The Battle of Midway (55 page)

Leslie led the attack even though by now his plane no longer carried a bomb. The planes of his squadron had recently been equipped with a new electrical release that was supposed to make dive-bombing more accurate. Instead of pulling back on a lever, which sometimes threw off the bomb’s trajectory, all the pilot had to do now was press a button on top of his control stick. The electrical release system was not armed during takeoffs, so after departing the
Yorktown
, Leslie prepared to arm it. Much to his astonishment, when he did so, his bomb dropped away. Three other pilots in the squadron did the same thing, and fifteen thousand feet below them four bombs exploded on the surface, startling the pilots of the torpedo planes and their escorting Wildcats. Leslie broke radio silence to warn the other pilots not to arm their release devices. As a result of this mishap, four of his seventeen bombers had lost their principal weapon. They flew on anyway, Leslie because it was his command, and the others because they could still use their .50-caliber machine guns to strafe the enemy.
³²

When Leslie pushed over at 10:25, the crew of the
S
ō
ry
ū
was on full alert. Minutes before, a bugle had sounded over the intercom system and a voice had announced that
Kaga
was under air attack. Indeed, crewmen crowding the rails on the
S
ō
ry
ū
could see smoke rising from the big carrier off to the south. Then, just as Dick Best was diving on the
Akagi
, an American dive-bomber emerged from out of the clouds north of the
S
ō
ry
ū
.
Then another. Captain Yanagimoto Ry
ū
saku ordered the
S
ō
ry
ū
hard to port, to throw off the bombers and to unmask his own antiaircraft battery, which opened fire at once. Leslie later recalled that “the sides of the carrier turned into a veritable ring of flames as the enemy commenced firing small caliber and anti-aircraft guns.”
³³

Leslie planned to strafe the flattop, but at 4,000 feet his guns jammed and he pulled out. The next plane in line was piloted by his wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul “Lefty” Holmberg. His bomb landed near the
S
ō
ry
ū
s
forward elevator and exploded on the hangar deck. A second bomb, dropped by Lieutenant Harold Bottomly, penetrated deep into the
carrier’s engine spaces before detonating. Leslie described the result as “the greatest inferno and holocaust I could ever imagine … with debris and material flying in all directions.” He counted a total five “direct hits” and three near misses by the planes of his squadron, though in fact only three bombs actually struck the
S
ō
ry
ū
.
Each one, however, landed in a different part of the carrier: one forward, one aft, and one amidships. In consequence, the
S
ō
ry
ū
became, in Leslie’s words, “an inferno of flame.” She was so obviously a total loss that pilots in the trailing section of Leslie’s squadron chose to attack other nearby targets, including a cruiser and a destroyer. A sailor on the
Hiry
ū
who watched the attack thought the
S
ō
ry
ū
“looked like [she] … had been sliced in two” and recalled that “it was possible to see right through her to the other side.” Like the
Kaga
and
Akagi
, the
S
ō
ry
ū
had been mortally wounded. Though desperate damage-control parties on all three ships fought valiantly to contain the raging fires, it was hopeless. In little more than five minutes, three of the four carriers of the Kid
ō
Butai had been smashed beyond recovery.
³⁴

The
S
ō
ry
ū
maneuvers radically in reaction to the attack by Max Leslie’s bombers. Note the rising sun painted on the forward part of the flight deck. (U.S. Navy)

Witnessing all this, Nagumo was reluctant to face reality. Though the fires on his flagship were burning out of control and her communications system had been knocked out, he did not want to leave the ship. Urged to transfer to another vessel, he replied, “It is not time yet.” But it was very nearly past time. The
Akagi’s
captain, Aoki Taijir
ō
, urged Kusaka Ry
ū
nosuke, Nagumo’s chief of staff, “to leave this vessel as soon as possible.” Kusaka pleaded with Nagumo. The
Hiry
ū
was still undamaged, and a swift counterstrike could still redeem the situation, but, he pointed out, Nagumo could not command the Kid
ō
Butai from a ship whose radio communications had been destroyed. Reluctantly, Nagumo allowed himself to be transferred to the light cruiser
Nagara.
Perhaps victory could still be snatched from the jaws of defeat.
³⁵

*
The Mark III Torpedo Data Computer (TDC) was an early electromagnetic analog computer used for calculating fire-control solutions on American submarines.

I
t was evident very quickly that the
Kaga
and the
S
ō
ry
ū
were doomed. Though the
Kaga’s
heavy armored battleship hull allowed her to continue to limp along at two to three knots, she was obviously dying. Flames raged unchecked all along her hangar deck and black smoke poured out of her from stem to stern. As for the
S
ō
ry
ū
, Lieutenant Harold Bottomley’s 1,000-pound bomb had penetrated deep into the ship and destroyed her engineering spaces. Dead in the water and without power, the
S
ō
ry
ū
was helpless. To save his men, Captain Yanagimoto Ry
ū
saku ordered abandon ship at 10:45, barely twenty minutes after the first bomb struck. He chose to stay on board. On
Akagi
, which had been hit only by Dick Best’s single bomb, damage-control teams struggled to fight the fires while other men labored to get her engines working again. It was a losing fight, however, since exploding ordnance and especially the aviation fuel on the hangar deck continued to feed the inferno. Consistent with a preference for attack over defense, Japanese damage-control doctrine and equipment were less robust than on American ships, with little built-in
redundancy. With the ship’s main engines out, the water pumps didn’t work, and there were no portable gasoline-powered pumps or generators. Desperate crewmen manned a hand pump on the anchor deck that produced a thin stream of sea water, but it was like spitting into a forest fire. Though efforts to save the flagship would continue until that evening, at 1:30 in the afternoon, Captain Aoki, in silent acknowledgement that the situation was hopeless, ordered the emperor’s portrait removed and sent over to the destroyer
Nowaki
.
¹

Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, the aggressive and well-liked commander of Carrier Division 2, flew his flag on the carrier
Hiry
ū
at Midway. (U.S. Naval Institute)

Catastrophic as the situation was, Nagumo thought less about his losses than about how to strike back. Once he had reestablished himself aboard the cruiser
Nagara
, he reported to Yamamoto that three of his carriers were burning—a message that, when it arrived, produced only a low groan from the commander in chief. Reflecting a culture that valued heroic effort nearly as much as ultimate success, Nagumo’s understanding of his duty compelled him to continue the fight even if it did not produce a victory. Though
Hiry
ū
was the only functioning carrier he had left, he was determined to find the American carriers and attack them. During his transfer to the
Nagara
, operational command
fell temporarily onto Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki, commander of Cruiser Division 8. At 10:50, Abe signaled Yamaguchi Tamon in the
Hiry
ū
to “attack the enemy carriers.”
²

Yamaguchi hardly needed such an order. Very likely he felt vindicated by the horrific turn of events. At 8:30 that morning he had argued for an immediate strike—even a partial strike—against the enemy, and his advice had been rejected. Nagumo had been reluctant to send only thirty-six dive-bombers without a significant fighter escort to attack the Americans; now he would have to do so with only half that number. In response to Abe’s order, Yamaguchi had replied, “All our planes are taking off now,” but that did not mean a full deck load. The
Hiry
ū
launched only eighteen Val dive-bombers—all there were—accompanied by six Zero fighters. Yamaguchi also had nine Kate torpedo bombers on board (one more, a refugee from
Akagi
, would land a half hour later). They were not ready to go, however, and rather than wait for them, he sent off what he had. It was far short of the “armored gauntlet” that Nagumo had expected to hurl at the Americans.
*

These circumstances emboldened Yamaguchi to offer more unsolicited advice to his commander. By blinker signal to the new flagship, he insisted that only a single destroyer should be left behind to watch the three crippled carriers; everything else should be sent at once to attack the Americans. It was not the first time Yamaguchi had offered his views, but this time the syntax of his message was that of an order: “Leave one destroyer with the damaged carriers and have the others proceed on the course of attack.” This was more than presumption, it was insolence. Either Nagumo ignored the “order” or his staff never showed it to him, for there was no acknowledgment from the flagship, only the order from Abe to “attack the enemy carriers.”
³

The
Hiry
ū
s
eighteen Val dive-bombers were in the air by 11:00 a.m., merely thirty-five minutes after the first American bomb had landed on the
Kaga.
Lieutenant Kobayashi Michio commanded the mission, which included six Zeros under Lieutenant Shigematsu Yasuhiro. All of the pilots were experienced veterans. They headed east toward the most recent contact location sent in by a scout pilot from the cruiser
Chikuma.
Though the initial contact that morning had identified Spruance’s Task Force 16, this newest sighting was of Fletcher’s
Yorktown
group.