The Battle of Midway (23 page)

Lieutenant Miller had instructed the Army pilots about Navy protocol, and he watched with pride as they marched up the gangway of the
Hornet
one
by one, saluted the flag on the fantail as well as the officer of the deck, and requested permission to come aboard. Despite that, there was a palpable coolness between the Army men and the crew of the
Hornet
. Much of it derived from the fact that the Army flyers, who had been constantly enjoined to keep quiet about their mission, were not particularly communicative. They had a “defensive aloofness,” in the words of one Navy officer. They kept to themselves, messing together privately, and deflecting all of the crew’s questions about them and their mission. Beyond that, however, some on the
Hornet
thought they were “undisciplined.” Unlike the Navy pilots, who routinely wore neckties with their long-sleeved khaki shirts, the Army pilots wore open collars, short-sleeved shirts, and scuffed shoes. They were casual not only about their appearance but also about shipboard routine. “A briefing would be set for 8:30,” one Navy pilot recalled, and “they would saunter in” around 9:00 or 9:15, and sometimes the meeting couldn’t start until 9:30. Even then, “their attention span was very short, half an hour at the most.” Matters improved after the
Hornet
passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and Mitscher got on the 1MC. the loudspeaker system. Though many on board had suspected what was coming, the announcement that they were off to bomb Tokyo warmed up relations between the two services. “From then on there was complete rapport,” Doolittle reported.
²⁷

The
Hornet
and her escorts left San Francisco just after 10:00 a.m. on April 2. It was a foggy day, with visibility limited to one thousand yards, but anyone who cared to look could see the
Hornet
steaming under the Golden Gate Bridge with sixteen Army bombers strapped to her flight deck in a herringbone pattern. Most of those who thought about it, if anyone thought about it at all, probably assumed that she was on her way to deliver those planes to Hawaii or some other American outpost. The
Hornet
had an escort of one heavy and one light cruiser, four destroyers, and the essential oiler. It was designated as Task Force 16.2, because as soon as it rendezvoused with Halsey’s
Enterprise
group it would become part of Task Force 16. That same day, 5,133 miles to the west, Commander Watanabe was traveling by seaplane to Tokyo to present Yamamoto’s Midway plan to the Naval General Staff.
²⁸

Halsey was among those who watched the
Hornet
depart. He was to fly from San Francisco to Honolulu in a few days to reboard the
Enterprise
and take her out to the predetermined rendezvous point northwest of Hawaii. He almost didn’t make it. Struck down by the flu, he was woozy from medication as he finally boarded the plane on April 6. Nonetheless, he arrived in time to take the
Enterprise
group out of Pearl Harbor on April 8. Four days later, the two American carrier groups were approaching the rendezvous coordinates along the international date line. Halsey informed his pilots that there was another American carrier in the vicinity to ensure that they did not bomb her. One of the pilots flying CAP that day was Lieutenant Richard Best. He spotted the approaching
Hornet
, and it seemed to him as if there was something wrong with her. Her deck was encumbered by what looked like “construction equipment … odd shapes, maybe tractors.” As he got closer he was astonished to see that “she had two-engine bombers on board.”

The now united Task Force 16 steamed westward for four more days without incident. On April 17 (Tokyo time)—the day after Nagano presented the Midway plan to Emperor Hirohito—the two carriers and four cruisers of the united Task Force 16 topped off their fuel tanks and, leaving the slower oilers and fuel-guzzling destroyers behind, began a high-speed run in toward the launch point.
²⁹

That night, at ten minutes past 3:00 a.m., the radar on the
Enterprise
picked up a surface contact. In these waters it could only be hostile. The task force maneuvered to avoid it, and the contact soon faded from the screen of the CXAM radar set. The radar could be temperamental, and as soon as there was enough light Halsey ordered an air search, sending out three scout bombers and eight Wildcats from the
Enterprise
. Rain squalls and wind gusts made the launch more precarious than usual, but all eleven planes got off safely. Less than an hour later, at two minutes before 6:00 a.m., Lieutenant Junior Grade Osbourne B. Wiseman flew over the
Enterprise
and dropped a beanbag onto the deck—this was how pilots sent messages back to the ship when the need to maintain radio silence was imperative. The beanbag was rushed up to the bridge, and Halsey read the attached note: “Enemy surface ship—latitude 36–04 N, Long. 153–10 E, bearing 276
[degrees] true—42 miles. Believed seen by enemy.” Should the observers on the contact recognize a carrier plane, they would know an American carrier was nearby. Halsey sent the cruiser
Nashville
to sink the surface craft, which proved to be the
Nitto Maru
, one of the picket boats Yamamoto had ordered out to provide early warning. It took the
Nashville
almost a full hour and nearly a thousand rounds of 6-inch ammunition to send it and another small picket boat to the bottom. By that time, radio operators on the
Enterprise
had intercepted several radio messages coming from them. A Japanese-speaking officer on board had been able to translate the unencrypted message: “Three enemy aircraft carriers sighted at our position, 650 nautical miles east of Inubo Saki at 0630.” On board the
Hornet
, Mitscher turned to Doolittle and said: “They know we’re here.”
³⁰

Brigadier General James Doolitt le (left) and Pete Mitscher with the Army pilots and crews on board the USS
Hornet
in April, 1942. Several American officers had medals they had been given by the Japanese government before the war, and this photo depicts them att aching those medals to the bombs to “return” them. (U.S. Naval Institute)

Doolittle and Halsey had discussed this possibility during their restaurant dinner in San Francisco; both knew what to do. Halsey blinkered a message from the
Enterprise
: “Launch planes. To Col. Doolittle and his gallant command, good luck and God bless you.” On board the
Hornet
, the klaxon sounded and a voice called out: “Army pilots man your planes.”
³¹

The seas were rough. The assistant signal officer on the
Enterprise
, Robin Lindsey, called it the “God damnest weather [he’d] ever seen.” Green water broke over the bow of the
Hornet
, and everyone on deck had to wear a lifeline to avoid being swept over the side. The wind gusted up to 27 knots, and with the
Hornet
making 30 knots, the relative wind speed over the deck was 50 knots or more. Despite the choppy seas, that wind was a blessing, for it would aid in getting the 31,000-pound bombers into the air. Navy Lieutenant Edgar Osborne stood near the bow with a safety line around his waist and a checkered flag in his hand. Sea spray soaked him each time the big carrier plunged into another wave. He watched the majestic rise and fall of the
Hornet
, waving the black-and-white checkered flag over his head in a circle as a signal for Doolittle to rev his engines. Then, just as the
Hornet
reached the nadir of its plunge, Osborne slashed the flag downward. Doolittle released the brake, and his B-25 surged forward. He kept the nose wheel on the white line painted on the
Hornet’s
flight deck. If he kept it steady, his right wing tip should clear the superstructure of the ship’s island by six feet. The plane raced downhill at first, and then, as the
Hornets
bow rose up again, his plane rose up with it and was boosted into the sky with plenty of flight deck to spare. It was exactly 8:20 a.m.
³²

Doolittle made one pass over the ship, then flew off on the coordinates he had calculated. He did not circle to wait for the rest of the planes to join him. To do so would waste precious fuel, especially since they were launching nearly a hundred miles beyond optimum range. Flying in formation used up additional fuel, since every pilot except the leader had to make constant tiny adjustments to hold his position. Instead, each plane would make its way to the target independently.
³³

The rest of the planes took off at intervals of several minutes. The second one almost didn’t make it. Lieutenant Travis Hoover’s plane dropped
off the end of the deck and disappeared. After a few harrowing seconds, it appeared again, struggling up into the sky. The rest of the launchings were mostly routine—as routine as launching two-engine land bombers off a carrier could be. Until the last one. The tail of the sixteenth plane extended out over the back of the
Hornet’s
fantail, and the plane had to be wrestled forward to the launching spot by the deck crew. The wind continued to gust unpredictably. One particularly severe gust caught Seaman Robert W. Wall and threw him into the left wing propeller. His arm was badly mangled and later had to be amputated. But the plane left on time.
³⁴

Doolitt le’s B-25 Mitchell bomber takes off from the deck of the
Hornet
on April 18, 1942. Note the white line painted on the flight deck to help the pilots avoid hitting the ship’s island superstructure. (U.S. Naval Institute)