Things weren’t looking great for the American carriers off Midway in June of ‘42. The Yorktown (repaired from near-collapse days before), Hornet, and Enterprise had launched strike after strike against the tightly-grouped carriers advancing on Midway island, but had so far been met with failure.
Each strike was cut out of the air by the superior Zeros and AA guns, inflicting next to no damage on the Japanese. Even finding the carriers was a chore: The groups were still fifty miles apart, and planes didn’t have any kind of sophisticated radar…each group was forced to use spotty available information and scan the ocean below for ships.
Realizing he had to face a carrier group before completing the bombing of Midway, Admiral Nagumo had a problem. Half his force was still bombing Midway Island, and the Japanese battleship doctrine required a full force present for a strike against carriers. Nagumo let the strikes continue while fueling up and rearming his planes for sea warfare, awaiting the return of the strike force from Midway.
A group of American SBD Dauntless dive-bombers were approaching the Japanese fleet from the northeast and southwest. After hours in the air, they hadn’t been able to find the carriers at the given location, and barely had enough fuel to return to land. However, the squadron commanders gave the order to continue the search, and by chance, picked up the trail of the destroyer Arashi. They followed it to the carriers.
Two of the pieces were in place, and the third gave the Americans the victory: Due to the constant attacks, the swarm of Zero fighters defending the Japanese carriers had been drawn low in the sky, and away from the angle of the SBD’s incoming path.
The missing Zero patrols, the lucky, and the hangars full of planes being loaded with fuel and bombs spelled doom for the Japanese at Midway. In a matter of minutes, a handful of bombs reversed the course of the war in the Pacific, causing chain reaction that ripped up the wooden decks and incinerated the crews and strike forces almost instantly. The loss of Midway and the carriers punched a hole in the middle of Admiral Yamamoto’s complex chain of ships, and cost the Japanese irreplaceable ships and veteran pilots.
However, by the decisions of squadron commanders C. Wade McClusky, Jr. and Max Leslie to continue the search, they spotted the wake of Japanese destroyer Arashi. The destroyer was steaming at full speed back to Nagumo’s carrier force, after having unsuccessfully depth-charged the U.S. submarine Nautilus (SS-168), which had earlier carried out an unsuccessful attack on the battleship Kirishima.[47] The American dive-bombers arrived in a perfect position to attack the Japanese.[48] Armed Japanese strike aircraft filled the hangar decks at the time of the fateful attack, fuel hoses were snaking across the decks as refueling operations were hastily completed, and the constant change of ordnance meant bombs and torpedoes were stacked around the hangars rather than stowed safely in the magazines.[49] The Japanese carriers were extraordinarily vulnerable.
Recent Comments