The Battle of Midway (61 page)

Murphy sent out a contact report, but it was necessarily vague and specified only that he had spotted “many unidentified ships.” He was hoping that Midway could tell him whether these vessels were likely to be friends or enemies. Meanwhile, he maintained intermittent contact but was unable to get in position for an attack mainly because the cruisers were barreling along at 28 knots and the
Tambor
had a top speed of 21 knots. At 3:06 a.m., Murphy got an acknowledgment to his initial report, which did not contain any news about whether any U.S. surface forces were in the area. Not until 4:12, when the sky had lightened enough to enable him to study
the profile of the ships against the gray dawn, was Murphy satisfied that these were enemy cruisers. He had no time for an updated report, however, because one of the two accompanying destroyers detached itself from the column and came charging toward him. Murphy stepped back from the periscope and yelled out: “Dive! Dive! Dive! Take her down and rig for depth charge attack!”
⁸

Murphy took the
Tambor
deep and stayed down for twenty minutes before easing back up to periscope depth. In the growing light of dawn, he saw two cruisers of the
Mogami
class, moving now at only about 17 knots and signaling to one another. Murphy tried to get close enough for an attack. Despite his efforts, however, the range actually increased from 9,000 yards to 13,000 yards (over seven miles). He sent in an updated contact report noting that the two cruisers were now headed due west on a course of 270 degrees. He also reported that “the trailing cruiser had about forty feet of her bow missing.”
⁹

Though he did not know it, Murphy and the
Tambor
were primarily responsible for that missing bow section. The wounded ship was, in fact, the heavy cruiser
Mogami
, namesake of the class. The
Mogami-class
cruisers were big ships, heavily armed with ten 8-inch guns in five two-gun turrets packed into a 661-foot long hull. At 2:35, Kurita’s cruisers had just completed their turn northward in response to Yamamoto’s recall order when one of the lookouts on Kurita’s flagship,
Kumano
, spied the low silhouette of the
Tambor
almost dead ahead on the northern horizon. Kurita ordered an emergency simultaneous turn to port. The
Kumano
, at the head of the column, and the
Mikuma
, which was third in line, both turned sharply left at near 90 degrees, but the number 2 ship
(Suzuya)
and the trailing ship
(Mogami)
each turned at 45 degrees. The
Suzuya
barely missed colliding with the
Kumano
, and the
Mogami
drove herself headlong into the fourinch-thick armor belt on the port side of the
Mikuma
, just forward of her bridge. The
Mikuma
was only superficially damaged, but warships of the Second World War were not built for ramming, and the sheer bow of the
Mogami
crumpled like a crash-test car hitting a concrete wall.
¹⁰

Quick and effective damage control prevented the
Mogami
from going down, but she could no longer make 28 knots, or even 20. With dawn
approaching, Kurita could not slow the whole formation to wait for her. He ordered the two lead ships to proceed, and directed the wounded
Mogami
, accompanied by the
Mikuma
and the two destroyers, to follow at best speed. At first that best speed was only about eight or ten knots, as the
Mogami
pushed her blunt bow into the sea. Her captain, Soji Akira, did everything he could to regain speed: his men cut away the wreckage and threw overboard all nonessential materials, including all twenty-four of the expensive and valuable Type 93 torpedoes (a decision that would have important consequences later). Gradually the
Mogami
worked her way back up to 20 knots, which allowed her to run away from the
Tambor.
But when dawn arrived at 4:15, Midway was only a hundred miles away. It was only a matter of time before an American patrol plane found these two ships struggling along under the bright sun.
¹¹

Sure enough, at 6:30, a PBY out of Midway reported sighting “two battleships” 125 miles to the west. Simard ordered out what was left of his attack group: six Dauntlesses under Marine Captain Marshall Tyler and six Vindicators under Marine Captain Richard Fleming. They found the two cruisers and dropped their bombs, but the poor luck of the Marine bombers continued. Fleming’s plane was shot down, and despite the cruisers’ relatively slow speed, all of the American bombs missed. Eight Army B-17s from Midway tried their luck next, but they, too, failed to make any hits. The commanding officers of the two cruisers began to hope that they might get away after all.
¹²

Spruance also got word of the two “battleships” west of Midway, and his task force now possessed a robust strike force of more than sixty bombers with the addition of Wally Short’s Scouting Five from
Yorktown
and the return of Ruff Johnson’s Bombing Eight from Midway. Spruance did not launch at once, however. Battleships were valuable targets but not as important as carriers, and another report at 8:00 a.m. indicated a crippled Japanese carrier off to the northwest. It was, in fact, the
Hiry
ū
.
Despite the torpedo from the
Makigumo
that was supposed to have sunk her, the
Hiry
ū
continued to drift along, powerless but afloat. Moreover, forty or so men from the engine rooms who had been overlooked when she was
abandoned had made their way up to the flight deck and were still on board. Spruance did not know any of this; all he knew was that there was still an enemy carrier out there, and he wanted to go get it.

The
Hiry
ū
, as photographed by a scout pilot from
H
ō
sh
ō
on June 6. When Yamamoto learned that the
Hiry
ū
was still afloat, he dispatched the destroyer
Tanikaze
to finish her off. (U.S. Naval Institute)

Yamamoto found out that the
Hiry
ū
was still afloat about the same time that Spruance did. At 7:20 that morning, a search plane from the small carrier
H
ō
sh
ō
, which was accompanying Yamamoto’s Main Body, sent in a sighting report of the
Hiry
ū
, including the information that there were still men on board her who had waved when the scout plane flew past. The pilot’s backseat gunner took pictures of the crippled carrier, still smoking and with a gigantic hole in her forward flight deck, but on an even keel and in no apparent danger of sinking. Yamamoto was displeased, for now he had to order a destroyer to go back and rescue the men on the carrier and then ensure that the
Hiry
ū
was sent to the bottom. Ironically, as Spruance was pondering sending a force to find and sink the
Hiry
ū
, the Japanese
destroyer
Tanikaze
was dispatched on a mission to accomplish precisely the same goal.
¹³

Conflicting sighting reports led Spruance to hold off from attacking immediately, and by the time these reports were sorted out, it was early afternoon. Another problem was that the sighting reports put the
Hiry
ū
some 230 miles away, and the need to turn away from the target into the wind to launch meant that it would be closer to 270 miles away by the time the strike force set out. Though this was well beyond the ideal range of the Dauntless dive-bombers, Browning wanted to launch at once. He pointed out that if Task Force 16 steamed toward the target during the outbound flight, it would reduce the length of the return trip. Moreover, he wanted all the planes to carry 1,000-pound bombs, which were unquestionably more effective than 500-pound bombs, but which significantly reduced the fuel efficiency—and therefore the range—of the bombers. The planes on
Enterprise
that would be assigned this task were mostly refugees from the
Yorktown
, and the two squadron commanders, Dave Shumway and Wally Short, were leery of lugging 1,000-pound bombs to a target more than 250 miles away. After talking it over between themselves, they decided to talk to the CEAG, Wade McClusky, who was down in sick bay recovering from his wounds of the day before. McClusky listened to their concerns and agreed that the order was unwise. He got out of bed to go with them back up to the bridge to see Browning.
¹⁴

Browning was annoyed at having his orders challenged. He was not only the senior aviator on board, in his mind he was the representative—in spirit, if not in fact—of the absent Bull Halsey, and he refused to reconsider. As McClusky put it, “Browning was stubborn.” Unintimidated by his blunt refusal, McClusky pressed the issue. He reminded Browning that most of the planes in his own squadron had run out of gas returning from their attack on the
Kaga
and
Akagi
the day before—and those targets had been only 170 miles away. He pointedly asked Browning whether he had ever flown an SBD carrying a 1,000-pound bomb and a full load of gas from a carrier deck. Browning admitted that he had not. McClusky then formally requested a one-hour delay in the launch in order to close the range, and, further, that the bomb loads on all the planes be changed to
500-pounders. Browning was starting to reject McClusky’s request when Spruance, who had been quietly listening nearby, interrupted him, saying evenly, “I will do what you pilots want.” Browning was furious to be publicly overridden. Without another word, he left the bridge and stalked off to his cabin. A contemporary likened it to Achilles sulking in his tent.
¹⁵

Spruance’s decision meant not only an hour’s delay in the launch but rearming all the strike planes with 500-pound bombs, which took additional time. As a result, the strike against the
Hiry
ū
was not launched until after 3:00 in the afternoon. The
Hornet
launched first—and this time Stanhope Ring made sure that he was not left behind. He led Walt Rodee’s VS-8 and Ruff Johnson’s VB-8 (plus one orphan from Wally Short’s VS-5), thirty-two planes altogether. At about the same time, Shumway and Short led thirty-three planes from the
Enterprise.
Thus a total of sixty-five bombers headed out to finish off the crippled
Hiry
ū
.

Though none of them knew it, the
Hiry
ū
had already sunk, going down without any further assistance from either American bombs or Japanese torpedoes shortly after 9:00 that morning, less than twenty minutes after the last sighting had been called in. Stanhope Ring was bound on another “flight to nowhere.”
*

The Americans flew low in a long scouting line to ensure that they did not miss the target. When they reached the reported coordinates at twilight, around 6:00 p.m., “the enemy was nowhere in sight.” Grimly determined, Ring pressed on. At 6:20, he spotted a single vessel, initially identified as a light cruiser but which was in fact the destroyer
Tanikaze
bound on the same mission he was: to find and sink the
Hiry
ū
.
Ring led his air group past the
Tanikaze
, looking for bigger game. After flying more than three hundred miles and seeing nothing, Ring decided to go back and sink that light cruiser. It was the first enemy ship he had seen since the battle began, and he was not going back
this time without striking a blow. He reported the sighting to both Shumway and Short, and since neither of them had found a target either, all sixty-five American dive-bombers prepared to attack the hapless
Tanikaze.
Her captain, Commander Katsumi Tomoi, may have wondered what he had done to merit such attention.
¹⁶