The Battle of Midway (58 page)

Hashimoto’s second division had better luck. Threading their way through the heavy antiair fire, four of the Kates in his section managed to get close enough to launch their torpedoes. That morning, Petty Officer Hamada Giichi had watched the destruction of
Kaga, Akagi
, and
S
ō
ry
ū
from the deck of the
Hiry
ū
and had resolved to make the Americans pay. Now, after his pilot dropped his torpedo and pulled out over the
Yorktown
’s flight deck, Hamada leaned out of the cockpit and shook his fist at it. The Americans who saw him yelled and gestured back. It was an intensely personal moment in a battle dominated by impersonal weapons. Within seconds, at 2:43 p.m., the first torpedo struck the
Yorktown
flush on the port side at about frame 90.
²⁶

“It was a real WHACK,” Ensign John “Jack” Crawford remembered. “You could feel it all through the ship. … I had the impression that the ship’s hull buckled slightly.” The blast knocked out six of the ship’s nine boilers and opened a large hole in the hull fifteen feet below the water line. Fires spread into the other boiler rooms and knocked out all propulsion. The
Yorktown
began to slow and take on a slight list. Then, just moments later, a second torpedo struck near frame 75. The two strikes were so close together that combined they created a single giant sixty-by-thirty-foot hole in the
Yorktown
’s port side. The inrushing sea flooded the generator
room and knocked out power throughout the ship; the emergency generators failed too, and the ship went dark. The
Yorktown
continued to lose way and the list became more pronounced. Soon she was again dead in the water. Eventually the ship heeled over at a 26-degree angle—so steep that it was difficult to walk on the flight deck. Commander Clarence Aldrich, the damage-control officer, reported to Buckmaster that without power none of the pumps feeding the fire hoses were working, nor could he effect counterflooding to prevent the
Yorktown
from listing further. Charles Kleinsmith, whose crew had kept boiler number one in operation after the first attack, had been killed. Lacking power, unable to fight the fires, and fearing that the big flattop “would capsize in a few minutes,” trapping the whole crew underwater, at 2:55, Buckmaster ordered abandon ship.
²⁷

There was no panic. Men came up from the darkened spaces below, some carrying the wounded. The kapok-filled life vests were stowed in giant canvas bags suspended from the overhead on the hangar deck, and they spilled onto the deck in a heap. As they had on the
Lexington
in the Coral Sea, men stripped off their shoes for swimming and lined them up on the deck. Because Buckmaster feared the ship might roll over at any moment, he directed the men to evacuate from the starboard (high) side. From there, it was some sixty feet from the flight deck to the sea, and the men had to lower themselves down knotted ropes thrown over the side. One recent graduate of the Naval Academy began to lower himself with his legs splayed out at a 45-degree angle as he had been taught to do in gym class. Then, appreciating that this was not gym class, he wrapped his legs tightly around the rope as he continued his descent. Seaman E. R. “Bud” Quam successfully lowered himself down into the sea, then found that the water soaking into his heavy anti-flash overalls made them heavy and threatened to drag him down. He was floundering badly when a pair of strong arms pulled him out of the water and into a rubber raft. He looked up at his rescuer and was astonished to see that it was Peter Newberg, a high school classmate from Willmar, Minnesota.
²⁸

Morale remained high, even in the water. Those bobbing in life vests put out their thumbs to those in the rafts, as if hitching a ride. A few called out “Taxi! Taxi!” and there was a lot of joshing and joking—one group
began singing “The Beer Barrel Polka.” The escorting destroyers closed in to pick up the survivors, and eventually some 2,280 men were recovered; USS
Balch
alone picked up 725. Buckmaster wanted to ensure that he was the last one off the
Yorktown
. All alone, he conducted a tour of the spaces that were still above water to make sure that no one had been overlooked. With the
Yorktown
listing near 30 degrees and the decks and ladders slippery with oil, he had to move “hand-over-hand” to stay vertical. By now the water was lapping at the hangar deck. Buckmaster made his way to the stern, stepped off into the sea, and swam away from the ship. He was soon picked up and taken on board Fletcher’s new flagship, Astoria.
²⁹

The USS
Balch
(DD-363), at right, picking up survivors from the badly listing
Yorktown
on the afternoon of June 4. (U.S. Naval Institute)

As the
Yorktown
was fighting for her life, Bill Brockman on the
Nautilus
was getting his second good look that day at an enemy aircraft carrier. After finding himself alone on the surface at 10:00 that morning, he had continued
northward for half an hour when he spotted a tall cloud of smoke on the horizon. Because of enemy airplanes in the vicinity, he went to periscope depth, where he had to rely on the boat’s electric power. He was concerned about how long his batteries would last. However, deciding that they had enough juice to last until nightfall he continued submerged until, at 11:45, he “identified the source of the smoke as a burning carrier” guarded by what he thought were two cruisers, but which were the destroyers
Hagikaze
and
Maikaze.
Closing this formation proved difficult since the burning carrier was still making headway at one or two knots, and with her depleted batteries, the submerged
Nautilus
herself was only marginally faster. As Brockman watched through his periscope, it seemed to him that the two “cruisers” were making preparations to take the carrier under tow. He thought about attacking the escorts, but in the end he decided it was more important to finish off the carrier.
³⁰

At two o’clock, about the time that Tomonaga was beginning his attack run on the
Yorktown
, Brockman calculated the range and the angle on the bow. He and the other officers carefully studied the ship identification books—”to make sure this couldn’t possibly be one of ours.” Satisfied that it was not, he fired a spread of four torpedoes at what he thought was a S
ō
ry
ū
-class carrier but was instead the mortally wounded
Kaga.
One of the torpedoes misfired, and two missed. The fourth ran straight and true and struck the
Kaga
flush on her starboard side. At the time, Brockman’s enthusiasm led him to imagine that he saw it explode and reignite fires on the big carrier. In fact, however, when the torpedo hit the
Kaga
’s armored battleship hull, it did not explode, and instead broke in half. The heavy nose containing the unexploded warhead sank from sight, and the after section floated harmlessly nearby. Ironically, several Japanese crewmen who had evacuated the
Kaga
used it as a flotation device until they were picked up by one of the destroyers.
³¹

Brockman had no time for a lengthy assessment, since the
Kaga
’s two escorts immediately charged toward him and he had to dive. He went down to three hundred feet—as deep as the boat would go. The Japanese destroyers dropped eleven depth charges, but their deepest setting was two hundred feet, and all of them exploded well above him. Despite that, the
multiple concussions at such an extreme depth started several leaks in the boat’s hull, and the dripping water led to some tense moments on board the
Nautilus.
Brockman stayed deep for almost two hours, then crept back up to periscope depth just past 4:00 p.m. The carrier was still there, smoke pouring out of her. The duty officer on the
Nautilus
watched the towering column of smoke climbing up “to the height of a thousand feet” and told Brockman with evident satisfaction that it reminded him of the smoke that rose up from the USS
Arizona
on December 7.
³²

By then, Nagumo had finally, and reluctantly, given up on the idea of forcing a surface action. At 3:40 he ordered what was left of the Kid
ō
Butai to change course from northeast to northwest. It was the right decision, if somewhat tardy. By now
Hiry
ū
had only nine attack planes left (four Vals and five Kates), plus perhaps a dozen Zeros. Though Yamaguchi reported (incorrectly) that his two air strikes had “accounted for 2 carriers damaged,” another report from a scout plane informed Nagumo that there were still two more undamaged American carriers east of him. For his part, Yamaguchi was planning one more desperate attack at dusk. He hoped to launch his last nine attack planes, plus six Zeros, at about 6:00 p.m. and hit the Americans at twilight when they would not be expecting it. Though the pilots were woozy with exhaustion, the planes were ready and waiting on the hangar deck. Meanwhile, Yamaguchi kept an active CAP flying over what was left of the Kid
ō
Butai.
³³

The Americans, too, were planning a strike that afternoon, and they had many more tools to hand. Without question, their morning losses had been heavy and sobering. All three of the torpedo squadrons had been virtually annihilated, and whatever happened from now on would depend entirely on the rugged and dependable Dauntless dive-bombers. Of the thirty-two dive-bombers that Wade McClusky had led away from the
Enterprise
that morning, however, only eleven had returned, and two of those were so badly damaged as to be of no further use. These losses were due less to enemy fire than to the long flight and lengthy search; most of the planes had simply run out of gas on the way back and ditched in the water. The vast majority of their pilots would eventually be recovered, but for now
Enterprise
had only
about as many attack planes left as
Hiry
ū
did: seven from Earl Gallaher’s Scouting Six and four from Dick Best’s Bombing Six. There was, however, Max Leslie’s Bombing Three from
Yorktown
, When Leslie’s bombers had returned from their strike on the
S
ō
ry
ū
to find the
Yorktown
under attack, Pederson had ordered them to help defend the task force and then sent them off to find refuge on the
Enterprise.
Leslie himself and two others ran out of gas en route and ditched in the water, but fourteen of them had made it, and those fourteen were on board
Enterprise
now. Adding them to the remnants of Gallaher’s and Best’s squadrons gave the
Enterprise
a strike force of twenty-five dive-bombers.
³⁴