada and his combat air patrol of Zeros destroyed. Two of the four B-26 bombers were also shot down. Forty-five minutes later, Vindicator and Dauntless dive-bombers from VMSB-241 began their glide attacks from 8,000 feet and were cut to pieces by the Zeros. Nine of the twenty-seven didn’t return. Shortly after 8:00 a.m. fifteen B-17s arrived overhead at 20,000 feet and added their bomb loads to the confusion.

The continued attacks by American shore-based aircraft had prevented Nagumo from launching the second strike. By this time his first strike force had arrived back at the fleet for refueling and rearming, and he chose to recover the first group before attacking Midway again. A cruiser scout plane had reported enemy ships, but it wasn’t until 8:40 that an American carrier was confirmed. Once again the rearming was changed back to torpedoes and the hangar decks of all four carriers were chaotic as crews frantically worked. Stacks of bombs were everywhere, with high octane fuel hoses snaking between torpedoes and boxes of ammunition.

Unbeknownst to the Japanese,
Enterprise
and
Hornet
had launched their own attack at 7:02. Based on the timing for the Midway assault, Spruance’s chief of air staff, Capt. Miles Browning, calculated that an American strike launched
now
would catch the Imperial Navy in the midst of recovery and refueling—and it happened exactly that way.

The
Hornet
’s strike group had arrived at the estimated target point and found empty sea. Figuring that Nagumo had headed to Midway, they turned southeast and flew toward the island—all except VT-8. Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron guessed that the Japanese might be lurking beneath a low cloud layer to the north, and that’s where he found them. At 9:40, running low on fuel and without fighter escort, he attacked, followed by VT-6 off the
Enterprise
and VT-3 from the
Yorktown
. Thirty-five of forty-one torpedo planes were shot down by Zeros and anti-aircraft artillery with no hits on the ships.

But while the Japanese were taking evasive action, no launch was possible, so the flight decks were clogged with fully fueled, heavily armed aircraft. Most important, all fifty Zero fighters were down at low altitude chasing the surviving Americans. Kaname Harada later recalled, “The American aviators were exceptionally courageous. I was impressed at how bravely they pushed home their attacks.”

Nagumo was vainly trying to reorganize, regroup, and launch the next strike when his luck finally ran out. Dive-bombers from the
Enterprise
had trailed the destroyer
Arashi
back to Mobile Force 1 and found four Japanese flattops ponderously turning into the wind. As fate would have it, Lt. Cmdr. Max Leslie arrived with seventeen more dive-bombers from the
Yorktown
.

At 10:22 Lt. Cmdr. Wade McClusky split his thirty-seven dive-bombers into two groups, rolling in from 14,000 feet on the
Kaga
and
Akagi
. Yorktown’s VB-3 attacked the
Soryu.
Like lethal silver water droplets glinting in the sun, all fifty-four aircraft screamed down toward the Japanese. Harada and the other Zero pilots struggled to climb and engage, but they couldn’t stop this attack.

At least one bomb went through
Akagi’s
flight deck to detonate on the packed hangar deck below. Fuel and ammunition exploded, roasting flight crews in their planes and gutting the ship.
Kaga
went down three hours later, and
Soryu
would be torpedoed by a U.S. submarine and sink at sunset. The Japanese were shocked and shattered, while the exuberant Americans continued hunting for the last enemy carrier.

But the Imperial Navy still had a few teeth yet and immediately launched
Hiryu’s
remaining aircraft. Following behind VB-3’s returning strike force, they appeared on
Yorktown’s
radar at 1:30 p.m. Eighteen dive-bombers were intercepted by Wildcats from Fighting Three (VF-3), which splashed ten of them, and two more were shot down by anti-aircraft fire. However, six got through and three scored hits on the carrier, one of them disabling eight of her nine boilers. Superb damage control had her steaming again within ninety minutes, and by 4 p.m. she could make 20 knots. At the same time, radar detected a second wave of Japanese planes inbound from the west. Four airborne Wildcats immediately committed out to intercept, while those on deck, some with only 20 gallons of fuel, also took off.

The protective combat air patrol (CAP) got six of the inbound Kate torpedo bombers, but at least four survived to drop their fish. Two missed, but two more hit the port side, eventually causing a 30-degree list. Though the ship was abandoned,
Yorktown
’s aircraft were recovered on the
Enterprise.
Ten of these dive-bombers, along with a full strike package from
Enterprise
, set off to find the last remaining Japanese carrier.

Kaname Harada had landed his fighter aboard the
Hiryu
after his own carrier was hit. The plane was so full of holes that a maintenance officer ordered it pushed over the side. He was wondering what to do when a spare Zero was brought up, and he hopped in. Getting airborne at 5 p.m., he’d just glanced back when a wave of hot air hit him, bouncing the lightweight plane sideways. The entire flight deck disappeared beneath a rolling wall of fire. Smoke poured up everywhere, and he whipped his head back around, staring upward. Dive-bombers were dropping like stones, little black bombs detaching as the aircraft pulled out with vapor streaming from the wings. It was a full package from the
Enterprise
plus ten from the
Yorktown.

Harada fought back until he was out of ammunition and out of time—the sun was setting and he had no place to land. Locking the canopy open, he dropped flaps, pulled the power, and pancaked into the sea behind a destroyer. Even as it circled back to him, B-17s showed up overhead and dropped their bombs in Midway’s final attack of the day. The destroyer fled and after floating all night, Harada was picked up the next morning by the
Makigumo.
In a strange twist of fate, the pilot who was first off the decks for the Pearl Harbor attack was the last one off at Midway. Harada was also rescued by the same destroyer that would scuttle the last Japanese carrier afloat—
Hiryu.

Still refusing to sink,
Yorktown
remained afloat all night, and a second salvage operation got under way on June 5. By 3:30 p.m. that day, it actually appeared the ship might be saved. But then four torpedo wakes were spotted.
^*
Two of them struck, and by early morning on June 7, the battered carrier finally rolled over and sank.

The Imperial Navy could not cover an invasion without aircraft carriers, so Admiral Yamamoto ordered a general withdrawal to the west. Spruance and Fletcher were later criticized for not pursuing the Japanese, but this is an unfounded judgment. They had no way of knowing if an invasion would occur, or even if something other than Midway might still be a target, so they remained where they could react if necessary. There was also a very real chance of running into Yamamoto’s main battle fleet, and that would certainly have been disastrous for the few heavy American warships left.

The loss of four fleet carriers was a tremendous blow, as were the 3,000 Japanese lives lost. More than 240 aircraft went down, with nearly all their trained and experienced flight crews. It has also been estimated that 40 percent of the Imperial Navy’s mechanics, armorers, and specialists were also lost in the battle. Though it would not stop the Japanese advance, Midway did cost them their ability to conduct unrestricted offensives. This means they lost the momentum that had carried them thus far, and they would never really regain it. Over the next two years the Japanese would produce just six fleet carriers.

The 307 American sailors, crews, and pilots lost were a bad blow to a sorely pressed navy.
Yorktown
was a heavy loss, but from 1942 to 1945 the Americans would launch twenty-six
Essex
-class carriers, 45,000-ton warships carrying 2,600 men that each supported a ninety-plane air group. Nine
Independence
-class carriers and more than a hundred light and escort carriers would also roll down the slipways into salt water. As Yamamoto had foreseen, time was running out for the Japanese. The giant was awake, angry, and out for blood.

After the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, and the Pacific battles of Coral Sea and Midway, airpower no longer had any detractors. The startling results from those key conflicts demonstrated the influence of tactical aircraft, and the men who flew them, far beyond all expectations.
They
were the weapons, with potential and effects previously only imagined by a few visionaries. Conventional ground forces and naval vessels that had defined warfare for six hundred years stared up at the fight and watched, basically spectators, as a new era emerged.

CHAPTER 11

TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN

S
EPTEMBER 18, 1944

SHUDDERING VIOLENTLY, THE
P-51 bit into the thin air and continued to climb. The pilot winced; he knew that the vibration was from his supercharger, but he still didn’t like the sound. The results were hard to beat, though, and he leaned forward a bit as the fighter passed 21,000 feet. As he bunted over a few seconds later, his butt came off the chute pack and mist spat out of the air-conditioning vents.

There!

Three distinct groups of dark flecks against the puffy clouds, about five miles away. Focke-Wulf 190 fighters. A little lower than him and not turning toward the flight of four Mustangs. He’d seen it before: they were going directly for the lumbering, slow-moving bombers. Unlike other escort missions he’d been on, these B-24s were loaded with supplies, not bombs. Operation Market Garden, an enormous Allied airborne assault, had begun the day before.

Forty thousand British and American paratroopers had been dropped along Highway 69 in Holland; the Americans were to take the bridges at Eindhoven and Nijmegen while the British 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade would take Arnhem. Capt. Robin Olds shook his head, staring at the distant German fighters. Maybe it would work. He was a fighter pilot, not a ground pounder, but trying to move tens of thousands of troops along a single narrow road didn’t seem a great idea. Then, of course, the poor Brits and Poles landed right on top of two SS panzer divisions that had been put in Arnhem for a rest. Talk about a bad break . . .