The Battle of Midway (60 page)

Only then did Stebbins’ fourteen planes from
Hornet
arrive on the scene. Seeing that the Japanese carrier was already smashed and “burning throughout its entire length,” Stebbins led his squadron against the heavy cruisers
Chikuma
and
Tone
. Based on the pilots’ assessments, Mitscher later reported three hits on a battleship and two on a heavy cruiser, though in fact none of the bombs from the
Hornet’s
planes hit home.
⁴⁵

In an epilogue to this very long day, a dozen Army B-17s—six from Midway and six from Barking Sands Airfield on Kauai Island—appeared overhead just at dusk and dropped more than thirty 500-pound bombs on what was left of the Kid
ō
Butai. They scored no hits, though they returned to base claiming one hit on a carrier and the sinking of a destroyer.
⁴⁶

By the time all the Navy planes were back aboard the carriers, it was full dark.
*
Spruance called Fletcher on the TBS to ask if he had any orders. “Negative,” Fletcher replied; “will conform to your movements,” in effect releasing Spruance to operate his task force independently, a vote of confidence that Spruance greatly appreciated. Spruance’s first decision was to turn Task Force 16 to the east, away from the enemy. He was aware that this might allow the remnants of the Kid
ō
Butai to escape during the night. He knew, however, that four Japanese carriers had been hit, and he was sensitive to the possibly of a Japanese night attack by their heavy battleships or by destroyers launching torpedoes. As he put it in his subsequent report to
Nimitz, “I did not feel justified in risking a night encounter with possibly superior enemy forces, but on the other hand, I did not want to be too far away from Midway the next morning.” Though Spruance’s decision was subsequently controversial, it was a sound one. Nimitz had told him—and Fletcher—not to risk the fleet.
⁴⁷

As for Nagumo, with his last carrier in flames, and lacking any aircraft beyond the few scout planes on the heavy cruisers and battleships, he at last faced reality and directed the remnants of his command to head west into the setting sun.

*
Altogether, Yamaguchi and the
Hiry
ū
could count up to sixty-four aircraft. That included twenty-seven Zero fighters from all four carriers, most of them still flying CAP. There were an additional ten Zeros on the
Hiry
ū
s
hanger deck, the eighteen Val dive bombers, and nine Kate torpedo planes, plus one more orphaned Kate from the
Akagi.

*
Though the Zeros failed to shoot down any of Ware’s dive bombers, none of the American planes made it back to the
Enterprise
, presumably because they subsequently ran out of gas. The crew of one of them—Ensign Frank W. O’Flaherty and his backseat gunner, Avation Machinist’s Mate First Class Bruno Gaido—ditched in the water and were subsequently taken prisoner by the Japanese destroyer
Makigumo.
Gaido was the man who had won Halsey’s approbation four months earlier by attempting to fight off a Japanese Nell from the stern of the
Enterprise
during the raid on the Marshall Islands (see
chapter 4
). After the Japanese interrogated the two Americans, they tied weights to their ankles and dropped them over the side.

*
Because the
Yorktown
was out of action by the time these scouts returned, all of them had to land on board the carriers of Task Force 16. When Adams climbed out of his Dauntless on board the
Enterprise
still wearing his pajamas, he provoked a laugh when he claimed to be the only one who had come prepared to spend the night.

*
There was one more American air strike that night. At 5:00 p.m., a PBY from Midway reported a “burning carrier” off to the northwest—almost certainly the
Kaga.
Major Ben Norris lifted off with twelve planes from the Eastern Island airfield at 7:15, and Simard sent out eight PT boats, each of them carrying a 200-gallon auxiliary gas tank to enable them to make the long run out to the target. But by the time any of them arrived, the
Kaga
was no longer afloat. At 6:25 she suffered another massive explosion and went under at around 7:25, taking some eight hundred men out of her crew of 1,800 down with her. During the return flight, Norris got disoriented in the dark with no visual references and flew his plane into the sea.

T
he battle was not over. Though Yamamoto was a gambler, he was also a realist. Nonetheless, for several more hours he continued to behave as if victory were still possible. When Spruance turned Task Force 16 eastward after dark, Yamamoto sent a radio message to all units that the American fleet, which he announced had “practically been destroyed,” was retiring to the east and that the landing on AF (Midway) would proceed. His purpose in sending such a message may have been to boost morale, but his subsequent orders suggest that he was still clinging to the hope that he could make it happen. At 9:20 p.m. he ordered Kond
ō
’s two battleships and four cruisers to head northeast at high speed, to seek a night surface engagement with the retiring American carrier task force. He also directed Kurita’s four heavy cruisers, which were covering the “Transport Group,” to proceed to Midway to shell the airfield. He announced that the main body, including his flagship,
Yamato
, was coming up to rendezvous with what was left of the Kid
ō
Butai. Finally, he authorized Ugaki to relieve Nagumo of his command and put Kond
ō
in charge of the battle. Kond
ō
led his big surface
ships to the northeast, spreading them out into a scouting line in anticipation of finding the American carriers in the dark.
¹

Yamamoto also had to decide what to do about Nagumo’s wrecked flagship. Though the
Akagi
was virtually destroyed, she remained stubbornly afloat. It was unrealistic to imagine that she could be salvaged and towed all the way back across the Pacific, but the alternatives were appalling: abandoning her to the enemy or sinking her with torpedoes. One of Yamamoto’s staff officers worried that if she were abandoned, the Americans would turn her into “a museum piece on the Potomac River,” a horrifying scenario. But the idea of sinking one of the emperor’s capital ships was equally horrifying. The decision belonged to Yamamoto, and after listening to the discussion he told his staff, “I will apologize to the Emperor for the sinking of the
Akagi”
and he gave orders for her destroyer screen to send her to the bottom. After receiving those orders, the screen commander fired four torpedoes at the
Akagi
, one from each of his four destroyers, like a firing squad. At least two of them struck home, and the majestic
Akagi
slipped beneath the waves.
²

That made the
Hiry
ū
the last Japanese carrier afloat. For some time, Yamaguchi hoped that he could salvage his flagship and get her back to Japan, and throughout the evening and into the night her crews fought the fires. Then, just past midnight, the
Hiry
ū
was rocked by another internal explosion. The exhausted damage-control parties continued to labor, but it was now evident to all that it was hopeless. At 2:00 a.m., Yamaguchi ordered them to stop working and to assemble on the flight deck aft of the gaping holes left by the American bombs. There, he addressed them. He took full responsibility for the loss of the
Hiry
ū
and ordered the seven hundred or so survivors to live, so that they could become the core of a new and revitalized Imperial Navy. He asked them to face west, toward Tokyo, and called for three banzai cheers as the flag was lowered to the strains of the national anthem. Then, at 3:15 a.m., he ordered abandon ship. His last two messages consisted of an apology to Nagumo and an order to Captain Abe Toshio, commanding the destroyer screen, to sink the
Hiry
ū
with torpedoes once the crew had left the ship. Yamaguchi himself remained aboard. Several members of his staff came to him to say that they, too, wished to go down with the ship. No, Yamaguchi told them. They must survive so they could carry on the war. He did,
however, accept the request of the
Hiry
ū
’s captain, Kaku Tomeo, to remain aboard, and the two of them stood together on what was left of the bridge to watch the orderly evacuation and admire the brightness of the moon.
³

At ten minutes past five, after the
Hiry
ū
s
crew had been plucked from the water, and with the sun just coming up, Commander Fujita Isamu, captain of the destroyer
Makigumo
, fired a Type 93 “Long Lance” torpedo at the smoldering flattop. The first one ran underneath the hull and failed to detonate. A second struck home and exploded. Fujita, perhaps eager to wash his hands of this unpleasant duty, steamed off to the west. Some members of his crew reported that they saw survivors on board the
Hiry
ū
waving at them, but, perhaps assuming that these were patriots who preferred to go down with the ship, Fujita kept going.
⁴

By then Yamamoto had abandoned whatever hope he had had of forcing a surface action. By midnight, two things had become clear. First, that Kond
ō
was not going to catch the American carriers before dawn, and second, that Kurita’s cruisers could not reach Midway before sunrise left them exposed to air attack. There was no avoiding what was now evident—he had to acknowledge defeat and call off the whole operation. Yamamoto’s gunnery officer, Watanabe Yasuji, who had argued so passionately for the Midway plan before the Naval General Staff back in April, suggested that the battleships
Haruna
and
Kirishima
could be sent to join Kurita’s four cruisers in the bombardment of Midway. Their big guns could neutralize the Midway airfield, he declared, and gain more time for Kond
ō
’s battleships to catch up with and finish off the American carriers. Victory was still possible. Listening to his enthusiastic young staff officer, Yamamoto “turned very calm and quiet,” then replied, “It is too late now for such an operation.” He suggested to Watanabe, not unkindly, that as in
shogi
, “too much fighting causes all-out defeat.” Instead, Yamamoto recalled both Kond
ō
and Kurita, ordering them to fall back on the main body.
⁵

There was a delay in the transmission of those orders, perhaps a deliberate one. Watanabe acknowledged that “everyone was crazy to recover the situation and fight the enemy.” Kurita’s recall order was sent first to the wrong cruiser division and he did not get his orders until 2:30 a.m. By then, his four cruisers were less than ninety miles from Midway—three more
hours would have put them within gun range of the atoll. To be so close to the objective and have to turn around was galling, but orders were orders. Worse, dawn was now only two hours away, so that even at their top speed of 35 knots, Kurita’s four cruisers would be no more than 160 miles from Midway when the sun came up on June 5. They would be isolated, without air cover, and within easy range of the Midway airfield; Kurita knew it was unlikely he would get away undiscovered.
⁶

For Kurita and his cruiser force, however, there were other dangers that night besides airplanes. In the pitch darkness of the early hours of June 5, while Yamaguchi addressed the crew of the doomed
Hiry
ū
, the American submarine USS
Tambor
(SS-198) was running on the surface eighty-nine miles west of Midway. At 2:15 a.m., her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander John W. Murphy, Jr., spotted “the loom of four large ships on the horizon.” They were, of course, Kurita’s four heavy cruisers, at that time still closing on Midway for a dawn shelling of the airfield. In the dark of night and three miles away, however, Murphy could not tell if the ships were friend or foe. His orders had cautioned him and all other sub commanders that “encounters with friendly surface forces during night [were] possible,” and that they should be sure of their targets. Murphy therefore turned the
Tambor
to the east to parallel the unidentified vessels, hoping to catch them in the moonlight so he could “identify them by silhouette.” Instead he lost them in the dark. He did not regain contact until 2:38, by which time they had changed course to the north in response to Yamamoto’s recall order. Now they were heading almost directly toward him.
⁷