Our anti-aircraft batteries shot well, downing ten planes, damaging a great many more—as did our fighter planes. Our returning fliers report large numbers of enemy planes down on the water and falling out of formation. Little damage was done to runways, the Japanese apparently leaving these intact for their own anticipated use. The Cable Station, with its long cool balconies and becoming slate roofs, deep in shadow under the imported trees, was left for the same reason. The loss of life is very small in the Islands’ fighting, and the underground installations untouched. The few wounded are cared for in the dugout hospital. Considerable damage was done to many of the larger structures above ground. The fires are soon out, save for the smoky nuisance of the useless oil sludge. The PT boats, as usual, did a wonderful job, dodging the horizontal bombers’ big missiles, and in bringing down one, possibly two, Jap planes. The young officers, all USNR under a regular Squadron Lieutenant, had the time of their lives, and although several boats were sprinkled with machine gun bullets, all came through. The YP’s popped away, swishing their round bodies about through the water, as busy as bird dogs, doing helpful work wherever they could. Trucks rumble about with working parties, cleaning up, and the Islands wait for whatever may come from sky or sea.

Wings Over the Sea

Another historical event is about to take place on this morning of many far flung battles. The Army B-26’s, soldiers at sea, fly north to find their targets—our Army’s first attack with torpedo planes. The planes sight the big masses of the two Jap carriers and most gallantly speed in for the attack, under a cloud of heavy fighter concentrations. On they roar against the hail of steel from the carriers’ anti-aircraft and the fighters. Coming in low under this withering fire, one plane dives suddenly with terrific force, sending up a column of water like a plunging shell, before she can launch her torpedo. A second B-26 gets in close, punch drunk, releases her torpedo, pulls out too late, skids across the flight deck, and crashes into the sea beyond. The remaining two get close, pull out and zoom over, literally flying sieves. So hot is the A.A. fire that these two surviving planes have no time to observe results, but the approaches they made would indicate one torpedo hit. They arrive at Midway with difficulty, so shot up from the gruelling fighter and anti-aircraft fire that they are unserviceable. This kind of Army attack under better conditions will have its greater reward for such gallantry.

Almost simultaneously with the attack of the B-26’s, the Navy TBF’s make similar heroic assaults against an equally determined and overwhelming number of fighters. Two are shot down before they can launch their torpedoes. Only one badly mauled plane returns, the dazed pilot unable to tell what happened to the remainder of his unit, or how the attack fared. A B-17, on reconnaisance, reports seeing one of the planes make a torpedo hit. Well armed as the TBF’s are, they cannot go through fighter opposition without their own fighter protection.

In the early morning the Major in Command of a group of Marine dive bombers finds the big carrier Soryu of the Striking Force, zigzagging at twenty-five knots. His planes had been received too recently to train his men sufficiently in dive bombing, so he chooses the less effective and more hazardous method of glide bombing attack, because it permits lower pull-outs. Down in the long glide they bravely come, against another overwhelming number of swift fighters, spitting torrents of steel. Bullets are ripping through the Major’s plane, smoke trailing astern curves steeply downward as he plunges into the sea. One, two, three, four, five and a sixth falters, swoops, swings and spins crazily down after him. The other indomitable Marines dive in and score three bomb hits leaving the Soryu afire. Eight return badly shot up, one having two hundred and ten holes in her. Peering through the bullet holes at the armored backs of the pilots’ seats, is like looking through a colander at two tombstones.

Soon afterward the Marine bombers from Midway make a glide bombing attack on a Jap battleship, again against heavy fighter opposition. They bore in and get two hits, and when last seen the battleship is smoking heavily with a list to starboard.

In the meantime, the B-17’s, Army Flying Fortresses, have been directed to change their objective from the Transport Force to the carriers. Promptly and with skillful navigation the planes sweep north, picking up the enemy fleet on bearing 320, about one hundred and forty-five miles from Midway. The Lieutenant Colonel, USA, leads this bombardment squadron in the same outstanding manner that he has shown throughout other engagements, and attacks with 500 pound demolition bombs at twenty thousand feet. Each plane is pregnant with eight bombs and the bombardiers, like Nature herself, control the convulsions that release the shiny babies. Far below, the stately carriers seem to move in slow rhythm, their broad trains spread out astern like a bride’s white veil. Zeros dive at the armed bombers, our bullets piercing their bright tin shells, as they swerve and twist. Down goes one, diminishing rapidly to a shiny flickering bit of mica, before it makes a tiny circle of white on the flat blue sea. Three flashes are seen on the two carriers, as the white plumes of water rise around them. Our planes rumble on and away, leaving one carrier smoking heavily. This is probably the Soryu, since only one carrier was reported smoking, and the Marines hit her with three bombs a few minutes before. In spite of these hits the two big ships are still maneuvering, operating normally and proceeding steadily toward Midway.

Air attack on Japanese carriers Kaga and Akagi, Midway, June 4, 1942

The Islands’ air force has struck with their full strength, with all their guts, with everything they had. Men had died in a confusing maze of steel tearing in from all directions at once. Those who lived never wavered from their purpose, to strike hard at the enlarging mass of the ship in front of their eyes. A flashing concentrated ambition, to be accomplished in the few remaining seconds of consciousness, that’s all they wanted—Army, Navy, or Marine, their ruling passion strong in death was the same. Yet on came the great armada, nearer, ever closer to Midway. Eight or ten ships are damaged, a transport and a cargo vessel are sunk, but this is hardly an impression on the mighty force of eighty ships converging on Midway. Three or four Japanese carriers are either undamaged or not enough so to hamper their deadly operations. Most of Midway’s fighters, dive bombers and torpedo planes, the only types capable of making a high percentage of hits against ships, are nearly wiped out. This is the critical situation at 8:30 this fateful June morning, and moreover replacements of these types on distant Oahu cannot be got to Midway for the remainder of the battle.

“Where Is the Navy?”

This is the time of day when our big cities open their offices, the streets leading to the tall buildings are crowded with attractive secretaries and stenographers dainty in their light summer dresses, their high heels clicking on the hard, freshly’ washed pavements. Clerks are hanging up their straw hats, removing their jackets, turning over their mail, as the typewriter’s tap is punctuated by the tiny bell. In San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York—all office business days start like this. Millions of little bells warn of the line’s near ending, the carriages snap back and the little lettered hammers strike the paper. “Bill had your desk before he went into the Navy.—Say, did you see the headlines? The Japs are attacking Midway—for Gawd’s sake, where’s the Navy?”

On his bridge, the stocky Jap Admiral peers with his expressionless little slanting eyes to the southeast, toward coveted Midway. He will take their fine concrete runways for the Rising Sun. They are almost his. He knows that he has all but annihilated the burning Islands’ air force. Rub out the despicable defenders, hidden like rats in the sand. Through the eyes of his commanding air force, his big out-ranging ships can lay off and pulverize the Islands without receiving a hit. But where is the American Navy? These land planes that escaped had my course and bearing. The American is capable of unhonorable tricks. His mouth moves slightly in his inscrutable face. The signalmen spring to the halyards and hoist the word. The visor of his cap casts a deep shadow across his broad round cheekbones, as the big Striking Force stealthily turns in a long sweeping curve, and heads northwest. Like huge white U’s, the creamy foam gradually mingles with the ocean’s blue, leaving no trace of their going.

Two hundred miles to the northeast of the Jap carriers the cloud base spreads thickly, high above the gray waters. Now and then through an opening, bright shafts of the sun’s yellow light shoot down, enlivening the broad surface in large circles of sparkling green. Like the beams of a huge celestial searchlight, they pass with the clouds’ moving lens, lighting for a few moments the big flat tops of our carriers, the glistening wet sides of our fast turning destroyers, glinting the long guns of our swinging blue cruisers. The Task Forces in the early morning, with white bones in their mouths, move swiftly, gray ships on a gray sea.

They silently intercept the first contact reports of the Midway scouts. The Enterprise and the Hornet commence launching their attack groups. Headed to windward, the fine bow of the Enterprise slices the gray sea in two divided white streams of slapping foam, forming a long V. One by one with gathering speed, the planes run down the long flat top, rise against the heading wind, sweep round in a rising curve and diminish into obscurity. With the regularity of the stop watch’s jerking second hand they are air borne, humming mechanical ships hurtling noisily through the sky. A pilot looks down from a dive bomber and sees small hornets buzz away in streams from their mother’s broad back. The Hornet launches VSB’s, VTB’s and VF's. The Enterprise launches an equal number, save for one less VTB. These ships’ two groups proceed independently to the attack. The Yorktown is temporarily held in reserve until her scouts return.

At a high altitude far above the clouds, the dive bombers streak along; fifteen hundred feet below the cloud base fly the torpedo planes. Fighters fail to accompany the torpedo planes. The Hornet’s dive bombers expect to provide protection for the bombers and torpedo planes over the fleet, but the torpedo planes proceed separately and contact with them is lost. The fighters of the Enterprise also operate at high altitudes, expecting to find the enemy fighters aloft in the clearer sky, and consequently are unable to reach their torpedo planes in time to assist them. Naturally neither group can know of the reversed course of this Jap Striking Force, especially because of the bad visibility. The sea is obscured, the distance to be traveled great, and the Jap Striking Force having retired directly after the last Midway attack, they were consequently not in the estimated position.

The Hornet Group Commander makes the decision to turn south and searches along the enemy’s reported track, failing of course to find him. The fighters search until forced down for lack of gas, one by one with spluttering engines they descend into the sea, and all the planes are lost. The pilots push back their hoods and crawl from the sinking ships, inflate their rubber boats, and eventually eight are recovered from the lonely wastes of the Pacific. All but two of the dive bombers in time get back to the Hornet, eleven of them via Midway, having found nothing to attack. The Group Commander of the Enterprise estimates that the enemy must have reversed course and therefore roars north to the search. This is one of the most important decisions of the battle, resulting in decisive losses for the enemy. Shortly after ten this morning, he finds the wary Jap fleet and prepares to attack.

Meanwhile the Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8, led by a gallant Lieutenant Commander, finds the enemy and without hesitation, at 0920, conducts a most amazingly heroic attack entirely unsupported. Having been spotted a while back by a Jap scout, they expect to catch hell. Ahead they see two towering columns of smoke rising beyond the horizon, and instantly drop down and come in skimming low over the waves’ crests, the Commander’s radio flashing the Japs’ position to our carriers. A large flock of Zeros that had been circling high above the fleet, a swarm of silver gnats, form and come down like a spray of bright bullets, their loudening cannon spurting fire. The rear guns of Squadron 8 spit flame, gun muzzles spurt like high pressure fire hose.

At eight miles the Squadron is met by a horizontal sheet of anti-aircraft fire that flashes past like whizzing balls of brimstone. They pass through the smoke like an arrow, too fast for blinding. The sense of speed is terrific. Right beneath, the sea is shooting past in parallel blurs of dark and light, the gray surface comes at them with the velocity of lightning. A plane in front hangs suspended above the floor tearing away beneath—is hit—strikes the flying water, a sheet as hard as armor plate. The white patch spins past, an oblong flashing streak. Another plane ahead is there—vanishes in a crash—and a piece of wreckage shoots at and under the following pilot. The Commander’s plane—a burst of instantaneous flame—splash—and the black puff of smoke is far astern. Tail and wings of the plane directly in front blankets the target—drops in the blink of an eye—the growing mass of the carrier is in its place. Another and another vacate their space in a burst of orange, dropped by the smash of an exploding shell. The remnant of Squadron 8 drive their attack right in to closer range, launch torpedoes, before being tripped by heavy missiles.

One plane, the gunner killed and the pilot wounded, comes on alone. Slipping and skidding at eight hundred yards, the pilot releases the torpedo at the swinging Kaga, flippers up and by a split second, a few feet, catapults over her flat top—gone before the echoes cease. Four Zeros drop on him as quick as thought, shooting away his controls, and he skims down, hitting the water with a smacking glance—his wings cutting the surface, knife under. Breathless and wounded, the Ensign fights to the surface, feels the quivering thud of his torpedo with his first deep breath.