The Battle of Midway (28 page)

T
he Coral Sea is one of the world’s most beautiful bodies of water. Named for the coral reefs that guard Australia’s northeast coast, it is bounded by Australia on the south, New Guinea on the west, the Solomon Islands on the north, and the New Hebrides on the east. On May 1, 1942, the same day that Halsey’s Task Force 16 left Pearl Harbor, Jake Fitch and the
Lexington
task force joined Frank Jack Fletcher’s
Yorktown
force four hundred miles southeast of Guadalcanal Island. The two task forces operated independently for six days, but when they were formally amalgamated into a single unit on May 6, it put Fitch in an awkward position. So long as the
Lexington
operated separately, he commanded the task force. Once it became part of Task Force 17 under Fletcher, he had no job at all. He didn’t even command the
Lexington
itself—that was the job of Captain Frederick C. Sherman. Instead, Fitch was, in effect, a passenger on the
Lexington
—a high-ranking passenger to be sure, but a passenger nonetheless. Fletcher resolved the situation by designating Fitch, a 1906 Annapolis classmate and a close friend, as the tactical air officer for both carriers. Fletcher retained
operational control of the combined task force, but the brown shoe Fitch would assume tactical responsibility for air operations. It was a creative and diplomatic way to resolve an awkward command problem and to take advantage of Fitch’s experience and expertise.
¹

That same May 1st, fifteen hundred miles to the northwest in the Japanese-controlled Caroline Islands, the
Shökaku
and
Zuikaku
and their escorts got under way from the spacious lagoon at Truk and steamed southward toward the Coral Sea to cover Operation MO. The commander of this Japanese force was Vice Admiral Takagi Takeo, who, like Chester Nimitz, was an old submarine man. Despite his seniority, Takagi had no experience in air operations and used a heavy cruiser as his flagship. Consequently, he delegated control of carrier operations to his close friend Rear Admiral Hara Ch
ū
ichi who commanded Carrier Division (CarDiv) 5. Hara was a big man (his nickname was “King Kong”), but that did not impress the judgmental and diminutive (five foot two, 120 pounds) Genda Minoru, who believed that while Hara “looked tough,” “he did not have the tiger’s heart.” Though the
Shökaku
(“Soaring Crane”) and
Zuikaku
(“Happy Crane”) were the newest of Japan’s big carriers, their pilots were also the least experienced, and despite performing well at Pearl Harbor and in the Indian Ocean, they had yet to earn the full respect of the veterans in CarDivs 1 and 2. This independent operation was a chance for both Hara and the pilots of CarDiv 5 to prove themselves.
²

Also on that busy May 1st, eighteen hundred miles further north, a group of senior officers met on board the Combined Fleet flagship
Yamato
, anchored in Hashirajima Harbor near Hiroshima, to participate in a war game for the attack on Midway. The officers who bowed to Yamamoto as they prepared to game out the battle plan were confident that in a few days the Port Moresby operation would be complete, CarDiv 5 could be reunited with the Kid
ō
Butai, and they could turn their attention to bigger things.
³

Fletcher’s orders from Nimitz were specific as to his objective but discretionary as to his movements. “Your task,” Nimitz wrote him, was to “assist in checking further advance by [the] enemy … by seizing favorable opportunities to destroy ships, shipping, and aircraft.” Nimitz did not tell him how to accomplish this; he left the tactical decisions to his subordinate.
⁴

Fletcher already knew more about the Japanese movements than they did about his. He knew that they planned to conduct an operation in the Solomons to enhance their search capabilities over the Coral Sea. He knew, too, that around May 3 or 4 the Port Moresby invasion force would be moving south around the eastern tip of New Guinea through the Louisiade Archipelago and that it would be screened by a surface force that included at least one carrier (at that point assumed to be the mythical
Ry
ū
kaku
, but in fact the light carrier
Sh
ō
h
ō
). Finally, he knew that the two big carriers of CarDiv 5 were somehow part of the operation, though their position and course were more of a mystery. Fletcher was fairly confident that the Japanese did not know his whereabouts, or even that he was in the Coral Sea, and he planned to keep it that way by maintaining radio silence and waiting until the analysts at Hypo, or one or another of the Allied search planes, could tell him where the Japanese were. All of this gave Fletcher an indisputable advantage, though none of it guaranteed success.
⁵

One problem that Fletcher had was logistical. As Nimitz had reminded King, the Coral Sea was 3,500 miles from Pearl Harbor and at least 600 miles from the nearest source of fuel oil. It was imperative that Fletcher keep his two-carrier task force fueled up and ready, and to do that he would depend heavily on his big fleet oilers—
Tippecanoe
and
Neosho
. Fletcher’s biographer notes that he “constantly worried about uncertain logistics,” and that worry would remain an important feature of Fletcher’s decision making in the battles to come.
⁶

Inoue did not expect American naval forces to interfere with Operation MO. Given his confidence in the power of land-based bombers, he thought the greatest threat to the Port Moresby invasion force was from aircraft on the Australian mainland. To neutralize that threat, he wanted the big carriers of CarDiv 5 to conduct raids against the Allied bases at Townsville and Cookstown on the Australian north coast. To accomplish this, Takagi was not to approach the Coral Sea from the north—the most direct route—but to steam around the Solomon Islands and enter the Coral Sea from the east, to stay beyond the range of Allied search planes from Australia. In military terms, he was planning a flank attack—or, in football terms, an end run. Hara was dubious about the mission. Worried about taking his carriers too
close to the barrier reefs, he succeeded in getting Yamamoto to cancel the raids. His new assignment was to cover the approach of the Port Moresby invasion force and deal with any Allied surface units in the Coral Sea that might turn up. If an American carrier were in the Coral Sea, Takagi and Hara were to make it their primary mission. Given that Takagi and Hara did not know that both
Lexington
and
Yorktown
were already in the Coral Sea, or that they had 141 planes to the 124 on the two Japanese carriers, there was more reason than they knew to be concerned.
⁷

At the last minute, Takagi and Hara got saddled with an extra job. Since they were already going that way, Inoue ordered Hara to ferry nine Zero fighters from Truk to Rabaul. Though it seemed unimportant at the time, this added requirement would prove crucial. Hara intended to fly the Zeros off his decks as he passed within 250 miles of Rabaul, but the weather worsened as he headed south, and when he sent them off on May 2 they were unable to fight their way through the storms and had to return to the carriers. Hara tried again the next day, with no better results. Indeed, this time one of the fighters had to ditch in the water while trying to return to the carrier. Consequently, the whole force lingered another day near Rabaul before the eight remaining planes could be delivered and CarDiv 5 could continue on its mission. That put Takagi and Hara forty-eight hours behind schedule, which meant they would not enter the Coral Sea until May 5.
⁸

Meanwhile, the newly arrived
Lexington
and her escorts refueled from the oiler
Tippecanoe
. This process was still under way on the evening of May 3 when Fletcher learned that Allied planes from Australia had spotted five or six big ships in the Solomon Islands. He deduced from their position that the target of this expeditionary force was the commodious anchorage at Tulagi, and believing that, in his words, “this is just the kind of report we have been waiting two months to receive,” he left the
Lexington
group behind to complete refueling and headed north with the
Yorktown
.
⁹

Steaming all night at high speed, Fletcher put the
Yorktown
in position for a dawn strike against the shipping gathered off Tulagi on Florida Island, located on the other side of Guadalcanal. Early on the morning of May 4, the
York-town
launched forty attack planes: twenty-eight bombers and twelve torpedo planes. Because he did not expect the Japanese at Tulagi to have much air cover,
and because he wanted to ensure protection of the
Yorktown
, Fletcher kept all eighteen of his Wildcat fighters with the task force. This might have been disastrous had CarDiv 5 been on schedule, but since it was not, the only air opposition the Americans encountered consisted of a handful of float planes.
¹⁰

The eager pilots from the
Yorktown
swooped down on the roadstead in the harbor off Tulagi and saw what looked to them like a rich target. They reported seeing a nest of three cruisers, several destroyers, and a seaplane tender, plus a lot of cargo and transport ships. Their eagerness distorted their vision. The “three cruisers” were actually an armed minelayer (the
Okinoshima
) and two destroyers. American planes expended thirteen 1,000-pound bombs and eleven torpedoes on the
Okinoshima
and still failed to sink her. The American attacks were piecemeal and uncoordinated in part because Captain Buckmaster wanted the air group commander, Oscar “Pete” Pederson, to stay on board the
Yorktown
as fighter director, and no other officer had been appointed to command the strike group in his absence. In three separate strikes that lasted all morning and into the afternoon, the Americans dropped seventy-six 1,000-pound bombs on the shipping near Tulagi and made only eleven hits. The relative inexperience of the pilots was one reason for this disappointing total; another was that when the Dauntless bombers dove from altitude, the windscreens on many of them fogged up and made accurate bombing difficult. Total losses for the Japanese were one destroyer (the
Kikuzuki
), three minesweepers, and four seaplanes. By the end of the day it was evident that the strike had fallen short of the staggering blow that Fletcher had anticipated, though it did provide valuable experience for the
Yorktown
pilots, a kind of warm-up for the main event.
¹¹

The
Yorktown
rejoined the
Lexington
the next day, and while the
Yorktown
refueled from the
Neosho
, Jake Fitch flew over to the flagship in the back seat of a dive-bomber in order to talk with Fletcher face-to-face. When his plane landed on the
Yorktown
’s flight deck, a member of the deck crew assumed that the man in the back seat was the plane’s enlisted gunner and greeted him with a jibe: “Well, chief,” he said, “you guys kinda missed out on some fun yesterday.” Fitch grinned and replied, “Yes son, I guess we did.” By then Fitch’s two stars were exposed and the poor deck hand was rendered speechless.
¹²

Since the raid on Tulagi had tipped his hand, Fletcher broke radio silence to report the raid to Nimitz, and Nimitz responded with congratulations, especially praising the perseverance Fletcher had shown in sending three consecutive strikes. There was no disguising the meager results, however, and Fletcher had revealed his presence without having spotted any of the Japanese carriers. Though he did not know it, Takagi’s carrier force was north and west of him, still out of range (thanks to the delay in delivering planes to Rabaul). On May 5, however, CarDiv 5 rounded the tip of San Cristobal and entered the Coral Sea from the east behind Fletcher’s now reunited task force. That night, in fact, Hara’s two carriers passed through the very spot from which Fletcher had launched his Tulagi raid, though by then Fletcher was more than a hundred miles to the south. The
Tippecanoe
, emptied of her oil, was sent back to Pearl. Fletcher also detached the
Neosho
, guarded by the destroyer
Sims
, and sent her to the south while the American task force steamed west toward New Guinea to intercept the MO invasion force, which had left Rabaul on May 4. Hara steamed west, too, before turning south. On May 6, both forces sent out long-range air patrols, each seeking the other. Though at one point the two forces came to within seventy miles of one another, neither side made contact.
¹³