War Stories II (24 page)

Meanwhile, Station Hypo was in high gear. Layton and Rochefort's team went two days straight without sleep, taking catnaps at their radio sets. Having provided the strategic intelligence Nimitz needed, they now wanted to give the commanders at sea good information on the tactical situation.

On 2 June, Rochefort's code-breakers had cracked enough JN-25 messages that he was able to tell Layton the dispositions of the enormous Japanese fleet as it closed on Midway—including the intended sequence of attack from the seven different subordinate commands that Yamamoto had established for the operation. And as if the Navy at sea and the Marines at Midway needed any more motivation, the Station Hypo crew let the Americans lying in wait know that the first attack aimed at the atoll would be commanded by Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, heading the First Carrier Strike Force, the very man and unit that had devastated Pearl Harbor on 7 December.

But neither Yamamoto nor Nagumo had considered two important factors : One, they no longer held the element of surprise—American code-breakers had seen to that. And second, they misjudged the Americans' response, thinking that Nimitz would race to defend the Aleutians with everything he had available out of some sense of “military honor.”

The Japanese struck the Aleutians right on the schedule that Rochefort's code-breakers had predicted. Bombers from the Imperial Navy's Second Carrier Strike Force attacked Dutch Harbor, the biggest target off the Alaskan mainland, and two Japanese invasion forces captured the tiny uninhabited islands of Attu and Kiska. Dutch Harbor suffered only moderate damage.

Yamamoto received word of Admiral Kakuta's successful attack against Dutch Harbor and cautioned his forces to be on alert, certain that the
Americans would deploy to protect their territory and that the “decisive engagement to destroy U.S. naval power in the Pacific” was just ahead in the waters around Midway. And, Yamamoto reasoned, once that battle was over, no one in Japan—not the emperor, not the politicians—need ever fear another embarrassment like the Doolittle Raid in April.

It was this event, more than anything else, that had led Tokyo to approve Yamamoto's audacious plan. The desire to avenge the Doolittle attack—and ensure that nothing like it would ever happen again—had also clouded the Japanese High Command's otherwise successful strategic and tactical judgment.

Until the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese had applied sound strategic and tactical doctrine in their naval engagements. They had insisted on gathering good intelligence before committing to action, required the use of overwhelming force against their enemy, operated from relatively simple, understandable, and straightforward plans, concentrated their forces at the main point of attack, and mandated strict radio discipline to preserve the element of surprise.

But in the Coral Sea fight, the Japanese had split their forces—and suffered losses as a consequence. And now, as the Combined Fleet closed on Midway, Yamamoto had constructed an elaborate plan, splitting his force into seven separate groups with two objectives: the Aleutians and Midway. Either from arrogance or from fatigue, they had little good intelligence, a very complicated plan, and no radio discipline whatsoever.

Yet with all this, the sheer number of ships—145 in total, all with experienced crews and pilots, still gave him a powerful advantage over the U.S. Pacific Fleet. To carry out the mission of destroying the U.S. Navy in Japan's ocean, Yamamoto had personally chosen the First Carrier Strike Force—
Kido Butai
—the same force that had led the attack on Pearl Harbor. These were the same indomitable Bushido warriors who had led the attack on the American base, the very same commanders and pilots who had been victorious in every encounter with Japan's enemies, from the Hawaiian Islands to the Indian Ocean: Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo and Air Officer Mitsuo Fuchida.

Against all this, Nimitz could only muster the Marines on the ground at Midway and the Army, Navy, and Marine pilots based on the atoll; nineteen submarines with defective torpedoes; eight cruisers; eighteen destroyers; two battle-untested carriers—the
Hornet
and the
Enterprise
—and the battered hull and patched flight deck of the USS
Yorktown
. And, of course, the American pilots who would fly from those carrier decks.

At 0415 on 4 June 1942, the Marine air base on Eastern Island was still covered in predawn darkness but alive with the roar of PBY Catalina and Army Air Corps B-17 aircraft engines. The patrol pilots were given their orders: find the Japanese fleet some 200 to 250 miles northwest of Midway, just across the International Date Line, somewhere near 180° longitude and 39° latitude, and report their exact position. The B-17s were told to hit any capital ships they could find west of Midway.

Fifteen minutes later, 108 strike aircraft were launched from four of Admiral Nagumo's First Strike Force carriers hiding in the fog banks 150 miles northwest of Midway—where the PBYs were heading. Nagumo gave the order for his carriers to close on Midway so that his pilots wouldn't have to fly so far when they returned from destroying the sleeping Americans and their airfield.

At about the time Nagumo launched his first strike, the Midway-based B-17s, flown by inexperienced pilots and crews, spotted a group of Japanese support vessels and dropped their bombs, failing to score a single hit. Four of the Catalinas drew first blood in the fight by sinking a Japanese oiler, though. Hearing the report of the attack, Admiral Fletcher ordered search planes aloft from the
Yorktown
, hoping to pinpoint the rest of the Japanese fleet and get the word back to the American carriers.

Nearly two hours after the B-17s, Catalina bombers, and PBY search planes launched from Midway, the Japanese attackers arrived over the atoll, hoping to catch the Americans with their aircraft on the parking aprons, as they had at Pearl Harbor. But most of the U.S. Marine fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo bombers of Marine Air Group 22 were already aloft.

The Japanese air attack was fierce, but the Marines on the ground were ready and responded with a furious anti-aircraft barrage. The Marines of VMF-221, however, flying combat air patrol in the old Brewster Buffalos, were cut to pieces by the far superior Japanese carrier-based planes. Two-thirds of the squadron was gone in five minutes of air-to-air combat. At 0645, ten minutes after it started, it was over. Only six Japanese aircraft had been downed, but when the leader of the Japanese strike made one last pass over the air base in the gathering daylight, he saw that their bombs had started a fuel tank fire and destroyed a hangar. It was what he didn't see that alarmed him. There were only a few burning American airplanes on the ground—and worse, the runways were still intact. It would require another bombing attack. He headed back to his carrier to inform Admiral Nagumo to prepare another bombing run against Midway.

Meanwhile, a Midway-launched PBY spotted the Japanese carriers. Almost simultaneously, a Japanese scout plane found the
Hornet
and the
Enterprise
. Both pilots radioed back the locations to their respective fleets, and both the Japanese and American admirals prepared to attack each other's ships.

With half his aircraft heading back from attacking Midway, Nagumo was beginning to fuel and arm his remaining planes with torpedoes and high-explosive bombs fused for an anti-shipping attack. Suddenly, two waves of Marine dive-bombers and torpedo bombers that had launched from Midway before the Japanese assault arrived overhead.

Though the Marine attacks were totally unsuccessful—no Japanese ships were hit—the attack by land-based aircraft convinced Nagumo that he first had to deal with the aircraft and runways on Midway before taking on the American carriers. He therefore ordered the armament on his
planes changed back to ordnance for a ground attack. For almost an hour, there was chaos on the Japanese flight decks as pilots, plane crews, ordnance men, and deck handlers—already shaken by the violent maneuvers to avoid the American torpedo attacks—tried to comply with Nagumo's order.

In the midst of this confusion on the Japanese carriers, a second strike launched from Midway arrived overhead. Marine Major Lofton Henderson, with a flight of brand new Dauntless SBD dive-bombers, led the way, followed by Army Air Corps B-17s and more of the ancient Vindicators. The experienced Japanese gunners and fighter pilots made short work of this raid, but as the
Akagi
,
Soryu
,
Hiryu
, and
Kaga
jinked and turned, leaving snakelike wakes in the Pacific—maneuvering to avoid the Marine attackers and the U.S. Army B-17s—it was impossible for the Japanese crewmen on the flight and hangar decks to complete the ordnance changeover that Nagumo had ordered.

And then, to compound the problem Nagumo had created by ordering the ordnance change for a second strike at Midway, his combat air patrol aircraft and the planes he had sent on the first Midway attack showed up overhead, urgently needing to land before they ran out of fuel.

Once again Nagumo ordered the aircraft preparing to launch to be shuffled out of the way to clear his carrier decks. For the second time that morning, fatigued and confused Japanese crewmen started shutting down aircraft, pushing them aside, and lowering them, fully fueled and armed, into the hangar decks of his carriers.

At 0830, in the midst of this new round of turmoil and disorder on the Japanese carriers, the USS
Nautilus
stuck up her periscope and fired off two torpedoes, which did no damage but did instigate a furious half hour, as Japanese destroyers churned around, tossing depth charges while Nagumo's carriers zigged and zagged—still making it impossible to launch or recover aircraft. Then the first of 155 U.S. Navy carrier aircraft appeared over
Nagumo's head. Spruance had launched every bomber from the
Hornet
and the
Enterprise
—holding back just the three dozen fighters of the Task Force 16 combat air patrol. Half an hour later, Fletcher had sent up six Wildcats, sixteen Devastators, and seventeen Dauntlesses from the
Yorktown
. Despite withering anti-aircraft fire and the swirling Zeros, the Navy Devastator torpedo pilots attacked first, skimming over the whitecaps in three waves, aiming for the Japanese carriers.