WATCHING THE ATTACK ON THE FIRST CARRIER STRIKING FORCE
The Japanese Carriers
As I broke free of the cloud base, I searched to the right and ahead for my torpedo planes. There were no aircraft in sight. As two puffballs of AA blossomed in the direction I was searching, I looked closer--still nothing in sight. Then one, two, three more puffs of black popped up, each successively closer to me. Realizing I was the target, I glanced down to the left and found a large cruiser of a design I had never before seen. With its bow splitting the water in a foamy white wave ("a bone in its teeth"), whatever its destination, the ship was wasting no time getting there.
I pushed over and rolling right, dove for the ocean, leveling off at a hundred feet above the water. Swinging back to the left, I found what the clouds had kept hidden from me. There before me was the target, the First Carrier Striking Force. Ahead, and on a course to my left, were three large carriers, all with bow waves and stern wakes that indicated a high rate of speed. These were later identified as Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu. The fact that there should have been a fourth carrier, Hiryu, failed to register in my memory.
"THE FAMOUS FOUR MINUTES" - by R.G. Smith
This painting depicts one of the defining moments of the Pacific War when the tide turned against the Japanese aggressors at America's Midway Islands. Lieutenant Richard Best and his two wingmen in their Douglas Dauntless SBD dive-bombers have just launched a successful attack on the Japanese flagship aircraft carrier Akagi. The crushing defeat inflicted on the Japanese Navy by the very much smaller United States Pacific Fleet at Midway put an end to Japan's ambition to dominate the central Pacific region, and removed the Japanese threat to Hawaii.
Kaga was in the lead, with Akagi not more than three miles broadside to and directly ahead of me. Soryu, which I compared to Enterprise in size, was a mile beyond and to the right of Akagi, and appeared to be just starting a hard turn to starboard. Flashes of gunfire spotted the decks of nearby escorts, but I saw no shell burst or possible targets. It appeared I had the sky to myself.
A brief thought flashed across my mind: should I make a strafing run on the nearest carrier? Then as I looked back to Akagi, hell literally broke loose. First, the orange-colored flash of a bomb burst appeared on the flight deck, midway between the island structure and the stern. Then in rapid succession, followed a bomb burst midship, and the water founts of near misses plumed up near the stern. Almost in unison, on my left, Kaga's flight deck erupted with bomb bursts and flames. My gaze remained on Akagi as an explosion at the midship waterline seemed to open the bowels of the ship in a rolling, greenish-yellow ball of flame. A black cloud of smoke drew my attention to Soryu, still in a turn to starboard. She too was being heavily hit. Dense black smoke billowed from the entire length of her hull. All three ships had lost their foaming white bow waves and appeared to be losing way.
I circled slowly to the right; awe-struck; my mind trying desperately to grasp the full impact of what I had just witnessed, and the scene still in motion. In reading the script, the briefing team had voiced this destructive happening as only a hoped-for possibility. The infernos I now watched in creation were not being viewed from a comfortable seat in a movie, but from atop a parachute pack in a Grumman fighter.
Return
"Group rendezvous! Rendezvous!" The command piercing into my ears from the headphones in my helmet jerked me back to reality. I was also startled by the realization that, except for an occasional sputter of static, the abrupt command was the first radio transmission I had heard the entire time we had been airborne. I reached for my microphone and began to call, first Jimmy, then Dan, finally any station! I desperately wanted the sight of a friendly set of wings. My headphones remained silent.
At briefing, the rally point after the attack had been given as twenty miles north of the target. Japanese ships were visible in that direction, and to get there it would take fuel that I did not have to spare. Thach's admonition popped to mind, "None of this lone wolf business!" It was time to get out of here.
Pulling the plotting board out of its slot under the instrument panel, I checked the return heading to Point Option and Yorktown. Swinging the fighter's nose onto the desired compass heading, I scanned the sky in all sectors for aircraft. There were none in sight, neither friend nor, thankfully, foe.
A last look in their direction found the three carriers now almost dead in the water. Each vessel's position was marked by a black cloud of smoke, towering above, that rolled and boiled in a manner indicating it rose from an area of intense heat. Climbing to the base of the low hanging clouds to protect myself from being jumped from above, I set the engine controls for maximum range. A visual sweep of the area for aircraft informed me that I was still on my own.